A HISTORY OF SCOTLAND
JRY OF SCO
THE ROMAN OCCUPATION
ANDREW LANG
MS
MH P
All Rights reserved
. //• //
I
A HISTORY OF SCOTLAND
FROM
THE ROMAN OCCUPATION
BY
ANDREW LANG
VOL. III.
WITH A FRONTISPIECE
All Rights reserved
MICRCFORMED BY
DATE
MAY 01
U.9,5" v.3
CONTENTS OF THE THIRD VOLUME.
CHAPTER I.
CHARLES I. THE BEGINNING OF EVILS. 1625-1633.
The Protestant Disruption (1625) . 2
Case of Leighton (1630) ... 3
The King's impossible task . . 4
" Popery and wooden shoes " (1626) 5
Scotland quiet (1625) ... 6
The Revocation (1625) ... 7
Judges and Privy Councillors (1625) 8
Melrose ceases to be Secretary (1625) 9
Teinds or tithes (1626) 10
Want of money (1626) . . . u
Scottish levies (1626) ... 12
PAGE
Church property (1627) ... 13
Selling the tithes (1627) ... 14
The Revocation and the rebellion . 15
Trouble about kneeling (1626-1630) 16
"Arminian" bishops (1630) . . 17
The Liturgy (1616-1630) 18
Charles in Scotland (1633) . . 19
Parliament (1633) .... 20 Unconstitutional conduct of Charles
(1633) 21
The Fire of Frendraght (1630) . 22
CHAPTER II.
THE LITURGY AND THE COVENANT, 1633-1638.
Despotic introduction of Liturgy
(1636-1637) 25
The riot in St Giles's (1637) . . 26
General resistance (1637) . . 27
A Committee of Public Safety (1637) 28
The war of Protestations (1638) . 29
Montrose for the Covenant (1638) . 30
" Defence of the king's person " . 31
Legality of the Covenant 7(1638) . 32
Laud and the king (1637) . . 33
The Covenant forced on men (1638) 34
Hamilton's mission (1638) . . 35
Temper of the nobles (1638) . . 36
Hamilton drives time (1638) . • 37
VOL. III.
A General Assembly (1638) . . 38
Objections to its constitution (1638) 39 Disputable conduct of Hamilton
(1638) 40
Hamilton leaves the Assembly
(1638) 41
The bishops attacked (1638) . . 42
Scruples of Baillie (1638) . . 43
Censorship of the Press (1638) . 44
Montrose and Argyll (1638) . . 45
Rothes and Hamilton (1638) . . 46
The Marquis of Argyll (1638) . . 47
The great Montrose (1638) . . 48
Montrose ..... 49
VI
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER III.
THE BISHOPS' WAR, 1639.
The royal plan ( 1639) 53
Operations in the north (1639) . 54
Surrender of Huntly (1639) . . 55 Montrose's disputable conduct
(1639) 56
Hamilton disappoints the Gordons
(1639) 57
Montrose at Bridge of Dee (1639) • 5^ Leslie in the south (1640) . . 59 Perilous position of the Coven- anters (1639) .... 60 The king negotiates (1639) . . 61 The terms of capitulation (1639) . 62 Activity of Waristoun (1639) . . 63 The futile truce (1639) ... 64 Folly of the king's surrender (1639) 65
Meaning of the treaty disputed (1639) 66
Montrose meets the king (1639) . 67
Charles and the Assembly (1639) . 68
The Lords of the Articles (1639) . 69
Parliament adjourned (1639) . . 70 Covenanters intrigue with France
(1639-1640) 71
Preparations for war (1640) . . 72
Parliament defies prorogation (1640) 73 Montrose opposes the Convention
(1640) 74
The ' ' Bonnie House o' Airlie "
burned (1640) .... 75
Savile's forgery (1640) ... 76
Montrose thwarts Argyll (1640) . 77
Montrose crosses Tweed (1640) . 78
CHAPTER IV.
THE SCOTS INVASION OF ENGLAND, 1640.
Montrose's letter to the king (1640) 81
Charles returns to Scotland (1640) . 82
Montrose for the king (1641) . . 83 Preachers against conventicles (1639-
1640) 84
The professionally godly (1641) . 85 Montrose prophesies of Cromwell
(1640-1641) . .... 86
Montrose accuses Argyll (1641) . 87
The Dromedary and Elephant (1641) 88 Montrose and Napier imprisoned
(1641) 89
Charles in Scotland (1641) . . 90
Danger of Montrose (1641) . . 91
Mystery of "The Incident" (1641) . 92
Crawford's evidence (1641) . . 96
Murray's evidence (1641) . . 97
" The Incident " never unriddled . 98
William Murray suspected (1641) . 99
Irish Rebellion (1641) . . . 100
General confusion (1641-1642) . 101
State of the country (1642) . . 102
Presbyterian morals (1642) . . 103
Assembly and Parliament (1642) . 104
Tyranny of preachers (1642) . . 105
Montrose disregarded (1643) . . 106
A Convention (1643) . . . 107
Terrors of the godly (1643) . . 108
Solemn League and Covenant (1643) IO9
Montrose's venture (1643) . .no
Hamilton a prisoner (1643) . . in
Leven besieges Newcastle (1644) . 112
Turner on Leven (1644) . . . 113
Montrose disappointed (1644) . . 114
Huntly's bustling (1644) . . . 115
Montrose takes Morpeth (1644) . 116
Montrose contra mundum . -117
CHAPTER V.
THE YEAR OF MONTROSE, 1644-1645.
The man with the fiery cross (1644) 120 Montrose raises the standard (1644) 121 Victory of Tippermuir (1644) . . 122
Murder of Kilpont . . . Victory of Aberdeen (1644) Alleged cruelties to women (1644)
123 126 127
CONTENTS.
Vll
Montrose baffles Argyll (1644) . 128
Argyll retreats (1644) . . . 129 Montrose drives Argyll from In-
veraray (1644) .... 130
Argyll ' ' overtakes the rogues "(1645) 132
The trumpets at dawn . . . 133
Victory of Inverlochy (1645) . . 134
The preachers' cry for blood (1645) 135
The Kirk upbraids the king (1645) J3^
Montrose takes Dundee (1645) . 137
Montrose's remarkable retreat (1645) 138
Presbyterian Easter feast (1645) . 140
The eve of Auldearn (1645) . . 141
The victory of Auldearn (1645) . 143 Manoeuvres of Montrose (1645) . 145 Alford fight (1645) .... 147 Victory of Alford (1645) . . . 149 Charles fails to join Montrose (1645) 150 Covenanters butcher women (1645) 151 Baillie thwarted by Argyll (1645) . 153 Victory of Kilsyth (1645) . .155 Montrose deserted (1645) • -156 Defeat at Philiphaugh (1645) . . 157 Perfidy and massacre . . .158 Escape of Montrose (1645) . . 159
CHAPTER VI.
THE REVENGE OF THE COVENANTERS, 1645.
The theology of Anahuac . . 162
Murders of women (1646) . . 163 Scottish Commissioners turn to
France (1645) .... 164
The Scots and the king (1645) • l(>5
Montereul and Charles (1646) . 166
The king's scruples (1646) . . 167 Scottish "unblushing effrontery"
(1646) 168
"A ghost of assurances" (1646) . 169 England rejects tyranny of Presby- ters (1646) 170
The king's honour (1646) . . 171 The king believes he has assurance
(1646) 172
Punica fides (1646) .... 173
The king goes to the Scots (1646) . 174
The king ' ' barbarously used " (1646) 175
" Barbarously baited " (1646) . . 176
Conduct of Argyll (1646) . . 177
What was his statesmanship worth ?
(1646) . . . " . . .178 ' ' The unwilling slave of the Kirk " 179 Preachers bar Charles out of Scot- land (1646) 180
The king is sold (1647) . . . 181 The Scots "worse than Jews" (1647) 182 The massacre of Dunavertie (1647) . 183 More massacres (1647) . . . 184 "The Engagement" (1647) . . 185 A stroke for the king (1648) . . 186 The preachers thunder (1648) . . 187 Argyll's duel (1648) . . . .188 Kirk versus State (1648) . . .189 Preachers curse the army (1648) . 190 Scots invade. Cromwell meets them
(1648) 191
Utter ruin of the Scots (1648) . . 192 Triumph of the Kirk (1648) . . 193
CHAPTER VII.
KIRK'S TRIUMPH. NATIONAL RUIN. 1648-1650.
Whiggamore raid (1648). . . 196
Argyll embraces Cromwell (1648) . 197
Parliament of 1649 .... 198
Hopeless dilemma of Argyll (1649) . 199 Argyll and Lauderdale against
Montrose (1649) .... 200
Ruinous "Act of Classes" (1649) . 201
The royal martyr (1649) . . . 202
Scotland's gains from the Covenant 203 General demoralisation (1650). . 204 Infamous cruelties to women (1652) 205 Charles II., Covenanters, and Mon- trose (1649) 206
The preachers beggar their brethren
(1649) 207
Mr Blair as Athos (1649) . . 208
Vlll
CONTENTS.
Charles listens to Montrose (1649) . 209 Montrose and the Queen of Hearts
(1649) 210
Charles sends Montrose to death
(1649) 2ii
Montrose will "search his death"
(1649) 212
Charles II. deserts Montrose (1649) 213
Strachan routs Montrose (1649) . 214
Assynt surrenders Montrose (1649). 216
The passion of Montrose (1649) • 218
" Let me die in peace ! " (1649) . 219
Death of Montrose (1649) • • 220
Montrose and Jeanne d'Arc . . 221
Charles II. and Montrose . . 222
New evidence 224
Another letter reported . . . 225
Conjectures . . . • . 226
CHAPTER VIII.
CROMWELL AND SCOTLAND, 1650-1651.
Scots Commissioners and Charles
(1650) 229
The corruption of Charles (1650) . 230
War with England (1650) . . 231
The preachers purge the army (1650) 232 Cromwell's letter to the preachers
(1650) 233
Charles compelled to dishonour his
father 234
Cromwell forced to retreat (1650) . 235
Leslie's counsels confused (1650) . 237 " The clergy's counsel prevailed "
(1650) . . . . . .238
Cromwell's watchful night (1650) . 239
Surprise and counter surprise . . 241
The rout of Dunbar (1650) . . 242 Preachers prove they are never
wrong (1650) . . . .243
Cromwell exposes their pretensions
(1650) 244
Charles will pay his father's blood
price (1650) 245
"The Start" (1650) . . . 246
The Kirk is rent in twain (1650) . 247
" The Remonstrance" (1650) . . 248
" The Resolutioners" (1650) . . 249
Lady Anne Campbell (1650) . . 250
The Estates meet (1651) . . . 251
The St Andrews Assembly (1651) . 252
A Royalist defeat (1651) . . . 253
" Another for Hector " (1651) . . 254
The unpatriotic " Protesters" (1651) 255
Charles invades England (1651) . 256
Charles's march (1651) . . . 257
Worcester fight (1651) . . . 258
CHAPTER IX.
FROM WORCESTER TO THE RESTORATION, 1651-1660.
The Regalia saved (1652) . . 261
Attempted union (1652) . . . 262 " Bloody Presbyterial Government"
(1652) 263
" The night is near gone " (1652) . 264
The Assembly turned out (1653) . 265
Rising in the Highlands (1652) . 266
Ruin of Argyll (1653) . . . 267
Argyll gives information (1653) . 268
Wogan's raid (1653) . . . 269
Middleton for Scotland (1654) . 270
Royalist quarrels (1654) . . .271
Monk's administration (1654) . . 272
Battle of Lochgarry (1654) . . 273
The Highlands pacified (1655-1658) 274
Sorrows of Argyll (1652-1659) . . 275
Rise of Quakers .... 276
Death of Cromwell (1658) . . 277
Monk's march south (1660) . . 278
Study of a Covenanting laird . . 279
Brodie of Brodie .... 280
CONTENTS.
IX
CHAPTER X.
THE RESTORATION, l66o-l666.
Career of James Sharp . Sharp in 1660 . . . . Breda and London (1660) . Argyll arrested (1660) . • Conduct of Sharp (1660) . Arrest of Mr Guthrie (1660) . Promises to Presbyterians (1660) Psychology of Sharp (1660-1665) Sharp is won over (1661) Scottish Parliament (1661) Funeral of Montrose (1661) . Trial of Argyll (1661) . Fatal letters of Argyll (1661) . Monk's revenge on Argyll (1661)
284 285 286 287 288 289 290 291 292
293 294 295 296 297
Executions of Argyll and Guthrie
(1661) 298
Restoration of Episcopacy (1661) . 299
Bishops back again (1662) . . 300
Plots against Lauderdale(i662-i663) 301
Coming of " the curates " (1663) . 302
The ousted ministers (1663) . . 303
Persecuting Parliament (1663) . 304
Energy of Sir James Turner (1664) 305
Conventicles (1665) .... 306 Covenanters intrigue with the Dutch
(1666) 307
The rising at Dairy (1666) . . 308
Battle of Rullion Green (1666) . 309
CHAPTER XL
THE STRIFE WITH THE COVENANTERS, 1667-1679.
Punishment of rebels (1667) . . 312
Sharp disgraced (1667) . . . 313 Proposals for peace (1667) . .314
Turner cashiered (1668) . . . 315
Leighton's policy (1668) . . . 316
Mitchell shoots at Sharp (1668) . 317
The Black Indulgence (1669) . . 318
The Indulgence illegal (1669) . . 319 Lauderdale Royal Commissioner
(1669) 320
Leighton archbishop (1669) . . 321
Armed conventicles (1670) . . 322
Repression and negotiation (1670) . 323
Curate rabbling (1671-1672) . . 324
The new Indulgence (1672) . . 325
Parliamentary opposition (1673) . 326
" Humble resentments" (1674) . 327
Resignation of Leighton (1674) . 328
Disorders (1675) .... 329
Sharp and Mitchell (1674-1678) . 330
Execution of Mitchell (1678) . . 332
The Highland host (1678) . . 333
Claverhouse (1678) .... 334
The Kirk rent asunder (1679). • 335
Active conventiclers (1679) . . 336
CHAPTER XII.
BOTHWELL BRIDGE, 1679-1680.
The Covenanting temper . . 340
Legend of Sharp (1679) . . . 341
Murderous plottings (1679) . . 342
Sharp hacked to pieces (1679) . 343
The murderers (1679) • • • 344
They ride west (1679) . . . 345
Drumclog fight (1679) . . . 346
Pistoling prisoners (1679) • • 347
Quarrels of the Covenanters (1679) . 348
Welshites and Hamiltonians (1679) 349
Monmouth's arrival (1679) • • 35°
Deputation to Monmouth (1679) . 351
CONTENTS.
"All ran away " (1679) . . . 352
"The Bluidie Banner" (1679) . 353
After the battle (1679) . . . 354
Punishment of the rebels (1679) . 355
Cameron and the Duke of York (1679) 356
Cameron's prophecies (1679) . . 357
Airs Moss (1680) .... 358
The sweet singers .... 359
Meikle John Gibb (1681) , . 360
CHAPTER XIII.
THE KILLING TIME, 1680-1685.
Death of Cargill (1681) . . . 364
Position of Argyll (1681). . . 365 The Duke of York and Parliament
(1681) 366
The inconsistent test (1681) . . 367
Argyll's escape (1681) . . . 368
Aberdeen and Queensberry (1682) . 369
Claverhouse in Galloway (1682) . 370
Policy of Claverhouse (1682) . . 371
Success of Claverhouse (1682) . . 372 Claverhouse and the Dalrymples
(1682-1683) 373
Increased severities (1683) . . 374
A medley of plots (1683). . . 375
Wedding of Claverhouse (1684) . 376
Humanity of Claverhouse (1684) . 377
The case of Carstairs (1684) . . 378
Execution of Jerviswoode (1684) . 379
Argyll and the Rye House Plot . 380 The mingled plots (1684) . .381 Renwick's apologetical declaration
(1684) 382
The abjuration (1684) . . . 383
Ferocities of both parties (1685) . 384
Death of Charles II. (1685) . . 385 John Brown and Margaret Wilson
(1685) 386
The Wigtown martyrs (1685) . . 387
Various versions .... 388
The Renwickites (1685) . . . 389
Parliament of April 1685 . . 390
Note on John Brown . • . 392
CHAPTER XIV.
ARGYLL'S RISING, 1685.
Argyll and Polwarth (1685) . . 398 Various versions of Argyll and
Polwarth 399
The leaders thwart each other (1685) 400
Argyll's party divided (1685) . . 401
Cross marchings .... 402
Contradictions of evidence . . 403
Argyll taken (1685) .... 404
Argyll's confessions . . . 405
Death of Argyll (1685) . . . 406
Cruel orders of Council (1685) . 407
Toleration for Catholics (1686) . 408
Exercise of prerogative (1686) . 409
New Indulgences (1687) . . . 410
Execution of Renwick (1688) . .411
Birth of the Prince of Wales (1688) 412
Dutch invasion (1688) . . . 413
James and Claverhouse (1688) . 414
Behaviour of the bishops . . 415
William and the bishops (1689) . 416
Holyrood sacked (1688) . . . 417
The excesses of the remnant (1688) 418
Convention of 1689 .... 419
Jacobite plans 420
Dundee rides north (1689) . . 421
William made king (1689) . . 422
Regifugium ..... 423
LIST OF MAPS.
PAGE
CAMPAIGN OF TIPPERMUIR AND ABERDEEN . . . .124
THE BATTLE OF ABERDEEN 125
CAMPAIGN OF INVERLOCHY 131
CAMPAIGN OF DUNDEE AND AULDEARN 139
THE BATTLE OF AULDEARN . . . . . . .142
CAMPAIGN OF ALFORD 146
THE BATTLE OF ALFORD 148
CAMPAIGN OF KILSYTH . . . . . . . .152
THE BATTLE OF KILSYTH 154
THE NORTH OF SCOTLAND 215
BATTLE OF CARBISDALE 217
CROMWELL'S OPERATIONS ROUND EDINBURGH . . . 236 BATTLE OF DUNBAR 240
The portrait of Montrose is reproduce^ by permission from Honthorst's painting in the possession of the Earl of Dalhousie.
A HISTORY OF SCOTLAND FROM THE ROMAN OCCUPATION.
. CHAPTER I.
CHARLES I. THE BEGINNING OF EVILS. 1625-1633.
SIR THOMAS MALORY tells us that, in a lonely forest glade, the good knight, Sir Percival, saw a lion fighting a serpent. He drew his sword to aid the lion, " for it seemed to him the more natural beast of the twain." The history of Scotland, from the death of James VI. to the Revolution of 1688, is that of a battle between two tyrannies, the lion and the serpent, the Tudor despotism in Stuart hands and the Knoxian despotism of the ministers of religion. These two forces destroyed each other. The triumph of the Presbyterian ideals, the claims to bind and loose, to ruin and ex- communicate, to sit in the seats of the Apostles and judge mankind, to carry a crusade of compulsory Presbyterianism into England and even abroad, and to extirpate idolaters, endured but for ten or twelve years (1638-1650). It could only endure, that triumph, while the nobles, irritated by Charles's despotism and illegal measures, were at one with the Kirk, terrible as an army with banners. When once the Estates differed from the Commissioners of the General Assembly; when once the Kirk, thwarting the State, had brought the Cromwellian conquest on Scotland, the ranks of the Covenanters were split in twain. Under the persecutions and indulgences of the Restoration, the enormous majority of Presbyterians — ministers and flocks — learned to submit to compromise, which was only resisted, and vainly resisted, by the extreme left wing of the Covenanters.
VOL. III. A
2 THE PROTESTANT DISRUPTION (1625).
the societies of Cameronians, and especially of Renwickites. Among them alone survived the pretensions that had rent Scotland for more than a century. Meanwhile the Catholic despotism of James II. ruined the cause of royal tyranny, the lion and the serpent had destroyed each other. As the Presbyterian absolutism had invaded every corner of private life; as its claims to divine right were based, like the secular pretensions of the kings, on false criticism of isolated scriptural texts ; as its odious cruelties were in contrast with the plain duty of professed " followers of the Lamb " ; some may reckon the serpent the less natural beast of the twain. Sir Walter Scott justly said that our sympathies turn to the faction which, for the moment, has the worse of the struggle.
With the death of James I. ended that brief period of relative peace and quiet which Scotland enjoyed after his accession to the English crown. The dragon's teeth, plentifully sown by the Reformation, and by the king himself, were soon to bring forth their crops of armed contending men. The Reformation had scattered the fatal seed ; while breaking away from the uniformity of the Church, Protestants desired a uniformity of their own — desired it with a zeal which shrank from no injustice of persecution. Now uniformity was for them impossible. Since the days when Knox and his English congregation at Frankfort quarrelled over the " mummuling " of the responses there had been two irreconcilable parties, High Church and Puritan, in the Protestant camp, and a third was rising. One faction was rigidly Calvinist, and detested most vestiges of old ecclesiastical ritual. Their altar was "the table " ; candles, surplices, organs, windows of stained glass, devout gestures and attitudes, beauty of services, many of the rubrics in the Prayer Book, the prayers themselves — all things almost but preaching, psalm-singing, and "conceived prayers," were abomina- tions to the precisians of England or of Scotland. Any theology short of Calvin's and Knox's was " Arminianism," and was to be put down and rooted out by the Parliament, as a flower of Rome. These men "saw red" whenever they thought of the danger of relapse into Catholicism, and of that they were always thinking.
Thus Mr. Row, a Presbyterian minister of the old school, explained the plague of 1625 as the vengeance of Heaven on Charles's marriage with Henrietta, a Catholic. " It is very remark- able that the Queene's masse, the pest of the soule, and a most rageing pestilence, killing bodies, came to London together (O that
CASE OF LEIGHTON (1630). 3
men had eyes in their heads to see, and hearts to consider, the Lord's wayes)." l It was the old story of the fog, a divine warning, sent when Mary Stuart landed in Scotland. Mr. Row firmly held that Buckingham was "a Papist," who, even if he did not murder King James, " marred all," whence the failure to relieve the besieged Protestants of La Rochelle.2
Again, in 1624, to spur on the futile and disastrous war with idolatrous Spain, a preaching Scot in England, Alexander Leighton, wrote his 'Speculum Belli Sacri' ('Mirror of the Holy War'), a masterpiece of fanaticism. In 1630 he circulated in England his 'Appeal to Parliament, or Sion's Plea against Prelacy.' This work was " The Cry of ane Howie in the Wilderness " of Presbyterianism. Whatever evil existed in the world was laid to the charge of the bishops, "knobs and wens and bunchy popish flesh." The voice is the voice of Andrew Melville and John Davidson, and the voice appeals to the Parliament of England.3 The king did not escape. " God had suffered him to . match with the daughter of Heth " (France), " though he missed an Egyptian " (Spaniard). " Down with the bishops " was the burden of Leighton's appeal to the English Parliament, then sitting. "Strike neither at great nor small, but at these troublers of Israel : smite that Hazael in the fifth rib." "Laud," said a written pamphlet, "look to thyself: be assured thy life is sought" (1629). "Deliver my soul," wrote Laud, "from them who hate me without a cause." They were to work their will, but already Protestantism, in these voices, was appealing, as of old against Cardinal Beaton, to its old weapons the dirk and the sword, and these things were " done in the green tree " long before Laud tried to thrust the liturgy on Scotland. We see the temper of the godly before King Charles set foot in his native country.
As for the other side, the backers of bishops, the Court of Star Chamber sentenced Leighton to pay a fine of ;£i 0,000, to be whipped in the pillory, have an ear cut off, his nose slit, and be branded S. S. for a Sower of Sedition, as he certainly was. Later ' he was to be whipped again, and lose his other ear. Laud himself was one of the judges who thus avenged the bishops for Leighton's instigations to smite them under the fifth rib. Leighton was allowed to keep one ear, and was spared the second flogging. Perhaps, had he not made an escape and been retaken, he might have kept both ears and a sound back. His son, condemned "a father's soul to cross," became an archbishop under Charles II., a
4 THE KING'S IMPOSSIBLE TASK.
saintly, ineffectual soul. Meanwhile the third party, the Inde- pendents, learned or ignorant, sane or insane, were rising, and some were to utter the word of all others most hateful to good men, "Toleration."
We have briefly illustrated the savage religious temper of Pro- testantism in Scotland and England when Charles I. began his reign. The Christianity of our fathers, notoriously that of the godly who fled to New England, meant intolerance, going to the lengths of the dagger, the axe, the hangman's shears, the pillory, and the scourge. Thus they " fought like devils for conciliation, and hated each other for the love of God." Uniformity was impossible except, perhaps, by dint of relentless and secular and one-sided persecution. Do not let us imagine that toleration for their maimed services and polemical preachers, had Charles granted it, would have satisfied the godly. The other side, the Arminians, the prelatists, " the bunchy knobs of papist flesh," must be put down, like Hazael. Liberty and tolerance were equally loathed by both parties, and free speech, from the pulpit, about predestination, was forbidden in England as it had been in Scotland. "The Puritan," says Mr Gardiner, "demanded exact conformity with the practices of which he approved. Laud demanded exact conformity with the practices of which he approved." The knot could only be cut, or rather cut at, by the sword. No statesmanship could have reconciled the parties peacefully.
Let no man think that Charles Stuart had a possible task. Naturally he sided with the religious party whose leaders maintained the Tudor absolutism, as against the party which aimed, more or less consciously, at the absolutism of the House of Commons. A better manner might have done something for him. " This king," wrote the Venetian ambassador not with perfect truth, " is so con- stituted by nature, that he never obliges any one, either by word or deed." 4 But, with good manners or bad, Charles had to face an 'inevitable religious war, and the inevitable revolutionary reaction against four generations of Tudor absolutism. He was born and bred in that old regime ; and, from the very first, it was plain that of the regime England was weary. It is not, of course, true (as a Nonconformist divine has audaciously asserted in a Life of Cromwell), that all the gentlemen of England were on the side of the King. Puritanism and reaction against absolutism had scores or hundreds of leaders among the nobles and the gentry, Cromwell himself being,
"POPERY AND WOODEN SHOES" (1626). 5
as he said, a gentleman. But the opposite opinion has been boldly maintained, a proof that the blindness of the parties to that old struggle still darkens counsel and clouds popular history.
Charles did not visit Scotland till 1633, when eight crucial years of his unhappy reign had gone into the irrevocable past. A few words must be given to the events of these years in England, before we turn to the contemporary occurrences in Scotland, — occurrences apt to arouse that deep distrust of the king, which united against him, later, the nobles and the preachers with their middle-class congregations, the mobs of towns, the fisher-folk, the sailors, and the ploughmen of the fields. The years between Charles's accession and his visit to Scotland in 1633 were occupied in the first bout of the inevitable battle between the Crown and the country. The deepest cause of the conflict was still the incurable suspicion and inappeasable terror of the Puritans. Charles had inherited a "sacred war" with idolatrous Spain, and a Protestant war to recover (with the aid of Holland, of Denmark, and, as he hoped, of France) the Palatinate. These were pious enterprises, but then Charles had married an idolatress, a " Daughter of Heth," and in Buckingham he had a favourite, or a master, who, his political blunders apart, could not be dear to Puritans. Buckingham therefore, who had a Catholic wife, was described as "a Papist" and "a minion." Charles, on marrying Henrietta, had promised a measure of quiet to his own Catholic subjects. But he could not and did not keep his promise to France, and he threw the Catholics to the wolves, — the accustomed sacrifice, which never conciliated the brethren, which never broke down the constant loyalty of Catholics, but which naturally made France indignant.
So early as 1626 Carelton introduced to the notice of the House of Commons the inextricable connection between " Popery, slavery, and wooden shoes," a cry that was long to be popular and useful.5 The endeavour to secure France as an ally in Protestant wars failed, by reason of the breach of the promise to the French king, the romantic adventures of Buckingham with the French queen, and the dismissal of the Catholic and French attendants of the young Queen of England. Charles could not, with his best endeavours, run with the idolatrous hare and hunt with the Puritan hounds.
In the war for the Palatinate, Mansfeld's troops, more or less subsidised with English money, drifted from disaster to disaster. Enormous sums were needed when Charles's first Parliament met in
6 SCOTLAND QUIET (1625).
June 1625 ; indeed the warlike expenses had been so great that the Government, like the ordinary individual in straits, kept back the full schedule of its debts. From the beginning the Government and household of the young king were poverty-stricken, and financiers were too wary to make large advances on the security of the royal jewels. The House at once opened on the Protestant cry against " the wicked generation of Jesuits, seminary priests, and incendiaries." Eliot joined in ; and while the enforcement of the persecuting Acts was insisted on, the Commons offered the most inadequate supplies ; for war, however " sacred," is expensive, especially when managed in the traditional English way. So the feud between King and Commons about money began ; at the same time began the Puritan attack upon a clergyman named Montague. He did not love the doctrine of predestination, to which the Puritans were tenderly attached ; nor was he convinced that the Apostle had the Pope in his eye when he spoke of Antichrist. He saw no harm in works of sacred art, nor in exhorting a puzzled parishioner to consult his parson. He was also a strong supporter of Royal, not Presbyterian, Right Divine : so the Commons persecuted Montague, while Charles pardoned him and made him a bishop.
Thus what was to keep going on began at once. The religious triangular duel, the refusals of money, of tonnage and poundage, the king's attempts to extract money by force, the assertion of his prerogative, the failures of pressed and unfed soldiers and sailors, the quarrel with France, the disasters at Cadiz, at La Rochelle, everywhere ; the mutinies, the arrests of politicians, the attacks on Buckingham, his murder, warmly applauded by many Puritans, the Petition of Right, the brawl in the House, the imprisonment of the members who led the brawl, the ministry of Weston, almost as much hated as Buckingham, the fall of Rochelle, the accession of Wentworth (Strafford) to the Royal cause, the dissenters' disorders which Laud could not repress, the discreditable peace with France and with Spain, the Dissolution, the beginning of Government without Parliament, — five years brought all these things, and, in 1633, led Charles back to Scotland. To Scotland we return.
That country had been a " more than usual calm " observer of the constitutional progress made by the sister kingdom. In the * Annals ' of Sir James Balfour, the English Parliament of June 1625 is dismissed in fifteen lines, without a single word about its religious and financial polemics. Spalding, who wrote ' The Memorialls of
THE REVOCATION (1625). 7
the Trubles in Scotland and in England,' begins, quite naturally, in 1624, with domestic affairs, a feud between the Earl of Moray and Clan Chattan, Moray having "cassin them out of thair kindlie possessions." They were too hard for the Earl, wasted his lands, "sorned throw the northlandis," and "Clan Chattan becamis moir furiouss." Moray gets a commission of Lieutenancy, and that revives the old feud for the Bonny Earl, slain in 1592 ; everything in Scotland is as it used to be, and so Spalding passes on to 1628. The "trubles" in England, so far, do not attract his attention. With him all is dirk and dourlach, hackbut and claymore, not constitutional progress.
In Scotland, in short, as Charles, on his accession, wrote to the Privy Council, " matters shall continue and go forward in the same course wherein they now are." The country was governed by the Privy Council, Hamilton (Tarn o' the Cowgate), now Earl of Melrose, being Secretary ; Sir George Hay of Kinfauns, Chancellor ; Mar, Treasurer ; and six prelates, including Spottiswoode, Arch- bishop of St Andrews, having seats. A rising of Maclans of Ardnamurchan was put down by Lome, Gillespie Gruamach, son of the Catholic Earl of Argyll, vanquished at Glenrinnes, and himself later the defeated of Inverlochy, and the victim of the Restoration.
A large contingent of lords and gentry went to James's funeral, where Spottiswoode declined to wear lawn sleeves, which was reckoned very noble and patriotic. Charles (July 26) emitted a proclamation, intended to be soothing, to this effect: — "restless and unquiet spirits, popishly disposed, have presumed to disperse false bruits and rumours that his Majesty intends to make some innovation concerning the estate of religion, or at the least to give too much toleration and connivance to the Popish profession." His Majesty, despite his promises to France, reassured his Scottish subjects on this point; but he made it clear that he would not revert to the golden state of the Kirk in 1592, or revoke the Articles of Perth.6
But Charles now caused fear and distrust It was usual for the kings of Scotland to revoke, on attaining majority, all grants of crown property made in their long and turbulent minorities. As king, Charles had no minority, as prince of Scotland he had On May 17, 1625, Gilbert Primrose, then in London for James's funeral, wrote that he had been employed by Lord Melrose to draft the king's Revocation. "The words were words of fear," says
8 JUDGES AND PRIVY COUNCILLORS (1625).
Dr. Masson.7 When the dreaded Revocation arrived, on July 25, it proved that Charles meant to revoke, — not only the grants of his minority as prince, but those of " our predecessors in their times, in detriment and harm of our soul and conscience," — annexing these old grants to the crown and its patrimony, rights, and rents. This was alarming news, though worse was to follow. The menace seemed to upset the real property of Scotland. As Dr. Masson judiciously observes, this demand was drawn up (Sir William Alexander being perhaps the adviser?) just three days after the English Parliament had granted the king its starveling supplies.8 The hint as to Charles's imperilled "soul and conscience" may have referred especially to the alienations of Church lands. Charles may be credited with genuine scruples as to the wholesale robbery of the Church, after the Reformation, and, as we shall see, he finally did restore to the Kirk " a living wage " for all its ministers, which they had never enjoyed since the great pillage. The king may even have seen the enormity of the mistake made by the privileged classes when they starved a set of men so potent as the preachers ; the sure way of producing a democratic and demagogic clergy.
While the Revocation was but distant thunder of uncertain im- port, a financial Convention at Edinburgh (October 27-November 3) with twenty -nine representatives of the minor barons or lairds, and twenty-one of the burghs, voted ^400,000 (Scots) in three years, and a five per cent income tax. The vote was unanimous and enthusiastic, all unlike the English grant. Charles hinted a desire to commute most of the taxes for a force of 2000 men, with shipping, but to this the Convention would not assent. As time went on, and the foreign wars lasted, however, men were drilled for home defence, and a few ships were poorly provided by the Scots.
Meanwhile the most important matter in hand was an alteration in the constitutions of the Privy Council, and of the Court of Session, the Court of the Judges, " the Fifteen." Gilbert Primrose had announced from London, in May, that there would be a " scaill " (a scattering, as when devotees " scail," or rush hurriedly, out of kirk) " among our Counsellors and the Sessioners (judges) removed from Council." This was written on May 10, 1625, the Revocation of grants in land was not drafted for despatch to Scotland till July, and we may doubt whether Charles removed the judges from the Privy Council, and made privy councillors resign their seats on the Bench, because he conceived that the arrangement would enable
MELROSE CEASES TO BE SECRETARY (1625). 9
him to pass the Revocation more easily.* This is the opinion ol Mr Hume Brown, and of others. But Mr Gardiner, no Cavalier, commends the action of the king. "One great blow had been wisely struck at their " (the nobles') " supremacy by Charles. . . . He had ordained that, with the exception of the Chancellor, men who sat in the Privy Council as administrators of the Government, should not also sit in the Court of Session as judges."9
The Council, as it stood, heard of the intended reorganisa- tion in November 1625, and did not like what it heard. On November 17 they sent to the king a letter of remonstrance. As to the Revocation, there was "fear universally apprehended." The nature and extent of the Revocation had been studiously kept in obscurity. Never had the good subjects been so heavily disquieted. Charles may have been promised "lawful and great gain," but he would find rather loss and disturbance. The Revocation, in fact, is regarded by the contemporary annalist, Sir James Balfour, as the beginning of evils, and of the Civil wars. " Let the reader here behold the seeds of most base and wicked counsel sown, which yielded no better fruit than the alienation of the subjects' hearts from their prince, and laid open a way to rebellion." 10 This is untrue ; " better fruit " was the endowment of the ministers. The Revocation " passed the seals " despite remonstrance, directed also against the changes in judicial organisation.11
The proposed alterations affected seventeen of the best of the Council, including Melrose. The Council asked that some of their number might confer with the king, and Sir George Hay, with Melrose, went to Court. They fared so ill that, in January 1626, Melrose was deprived of the secretaryship, which was given to Sir William Alexander, later Earl of Stirling, an old tutor of Prince Henry, a poet of merit, and a man especially active in the futile attempt to plant Nova Scotia, and in the creation of Nova Scotia baronets. Alexander was to be Scottish Secretary at the English Court ; and Melrose felt aggrieved, and probably was not consoled by a Royal letter.12 Melrose's private memoranda show his grudge against the Revocation as too indefinite in some clauses, and a needless substitution of prerogative for the ordinary processes of law. We naturally ask, who put the king on this
* Cf. Privy Council Register, L, xxxiv. Iviii. Hume Brown, ' History of Scot- land,' ii. p. 288. Rogers. Earl of Stirling's Register of Royal Letters, i., liv. Ivi
10 TEINDS OR TITHES (1626).
course? and no more probable name suggests itself than that of Sir William Alexander, who superseded Melrose. Meanwhile, early in 1626, Charles had to meet his second English Parliament after the disasters of the hapless naval expedition against Cadiz. The fiery Eliot led the Commons, Buckingham was to be impeached, the quarrel with France grew more angry, and the king, just before this embittered Session, sent, on January 26, 1626, a letter to explain his mind to his Scottish subjects.
He began with the usual proofs that he was a most satisfactory prince : he had already given orders for the banishment of priests and Jesuits. He next expressed his desire to provide for the Kirk and education out of the teinds, or tithes, which, since the Reformation, had drifted to lay holders in commendam, for life only, or had been given in perpetuity to new peers (titulars), or had been cumbered with the services and pay of middlemen (" tacksmen ") ; and, generally, had gone into all but the proper pockets — those of the ministers of the Gospel.* It happened, in the intricate course of national and ecclesiastical pillage, that many landholders did not own their teinds, which belonged to some noble titular. Where the teinds were collected, as was usual, in kind — the actual " stocks " of corn, — the titular could ruin the occupant or owner of the harvest by making him leave the corn out in the wet till the teinds were gathered. This and other abuses led to endless feuds and slaughters, and Charles now expressed his design to free the gentry from these vexations, " that every man may have his own teinds " (those from his own lands) "upon reasonable conditions."
As to the Revocation in general, Charles avers that his intention is "not to wrong any of his subjects, nor to question any lands, teinds, profits, or privileges, save such as, belonging to the ancient patrimony of his crown, or annexed or falling thereunto, or belonging to the Church, are without any just cause or lawful form conveyed from the same to the detriment thereof, and against conscience, and may be 'laughfully' recovered."
This was far from pacifying the fears of landholders whose rights to old Kirk lands had now matured for generations. The king also averred that, in revoking grants by his predecessors, he followed the precedents of his father as regarded Queen Mary, of Mary as
* The different methods and degrees of robbery and malappropriation of the " spiritualities " of the Church, the tithes or teinds, are fully and lucidly explained by Dr Masson, in his excellent preface to Privy Council Register, i., New Series.
WANT OF MONEY (1626). I I
regarded James V., of James V. as concerned James IV., and so back to James III. But he does not say that any revoker went back behind the reign of his one immediate predecessor. He is establishing Commissioners to aid the treasury, and, as he is levying 2000 men for the wars, needs money. As to legal reconstruction, he is merely restoring the Sessions Court to its original institution, in order that judges, no longer occupied with Privy Council work, may have time for their duties on the Bench. He is about to introduce a Commission of Grievances, but, as this was resisted, and regarded as an introduction of a Star Chamber, the scheme was dropped. Alexander's secretaryship at Court was announced, Melrose retaining a kind of correspondentship in Scotland.13
On March 23, the new Council was inaugurated, precedence over the Chancellor, Hay of Kinfauns, being given to Archbishop Spottiswoode, President of the Exchequer, "the first and last president that ever the Exchequer had," says Balfour. On July 12, this precedence of the archbishop was formally confirmed : but Kinfauns never yielded place to him : not even at Charles's Scottish coronation (1633) : "Never a ston'd priest in Scotland should set a foot before him so long as his blood was hot," said Sir George to Balfour, who was Lyon King of Arms. " Weel, Lyone," answered the king, "letts goe to bussines, I will not meddle furder with that olde canckered gootishe man, at quhose handes there is nothing to be gained but soure wordes."14
Of course this precedence of a prelate increased the irritation of the nobles, and bred a jealousy against bishops, sometimes low-born, which was a potent cause of the later militant union of Kirk and peers. But Charles was, except for old Kinfauns, resolute or obstinate. He would give his new Nova Scotia baronets precedence over the lairds, or minor barons, who vainly complained : so the lairds too had a new grievance.
The new Council was indolent, but " auld Melrose " continued to work with his habitual energy. The main business was providing men and ships for the wars which now left England without a single friendly port except Huguenot Rochelle. " We have not in all the Christian world but one port to put a boat into, Rochelle," said Bristol in the House of Lords. " We have been like the broken staff of Egypt to all that have relied upon us." 15
Without money, and with pressed men, starved, mutinous, and undrilled, Charles might have said of his foreign wars, ego vapulo
12 SCOTTISH LEVIES (1626).
tantum. Scotland did next to nothing for the navy, but perhaps in all some 20,000 men left home "to fight the foreign loons in their ain countrie." From Sutherland, Mackay led the peasantry of Strathnaver, accustomed to half starvation, as Richard Franck found them some twenty-five years later. Mackay (Lord Reay) founded a house half Scots half Dutch ; and Leslies, Setons, Lord Nithsdale, and others, raised levies, with many a Dugald Dalgetty in their ranks.
La guerre est ma patrie,
might have been their motto, and they were worthy descendants of the old Scots Archer Guard of France. Many of these troops were " masterless men," " ill neighbours," ne'er-do-wells, like Thomas Tower, of Auchindoir parish, described by the minister as "ane drunkard, blasphemer of Godis name, and ane continuall tuilzear " (brawler), "and most fitt to serve the Kingis Majesteis varres." Another recruit was " ane sorcerer and charmer " : it is better to fight than to burn, as a witch. Hawick sent a very lawless contingent, including a piper : on the whole the types of Nym and Pistol were well represented, waifs and strays from the running feuds in which the Gordons of Gicht were specially distinguishing themselves, in a manner worthy of Lord Byron's ancestors. Of these impressed ruffians many may later have borne arms for the Covenant.
While the Revocation hung like a thunder -cloud over every landed man in Scotland, Charles was not conciliating the Kirk. The laity had been wont to criticise and censure their preachers, in Edinburgh at least, on the Tuesday before Communion Sunday : a pleasant interlude of " heckling " which Charles put down. The Provost and Bailies pointed out that the fashion was as old as the Reformation, though we do not remember having met any account of a Tuesday's " heckling " of John Knox — a sight worth witnessing. Charles replied to the remonstrance with his usual tact, " the narrative, if it be true, shows what a Reformation that was, and how evil advised. . . . This is an Anabaptistical phrenzy."16 Charles continued to persecute the Catholics, but that sop never satisfied the Presbyterian Cerberus. The subject of the Revocation was revived by a royal letter on July n, 1626, considered by the Council on July 21. Charles now limited the Revocation to goods of the Church, annexed to the Crown, and later granted away, and to " Regalities and Hereditable Offices, and against the changes of holdings since 1540 from the ancient tenure of Ward and Relief
CHURCH PROPERTY (1627). 13
to Blenshe and Taxt Warde." This was alarming, and, though the heritable offices, an old curse of Scotland, survived till 1746, their holders probably suspected that Charles might, at any convenient hour, pounce on what he actually spared. He added that he had appointed Commissioners to arrange terms of composition with all who voluntarily surrendered their holdings, as described, before January i, i627.17
No man surrendered, and, on August 22, Charles began an action at law against the recalcitrants, technically "a summons of reduction." All concerned were to show their titles, and " hear and see the same reduced." Thomas Hope, who had once defended imprisoned preachers, took charge of the action. The main change was to be in the Royal recovery of Church lands (temporalities), and teinds, or tithes (spiritualities). As an example of the distinction, the Earl of Gowrie, about 1592, enjoyed the lands, the temporalities, of Scone, as an "erected lordship"; they descended to his legal heirs, supposing him to have had any. But of the teinds or tithes, the spiritualities of the Abbey, he had only a tenure for life, like other lay abbots, or commendators, holding " in commendam."
The Kirk, from one point of view, did not regret the "erected lordships," hereditary, carved out of old Church lands. These, it was thought, could never again be wrung from their noble holders, and used to pamper an idolatrous or prelatical Church. The security of Presbyterianism lay, as has elsewhere been said, in the thoroughness with which the old Church had been stripped of her property. But, by "The Red Parliament" of 1606, contrary to the Act of Annexation of Church Lands to the Crown in 1587, " Bishops' Lands " (not including abbey and priory lands held by bishops) had been restored to the hated prelates. The old secular property was given back, or was to be given back to the new bishops of James's creation : not so the property of the old regular or monastic clergy. "The two Scottish archbishoprics and eleven Scottish bishoprics, had, before the end of James's reign, become very substantial benefices. . . ." 18 Meanwhile the teinds were scattered, as we saw, among lay holders of many different sorts, all tenacious; the Kirk receiving but a starveling portion. To improve this condition of affairs was the object of the Constant Plat of John Lindsay, " Parson of Menmure," a plat of which he himself despaired. During his Scottish visit of 1617, James had
14 SELLING THE TITHES (1627).
devised a " constant plat " of his own, for the better endowing of the preachers, the king intending it to sweeten his unwelcome changes as to kneeling at the sacrament and so forth. Things so fell out that the Kirk "was more damnified than bettered," as Spottiswoode remarked.
Charles's purpose now was to recover the teinds, or as much of them as he could, from the complex ranks of lay holders, and to give the ministers at last " a living wage " out of these sources. This project horrified not only the nobles but the bishops. In November 1626 these bodies held meetings at Edinburgh, nominally as to putting down Catholics. " In some parts of the country the Papists are so strong in kindred, alliance, and friend- ship, Jhat none of the bounds dare or can execute any commission against them," the Council reports. Taking this opportunity of being met, the bishops sent two of their number and two ministers to Court, the Lords sent three young nobles, later notable in " the troubles," the Earls of Rothes and Linlithgow, and Lord Loudoun.19
The young peers were at first rebuked, but one of them, Lin- lithgow, was presently (January 12, 1627) made Admiral of Scot- land, during the minority of the young Lennox The registration of the Revocation was also postponed.20 The petition, signed by Melrose and many others, and carried by the three young nobles, had at least been considered. Charles had at first (December 4, 1626) "snibbed" Melrose for his part in the matter, but listened with courtesy to his proposal to call a Scottish Parliament. The king (January 17, 1627) said that he would think of a Parliament if a new Commission proved unsatisfactory.21 Charles had caressed and perhaps thought he had captured the young bearers of the petition, and the Privy Council received the New Commission on January 30, 1627. The Commissioners, a body of great weight, representing the prelates, nobles, lairds or minor barons, and burghs, was to cite all concerned to give in their surrenders before August. They were first, to induce lords of erections and other titulars of teinds, to sell the teinds to the owners of the lands on which they were levied. This would prevent the usual feuds and bloodshed at the collection of teinds on the fields, and secure " that the churches may be provided of sufficient ministers, the ministers of competent stipends, and that we may have a reasonable increase of our revenue." 2
The Commissioners went heartily to work, but the minor barons,
THE REVOCATION AND THE REBELLION. I 5
the probable buyers of the teinds from the titulars, desired that the king should first purchase from the titulars, and then the barons from the Crown. Sir James Learmonth of Balcomie, and Sir James Lockhart of the Lee, successfully negotiated this matter with Charles. Many questions of detail were left to the king himself. Lauderdale, Hamilton (great-grandson of Queen Mary's Chatelherault), Melrose, Nithsdale, and other great titulars, set the example of sending in their surrenders. Meanwhile the ten bishops on the New Commission proved troublesome. The Kirk's ideal, the recovery of all the teinds, was obviously shattered : the teinds were "too great a morsel for their greedy mouths," said Melrose. Charles " wondered and was displeased " at the insurrection of his very own men, the bishops and archbishops.23 The ministers, both of the Conformist and good old Presbyterian parties, began now to speak of a General Assembly. When that came, chaos came with it. Meanwhile the details of valuation of teinds were worked at, and a certain amount of definiteness was reached, in Charles's " Decreits Arbitral," in 1629. The king had consulted in the summer of 1628 with members of the Privy Council and others. If we believe the gossip of Burnet, the angry nobles had a plot to slay these advisers on their return, in the good old style ; but Burnet's evidence is not always trustworthy, and the date is unknown. The teinds were valued by Charles at nine years' purchase, and at one-fifth of the rents of the lands on which they were levied.24 " All men desiring to have their own teinds came in willingly," says Row,26 but this point is disputed. "It appears from a report of Commissioners in 1636 that at that time the far greater sort are not yet valued."26 Parliament confirmed the settlement in 1633.
As for the Church lands (not the tithes), the holders were to retain them, paying a rent to the Crown. There is no doubt, we repeat, were it only for the evidence of Balfour — a Bishop-hater indeed, but as Lyon attached to the king — that the Revocation produced discontent, apprehension of greater changes to come, and a tendency on the part of the nobles to side with the exasperated preachers. The preachers, again, like most people, felt no gratitude for benefits that resulted from a political measure. The Revoca- tion was an inducement to rebellion. Mr Gardiner says " in its final shape the arrangement is worthy of memory as the one successful action of Charles's reign ... it weakened the power of
I 6 TROUBLE ABOUT KNEELING (1626-1630).
the nobility, and strengthened the prerogative in the only way in which the prerogative deserved to be strengthened ... by the popularity it gained through carrying into effect a wise and beneficent reform. ... It is hard to say that the nobility had any real ground for dissatisfaction."27 But there is no sign of any access of popularity : the prerogative could not be strengthened by diffusing general suspicion of revolutionary royal designs ; and, in short, if the Kirk was better -endowed, Charles was more detested.
His ecclesiastical policy blew the fire of hatred from another quarter. In July 1626, he sent down a letter as to the stand- ing source of disquiet, the Articles of Perth. These, it will be remembered, enjoined kneeling at the Communion, which savours of idolatry. Nonconformist ministers ordained before the passing of the Articles were, for a time, to be gently used, provided that they did not agitate against the Articles. Ministers banished or imprisoned for nonconformity were, under certain conditions, to be repatriated and released. Ministers ordained since the passing of the Articles were to be urged, under episcopal censure, to con- formity : all were to sign a band of conformity. But Catholic nobles, like Nithsdale, and (later) Huntly, Angus, and Abercorn, were not to be " troubled for their religion." 28 Yet, at Easter 1627, very few kneeled, and some ministers did not kneel at the Communion, in "the Great Kirk."29 At Easter 1628, some preachers sent a remonstrance on the matter of kneeling to the king, which he answered angrily, in a letter to Spottiswoode, threatening " condign punishment." 30 There was no Communion. Robert Bruce, the veteran opponent of James, was confined to a three miles' radius of his house at Kinnaird. He had been preaching, near Edinburgh, that he was the only " lawful minister of Edinburgh living " (thus anticipating a later Cameronian divine), and that the Edinburgh ministers were, in his opinion, "greater enemies to the gospel of Christ than the bishops are," most of the Edinburgh preachers being conformists.31 In 1630, Mr. Foster, at Leith, denounced Christmas celebrations, preaching on Christmas day.
It was obvious that the Articles of Perth were a smouldering fire. Many of the younger ministers did not much object to them, but the women, at all events, hated them furiously ; and the older prelates, like Spottiswoode, had most reluctantly accepted them, merely to- avoid the anger of the king. But younger prelates were coming in,.
"ARMINIAN" BISHOPS (1630). 17
who, in some cases, were anti-Calvinistic in doctrine. Latitudin- arianism, " Arminianism," had invaded the Kirk ; already, as again in the eighteenth century, there were " Moderates," who declined to preach " tidings of damnation." The same men had no dislike of a modest amount of ecclesiastical costume, and of a liturgy which would prevent the grotesque language of " conceived " prayers : not really inspired by "the Spreit." It was later, in 1634, that the devout Mr William Forbes became Bishop of Edinburgh. He lived but a few weeks as bishop there, but his faith, says Row, " was a strange miscellanie, farrago, and hotch-potch of Poperie, Arminianism, Lutheranism, and the rest," in which he was followed by Bishops Maxwell, Sydserf, and Mitchell. "Then it was taught — The Pope is not Antichrist — A Papist living and dying such may be saved — Christ descended locally to Hell, — Christ died for all, intentionally to redeem all, — The Saints may fall from grace, finally and totally — Christ is really present in the Sacrament, Verbum audimus, motum sentimus, modum nescimus" and other heresies.32 To lay minds, it does not seem that the comment on the sacrament necessarily exceeds the sense of the nobly mystic words of Knox's Confession of Faith — a theme not adapted for this place.* "The larger hope," and the tolerance of Forbes's teaching are not, laymen may think, less Christian in spirit than Spottiswoode's cuffing of Father Ogilvie, whom he tortured and hanged, or Row's use of " bellie-gods " as a synonym for bishops, however personally ascetic. While contemning Charles's younger Scottish bishops as politicians; while detesting the odious policy of crushing the consciences of the people, we cannot but see that, in their doctrine, as often in their lives, these new conformist divines were infinitely nearer than their opponents to the mind of their common Master. They had reached a point in religion at which many of the Scottish clergy have now arrived; while certain of them have passed beyond it, into who knows what region of devout darkness and negation of belief. The world could not remain Calvinistic, even in Scotland, and the new bishops were pointing in the direction of Christian charity with one hand, while, with the other, they were forcing their flocks into a fold which these stubborn sheep would not enter. The bishops even favoured organs, and few kirks are now to be found without some such instrument. But, on this side, the bishops were
* Mr Gardiner says that the Calvinistic doctrine is " that of a real but spiritual presence" (viii. p. 311).
VOL. III. B
I 8 THE LITURGY (1616-1630).
guilty of an error condemned by a modern statesman, as by Charles Fox. They were " in advance of their time." *
Meanwhile the Kirk had understood that, by a definite promise of James, they were not to be tormented with innovations beyond the Articles of Perth. They had the word of the Marquis of Hamilton, when the Articles were ratified in 162 1.83 But this promise, Melrose told James at the time, was conditional on obedience to the Articles. How far they were obeyed we have remarked. In any case, as early as 1616, there had been attempts on the king's side to prepare and publish a Book of Canons, and a liturgy, and a large Commission was appointed to that end, under the sanction of the General Assembly at Aberdeen (vol. ii. pp. 510, 511). A draft of a liturgy was then drawn up; Cowper, Bishop of Galloway, being one of the constructors. (This was the Cowper, minister of Perth, who, in 1600, gave evidence as to the Earl of Gowrie's remarks on the extreme secrecy necessary in conspiracies. He died in 1619.) In 1619 Spottiswoode took the draft to Court, and it was to be printed. The thing stood over, and perhaps James thought that his promise of 1621 was binding on him.f In 1629, under Laud's influence, Charles returned to the project of the liturgy. Laud was pursuing his desire of uniformity, a mere will-o'- the-wisp in Protestant countries. Charles would now impose a liturgy by force. He failed, and by force the godly imposed the Covenant. Both parties were equally intolerant, equally reckless of conscience and of liberty. The king's idea was that the Scottish liturgy should be as near the English as Scottish national jealousy would permit. About 1629 a draft of what the Scottish bishops thought possibly feasible was taken to Court, but Laud recommended the mere imposition of the English liturgy. J
Struthers, a conformist minister of Edinburgh (St Giles's Church), heard of these proceedings, and, on January 28, 1630, wrote a letter of remonstrance to the Earl of Airth, sometime Earl of Menteith, who, as a descendant of the second and legal wife of Robert II., caused some umbrage to Charles II. Struthers said that the people dreaded liturgy and organs. The bishops, he added, were already the victims of public detestation. When they deposed a noncon-
* See Mr. Mathieson's ' Politics and Religion in Scotland,' i. pp. 326-344, for an appreciation of the bishops.
t The evidence is doubtful, being that of Hacket, in ' Life of Archbishop Williams' (p. 64), in the passage where he mentions James's expressed distrust of Laud.
J I follow Dr. Sprott in his work already cited.
CHARLES IN SCOTLAND (1633). 19
formist, they could scarcely find a substitute to take his place. Popery may increase, "The people universally will be made susceptible of any religion, and turn atheists in gross."84 Indeed the Reign of the Saints was attended by the rise of the craziest sects " of any religion," down to that of Meikle John Gib, who ended as a medicine man, or pow-wow» among the Red Indians. This was the result of uniformity enforced by secular violence. In 1631, Maxwell preached in Edinburgh, on the divine appointment of bishops, against which some of the canny prelates themselves remonstrated. Such was the condition of ecclesiastical affairs, so violent was the repugnance to Anglican innovations, when Charles, in 1633, came to Holyrood for his coronation, with Laud in his train.
It was on June 15 that Charles, with a very gallant company, entered Edinburgh. The good town had made some effort to sweep and garnish itself. The custom was to place all of what would now be the sewage of each house, simply in the public streets, whereby they "abounded with all kind of filth." This was forbidden for the time, and it was designed to appoint a dustman, "some honest man with ane kairt and hors," to carry away refuse. The heads on spikes which, by a lovable custom, usually decorated the gates, were removed : the heads were those of " some malefactors," unknown; and no Presbyterian prophet predicted that the king's head would soon be in little better case. A gallows with a casual malefactor, which enlivened the links (Bruntsfield links ?) was also taken away.35 The pageants were unusually magnificent, but the picture of the everyday state of the dirty town is more instructive than a record of its occasional splendour.
Though gallows and heads of malefactors were concealed, the real skeleton in the closet at once made its appearance. An Edinburgh preacher named Hogg, in his own name and that of other brethren, presented Charles with a list of grievances, which the king read through, says Balfour.36
1. The bishops had not observed the celebrated "caveats," as under the law of 1597. They ought to propose nothing in Parlia- ment, Council, or Convention, in name of the Kirk, without warrant from the Kirk.
2. They do not give accounts of their stewardship to General Assemblies.
3. The Kirk should be heard on all this, and the bishops kept under the ignored caveats.
2O PARLIAMENT (1633).
4. General Assemblies, by law (1592), should be held yearly: this law ought to be ratified.
5. The unholy Articles of Perth are contrary to an Act of 1567; moreover nonconformists are nicknamed "Puritans," and are oppressed.
6. New oaths for ministers are coined. Here Row, in a comment, avers that whoever takes the oath " obliges himself to be an incarnate dewill." Ne faict ce tour qui veult : but Row is very convinced. He adds, ominously, that all have "abjured antichristian prelacy in the Covenant" (1581) "which binds the posterity as well as the takers of it at first."37 Row makes it clear, however, that many ministers were now on the conformist side.
These and similar ejaculations were presented to Charles at Dalkeith, on June 13, before he entered Edinburgh. The demands of Hogg were like the books of the Sibyl. Charles was to buy them later at a dearer ransom, or rather was to abandon much that, had he conceded what was now asked, he might have retained. His coronation service was adroitly contrived to increase the Protestant tremors of men who believed Buckingham to have been a Papist. Spottiswoode and some bishops wore white sleeves, which, at James's funeral, Spottiswoode had disdained. There was "a four cornered table in manner of an altar, with two books at least resembling clasped books " (a sight of dread), and candles, and a basin, "wherein there was nothing." There was a tapestry, wrought with the Crucifixion, to which the bishops becked and bowed, " for the quhilk they were all deposit." Matters had gone far beyond organs ; here was plain idolatry.38 Later came the Riding of Parliament, the king "alighted at the stinking stile," so called par excellence.
The Parliament was a mere burlesque of a constitutional assembly. So irregular had the shadowy constitution been, that the all-important Lords of the Articles were chosen in different ways at different times. In the Reformation Parliament or Convention of 1560, according to Randolph, the Spiritual Lords were chosen by the Temporal (vol. ii. p. 76). This manner was revived. But the Spiritual Lords, in 1560, were in many cases lay holders of abbeys and parsonages "in commendam," and, as such, were paid to be trusty Protestants. In 1633 the Spiritual Lords, being bishops, were politically creatures of the king, who was the creature of Laud. Consequently they chose convenient Lords, including the young Duke of Lennox, and
UNCONSTITUTIONAL CONDUCT OF CHARLES (1633). 21
the young Marquis of Hamilton. He had been accused by Lord Reay (Mackay of Strathnaver) of treasonable designs, while abroad aiding Gustavus Adolphus, in 1631. But the king loved and trusted Hamilton : loved too blindly, trusted too long. The Sixteen Lords of the Articles chose eight from the Lairds, and eight from the Burgesses, and Charles added eight officers of the Crown.39 The Lords of the Articles were thus a packed body, and to the House their recommendations were offered in block : there was no debate on clauses, in fact no debate at all. The first Act, financial; imposed an income tax, and a reward was offered for informers against dishonest returns. Another Act enabled the king to regulate ecclesiastical costume, which now included " whites," or surplices, a thing abominable, being derived from the vestments of the priests of Isis. The Revocation was ratified. Francis Bothwell, son of the adventurous Bothwell who had so harried King James, was rehabilitated, and there was an arrangement about his recovery of lands from the Earls of Buccleuch and Roxburgh (Scott and Ker), names apt to hold a good grip of the gear, and not likely to be conciliated to Charles by the proceeding.40 *
Against such measures as these a Supplication was drawn up by many members. The ecclesiastical innovations were denounced, and "such an inquisition in men's estates as is not practised in any other nation in Christendom."41 This Supplication was not presented, but a copy later came into Spottiswoode's hands, and a son of that Balmerino who was ruined by James VI. was put at, and for many months lay in prison, for his connection with the paper. His father had been a true prophet ; he beheld Scotland " coming in a vile servitude, the foresight of which is all my wrack " (voL ii. p. 504). The maltreatment of the Balmerino of 1633 produced a spirited remonstrance from the poet recluse, Drummond of Haw- thornden, who advised the king to read Buchanan's 'de Jure Regni apud Scotos.' 42 A poet, a man of peace, one who of all things hated turmoil, Drummond spoke out, but Charles was deaf to every warning. When the crash came, Balmerino had " a contented revenge."
When the bills were to be voted on in Parliament, the king openly noted down his opponents' names on paper ; he meant to intimidate, he only enraged his subjects. The bills were carried,
* The Francis Stewart of 1633 was the forebear of the Frank Bothwell of ' Old Mortality,' who keeps a list of his family's estates and of their actual holders, signed Haud Immemor.
22 THE FIRE OF FRENDRAGHT (1630).
but it is said that Rothes challenged the correctness of the com- putation of votes. He was stopped by being told that he would imperil his life if he demanded a scrutiny and did not thereon prove his case. He, too, had his revenge.43 A constitutional opposition had never existed in Scotland. The method of the dirk and the ambuscade had prevailed. From these, in England, Charles was safe. The complaints of his northern subjects reached him faintly, in London ; when in Scotland, he closed his ears to them. The gossiping Bishop Burnet heard many strange things from his father, who remembered such ancient worthy prophets as Davidson and Robert Bruce. Among other things he heard that, had Balmerino not been acquitted (his case dragged on into 1635, and he had been found guilty of " leasing-making " by a majority of one vote) his prison would have been forced, the hostile jurors killed, and their houses burned. In 1630 the Lord Aboyne (Huntly's son) and the laird of Rothiemay, had been burned to death in the house of the laird of Frendraght (Crichton) : times still were violent. Treachery at Frendraght was suspected, and a young lady, Margaret Wood, was tortured in the boot ; was accused of "prevarication," and publicly flogged.44 These things arose out of a Crichton and Gordon feud, and it is perhaps uncertain whether Crichton of Rothiemay deliberately burned the Gordons who were his guests.46 The popular ballad, The Fire of Frendraght, preserves the memory of the affair. The savage old temper survived in Scotland, and this temper Charles deliberately provoked in the strength of the Tudor theory of monarchy. He made Edinburgh a bishopric, appointed to it the egregious Forbes, already named as having maintained that the Redeemer died for all, and he " dung down" the partition walls which had divided St Giles's into two, an unsightly arrangement.46 In the decadence of our age, St Giles's is once more a single church, and a fee is charged for admission, the building being thus open (to capitalists) on "lawful days."
Charles had departed for England on July 1 8 ; in August, Laud became Archbishop of Canterbury. Row tries to prove that Laud's is the name of the Beast (Revelation xiii. 17, 18). Charles had now two sons to succeed him, Charles (1630), and James (1633). This was grievous to good men, for had the king remained "a barren stock " his more Protestant sister, Elizabeth, would have suc- ceeded. Strange fortunes were prepared for his children by Charles's next important step, the effort to introduce " Laud's Liturgy."
NOTES. 23
NOTES TO CHAPTER I.
1 Row's ' Historic of the Kirk of Scotland,' p. 339.
2 Op. cit, pp. 346, 347.
3 Gardiner, ' History of England,' vol. vii. p. 145. 1899. In the small cheaper edition.
4 Gardiner, ' History of England,' vii. p. 142. Citing Soranzo's despatch, July 2/16, 1626. Venice, MSS. B Gardiner, ' History of England,' vi. no.
8 Privy Council Register, i. (N.S.) pp. 91-93.
7 Privy Council Register, i. , xix.
8 Privy Council Register, i. pp. 81, 82.
9 Gardiner, ' History of England,' vii. p. 297.
10 Balfour, 'Annals,' ii. p. 134.
11 Privy Council Register, i. pp. 193, 194.
12 Fraser, ' Haddington Memorials,' i. p. 169, ii. pp. 145-147.
13 privy Council Register, i. pp. 227-233.
14 Balfour, 'Annals,' ii. pp. 141, 142.
15 Gardiner, ' History of England,' vi. p. 307.
16 privy Council Register, i., c.
17 privy Council Register, i., cv. pp. 351-353. is Privy Council Register, i. , cxlii.
19 privy Council Register, i. pp. 456, 457.
20 Balfour, 'Annals,' ii. pp. 153, 154.
21 'Register of Royal Letters,' i. pp. 103-119.
M ' Register of Royal Letters,' i. p. 145. March 26, 1627.
23 Privy Council Register, Second Series, i., cxcvii.-cxcix.
24 Act. Parl. Scot. v. pp. 197-207.
25 Row, ' Historic of the Kirk of Scotland,' p. 345.
26 Mathieson, ' Politics and Religion in Scotland,' i. p. 350, note 2 ; not in Library.
27 Gardiner, ' History of England,' vii. pp. 279, 280.
28 Balfour, 'Annals,' ii. pp. 142-145.
29 Row, ' Historic of the Kirk of Scotland,' p. 343.
30 Row, ' Historic of the Kirk of Scotland,' p. 346.
31 Row, ' Historic of the Kirk of Scotland,' p. 347, cf. Privy Council Register, ii. p. 537, as to Bruce.
82 Row, ' Historic of the Kirk of Scotland,' pp. 371-373.
33 Sprott, ' Scottish Liturgies of the Reign of James VI.' p. xxxv. , citing Calder- wood and Spottiswoode. w Balfour, 'Annals,' ii. pp. 181-184.
85 Documents Relative to the Reception at Edinburgh of the Kings and Queens of Scotland, Edinburgh, 1822. 3S Balfour, 'Annals,' ii. pp. 215, 216.
87 Row, ' Historic of the Kirk of Scotland,' p. 361.
38 Spalding, i. p. 36. ^ Act. Parl. Scot. v. pp. 9, 10.
40 Act. Parl. Scot. v. pp. 15-55.
41 Row, ' Historic of the Kirk of Scotland,' pp. 365, 366.
42 Masson, ' Drummond of Hawthornden,' pp. 233-241.
43 Row, ' Historic of the Kirk of Scotland,' pp. 366, 367, note I.
44 Spalding, i. pp. 17-21.
45 Privy Council Register, ii. pp. 533, 534.
48 Row, ' Historic of the Kirk of Scotland,' p. 369.
24
CHAPTER II.
THE LITURGY AND THE COVENANT. 1633-1638.
WHILE in Scotland, Laud, like Charles, had been struck by the neglected and ruinous condition of the sacred buildings. As early as 1626, he had ordered the cathedral of the Bishop of Ross to be repaired, and "that every diocese should take the like course with their cathedral church, as being a principal parish church to them all."1 A few new churches were built under Spottiswoode : one, at Dairsie in Fifeshire, is a curious example of Jacobean imita- tion of mediaeval architecture. Decency, orderliness, uniformity, were what Laud and Charles desired in churches as in services. " Our father of blessed memory immediately after his coming into England compared the decency and uniformity of God's worship here, with that diversity, nay, deformity, which was used in Scotland, where no set or public form of prayer was used, but Preachers or Readers and ignorant Schoolmasters prayed in the Church, some- times so ignorantly that it was a shame to all religion to have the Majesty of God so barbarously spoken unto ; sometimes so seditiously that their prayers were plain libels girding at sovereignty and authority; or Lies, being stuffed with all the false reports in the Kingdom." So Charles said, or was made to say, in his ' Large Declaration,' issued in 1639 (p. 16).
There did, in fact, exist a book of common order for prayers in church, but, if the king is right, "conceived prayers," barbarous and political, were not unusual.
As to the condition of the sacred edifices, it was a not uncommon, if not an official Presbyterian opinion, that there was no holiness in a place : a house built with hands. The practical inference was that, in testimony to this doctrine, churches might be as neglected
DESPOTIC INTRODUCTION OF LITURGY (1636-1637). 25
and dirty as suited the genius of the people and the age. Father Baillie, a Benedictine, described St Giles's Church in 1627. "Bare walls and pillars all clad with dust, sweepings and cobwebs . . . and on every side the restless resorting of people treating of their worldly affairs ; some writing and making obligations, contracts, and discharges, others laying counts or telling over sums of money. . . . The west end of the church is divided into a high house for the College of Justice, and a lower house, called the Low Tolbooth," for minor cases.2 " Ye have made it a den of thieves."
In such circumstances, Laud and Charles desired to introduce decency, and, practically, the English Liturgy. The desire was, in itself, blameless ; not so the despotic measures by which a book of prayer, with, it might be feared, soap and water to follow, was thrust on the Kirk and the nation. The Book of Common Prayer of Knox was more a guide or directory to the conduct of the serv;ces than a text to be strictly followed: "conceived prayers," by the minister himself, were more congenial, and were perhaps directly inspired. They were as political as the sermons. Mean- while, even to so learned and relatively moderate a Presbyterian preacher and historian as Baillie, later Principal of Glasgow University, the beautiful prayers of the Liturgy seemed "anti- christian." It is impossible to follow here, in detail, the development of a scheme for the revision of the Presbyterian book, a scheme which had hung incomplete for twenty years. The Scottish bishops practised a policy of delay, but Dr Sprott writes " It is evident that the Scottish Prayer Book was virtually settled in April 1636, by Laud and Wren writing into an English Liturgy the few changes suggested in Scotland, which they were willing to admit, and such other alterations, mostly in an opposite direction, as seemed good to them." 3 Not all of the Scottish bishops agreed. The book, and the Canons which preceded it, had no ecclesiastical sanction, either of all the bishops, or of a General Assembly. The imposition was an act of sheer royal autocratic papacy : the book, being English, insulted Scottish national sentiment ; the changes from the English version were deemed to imply a nearer approach to Rome. Protestantism was in danger. The landowners suspected that •Charles meant to recover more of their old ecclesiastical estates, for the rebuilding of cathedrals, or cleaning of churches ; and thus, from "the rascal multitude" upwards, through every rank and •condition of his subjects, he gave intolerable offence, and caused
26 THE RIOT IN ST GILES'S (1637).
extreme apprehension. He lost three kingdoms and his head, not for a mass, but for a surplice. The Book of Canons, printed in 1636, preceded the Liturgy, and enjoined the acceptance of it; " The Masse in Inglish," says Row. " All must subscribe the Oath of Supremacy and the Book of Canons."
An intention to introduce auricular confession was suspected. The communion table was to be at the upper end of the chancel, and the cup was named the chalice. There was to be no excom- munication without the bishop's approval, and excommunication had been and continued, after 1638, to be the rod and staff that comforted and defended the Kirk. "Popish words" such as "clergy" and "laity" were employed. Happily the canons ("cannons" a joke of the day) could be turned against the wicked prelates, for the canons enjoined deposition for simony. Now the bishops were " glad to see money " (note the play upon words, or pun), and so they were righteously deposed in 1638. The complaints, and the joke, are chronicled by Row.4
The result of the introduction of the Liturgy is known to all. Baillie discovered that " the Liturgie is taken for the most part out of these Antichristian Writs " — the Romish rituals ! Ministers were ordered to purchase the book and use it : they behaved in such various ways as they deemed convenient. On July 23, 1637, in St Giles's, " the common people, especially the women," made the historical riot. Row says that several stools were thrown at the dean ; others, that one woman threw a stool : most historians now refuse the credit to Jenny Geddes. There was abundance of virtuous ribaldry, minutely chronicled by admiring pens. The bishop nearly fell into the hands of the mob, in the afternoon. It is not certain whether or not the tumult was prearranged, or whether the female "bangsters" were men in women's weeds. Spalding affirms that the riot was organised by the nobles, who heartily hated the bishops, as usurpers of their authority and " greedy mouths " gaping for their property.5 Others attribute the beginning of the clamours to waiting-maids who were, apparently, keeping seats for their mistresses. These ladies liked sermons, it would seem, better than prayer, and meant to come in when the preacher arose. On the whole " the devouter sex," and the rascal multitude (which broke the church windows), were quite capable of doing spontaneously all that was done. Mr. Gardiner judiciously remarks that, if 'prentices disguised as women threw stools, they
GENERAL RESISTANCE (1637). 2/
would not have missed. In any case the stool that was thrown played the part of the stone hurled at the tabernacle in the church of Perth (1559). The first shot in the long war had been fired.*
One effect of the Edinburgh riot was to perplex the Council, wherein, of course, the bishops, though no keen enthusiasts for the Liturgy, were of one mind, and most of the Lords probably 01 another. The next consequence was that public services of religion were put for a while under an interdict.6 Again, the use of the Liturgy had been enforced under the sanction of "horning," a mild form of outlawry under which debtors habitually lay. Certain clergymen of Fife, notably Henderson of Leuchars, soon to be the most powerful minister in Scotland, took legal measures to stay the horning process. The Council decided that " homing " applied only to those who did not buy, not to those who did not use the Liturgy. Meanwhile the king commanded that the rioters should be punished (as in the Porteous case, they were not), and the Council were to enforce the use of the detested "mass-book."7
On the other hand, volleys of petitions or " supplications " were discharged against the book, from all classes, ranks, and bodies of the kingdom. The country, save in the north-east (the western Celt cared for none of these things), was united. Young Lennox carried to London a supplication from the Lords and Gentlemen, with a list of sixty -six other petitions.8 The Duke could speak to the intense and uniform excitement of the country. The names of the noblemen suppliants by themselves prove the unanimity. From the far north came Sutherland ; Fifeshire sent Rothes ; for Ayrshire was Cassilis ; for the eastern Border, Home ; there were Lothian, Kinnoul, Wemyss, Dalhousie, Montgomery, Fleming, Lindsay, Elcho, Yester, Sinclair, Loudoun, Balmerino, Burley, Dalziel, Cranstoun, Boyd ; men whose fathers had stood on different sides in the wars of Moray and Mary, of Church and Kirk. Drawn up in long lines, nobles on one side, ministers and lairds on the other side of the road, from the Cross and the Luckenbooths to the Stinking Stile, they had waited for Lennox : the Council received the petition (September 20), and handed it to him.
* An excellent account of the development of the Liturgy will be found in Mr. Hill Burton's ' History of Scotland,' chapter Ixviii. The author goes into the question with the zest of a book hunter. Dr Sprott's work is also admirable. Of the riot perhaps the most complete contemporary account is in Lord Rothes' ' Relation of the Affairs of the Kirk, 1637-1638,' see the Appendix, Bannatyne Club, 1830. I have not thought it necessary to enter more fully into particulars.
28 A COMMITTEE OF PUBLIC SAFETY (1637).
Rothes had a conversation with Spottiswoode, and declares that the prelate merrily said " if the king would turn Papist we behoved to obey," and, — the fatal Tudor precedents in his mind, — he instanced Edward VI., Mary Tudor, and Elizabeth. He might have added Henry VIII. ; in any case it is clear that Charles I. was acting on the example of four English monarch-popes, who had changed the nation's creed at their will.9 Rothes made the obvious reply ; parties in England had been so equal in force, that the king's will could lightly tilt the balance. In Scotland it was not so ; nearly all (for the Catholics were mere Ishmaelites), were then Presby- terian. When the Covenanters insisted that Charles I. and when the Protesters insisted that Charles II., should force Presbyterianism on England and Ireland, they returned, unconsciously, to Tudor principles. If it was wrong for the king to compel Scotland to accept the Liturgy, it was right for mm to compel England and Ireland to accept Presbyterianism. Such was Covenanting logic.
Edinburgh was now thronged ; supplicants and excited persons ot all ranks flocking in, as before the riot of December 1596. The only reply to their petitions was a royal order to Council bidding all strangers to disperse (October 17). The mob desired the Provost and Council to add supplicants for the town. There was a good deal of violence, and the Lords supplicant declined to depart from the city. The Council withdrew to Linlithgow, much as James did in 1596, but now nobody was alarmed.
A letter from the king was expected on November 1 7 ; again there was a huge gathering of anxious malcontents. They left commissioners of every rank in Edinburgh, to watch and warn ; these four sets of commissioners were later representatives of nobles, lairds, burgesses, and clergy.10 They formed, in short, a kind of Committee of Public Safety, as in 1596; and were infinitely more powerful than the divided and timid Council who, from fear of mobs and tumults, acquiesced in the arrangement. This appears very weak on the part of the Council, but they were assured, says Rothes, by the king's advocate, Sir Thomas Hope, that the supplicant party might meet and choose commissioners " for any public business." n Here, in these four bodies of representatives, called " The Tables " was the nucleus of an organisation, revolutionary, so far as it resisted Government ; conservative, so far as it opposed a revolution on the part of the king. For years such standing committees were to govern Scotland.12 The men of the Tables, the Sixteen, always
THE WAR OF PROTESTATIONS (1638). 2 9
protested their loyalty, and "conspired," as Charles II. said of latei Whigs, " by advice of counsel." Their contention was that the bishops were the guilty parties, and, as such, ought to be prosecuted, not allowed to sit judging the case in the Council. The king, dallying with the crisis, merely published a statement of his aversion to Popery, and of his intention to do nothing contrary to law (December 7).13
The Commissioners of the supplicants kept up a kind of legal wrangle, presenting " Protestations " in answer to each move of the Council or utterance of the king. Traquair urged that they should make a humiliating submission, but, in February 1638, he found it necessary to go to Court and consult Charles. On February 15, Traquair having returned, Rothes announced to him that the supplicants desired all that the old Presbyterians had wanted, — yearly Assemblies, the enforcement of the " caveats " on bishops, the recall of the Articles of Perth, and, of course, the withdrawal of the Liturgy. The demands, if granted, would have made Scotland once more a slave to presbyters. Otherwise the nobles, barons, and burgesses would hang the bishops.14 This last he said " in jest," and he actually protected prelates whom the godly intended to hang.15 The supplicants now heard of a proclamation in which Charles, acquitting the bishops, took all the weight of the innova- tions upon his own Erastian head, and denounced meetings as treasonable. The supplicants therefore put in another Protestation, and went to Stirling where the Council was sitting. Their lawyers advised them to utter a Declinature, and, if that were refused, "a protestation according to order of law," as if the whole affair were a law-suit between the king and his subjects.16 Roxburgh pointed out to Rothes, who was the leader, that the king had allies ; for example, Huntly. Rothes answered that two Fife lairds could keep Huntly from crossing Dundee ferry, that " three parts of his name is decayed," and, in short, that the Gordons and the Cock of the North were not worth " a salt citron." That estimate later proved, at one time, nearly correct. In fact, there was, as yet, scarce any appearance of a Cavalier party, Aberdeen being the only consider- able town that did not go with the supplicants. But in Scotland there remained " a set of men whose worth was hardly known " (as a Jacobite poet sings in 1745), and the godly burgesses were to reckon with the claymore ere all was done.
There now occurred a grotesque race to Stirling, Traquair spurring
3O MONTROSE FOR THE COVENANT (1638).
to get a new proclamation out, and the legal protestors of the supplicants hurrying after to meet it with a protestation. The supplicants, Lindsay and Home, won the race easily, and Stirling was soon full of the precisians whom an old song unfeelingly styles " the lousy tykes o' Fife." Proclamation and protestation clashed, amidst great crowds, at Edinburgh on February 22. No man was more forward in protesting than young MONTROSE. " He was a gay gallant," and he climbed up on a puncheon that stood on the scaffold, when Rothes remarked " James, you will not be at rest till you be lifted up there above the rest, in three fathom of a rope." 17 Though godly, Rothes was not exactly a saint, but, alas, he prophesied sooth ! The leaders now sent to warn the country far and wide, bidding men neglect all proclamations inhibiting meet- ings. In 1596, it was the preachers who thus summoned illegal gatherings, but now the nobles took the lead.
They " fell upon the consideration of ane band of union to be made legally," 18 for bands were as illegal as they were common, in all cases of feud, murder, and resistance to authority. We have heard of scores of "bands," usually for purposes of bloodshed. But this band was to be " made legally." Nothing more angered the Covenanters than to be told that the Covenant was merely a " band " with all the sanguinary associations of such documents. But . of all bands, this modest " legally made " band was to be the bloodiest. For some fifty years it incarnadined the fields, and moors, and streets of Scotland. It became a kind of fetish, renewed again and again by the Westland and Galloway Whigs, long after it had ceased to harm "the idolatrous occupant of the throne," the Hanoverian king. Much sentimental writing has been produced in praise of the noble conduct of the Covenanters. But the point to be kept steadily in mind is this, the resistance to the thoroughly despotic, illegal, and strictly irreligious infliction of the prayer book on people who preferred " conceived prayers," was not only justifi- able, but most praiseworthy. On the other hand, the expression of that resistance in a document binding the country, " while sun and moon endure" to a supposed band with Jehovah, was an anachronism fatal to the peace and liberty of two generations. The arrangement, in ten years, bred a civil war within a civil war, and for half a century deluged Scotland with blood and tears.
O pectora cceca I Could the men who thought the "legally made band " such a clever stroke of attorney-like statesmanship have fore-
"DEFENCE OF THE KING'S PERSON." 31
seen their fates, they might never have sworn as they did, to the revised edition of the old "Covenant" of 1581, the Covenant which they broke, as some held (but this is a question of interpretation), when they left the king in English hands, and went home with part of their wages. The band gave itself out as "The confession of faith of the Kirk of Scotland," as first signed by James VI. and his household in 1580, again by persons of all ranks, with the sanction of the Privy Council and General Assembly in 1581, again, in 1590. To this was now added " a general band for the maintenance of the true religion, and the king's person" The Covenanters aver that " the present and succeeding generations in this land are bound to keep the aforesaid national oath and subscription inviolable," as if one generation could bind posterity to a form of belief, that belief being, in fact, Presbyterianism, with all its odious claims to inter- ference with the State. The confession was negative, mainly anti-papal. The innovations of Charles were to be understood as banned in the confession of 1580-81, "no less than if every one of them had been expressed in the aforesaid confessions."
The important clause is " we promise and swear that we shall, to the utmost of our power, with our means and lives, stand to the defence of our dread sovereign the King's Majesty, his person and authority, in the defence and preservation of the aforesaid true religion, liberties and laws of the Kingdom." * The clause last cited appears capable of being understood as only binding the subscribers to defend the king's person, so far as he practises " the aforesaid true religion." Later, when the king's head was off, the English sectaries pointed out to the Covenanters that, in beheading the king (who was not a Presbyterian), they had not broken the Covenant.
"Gathered by God and a good cause," says Rothes, the Scots had made their legal band. "This being drawn, was revised and corrected by many learned ministers, and subscribed by many thousands of the nobility and gentry at the Greyfriars Kirk, on Wednesday the last of February." Preachers and burghs subscribed, and, as the saintly Rothes remarks, were " admitted again in Cove- nant with God." 19 Scotland was once more in the happy posture of Israel of old, and enjoyed a definite legal instrument, binding on all posterity, and regulating the relations between itself and the Creator of the universe. Nothing was absent but the signature of
* The whole band may be consulted in Gardiner's ' Constitutional Documents,' 54-64.
32 LEGALITY OF THE COVENANT? (1638).
the other high contracting party. The whole affair was the most mischievous of ignorant anachronisms : Scotland was not really prae- Christian Israel, as the framers of the Covenant seemed to suppose.
The public signing of the Covenant, probably on March 2, by the stern but weeping populace, on a flat stone in the kirkyard of the long dispossessed Franciscans, has been duly celebrated in Scottish art and letters. "What they felt," says Mr Gardiner, in the same strain as Rothes, "was the joy of those who had been long led astray, and had now returned to the Shepherd and Bishop of their souls." But surely " Bishop " is out of place ?
They were not to be led "in pastures green, the quiet waters by." The position of Scotland was now much like its attitude throughout the War of Independence. Union with England would then have been a happy thing — but not a compelled union. The adoption of the excellent English Liturgy need not, perhaps, have led to the loss of souls, and would have saved the world from the eccentricities of "conceived prayers," such as many of us have listened to with a sigh or a smile. Even organs are no longer regarded in Scotland as the sirens of Satan. But an imposed liturgy the country would resist to the death. Indeed, looked at in a purely secular way, the imposed liturgy was a beginning of royal lawlessness : moreover, the nobles and lairds had to take thought of their kirk-lands. So the great band flew through the country. It was malignantly averred that the band was not legal, after all. This, if so, ought to have been known to Sir Thomas Hope, and to Johnston of Waristoun, who are said to have been the legal advisers. Johnston had later the misfortune to be hanged : for twenty-two years was the short duration of the reign of the Covenant. After that came another king who knew the Covenant but too well, and hanged Johnston.
The lovable Confession of 1581, now renewed, was much occupied by theological amenities. "We abhor and detest all contrary religion, but chiefly all kinds of Popery, in general and particular heads." Under "all kinds of Popery" were included, it seems, all shades of Christianity which were not " defended by many and sundry notable kirks and realms, but chiefly by the Kirk of Scotland, the King's Majesty, and three estates of this realm." Now was England one of these happy realms ? If so, then the Episcopal model was not, as such, popish and damnable. But Calderwood manages to include it thus : " under the name of wicked Hierarchy is condemned Episcopal Government," and he adds other Presbyterian arguments.20
LAUD AND THE KING (1637). 33
As for the legality of the band, Charles and his supporters argued that none but the Magistrate could administer a public oath. That the act of James (in 1581), then aged fifteen, was at most but a precedent. That only King and Council had a right to renew the oath. That the Covenanters had no right to interpret the old negative confession of 1581 as applying, for example, to the then unborn Articles of Perth. That they had added a clause of mutual defence "against all persons whatsoever," not excepting the king. That all such bands of subjects, without the king's privity, were notoriously illegal. Other arguments there were, — for example, that " it looked not like a thing approved of God, which was begun and carried on with fury and madness, and obtruded upon people with threatenings, tearing of clothes, drawing of blood," and other out- rages.21 Perhaps the opponents of the band had the better of the legal arguments. The band, one ventures to say (though a modern Scottish legist has defended it), so far as compliance with legality went, was a failure. Charles had broken the law : now his subjects broke it ; some of them had to find out how the law stood in this matter in their later time.
The sole excuse put forward to shield Charles, by loyalists, is that he was deceived by his advisers. Lord Napier, the friend and adviser of Montrose, asserts that his own enemies at Court were actually guilty of forgery. The gentlemen of the bedchamber (and the king's old "whipping boy" Will Murray, a man of much and mysterious importance) were said to read the letters from Scotland which the king kept casually in his pockets, and to send information to the Covenanting leaders.22 Lord Napier himself, in a memorandum, blames the bishops, as does Balfour. But it is certain that Charles dragged on the bishops : they could not stop Charles. Moreover, like Napoleon before and during the Russian campaign, Charles refused to listen to advice which thwarted his project. " The king is not pleased to allow any of us to come to inform him," wrote Traquair, the treasurer, on October 19, I63;.23 Though Traquair also complained of the bishops, who had not a friend, the whole " wyte " of the innovations lies on the heads of Laud and the king. Charles had no force in the now mutinous condition of England, and the Covenanters were in communication with the English Puritan malcontents. The king came, at last, to understand that he must give up much, but he did not perceive his true line of policy. He should have withdrawn the Liturgy, and
VOL. III. C
34 THE COVENANT FORCED ON MEN (1638).
revoked his Revocation ; with full assurances that he would noi meddle again with property and hereditable jurisdictions. The preachers would thus lose the additions to their maintenance from the tithes, and the nobles — their losses recovered, their fears allayed? their hold over the lairds regained with their lordships of tithes — would be separated, as of old, from the preachers.
Charles himself recognised and said, that Loudoun and Rothes, leaders against the Revocation, were, for the same reasons, leaders of the Covenanters. But the king merely " drove time," and, among all the things that he uselessly abandoned, he did not abandon the one thing needful, the Revocation, little as it benefited himself.
Meanwhile, the Covenant "flew like fire about." It was carried everywhere, and signature was forced on every one, with the threats, tumults, and bullyings becoming in a people newly awakened to freedom.24 "They hound out rascally commoners on men who have not subscribed the Covenant." The bishops sent Andrew Learmont to Charles with complaints, and details. Non-covenanting ministers were daily cursed to their faces, and their stipends were not paid. The loyal were unprotected, a thing most incident to loyalists, always and everywhere. The friends of Freedom, as ever, allowed no freedom to any but themselves. The zealots of liberty of conscience permitted no liberty of conscience to exist among persons of other opinions. In what respect their conduct was better than the king's (which was as bad as possible), it is difficult to discover ; but historians usually prefer the cause of popular to that of individual tyranny.
Mar had written to the under keeper of Edinburgh Castle, probably about munitions for the hold ; the under keeper, " a great Puritan by reputation," blabbed (February 26, i638).25 Presently the Covenanters had seized the keys of the castle, and practically blockaded it. Great palpable lies were told. There had been a design, it was said, to blow up the chief supplicants at Dalkeith, like Darnley ; and, that failing, to cut their throats : we are reminded of Arbuthnot's treatise on Political Lying, — to coin their own false- hoods is part of the rights of free peoples.26 Before this latest development of Covenanting fancy (springing from the storage, at Dalkeith, of powder which could not be placed in the castle), Charles called Laud to Council, with Spottiswoode, the Bishops of Galloway, Brechin, and Ross, and the Marquis of Hamilton. Spottiswoode
HAMILTON'S MISSION (1638). 35
had not the courage of Father Ogilvie, the Jesuit whom he had buffeted, tortured, and hanged. He and the other Scottish bishops were very reluctant to go home again, where their lives were in danger.27 The resolution taken was to send Hamilton down to Scotland, with concessions. The marquis was unwilling to under- take the task, knowing the ferocity of public feeling, and the impotence of the Crown ; though, of course, he concealed that opinion from the king. Writers like the impetuous biographer of Montrose, Mr. Napier, keep reminding us that Hamilton had been accused of aiming at the throne. Charles had chivalrously shown his sense of the absurdity of this charge, but Hamilton really was a broken reed. He wished to be secure in his own great possessions. " He was naturally dark and reserved in discourse," says Clarendon, and having been with Gustavus Adolphus, he spoke much of war. He was thought wise, because he was obscure : military, because he talked of fight and siege ; and so " was looked upon as a worse and more dangerous man than he deserved to be." If all tales are true, Hamilton, like his ancestor the waverer Chatelherault, was " Mr. Facing Both ways."
Hamilton carried with him two proclamations. In the first, after a preamble about the disturbance caused by the Liturgy, the Canons, and the Court of High Commission, Charles reiterated his horror of " the popish superstition." He promised never to press the innovations, " except in a fair and legal way," thereby condemn- ing his own recent measures. The Court of High Commission " shall never impugn the laws." He would pass an amnesty to all who forswore and delivered up the illegal bands : all who main- tained them should be proclaimed traitors. How little Charles knew the mind of the Scots ! He, in their view, was only " Christ's silly vassal," as Andrew Melville had told James VI. They, on the other hand, to repeat Mr Gardiner's eloquent words, " had long been led astray, and had now returned to the Shepherd and Bishop of their souls " ; not only so, they butted other sheep who would not enter their fold.
Spottiswoode knew his gentle flock. They would never abandon the band. But the king was peremptory, saying " that as long as that Covenant was not passed from, he had no more power than the Duke of Venice." ** This was true ; but the way to get rid of the band was to restore the nobles to their commuted tithes, and to abolish the Liturgy and the Articles of Perth. Even that was
36 TEMPER OF THE NOBLES (1638).
too late. Charles gave Hamilton an alternative form of clamation, dropping the explicit demand for the surrender of the Covenant. Hamilton, before setting out, had summoned his friends to meet him in Scotland, just as Cowrie's friends met him with a cavalcade in May 1600. The Covenanters filled Edinburgh with armed men, as if a great Scottish trial by law were going forward. The usual and useful panic about popish villains assembling was excited, with the accustomed effect. As the Covenanters mustered in great force, and were blockading the castle, Hamilton stopped at Dalkeith, whither (as we saw) a cargo of powder intended for the castle had to be carried. The supplicants would not meet Hamilton at that house. Rothes is extremely prolix about the negotiations which ensued, the supplicants defending the clause in their band about mutual aid as legal. A great deal of pettifogging was done by subjects who were blockading, with more or less of publicity, the king's own castle. To haggle about legalities while excluding the king's supplies from the king's house was truly characteristic of the nation.
At last Hamilton met Rothes. He was as conciliatory as possible, but vowed that Charles could, and if need be would, have recourse to the ultima ratio regum, and a fleet of sixty vessels. Wentworth, later in July, sent to Charles a plan for subduing the Scots. It may or may not have been feasible, but Wentworth was not present to be "thorough." Rothes was not daunted by Hamilton's menace.29 Hamilton anticipated that the usual threats (their use was denied by Rothes) would be employed to make him- self and the Council (one of whom was Lome, " the gleyed Argyll ") sign the Covenant. The supplicants would put in their wonted protestation against any proclamation that did not withdraw the Articles of Perth, establish the caveats, grant a General Assembly, to precede and be ratified by a Parliament (extreme Theocracy, with a lay backing, being thus re-established). Of course neither proclamation met these demands, and the men of the band were also set on punishing the bishops "for their crimes." Hamilton thought of risking the milder proclamation in a few days (this is what he probably meant by "dividing the proclamation"), but looked for no good result, and asked for military forces if his measures failed. Yet victory in war would be "but over your own poor people." They will not abate their "impertinent and damnable demands," and intend themselves to call a Parliament.
HAMILTON DRIVES TIME (1638). 37
The idea of a republic, we learn from Rothes, was not absent from the apprehensions of Hamilton.
By June 9 Hamilton left Dalkeith and was at Holyrood, the open and public blockade of the castle having been raised. Some 60,000 men and above 300 ministers met the Commissioner at Edinburgh. On the i3th he meant to publish the milder pro- clamation. He found that Hope, the king's very unfit advocate, maintained the legality of the great band, as did most of the lawyers and judges. A layman has no right to an opinion, but it does not seem probable that, in any earlier age, the view would have been taken by lawyers. Meanwhile Hamilton hoped that the crowds would disperse, and that, by protracting matters, Charles might gain time for warlike preparations. Only a complete con- quest would avail : a work " of danger and some difficulty." He dared not issue the proclamation on the i3th. The gentry and nobles stood with swords in their hands, lining the road to the town cross.30 The brethren of Fife occupied all one side of the way : when Montrose's war came, Fife was not so forward ! " The wicked and accursed ministers " thundered in the old style : the pulpit, says Hamilton, is "the causer of all these evils." We sigh for Cotterell and his handful of Cromwellian musketeers ! They were to come at last, and purge the General Assembly away, as at last the French galleys swept into St Andrews Bay to punish the murderers of the Cardinal.
Already (June 1 5) Hamilton foresaw the use that might be made of the men of the West Highlands and the Isles, not that they cared a farthing for religious disputes, but that they hated Lome. On June 24, he writes that he has told "some of the best affected of them " that he must return to Charles and seek new instructions. Meanwhile Berwick must be Charles's base, Dum- barton was secured : as for Edinburgh Castle there was little hope. The Covenanters had long been arming, getting weapons and stores from many foreign ports.81
Charles, on June 20, replied very calmly that his military pre- parations, money, and fleet, were adequate. "I intend not to yield to the demands of those traitors the Covenanters."32 But Charles was not thorough. Hamilton left Edinburgh on a promise to return in a month or less. He mainly wished to gain time, and to see that Charles really was ready for war; but he also had a scheme in the pettifogging way, the issue by the king of the
38 A GENERAL ASSEMBLY (1638).
Confession of 1581 under royal authority. But it was soon proved that the legalists of the other band had excellently pious reasons for not subscribing this one. Hamilton had left for England when a royal letter induced him to return with a pro- clamation which was instantly " protested." " It was openly said," writes Mr Gardiner, "that the right to hold Assemblies came direct from God, and that no earthly prince might venture to interrupt them " (citing Protestation, ' Large Declaration,' 98). 33
It were tedious, and in our space hardly possible to recount all the comings and goings of Hamilton in August and September. He dared not even see his mother, of the house of Glencairn, one of the most devout of the devouter sex. The Council itself he had difficulty in carrying with him, though Charles threw over almost all his ecclesiastical cargo in the storm. On August 20, the Covenanters were threatening to hold an Assembly and Parliament on their own authority.34 Montrose had gone to Aberdeen to secure subscribers to the Covenant, but in Huntly's region his methods would not yet serve, and the doctors of the University had the better in an exchange of written papers. Mean- while many a douce and canny preacher must have felt the qualms which Baillie, later Principal of Glasgow University, a cautious man, and at bottom no fanatic, notes in his own experience. " I find no example of a National Assembly meeting against the will of the supreme Magistrate, . . ." he says, the said Magistrate "rightly professing." Indeed such a meeting without a Royal Commissioner does not seem to be contemplated even by that golden Act of 1592. However, among other concessions, Charles granted a General Assembly.
Now the General Assembly in these ages was merely the curse and scourge of Scotland, from one point of view ; its rock of defence, from another. James had reduced it to a harmless condition by a system of packing its court, of tampering with his promises, and by the gradual introduction of bishops. All this royal policy was unfair and illegal, as we have frequently stated But James had never done the one thing necessary. He had never utterly destroyed the Kirk's weapon of excommunication — a relic of Rome if ever there was any — with its civil consequences. Excommunication had indeed been placed under episcopal sanction and restraint. But the first thing that "a free Assembly" would do, would be to deprive bishops of authority, and to excommunicate
OBJECTIONS TO ITS CONSTITUTION (1638). 39
them. Thenceforth this fiery two-edged sword would be used in all directions by the banded preachers.
Again, the old insufferable dictation of the " prophets " would certainly revive the empire of the men who judged angels, kings, and everybody. At first the allies of the nobles, the prophets would presently revolt, and rule Scotland in their own wild way. There could be no peace, and there was no peace, while the prophets bore rule. Charles should have fought rather than permit a revival of theocratic anarchy. But he could not fight ; he had not the means — he lacked men, ships, and money. England was not with him ; and England too, for a season, was consequently to find her own neck under the heels of the Presbyterian saints. She did not enjoy or long endure that situation.
Meanwhile there seemed a gleam of hope. The laity were the strength of the Covenanters, but the laity now insisted on sharing the privileges of the prophets. This, as Baillie says, " imported the ordinary sitting of laic Elders " (laic is a popish word, alas !) not only in sessions but also in presbyteries ; their voting there in the election of ministers to bear commission, "this they" (the preachers apparently) " took to be an innovation, and of great and dangerous consequences." Prophets who are to go to the Assembly should only be elected by prophets. Baillie himself appears to have held that laymen might vote : but the " Table " of preachers had to be coerced into permitting this by the nobles, lairds, and burgesses. " Sundry of the brethren are very jealous of the gentry's usurpation over them." 35 In fact, by this " usurping," the gentry, for the time, got rid of the dangers with which the prophets might threaten them.*
When the Assembly was held, a body calling themselves "the Ministers of the Church of Scotland " put in a remonstrance against Ruling Elders "having chief hand in choosing of Commissioners." M In short, and to be done with such matters, loyalists maintained that the Assembly of 1638 was not free and legal. The godly maintained that, for nearly forty years, no other Assembly had been
* But probably there was no "usurpation." The method of election seems to have been that deemed orthodox by the Synod of Fife in 1597. At least a writer who is not an expert in Scottish Presbyterian legalities, can only remark that the r.ynod conceived elders, having commission from their sessions, in matters of manners, to possess votes in the presbyteries. The provincial synods had the right "to choose the Commissioners to come from each shire to vote in the General Assembly."
4O DISPUTABLE CONDUCT OF HAMILTON (1638).
legal and free. Covenanters abolished, by a rescissory act, the Assemblies and laws of the past at their pleasure. So did Cavaliers, unto the Covenanters' Assemblies, with another rescissory act, when they returned to power (1661). It is waste of time to wrangle over the legal pettifoggings of revolution and reaction. Both were apt to be virulent and unjust.
Every step, good or bad, taken by Hamilton and Charles, to lull, however so little, the fury of the Covenanters, failed. The Negative Confession of 1581, which Charles stooped to sign, — the king's counter-covenant, — was rejected. The Council, above all Lome (whom we may henceforth call Argyll, as his father died at this time), were not to be trusted by the king, nor were the judges ; the king's advocate, Hope, was as anti-Episcopal as the fiercest fish-fag of Edinburgh. Hamilton now bought of Mar the Castle of Edinburgh, retaining the old lieutenant, who, he says, was no Covenanter. He intended to make General Ruthven governor ; but as the castle was without one sound musket, Ruthven would not accept the position. The bishops were accused of all manner of offences, religious and secular, before the Presbytery of Edinburgh. Their mere existence was a crime, their opinions damnable, their morals unspeakable ; indeed Hamilton, writing to Charles, does not regard several of them as immaculate. The bishops would, of course, decline the judicature of the Assembly, a thing that had now been for many long years in abeyance. They would, of course, as certainly be con- demned, whether they appeared or not, whether they were guilty or not. Hamilton provided for the Episcopal clergy, as for the purchase of the castle, out of his own estate. He expected that, very probably, he would be assassinated, or kept as a hostage, and prayed Charles not to consider his safety in that case. There is a well-known tale, to be set forth later, that Hamilton had really played a double part, and had bidden the leaders, before the Assembly met, to be resolute, when, he told them, they would attain all their desires. Montrose is given as, from his personal knowledge, the source of this anecdote : he, later, appears to make it one of his charges against Hamilton, to which we shall return.
The place of meeting of the Assembly (November 21) was Glasgow Cathedral, which has miraculously escaped destruction by Congregation and Covenant. The nobles, as usual in such crises, had brought in their retainers, and " the rascal multitude " was well represented, and behaved with its noble independence of manner.
HAMILTON LEAVES THE ASSEMBLY (1638). 41
"We might learn from Canterbury, yea, from the Pope, from the Turks, or Pagans, modesty and manners. . . . Our rascals, without shame, in great numbers, make such din and clamour in the house of the true God, that if they aimed to use the like behaviour in my chamber, I could not be content till they were down the stairs." So writes Baillie, but though he had threatened the Principal of the University into withdrawing a protestation against the legality of certain performances, Baillie was perhaps never quite a True Blue Covenanter. He had a sense of certain elementary decencies. Even Baillie was wearied with the legal discussions which occupied the first days of the Assembly. Alexander Johnston of Waristoun, a fire-brand of the law, was clerk, and accidentally let out a specimen of the "wire-pulling" and electioneering devices of the Tables. Alexander Henderson, the ablest man, Baillie thought, of the party, was Moderator, and set, as he always did, an example of becoming manners.
It were tedious and profitless to follow the "hairsplitting argu- mentativeness," as Mr Gardiner calls it, of both parties. The Assembly put aside the question as to the nullity of certain elections. They were not going to hear election petitions. They voted them- selves competent judges of the bishops, despite the prelates' declinature. Hamilton then made the last of his protestations; " he acted it with tears, and drew by his speech water from many eyes, as I think: well I wot, much from mine," says Baillie.* He then left the place. Legally speaking, by the Act of 1592 the Assembly would appear to have been ended. But it went on sit- ting, and working its will. Argyll spoke — a "somewhat ambiguous" speech, "and at that time we did not well understand him." In fact he had gone over to the larger party. " He was probably as incapable of withstanding a popular belief as he was of withstanding an army of his foes," says Mr Gardiner, who, nevertheless, praises Argyll as a statesman. But the Presbyterian belief was doubtless genuine in Argyll. His repute for ambition, cunning, and lack of military courage, has made him the reverse of a popular hero. But we have no reason to suppose him to have been a character so unusual as not heartily to hate a bishop, f
* The Rev. Robert Blair is said to have called Cromwell " a greeting deevil," but many public men, in those days, were as frankly lachrymose.
t Baillie, i. pp. 119-144. Burnet, ' Hamilton Memoirs,' p. 106. 'Hamilton Papers,' Camden Society, pp. 40, 61. Hardwicke MSS. ii. pp. 113, 121. The
42 THE BISHOPS ATTACKED (1638).
On October 14 Hamilton had written to Charles a remark truly prophetic. " I know well it is chiefly monarchy which is intended by them to be destroyed, and I cannot say but that it hath received so great a blow as it can never be set right till the principal actors have received their just punishment." That came to some of them, as to Waristoun and Argyll, poena pede claudo. That great collective enthusiasm, which now bound all Scotland together, except the clans, and the Gordons, and probably a fair proportion of the preachers, could not long endure. As when Jason cast the clod among the armed men born of the dragon's teeth, the Covenanters were to turn against each other their swords, and the lightnings of their excommunications.
Charles, for his part, thanked Hamilton, who had done his best : hoped "to shew myself like myself" (as unluckily he did), " before February or March," and thought that perhaps the Parliament promised had better be held, and that Huntly might have the Lieutenancy of the North, Traquair and Roxburgh of the South, all being subordinate to Hamilton (December 7, i638).3r
In the absence of Hamilton the Assembly went "at a great rate," as Burnet observes. The last six General Assemblies were declared legally invalid. This rescissory act, getting rid of forty years of law and custom, enabled the brethren to pounce freely on bishops and Episcopalians. The bishops were put at, and, whereas it was rather more than their lives were worth to appear before a Court of which
last document contains Hamilton's very free personal remarks on the leaders of both parties.
Hamilton's letter of Nov. 27 is a remarkable paper. He writes as if this note might be his last, such was the Covenanting fury, or so he represented it. The troubles, he says truly, are the result of the illegal introduction of the innovations by " my Lords of the clergy " — he should mean Laud, but he accuses the Scottish bishops. Yet he finds fault with Traquair for opposing them. He promises loyalty — he obstructed Montrose. For Roxburgh, he reminds the king of the character of him by James VI. Roxburgh, too, failed in time of need. Huntly is hated, but " will be of greater use when your Majesty shall take arms in your hand" — Huntly merely skulked, and thwarted Montrose. "Argyll will prove fhe dangerousest man in this State " — this was verified. Tullibardine is " a true hater of Argyll " : he was a broken reed. Lauderdale " is truly honest " : he did not, in fact, prove loyal, and a man less " honest " never sprang from the house of Lethington than Lauderdale's son, the Duke under the Restoration. Southesk is applauded : he merely trimmed. Dalzell is praised : he, as Earl of Carnwath, persuaded Charles not to head a charge at Naseby. The Covenanting nobles are, of course, hostile, "none more vainly foolish than Montrose" "Next to Hell I hate this place. ... I wish my daughters never be married in Scotland." Yet he tried to marx"y one of them into the house of Argyll.
SCRUPLES OF BAILLIE (1638). 43
they denied the jurisdiction, one of them was denounced as impudent — because he desired to appear ! In absence many were excommunicated in the most summary fashion; the rest were deposed. Baillie exults over their poverty in exile. Gordon remarks that while scores of conformist ministers were assailed for their irregularities, there appeared to be no absolutely peccant evangelist among the non-conformists. But Baillie does mention one of the brethren against whom an information was laid. " But the main thing alleged against him was but meddling with the Church box, and negligence in accounting for it." ^ The holy man was merely accused of robbing the poor, and he had refunded some of the money. He was referred to the presbytery of St Andrews, and, let us hope, restored the coppers of the charitable to the local paupers.
The allegations against Spottiswoode were, first, breach of the " caveats " which King James had been too slippery to enforce. The archbishop was also a Sabbath-breaker, a Simoniac, and kept 50,000 marks that had been raised for the release of some captives who lay among the Moors. He had also embezzled 5000 marks left by a Mr Wilkie for a bursary at St Andrews. It was the habitual practice, deep into the nineteenth century, to rob the University of St Andrews, whether Spottiswoode was guilty or not. There were other charges of having falsified the Acts of an Assembly. " His accusers offered to prove that he was guilty of many other gross crimes, or at least that there were very pregnant presumptions thereof against him." These were not produced. In short to be a bishop was to be guilty of everything and anything.39 A minister of Melrose had blasphemed " conceived prayers," comparing them " to a bird in a cage, flying here and there " : adding that " their cacologies and tautologies were intolerable," as they are even unto this day.40 To give modern instances of "conceived prayers" would amuse rather than edify. To the credit of Baillie, he did try to resist a clause in which the Kirk was said to have forsworn every kind of Episcopacy and the "Articles of Perth " (" before they were made ") in 1580-1 58 1.41 " It is one thing," Baillie said, " to pass by a policy as inexpedient, and another to abjure it as contrary to some article of the Confession of Faith." "Some, for the refusal of that declaration alone have been deposed from their ministry." Baillie was opposed to Episcopacy, opposed to the Articles ; " albeit I be not yet satisfied of our Church's old adjuration" (in 1581), "I did never
44 CENSORSHIP OF THE PRESS (1638).
expect that for this sole and only cause an Act should be set above my head, or the head of any other, importing no less than the merit of deposition and excommunication." Legalised boycotting was to be the sword hung over all who would not thoroughly purge the garner, " when any of our evil wishers pleases," and Baillie was " liable to all the pains whereunto anti- covenanters are now liable, or may hereafter be made subject" (July i639).42 The victory was almost always on the side of the most fanatical in the Assembly.
The Restoration turned preachers out of their parishes, and imposed oaths intolerable. The Restoration did but follow in the path of the Covenant, but popular narrators of these events are apt not to dwell on this circumstance. One better thing the Assembly did : it prohibited Sunday salmon-fishing. Netting seems to be meant, and nets laid on Sunday, as well as every other day, only hasten the extinction of the species.43 Among other forms of freedom, that of the Press was put at. "Because several papers, the years past, had been printed against the Covenant, therefore the keys of all printing presses were put in the hands of Mr. Archibald Johnston " (of Waristoun, clerk of the Assembly). " The ordinance bore that nothing that concerned the acts of the Assembly, nor any treatise which concerned the Church, should be printed without Mr. Archibald Johnston's warrant and approbation, under pain of all ecclesi- astical censure, " which one takes to imply excommunication. Such was the amount of liberty permitted by men who are said to have fought for freedom of conscience.44 Baillie thinks that the Assembly did not mean to trust " the youth " (Waristoun) quite so far. It was thought that Arminianism needed " a wipe " (in Randolph's phrase about Knox), and the wipe was administered by Baillie. Arminian- ism is "a deep, and large, and intricate subject," he says; he had only a night and a day for preparation, but he pleased the hurried Assembly.45
To keep down the Universities, which Knox had always dreaded and distrusted, Mr Robert Blair was sent to St Andrews, Henderson to Edinburgh, Dickson to Glasgow, and Andrew Cant to the eminently malignant and wickedly learned Aberdeen.46 Just as the ancient Church had found that universities were not breakwaters of heresy, but fountains of the same (like the Well of St Leonard's), so love of the Covenant was not a natural or not a necessary flower of university soil. The four dictators became famous in the course of the troubles. The Assembly broke up on December 20, after a
MONTROSE AND ARGYLL (1638). 45
Royal Proclamation, issued by Hamilton, and followed by the inevitable protestation in reply.47 Argyll addressed the brethren in such terms as he deemed convenient. They determined to meet at Edinburgh in July 1639.
The issue must now be left to the sword. The Tudor theory of monarchy had broken down in catastrophe, and only revolution and anarchy lay before the country. James and Charles had brought things to this pass. Liberty and freedom bear different senses in different ages. The liberty desired and secured by the Covenanters was, in one light, a mere shifting of the weight of tyranny into the opposite balance. " Of liberty of thought these Scottish preachers neither knew anything nor cared to know anything," says Mr Gardiner (viii. 374). Such appreciation of liberty of thought as did exist, was to be found among the excommunicated and deprived "Arminians." But national and political freedom from the intoler- able Tudor system, an English gift to the north, freedom from the lawless caprice of a king, had been reached, and was, through infinite troubles, to be secured : as, in the long run, was freedom from the tyranny of preachers.
The Scottish Revolution was to produce no great man, at once soldier and statesman, such as Cromwell, Washington, and Napoleon, An English historian writes, "To pass from a history which tells of Wentworth and Northumberland, Cottington and Portland, Essex and Saye, to a history which tells of Rothes and Loudoun, Balmerino and Lindsay, is like passing from the many-coloured life of the ' Iliad ' to the Gyas and Cloanthus of the '^Eneid.' " But Montrose and Argyll are not colourless and unoriginal. Montrose, the most sympathetic figure in the whole history of Scotland, was a poet as well as a soldier; Argyll had somewhat of the astuteness of Lethington. But whereas in the English, French, and American revolutions the shock of circumstances supplied an adequate armed force which would follow a great leader and sweep him into power, the civil war in Scotland produced no such coherent body ; nothing like the armies of Cromwell, of the French Republic, or of the homogeneous United States. Montrose had to do miracles with Celtic levies, ever ready to disband : the Covenanters were smitten by Cromwell, and split into factions, marching only at the music of " the drum ecclesiastic." Had Argyll been a soldier ; had Leslie been a genius ; had Montrose, after making himself free from the Covenant, possessed the materials of a stable Royalist
46 ROTHES AND HAMILTON (1638).
army, the man, not only great, but successful, would have been found.
At this point it may be well to sketch the characters and previous careers of the men most eminent in " the Troubles." Rothes has already played his part, for he died, aged forty-one, in 1641, at a time when he was veering towards the Royalist party. As the chief peer in Fife, he inherited the traditions of the Leslies who had been implicated in the murder of the Cardinal, and the anti-monarchic and Presbyterian sentiments of the county of the Melvilles. He had been active, as we know, in the opposition to the Revocation, and politically, if not personally, he was a sound Presbyterian. His Memoir as to the stormy affairs of 1638 exhibits him as cool, resolute, and genial : saying various things " in jest," which were to be transmuted into earnest. A fanatic he was not, and is probably not falsely accused of having been " prone to levity and addicted to pleasure." He was not an austere moralist, like Murray of old, or Argyll, but he had the universal and sincere jealousy and hatred of the bishops. For the part which he played he was excellently adapted : he had an attractive frankness of manner : his temper was admirable, he was not to be intimidated, and it remained to be seen whether or not he was to be bought. His son, created Duke of Rothes by Charles II., was one of the profligate oppressors of the Restoration : his face, in a miniature preserved by the family is marked by the worst passions. Rothes himself had a large fat chin, a high brow, great round eyes, and a countenance essentially Scottish.
Of Hamilton the character must be tracked through his many variations. Charles gave the clue to it, when he called the marquis " very active for his own preservation." His position, so near the succession to the Crown, probably never led him to indulge any dreams of ambition. "To hunt with the hounds and run with the hare," to make himself tolerable to both parties, was his real policy, and Gudyill, in ' Old Mortality,' justly says that his head was never of much value, though " a sair loss to him, puir gentleman." His instincts were loyal : Charles was his personal friend, and, however much he might tamper with the Covenanters, he never would have been a party to the selling of his prince.
Argyll has shared in the general unpopularity of the Campbells. They were, in Scotland, the foremost type of the man, or family, who "birses yont," who pushes forward, with a set policy of
THE MARQUIS OF ARGYLL (1638). 47
aggrandisement. Alone of the Highland clans, the Campbells had usually been on the side of the central Government. They had the police work of the West, they ousted Macdonalds and MacleanSj and were perpetually accused of fostering the feuds by suppression of which they profited. The young Argyll, who was defeated at Glenrinnes in 1594, by Huntly and the Catholics of the North, and who, later, subdued the Macdonalds of Islay and Kintyre, broke down as a poverty-stricken Catholic exile. He was allowed to come home, and died in England, in the autumn of 1638, just before his son, the Argyll of the Troubles, while still a member of the Council, joined himself to the revolutionary Assembly of Glasgow. This earl was born apparently between 1605 and i6o7.48 He was added to the Council in May 1628, probably just after he attained his majority. His guardian was the Earl of Morton. In 1621 Lome went to the University of St Andrews, where, like Montrose later, he left a silver medal attesting his skill in archery — his only proof of any military quality, it has been said. He approved of golf, " that excellent recreation, than which truly I do not know a better," cricket being then in its infancy, even in England, and football not setting this nobleman's genius.
At nineteen Lome married Margaret, second daughter of Lord Morton. His relations with his father and his father's second wife and family were hostile, and Clarendon says that his father, the old earl, described Lome to the king as "a man of craft, subtlety, and falsehood, and can love no man." That Clarendon could gossip foolishly about Scottish affairs, for instance, when he accuses Montrose of offering himself to the king as an assassin, is certain. The father and son, Argyll and Lome, were on bad terms about money, and the sire may or may not have said something splenetic. Just before the St Giles's riot of 1637, Lome had an altercation with the Bishop of Galloway : he defended Gordon of Earlstoun, who had brawled in church over the matter of kneeling at the communion. Lome then convened Rothes, Traquair, "a great enemy of bishops," and other nobles, and showed that he, like every one else, entertained a jealousy of the prelates. The Council was the arena of a scandalous outbreak by the Bishop of Galloway.49 So far Lome merely shared the universal detestation of episcopal meddling, for which, again, the king was responsible. When the famous Samuel Rutherford was deprived of his parish, Anwoth, for non-conformity, Lome took the side of
48 THE GREAT MONTROSE (1638).
the preacher, " a poor unknown stranger to him." Lome was one of the Council who visited London soon after the Covenant was started, and his father, Argyll, is said to have advised Charles to keep him in England, "or else he would wind him a pirn."60 Tangled in the threads of his own "pirn," Argyll at last died for his treasons.
As we know, at the Assembly of Glasgow, Lome, now Argyll, joined the Covenanters, though he had signed the King's Covenant. He alone of the Council supported the Assembly. Whether Argyll merely " shouted with the largest mob " (as Mr Gardiner practically states), or whether he courageously supported the weaker cause, may be disputed. He certainly must have known the strength of the national movement, and the impotence of the king.
Argyll has a reputation for the reverse of beauty. One of his portraits gives him a fair, intelligent, and melancholy face. Another makes him a moustached and resolute personage. His eyes, those of "gleyed Argyll," were "ill placed," says Clarendon. A late portrait (1652) robs the marquis of all his gallant costume, and shows him as a gloomy being, in a black skull-cap, wearing some- thing like the apparel of a preacher. Life has clearly not been a success with Argyll. As to his lack of military courage, " he was not John of Gaunt," and we shall have opportunities of estimating his conduct, his ambition, and his patriotism. He certainly was, to Royalty " the dangerousest man in Scotland," and could probably put 5000 Highlanders in the field, though he never led them with conspicuous gallantry, never to anything but disaster.
Unlike Argyll's, the laurels of Montrose are immortally guarded "under the wings of Renown." The leader of warlike men, swift and secret in his onslaughts, the poet, the cavalier, the soul of air and fire, the foremost to head a forlorn hope, at last the forsaken victim of a forsaken cause, Montrose is for ever dear to the imagination. Indeed, imagination was his master : if his fancy was affected by the universal enthusiasm for the national faith, with that tide went Montrose. If he beheld an insulted king, and suspected that he might himself be made the subject of an usurping subject, he stood for the Crown. His temper brooked no rival, his heart knew no fear, and, whether he wore the blue ribbon or the red, he bore himself still as the same gay gallant, flamberge au vent. In char- acter he was rather French than Scottish : he had ideals learned from Plutarch's men : he must be active, he must be great.
MONTROSE. 49
Mr Gardiner says that " there was but one mean action in the life of Montrose," and the full truth about that action, as we shall see, cannot now be ascertained. It was his misfortune, after he changed sides, to work with forces strong only for destruction, not for con- struction, forces anti-national, not national. He " kept the bird in his bosom," and no heart of more passionate loyalty ever beat, than that whose posthumous fortunes were a chapter of romance.
Montrose, though of an ancient house, with rich lands on either side of Scotland, was not, like Huntly, Argyll, or Hamilton, the chief of a great " name " or clan. Born in 1612, he had for grand- father that Earl of Montrose who was so long at the head of the Scottish administration. His father was a quiet man, much addicted to tobacco : his mother was a sister of that Earl of Cowrie who was slain in his own house on August 5, 1600: the most mysterious event in the history of Scotland. Montrose's mother died when her son was but five years old, and, losing his father early, the boy became the ward of Lord Napier of Merchistoun, his brother-in-law, a man of intellect, sagacity, and loyalty. Of Montrose's happy boyhood, sports, and studies at St Andrews much has been told in his ' Life ' by Mr Mark Napier. He married at seventeen, made the grand tour afterwards, and is said to have been very coldly received on his return by Charles, owing to insinuations by Hamilton. The later conflicts of Hamilton and Montrose are perhaps refracted in this anecdote, which is intended to account for Montrose's early devotion to the Covenant. But it is more probable that " the canniness of Rothes," and of a preacher, Mr Robert Murray, made a recruit of Montrose, who, by a functional necessity, had to be enthusiastic about something.
The manner of the great Montrose is thus described by Patrick Gordon, who wrote his book in the loyal and hopeless endeavour to vindicate his chief, Montrose's bane, the Marquis of Huntly. " I think, verily, he " (Montrose) " was naturally inclined to humility, courtesy, gentleness, and freedom of carriage . . . affecting rather the real possession of men's hearts than the frothy and outward show of reverence, and therefore was all reverence thrust upon him, because all did love him," as all who know him do to this hour.
In person Montrose was well knit and agile ; his portraits vary so much from each other that it is difficult to form an opinion as to his face. The very pronounced Scottish countenance in the likeness attributed to Jameson, bears no resemblance to the
VOL. III. D
50 NOTES.
dark, graceful, and melancholy cavalier of Honthorst. Montrose apparently had not all the beauty of his kinsman Dundee, but he made up for the lack by his dramatic appeal to sentiment. On hearts attached to the Covenant that appeal made no impression ; perhaps no " Malignant " was more detested than Montrose by the brethren, and by the modern partisans of the brethren in history. Argyll has been no less unfortunate in exciting the rancour of Cavalier historians, while against him is the incomparably humorous portrait by Scott in the ' Legend of Montrose.'
NOTES TO CHAPTER II.
1 ' Register Royal Letters,' i. pp. 73, 74.
2 Baillie, ' A True Information,' etc. Wirtsburgh, 1627. Cited by Mr. Kinloch, in ' Studies in Scottish Ecclesiastical History,' pp. 23, 24.
3 Sprott, ' Scottish Liturgies,' p. Ixiii.
4 Row, ' Historic of the Kirk of Scotland,' pp. 392-395.
5 Spalding, i. p. 79.
6 Rothes, ' Relation,' p. 4, Bannatyne Club, 1830.
7 Peterkin, ' Records of the Kirk,' p. 52.
8 Rothes, ' Relation,' p. 8.
9 Rothes, ' Relation,' p. 10.
10 The exact numbers and constitution form a perplexing subject. See Gardiner, ' History of England,' viii. p. 329.
11 Rothes, ' Relation,' p. 27.
12 Gordon, ' History of Scots Affairs,' Spalding Club, i. pp. 27, 28 ; Row, ' Historic of the Kirk of Scotland,' p. 486.
13 Gordon, ' History of Scots Affairs,' Spalding Club, i. p. 28.
14 Rothes, ' Relation,' pp. 56, 57.
18 Gordon, ' History of Scots Affairs,' Spalding Club, i. p. 34.
16 Rothes, 'Relation,' pp. 59-61, Bannatyne Club.
17 Gordon, ' History of Scots Affairs,' Spalding Club, i. 33, note I.
18 Rothes, ' Relation,' p. 69.
19 Rothes, ' Relation,' p. 70.
20 Calderwood, iii. pp. 505, 500.
21 Gordon, i. pp. 53-56.
22 Napier's ' Memoirs of Montrose,' i. pp. 102-126.
'* Hardwicke MSS., 'Miscellaneous State Papers,' 1501-1726, London, 1778, ii. p. 96.
24 Gordon, i. p. 45; Napier, i. pp. 142-144; Burnet, 'Memoirs of the Hamil- tons,' pp. 41, 42.
25 Traquair, ' Hardwicke Papers,' i. p. IOO.
26 Hamilton to Charles, June 7, 1638 ; Gardiner, ' Hamilton Papers,' Camden Society, p. 3.
NOTES. 5 I
87 Burnet, 'Hamilton Memoirs,' pp. 42, 43; 'Hamilton Papers,' Camden Society, pp. i, 2.
28 Burnet, ' Hamilton Memoirs,' pp. 43, 44, 46.
29 Rothes, 'Relation,' pp. 112-139; 'Hamilton Papers,' June J, Camden Society, pp. 3-7.
80 Rothes, ' Relation,' p. 148.
81 ' Hamilton Papers,' Camden Society, pp. 9-17.
82 Burnet, ' Hamilton Memoirs,' p. 59.
83 I am unable to find any such words and claims in the Protestation. " It shall be lawful to us to appoint, hold, and use the ordinary means, our lawful meetings and Assemblies of the Church, agreeable to the Law of God and practice of the primitive Church, the Acts of the General Assemblies and Parliaments," and so on. ' Large Declaration,' p. 105. By the Golden Charter of the Kirk, 1592, there were to be annual Assemblies, under certain royal con- ditions, which of course could not exist if Charles did not grant them. But I cannot find that, in 1638, the right to hold Assemblies is said to come "direct from God alone."
84 Burnet, ' Hamilton Memoirs,' p. 70. 36 Baillie, i. pp. 99, 100.
86 ' Large Declaration,' pp. 265, 266.
87 Burnet, ' Hamilton Memoirs,' pp. 107, 108.
88 Baillie, i. p. 154.
39 Gordon, ' History of Scots Affairs,' ii. pp. 99, 100.
40 Gordon, ' History of Scots Affairs,' ii. p. 144.
41 Gordon, ' History of Scots Affairs,' ii. p. 108.
42 Baillie, i. pp. 177-184.
43 Gordon, ' History of Scots Affairs,' ii. p. 162.
44 Gordon, ' History of Scots Affairs,' ii. p. 167. 48 Baillie, i. pp. 150, 151.
46 Gordon, ' History of Scots Affairs,' ii. p. 169.
47 Burnet, 'Hamilton Memorials,' p. in ; Balfour, ii. p. 315.
48 Willcock, ' The Great Marquess,' p. 1 1. This is a biography of Argyll, not, as might be supposed from the title, of Montrose.
49 Spalding, i. p. 78.
50 Guthry, ' Memoirs,' p. 36.
CHAPTER III.
THE BISHOPS' WAR. 1639.
THE beginning of the first "Bishops' War" proved that all the enthusi- asm and organisation were on the side of the king's rebels. The Tables became a strong central government ; they raised money and men, they purchased arms from abroad, and their ranks, for the time, were almost exempt from the most ferocious and fatal of passions, military jealousy. On Charles's side the English Council advised a levy of 30,000 of the " trained bands " ; Newcastle and Hull were to be fortified, and Carlisle and Berwick put into a posture of defence. But the trained bands would be reluctant soldiers, unlike the Scottish lads from the plough, still accustomed to make their hands keep their heads in private feud, full of spiritual and national excitement, led by their local lairds, and drilled by the covenanted Dalgettys re- turned from the Continental wars. Of these, Patrick Gordon tells us, enough came home to supply every grade of officers for 50,000 men ! Charles called the English nobles to do their almost obsolete feudal service. His forces, on paper, were reckoned at about 20,000, 5000 being under Hamilton. These were to join hands with Huntly in the north, sailing to Aberdeen, but, whether by virtue of Hamilton's jealousy and incompetence, or of Huntly's hereditary half-heartedness, or of the actual necessities of the Royal situation, this movement, in itself well calculated, ended in utter failure. On the English side, Arundel, a Catholic, or " of no religion," was to command, in place of Essex, who had some military experience. Holland, a favourite of the queen, was to lead the cavalry, wherefore Arundel all but resigned. On the other hand, the Scots, seeking efficiency, made the experienced, if old and crooked, Alexander Leslie
THE ROYAL PLAN (1639). 53
their commander, though he was nominally but adjutant-general to Montrose in the operations now to be undertaken against Huntly.
On February 14 the Covenanters laid their case before the people of England, and pleased the Puritans by casting the blame on the bishops, the common scapegoats. The king replied. The Scots had no reason for apprehensions about their religion. Plunder and the overthrow of the throne were their desire. The ' Large Declara- tion,' a volume of some four hundred and fifty pages, by a clergyman of the old Presbyterian name of Balcanquhal, was published.* The case for the Crown is clearly stated, and the similarity of Jesuit and high Presbyterian ideals is enforced. But the book, of course, is a partisan tract of unusual dimensions ; and such paper bullets of the brain, like all mere arguments, have never any effect upon opponents, beyond causing violent irritation.
The king's intended scheme of operations is well described by Burnet in his ' Memoirs of the Duke of Hamilton.' f
The royal plan, as we have partly seen, was for Charles to move in force on the Border. The fleet was to watch the coast; Hamilton's 5000 were to join Huntly — which they never did — and fall on the rear of the southern Covenanters, while dividing them from the brethren of the northern shires. The Earl of Antrim, a Scottish Macdonnell, was to divert Argyll by attacking Kintyre, from which the Campbells, under James VI., had ousted the Macdonalds. Wentworth was to lead an Irish force, victualling at Arran, to Dumbarton, the old Key of Scotland. Hamilton had managed to throw a few men with supplies into Edinburgh Castle, and the Castle of Dumbarton was reckoned secure. If Charles's leaders and men had been efficient, this was a good plot. But Ruthven, declining to be shut up in the untenable Castle of Edinburgh, had gone south to the king. Traquair, Roxburgh, and the Marquis of Douglas proved helpless in Tweeddale, Teviotdale, and elsewhere ; the Covenanters seized Tantallon ; Douglas, a Catholic, had no longer a name to conjure with, or a force to help or harm his prince. Roxburgh's
* It was "printed by Robert Young, His Majesty's printer for Scotland" ; if it was printed in Scotland, Waristoun's censorship of the press must have been relaxed.
t Hamilton is his hero ; on the other side Gordon upholds his chief, Huntly ; Mr Mark Napier was in love with his kinsman of old days, Montrose, and has there- fore to make Hamilton's conduct look as black as possible. None of the three Scottish nobles — Montrose, Hamilton, or Huntly — was in an enviable position, and it is hard now to unravel the rights and wrongs of their tangled affairs.
54 OPERATIONS IN THE NORTH (1639).
son went over to the Covenant, and the Kers would follow the son rather than his father.
When operations began, Huntly was holding a meeting at the village of Turriff, when Montrose, with his wonted mobility, descended on him. Huntly did not produce his commission of lieutenancy, and the parties merely " glared at each other," and dispersed. This was on February I4.1 On March 23 Leslie entered Edinburgh Castle, which offered no resistance. Sir William Stewart surrendered Dumbarton Castle, whether in consequence of an ingenious ruse de guerre^ or because, as Burnet says, all his men were Covenanters. Traquair was driven from Dalkeith, not a strong house, and the powder stored there was seized, also the Regalia, which were lodged in the castle. Traquair was not the man to fight it out, and blow up his magazine, like our officers at Delhi, in the Sepoy Mutiny.2 The whole of the south " was lost, without stroke of sword," and Charles's gate of Dumbarton was locked against him.
Now came the serious operations against Huntly. In that personal letter of November 27, 1638, which Burnet did not print, Hamilton had nibbled away Huntly's character as "much misliked," suspected of Popery, "to be trusted by you, but whether fitly or no I cannot say." Without the aid of Hamilton's 5000 men, Huntly, had he been a Montrose, might have made a stand; but he was no hero, and Hamilton never brought the men. He did not appear with his transports in the Firth of Forth till after Huntly was a captive. Like all of the Huntlys since Pinkie fight, the marquis was not to be trusted; though his language was nobly chivalrous.3 Gordon and Burnet agree that Huntly's commission as lieutenant was to be kept back as long as possible. He was not to be the aggressor ; he was to wait till the king was on the Border.4 However, Huntly did now begin to arm and to fortify his capital, the most unhappy town of Aberdeen (March 1639). Montrose meanwhile arranged that Argyll should provide occupation for the loyal Earl of Airlie (Ogilvy), and Argyll ravaged, with the Camerons (for once on the Lowland side), Huntly's Highland domains in Badenoch.
Montrose had some 2000 men, horsemen of Angus, Perth- shire, and the Crichtons and Forbeses, with drilled infantry, and officers from the foreign wars. Meanwhile Hamilton was con- fusing Huntly with commands to be dilatory. Huntly tried to make, in mid March, a pacific arrangement with Montrose,
SURRENDER OF HUNTLY (1639). 55
at his house near the town of that name, but Montrose insisted that he had a commission from the Assembly to deal with Aberdeen, " Meroz, that wicked city." Another set of heralds from Huntly found Montrose's men wearing the blue ribbon, " Montrose's whimsy," hence probably the phrase "true blue Presbyterian." Hence, too, the name of "the blue bonnets," which were soon to be " over the Border," for the gentry of the Covenant now adopted this headgear. Montrose had ever an eye for the picturesque, and knew the value of its popular appeal. Gordon, who was present, recounts a prodigy, the morning sun of March shining " of a perfect blood colour, like to fresh blood, whereof a little is poured into a bright silver basin." Learned men who beheld it could find no normal cause of this phenomenon. Huntly, meanwhile, for reasons best known to himself,* and certainly known to no one else, had disbanded his forces. The learned of Aberdeen, who had proved too hard for the godly in controversy, now fled by sea from the arm of flesh. Sixty of the best of the town, with the town flag, and a drummer, also departed to join the king.5 Huntly having retired, like his father before James VI., Montrose and Leslie entered Aberdeen on March 30. They compelled the citizens to fill up and level their ditches and ramparts.
Leaving Kinghorn with a sufficient force to guard Aberdeen, Montrose with " dear Sandy's stoups " (portable pieces of artillery introduced by Alexander Hamilton), marched on the heels of the fugitive Huntly. The Covenanters plundered pretty freely, but that was only natural. The Cock of the North came in, and met his pursuer in confidence : he next, with twelve gentlemen, went to Montrose's quarters at Inverury. Huntly here signed, if not the Covenant, something like the king's futile Covenant. The rest of the Covenanters, says Gordon, "thought it not so satisfactory as Montrose did," for, as to religious treaties with the Almighty, or feuds of preachers and bishops, as such, Montrose probably cared no more than Lethington. Catholics were admitted to protection, if " willing to concur in the common course of maintaining the laws and liberties of the kingdom." This d'.d not hold long, nor was it intended to hold. On returning to Inverury from the meeting with Montrose, Huntly found many of his feudal enemies there, Frazers and Forbeses. He sent to request that Montrose would not listen
* William Gordon, in his ' History of the Gordons,' p. 168, says that Huntly acted by Hamilton's orders.
$6 MONTROSE'S DISPUTABLE CONDUCT (1639).
to these men, warning him that, if he took the chiefs of the Gordons south, the country would not be the quieter. Montrose told Straloch, who carried this message, that all was done by the votes of Committees (these he mentions disdainfully in his famous song), and that " he could not get things done by himself."
Covenanters from all quarters now met at Aberdeen, inveterate foes of the House of Huntly from of old. They sent to Huntly a safe-conduct, signed, so Gordon assures us, by Montrose among the rest, and Huntly came to them, relying on this document. Leslie now " put Huntly to perform some articles " : to contribute to the expenses, pacify the Highlands, bring in certain prisoners, and so on. This Huntly refused.6 Leslie then told him that he must go south with them : Huntly asked for the return of whatever paper he had already signed, and Leslie, " some say," took him prisoner. The Forbeses, Frazers, and Crichton of Frendraght (in whose house Huntly's kinsmen had been burned) now insisted that he should be detained. Spalding avers that "the General" took the lead in coercing Huntly to come south, and that Huntly asked for, and received, the band, whatever it was, that he had signed at Inverury. By " the General," Spalding seems here to mean Montrose. Gordon7 assigns the seizing of Huntly to Leslie. Gordon doubts, as we saw, whether Montrose took part in the transaction because he was overpowered by votes, and by the glory of bringing in Huntly as a trophy, or whether he was constrained by the clamour of the northern Covenanters, Huntly's ancestral enemies. " It is uncertain."
In either case, says Mr Gardiner, in carrying Huntly away though he had a safe-conduct, Montrose K played but a mean and shabby part," " the only mean action in his life." So, certainly, had all the Covenanters concerned acted meanly. Montrose had already spoken of his inability to resist the Committee. We may wish that he had laid down his commission : he was not the man to dwell long in the Covenanting tabernacle. But we are not convinced that Huntly was really reluctant to leave the scenes in which Burnet, with clerical freedom, accuses him of playing a coward's part. Our evidence as to the whole affair is dubious, but Charles, writing to Hamilton (York, April 23), says Huntly is both "feeble and false."8 He probably had no objection to being removed from a dangerous and difficult position. In Edinburgh (April 20) Huntly said : "You may take my head from my shoulders, but not my heart from my sovereign." Brave words, never carried into useful action. The
HAMILTON DISAPPOINTS THE GORDONS (1639). 57
" shabbiness " of Montrose, in carrying off Huntly, then, must be left to the judgment of the reader.9 The writer believes that Huntly was no unwilling captive, and Montrose, certainly, no commander with full powers.
Montrose carried Huntly and his eldest son to Edinburgh. The second son, Lord Aboyne, had been allowed to return home; he was a lad of eighteen, and he, with his scapegrace schoolboy brother, Lord Lewis Gordon, became the centre of renewed troubles. It was not till May i that Hamilton with his 5000 men arrived in the Firth of Forth, where, Leith being strongly fortified, and all Fife opposing a landing, Huntly's country alone offered a chance of useful operations. Baillie indicates that Hamilton was believed to be too good a patriot to injure his countrymen : * he also attests the moderation and courtesy of Hamilton during his stay in the Firth, and avers that his forces died in numbers, while the rest were weakened by sickness. Hamilton, in fact, in place of fighting or preparing to fight, was feebly negotiating and making stolen visits to Covenanting lords. On May 8, Charles advised him to go north to Huntly's country, as originally designed, " to strengthen my party there." 10 This was not a command, but a counsel, a counsel which Montrose, in Hamilton's place, would have anticipated. The Gordons only wanted a leader. On the previous day, Hamilton had advised Charles to come to terms ; his infantry could not handle, still less discharge, a musket ! They improved in this respect, but Hamilton threw cold water on " Lord Aboyne's pro- position," that the 5000 should join the Gordons, and was afraid to send his men to Aberdeen. Meanwhile Aboyne had visited Charles, who approved of his plan for fighting in the north. By May 21 Hamilton was proposing to send two of his regiments to Charles on the Border, whither Leslie was marching with a strong if ill- provisioned army, which he could not have done had the Gordons risen behind him in the north, aided by Hamilton. Baillie rode with Leslie as an armed chaplain. Thus, when Aboyne came to Hamilton, in the Firth of Forth, by May 29, he found no aid in men, and was merely introduced to a Colonel Gun, who would be his adviser in war. This officer, who had fought abroad, proved to be a failure, and was deemed a traitor.11 Hamilton appears to have
* Mr Mark Napier says that, according to Baillie, this opinion was held "by many" (Napier, i. p. 194). But Baillie, in fact, says that it was held by few, •" amongst which few I was one " (Baillie, i. p. 202).
58 MONTROSE AT BRIDGE OF DEE (1639).
thought the cause hopeless, negotiation the least futile policy, and himself a person who ought rather to study the political situation than fight, or help others to fight.
Meanwhile Montrose dealt with the Royalist party of the north, where a ruffle called the Trot of Turriff (May 14) had been rather to the advantage of the Cavaliers. Bamff and Gordon of Haddo now nominally commanded a force raised by the lairds, and had a professional soldier, Colonel Johnston, to direct them. They occupied Aberdeen, and might have done something if Hamilton had followed the advice of the king and carried his forces to join the Gordons. Lord Lewis Gordon (a whelp who stole his father's jewels) had escaped from school, passed into the Highland domains of his family, and returned, in Highland dress, with kilted allies. The lairds, quarrelling among themselves, had left Aberdeen open to the Covenanting Earl Marischal (Keith), whom Montrose joined with a considerable force. His men looted houses, and killed all the dogs in Aberdeen, because the women, in derision, had adorned them with blue Covenanting favours. Baillie mentions the lenity of Montrose in sparing the town. But Baillie does not seem to have " panted after the blood and ashes of the loyal north," as Mr Napier avers.12 He merely says that the Covenanters now disbanded, " it was thought, on some malcontent- ment, either at Montrose's too great lenity in sparing the enemy's houses, or somewhat else." 13 At this moment Baillie was anxious about the prospects of the Covenant, but his knowledge was mainly of Leslie's force in the south. On June 6 Glencairn, Tullibardine, Aboyne, and other Royalists came to Aberdeen, and soon, with Lord Lewis and his Highlanders, marched against the Earl Marischal and Montrose at Stonehaven.
The purpose of the Royalists was to make a diversion southward, leaving Montrose unattacked, but Colonel Gun, merely "to harden his men to be cannon proof," placed them within range of Montrose's artillery. The Highlanders, more frightened than hurt, ran away ; to them guns were as unfamiliar as muskets to the forces of Montezuma. Aboyne retreated in good order to Aberdeen with his horsemen, but his three attendant ships, with guns and provisions, sailed away into the vague. Montrose followed Aboyne, and though the burgesses of Aberdeen stoutly defended the Bridge of Dee, he deceived Gun by a simple stratagem, a feint by his cavalry towards an impossible ford, while his infantry forced the bridge and entered
LESLIE IN THE SOUTH (1640). 59
the unlucky town on June 19. Baillie speaks of the Covenanters' intention to " have sacked the town orderly " (an operation unpre- cedented in war), but God was pleased to keep the Covenant " from all marks of the least alleged cruelty," for that night came news of negotiations between king and Covenant. Marischal and another are said to have pressed Montrose with the Committee's warrant for burning Aberdeen, whether " in orderly manner " or not ; but they changed their minds, and came in to Montrose's opinion.*
That Gun, who allowed the Brig o' Dee to be taken, was a traitor in Hamilton's interest, was the opinion of Colonel Johnston, wounded at the fight on the bridge, f and he challenged Gun. The king preferred to honour Hamilton's favourite, who later obtained high military rank in Germany. Probably he was merely ignorant of the country, believed the ford to which Montrose's cavalry rode to be practicable, and was obstinate. The cry nous sommes trahis is seldom justified, but suspicion of Gun was rife and mischievous. Spalding does not incriminate Gun in this matter, but blames Aboyne even for cowardice, which is incredible.14 Gordon, how- ever, treats Gun's conduct severely.15 Patrick Gordon, too, in ' Britane's Distemper,' reveals him as treacherous or imbecile.
While Montrose was Covenanter General in the north, in the south Charles, by May i, had advanced to Durham, and sent a new Proclamation into Scotland. It was not absurdly truculent and threatening, as a Proclamation of April 7 had been. But the Proclamation of May i could not get itself proclaimed. Sir Edmund Verney, a true Cavalier, and a man of sense, reckoned the Royal army at 12,000 foot, and 2000 horse: the men untrained, the weapons worthless, the supplies meagre. Charles was at his wits' end for money : by no means of cajoling or threatening could funds be raised. Thus he could not maintain indefinitely tactics of defence on the line of Tweed, which would have outworn his adversaries, while they, in turn, knew that if they invaded England the hearts of Englishmen would be aroused against them, and Charles would be backed by men and money in abundance.
Weak as was the position of Charles, the brethren had their own
* Mr Gardiner, no prejudiced Cavalier, writes : " Montrose had brought with him orders to sack the town. He disobeyed the pitiless injunction." Perhaps the point might be disputed by apologists for the Covenanters. Gardiner, ix. p. 41.
t Here Major Middleton, later so notable on the Royal side, fought for the Covenant.
60 PERILOUS POSITION OF THE COVENANTERS (1639).
perplexities. Charles (May 14) had tried a new, conciliatory, but ambiguous proclamation, from Newcastle. He would not invade if " civil and temporal " — not ecclesiastical — obedience were given to him, but, if the Covenanters came within ten miles of the Border, then the king would not spare them.16 Now, even the Covenanting Lord Advocate, Sir Thomas Hope, had already avowed his obedience in civil matters. Hamilton (May 14) informed the king that the Covenanters would " condiscend to all sivill obediens, yet it is with this damnabill ' but,' — that bishops must be abolished, or, at least, that Parliament must be heard on the matter." 17 Grounds for negotiation were thus being prepared ; but Charles tried to raise reinforcements, and, in spite of the remonstrances of those about him, marched in person to Berwick. Hamilton represented the resoluteness of the enemy, and proposed to send some 3000 of his men, hitherto idle, to the king. They arrived on May 28. Leslie, up till then, had certainly force enough, if he advanced successfully and crossed Tweed at Kelso, to cut Charles off from Newcastle. Hamilton thought that, if successful, the Scots might proclaim a republic, for which they were totally unfit. They, on their part, told Holland that they would keep the ten miles' limit if he would withdraw his fleet and army.18 On May 26 Henderson, at Dunbar, preached to the Covenanters on the wars of Israel and Amalek ; the Royalists, thus early in the day, were dubbed Amalekites, and to Amalekites Saul was forbidden to give quarter ! The king's friends were later treated on the precedent of Samuel, when he massacred Agag and others.
Hearing that English soldiers had published proclamations at Eyemouth and Aytoun, the Tables sent the fiery cross round among the Presbyteries, which now undertook military functions. Leslie advanced to Cockburnspath, near that deep ravine which Arran neglected to hold against the English invaders before Pinkie fight.19 The Covenanters were in bitter need now of supplies, " a natural mind might despair," says Waristoun. But a reconnaissance of Holland's horse to Dunse retired before a force which Clarendon thinks was inferior, and this gave heart to good men. The Covenanters made renewed appeals to the preachers to raise the whole country between sixteen and sixty. They lacked tools for entrenching, they lacked beef, and bread, and beer, and horsemen, at Dunglas. Fife was dilatory. Dumfries, widowed of Munroe's regiment, feared an incursion by the Maxwells, who had no taste for the Covenant. The Johnstones and the Laird of Lag, with the
THE KING NEGOTIATES (1639). 6 I
Earl of Galloway and Lord Drumlanrig, were bidden to gather and protect Dumfries. Forced loans were to be raised, on pain of con- fiscation, for Charles was not alone in this illiberal measure. The Covenanters at Kelso had been mutinous for want of supplies.
Thus, by June 3 Waristoun and his junto of preachers " have bethought and better bethought," upon the want of money, food, material, and discipline, "the natural impossibilities either to retire, remain, or go on." They therefore negotiated a small private covenant or treaty with the Deity ! " Mr David Dickson took instruments in my hand," says Johnston of the legal mind, that he and his friends would admire their heavenly Ally very much, if He extricated them from a position of threatened annihilation ! 20 This was a step which could never have occurred to an Amalekite mind ! While each party, Cavalier and Covenanting, was really in desperate straits, the Covenanters wrestled through to success, for the day after taking instruments with Omnipotence, the godly in Edinburgh heard of Holland's baffled reconnaissance ; Lothian, however, was called in to join the main body of Covenanters at Dunse. Leslie was extremely perplexed, and Waristoun " was brought low before God indeed." Meanwhile the honest English amateur soldiers were full of fight, " cast up their caps with caprioles, shouts, and signs of joy," in hope of a tussle at last. They were moved to Birks, three miles above Berwick ; and there they lay, unled, ill-fed, while Charles issued a proclamation ! 21
The king had been reinforced, but was short of money, as were his adversaries. Both parties were in a fright : victory would turn to the less nervous combatants. On June 4 the leaders sent round a letter saying that the people were disposed to surrender, or were hypnotised : " some Spirit of slumber hath overtaken and possessed them." But the leaders, taking heart, concentrated at Dunse (June 5). At this crisis a Royal page, Robert Leslie (he adhered to the king in captivity later) came with an informal proposal to Alexander Leslie for a conference. Charles had been frightened into adopting the defensive. In his place, Montrose or Dundee would probably have attacked Kelso in force a week earlier, occupied Dunse Law, and struck the first blow, securing the bridge at Kelso. But Leslie's advance to Dunse left Charles standing at gaze.*
* Mr Gardiner, who never cites Waristoun, supposes the Covenanters to have had abundance of money and supplies, quoting Baillie, i. pp. 212, 213. If so
62 THE TERMS OF CAPITULATION (1639).
Baillie took a much more favourable view than Waristoun of the prospects of his party. They meditated the " offensive defensive," he says, an invasion of England, while they lay entrenched at Dunglas, where their earthworks are still to be seen. Baillie seems to have been unaware of the scarcity of spades and shovels. He says that tidings of an order to Holland, to attack Kelso in force, caused the retreat of Munroe from Kelso, and the concentra- tion on Dunse Law, a circular eminence, which Charles ought to have occupied and entrenched while he could. Holding Kelso and Dunse Law, Charles might have threatened, from the sea, Leslie's rear at Dunglas. But the king's delay allowed Leslie to establish himself and secure supplies, so that, when it came to the push, the proposals for negotiations were from the Royal side.
The Scots willingly sent in the Earl of Dunfermline with a " supplication," and Sir Edmund Verney, with Dunfermline, visited the Covenanting camp. Charles was reduced to being thankful that his Proclamation, though refused, and, on legal points, refuted, was read by the leaders among themselves. After some haggling over safe-conducts, and after Waristoun had seen, to his indignant horror, a copy of Charles's 'Large Declaration,' the Covenanting commissioners entered the king's camp (June n). Charles un- expectedly appeared at the meeting, to hear the rebels' grievances with his own ears. On June 1 8, after arguments in which Charles had the better in logic, a treaty was signed.22 The "humble desires" of the men who burlesqued the part of " supplicants " had been : —
1. That the king would ratify all the Acts of the late Assembly
in a Parliament in July.
Now to do so involved Charles in ratifying the excommunications and other penalties decreed against the bishops, who had been his too faithful servants.
2. The king was to permit all matters ecclesiastical to be deter-
mined by Assemblies, all civil matters by Parliament. But what were " matters ecclesiastical " ? The Assembly, under James VI., had encroached constantly on " matters civil," hence the long war of that prince with the Kirk.
3. Charles was to recall his forces, compensate losses in trade,
hand over the excommunicated to endure their punish- ments, and withdraw all the manifestoes under his name.
Waristoun was a craven, or supplies came later than the moment when he was so alarmed. Gardiner, ix. p. 29.
ACTIVITY OF WARISTOUN (1639). 63
These were their " humble desyres " ! They were ready " not to insist to crave any point which is not so warranted." If England will not pay compensation, the suppliants would be satisfied with the estates of Catholics, "incendiaries," and bishops, to be ad- ministered for the preachers, the poor, and education. The brethren in England were to be safeguarded. Appointments to governorship of castles must be made " by the King and Estates, according to the old law of this kingdom." Here we recognise VVaristoun, who, in 1641, maintained that the Estates must unite with the king in making appointments to the chief offices of State. " Records " to this unexpected effect were " discovered " by Waristoun at Dunfermline. He had casually found them in Hay of Dunfermline's charter chest. So says Wodrow in his enter- taining collection of gossip and ghost stories.*
To this topic we shall return : meanwhile Waristoun inserted the full scope of the Parliamentary appointments of officers of State in his memoranda of humble desires. Waristoun reminded the nobles, Rothes, Loudoun, and Dunfermline, who were to treat, that they must not behave as they said that others had done, in reference to the Tithes and Revocation. "Every one then looked so to his own particular accommodation of the king that every one betrayed another, and all betrayed the public." ^ Thus the old real source of bitterness bubbles up. The public, above all the preachers, were not betrayed, but benefited by the commutation of tithes, but hoc nocuit, this was the source of the religious zeal of many a noble.
There was much wrangling on June 1 3, Waristoun speaking often. He insisted that the Kirk could excommunicate, "albeit not of civil punishments which behoved to be added by the civil law " ; and Rothes remarked that, if a king sinned like David (which Charles II. did exceeding abundantly), the Kirk could excommunicate him, — and indeed Cargill did. This power of the preachers to excom- municate, and to make the civil authority enforce the sentence, is the " storm-centre " of the long war between Kirk and State. Much discourse out of the books of Samuel followed. Later came a dispute as to whether the king could proclaim Assemblies to gather, and whether he had a veto, and whether the Assembly could sit after he dissolved it. The reply was that only an Assembly could decide : how it would decide we can guess. This conference, * ' Analecta,' ii. 219.
64 THE FUTILE TRUCE (1639).
indeed, contains the ground of quarrel in a nutshell. The right of preachers to dominate the civil magistate was asserted. Meanwhile the king was admitted to possess the right of calling Assemblies. His subjects could not do so, but the Kirk could " by herself con- vene," " in the case of extreme or urgent necessity," and so on, by "divine right." The king could not dissolve or veto an Assembly.24 The king replied (June 15) that, after consulting the Councils of the two kingdoms, he could not ratify the acts of the pretended Assembly of Glasgow, but would withdraw all innovations, and leave all bishops, actual or future, to the censure of the Assembly, and matters civil and ecclesiastical to annual Assemblies and Parliaments. He would appoint, and meant to be present at, an Assembly in Edinburgh. If the Scots would disband, dissolve their Tables, and surrender the castles, he would withdraw his forces, and restore what had been taken during the war. Objec- tions were made, Waristoun being very prominent; but Charles told him that the Devil could not put a more uncharitable con- struction on his Declaration. " He commanded me silence, and said he would speak to more reasonable men." Yet Waristoun went on to say that Charles evaded the question of the already proclaimed excommunication of the bishops. Then all kneeled, and begged that he would "quit bishops," to which he gave a smiling but evasive reply.25
Next day was Sunday, and the Covenanters in their camp modified the king's Declaration to their taste. On the lyth they returned to beg Charles to "quit bishops," if condemned (as they were sure to be) by the next Assembly. Charles retired for con- sultation, and Hamilton was overheard advising resistance to yearly Assemblies, which would deprive the king of his crowns, as they practically did.* The king, after much hairsplitting, made a few changes in his Declaration. On the i8th the Covenanters wrote out their view of the pact, in an " Information against all mistaking of his Majesty's Declaration." In brief, they announced that they held by the Assembly of Glasgow. Thus the pacification meant only a brief truce, as both parties were aware.26
Each side was content with the patent futility, because each side was at its wits' end. Charles beheld no prospect but that of defeat, if he fought. But he should have fought. Had he lost, if he fell
* Burnet attributes to Hamilton the advice to concede all, and bide better times. ('Mem. Ham.' p. 140, cf. Waristoun, p. 87.)
FOLLY OF THE KING'S SURRENDER (1639). 65
he fell with honour; if he survived defeat, "likely all England behoved to have risen in revenge," says Baillie. Many of the best in all ranks of the Covenanters were averse to entering England. If their scruples were overcome, then in England, says Baillie, they could not support themselves ; from Scotland they could neither have transport nor protection for convoys. There was but the slightest hope, or no hope, of aid from the English Puritans. There was too much murmuring in the Scottish camp ; Home, and other Berwickshire gentry " were beginning to be suspected" 27 The king had made (but not on Waristoun) a most favourable impression. " The king was very sober, meek, and patient to hear all. . . . His Majestic was ever the longer the better loved of all that heard him, as one of the most just, reasonable, sweet persons they had ever seen."
Fatal fascination ! An appeal to the sword was Charles's one chance ; " fall back, fall edge." He must have won victory, or, dying, found honour and revenge ; or, defeated, a united England behind him after a Cadmeian triumph of the Scots. Oh for one hour of Montrose !
Charles now entered on the path that led him through insult and unspeakable disgrace to the scaffold. The Covenanters entered on the path that brought them to the selling of " one of the most just, reasonable, sweet persons they had ever seen." From the first the Covenanters were determined to have every one of their demands ; and their published version of the sense in which they understood the treaty was later burned in England by the hang- man.28 Charles, on his part, meant only to secure delay and cover from which he could operate for the restoration of Episcopacy at a more convenient season.
On July i Charles had a proclamation read in Edinburgh as to the meeting of the Assembly. The date, at that time not inconvenient to sporting lay elders, was August 12. Archbishops, bishops, and commissioners of kirks were warned to attend. Against this the Covenanters formally protested, in the usual way. Charles had legality on his side. The case of the bishops was to be decided in the Assembly : they ought, said the king, to be present. But the protesters argued that they had already been excommunicated, in many cases, and deposed by the Assembly of Glasgow. If the bishops did appear, they must be " delivered over to the Devil." * " Next day," or the day after (July 3), Edinburgh
* Peterkin, ' Records of the Kirk of Scotland,' p. 231. VOL. III. E
66 MEANING OF THE TREATY DISPUTED (1639).
indulged in four riots, " one upon the Marquis of Huntly's gentle- men, the second upon Lord Aboyne, the third upon the Earl of Traquair, the fourth upon Sir William Elphinstone, Lord Chief Justice, whom, after the women had trampled under feet, and then housed, a lusty dame pulled the Covenant out of her purse and enforced him to subscribe it."29 The carriage of Traquair and Kinnoul was thrust through with swords, the occupants with difficulty fled to Holyrood ; Elphinstone was kicked. On July 5 some Lords came to Charles at Berwick to apologise ; but he, naturally annoyed, postponed his visit to Edinburgh, and presently abandoned it.30 Hamilton put the alternatives to Charles : he must abandon bishops and everything, or take " the kingly way " — war, — call a Parliament in England, and risk the chances of it, while leaving Scotland in the hands of the Covenanters (July 5).31 Loudoun was at Berwick, and Charles, having received the Covenanting account of the conference, and their interpretation of it, called Loudoun and " said no more but, ' Why do you use me thus ? '" 32 He deter- mined not to go to Edinburgh, and appointed Traquair (a sound bishop-hater) as Commissioner to the General Assembly.
Meanwhile, though the castle was put in Ruthven's hands, the brethren would not return the ordnance, or destroy their works at Leith. They would not carry their suits before the Court of Session, the Covenanters having banned it as illegally con- voked. They did not disband Munroe's regiment, they kept on holding meetings as of old. They would not permit certain nobles whom the king had summoned, to meet him, save Montrose, Loudoun, Lothian, Rothes, and Dunfermline, to whom they added, unbidden, Henderson the preacher (July is).33 Charles also wished to see Argyll, Cassilis, Lindsay, and others, but they came not. Charles demanded the cashiering of Leslie, the cessation of the Tables, the punishment of the rioters, the suppression of the paper about the Conference, the restoration of the guns and ammunition to the castle : so Henry de Vic heard, and wrote to Secretary Windebank. In most of these demands the king was justified : the brethren insulted him by acting as if their leaders could not be trusted with him (July 2I).34
On July 1 7 Charles entered into an extraordinary arrangement with Hamilton, who usually shared his sleeping chamber at this time. Hamilton was to use all the means he could to find out, from Montrose, Loudoun, Rothes, and the rest, "which way they
MONTROSE MEETS THE KING (1639). 6/
intend the estate of bishops shall be supplied in Parliament." If the bishops did not sit, how, it seems to be meant, was the royal interest to be recouped for the loss of their fourteen votes ? Lacking the Spiritual Estate, how were the Estates to be constituted? Generally, Hamilton was to worm out the designs of the Covenanters. "For which end you will be necessitated to speak that language which, if you were called to an account for by us, you might suffer for it." The document assured Hamilton of safety, if he thus talked the language of Canaan, and pretended to be of the godliest (Berwick, July 17, i639).36 Diplomatists have their own con- sciences, but Charles was authorising Hamilton to be a spy. Can it have been words used by him now, or on another occasion with similar licence, which were later made part of the charges against Hamilton? As for Rothes, with him Charles quarrelled on the point of declaring Episcopacy unlawful. If it were so, how could he maintain it in England and Ireland? Rothes professed no mind to go beyond Scotland ; but if Charles insisted on the merits of the institution elsewhere, "our people" would "rip up" the iniquities of English and Irish bishops, so joining hands, as they did, with the English Puritans, and doing what Rothes disclaimed, — making war to inflict their Presbyterianism on England. Twice, says Rothes, Charles called him a liar : an example of " sweetness " (August, Rothes to William Murray, of the king's bedchamber).36
As for Montrose's dealings with Charles at Berwick, we have no information.* As he opposed, presently, in Parliament, certain sweeping constitutional changes, "the Zealots," says the Rev. Mr Guthry, a contemporary, and later a bishop, "became suspicious of him, that the king had turned him ... at Berwick." The generous heart of Montrose may well have been moved by the insults which were Charles's daily bread. He may not have understood, in the same sense as the Zealots did, the clause in the Covenant about the king's "person and authority." The constitutional changes, reducing the king to the most faint and futile shadow of authority, on the modern pattern, may well have offended Montrose. No man is obliged, in honour, to adhere to
* Burnet says that Montrose " was much wrought upon, and gave his Majesty full assurance of his duty in time coming ; and upon that entered in a correspond- ence with the king" (Burnet, ' Mem. Ham.,' p. 149). But here Burnet probably reports the suspicions of the day, caused by Montrose's action in Parliament. He cites no documents.
68 CHARLES AND THE ASSEMBLY (1639).
a party in all its Protean shiftings, and all its excesses. But he who does not will be called a Judas, as if to desert a civil faction were to betray Christ ! Such was the lot of Montrose. " He changed sides," people still say, as if that were necessarily wrong.
Rothes and the rest were sent away (July 21) to bring their comrades. Only Dunfermline, Lindsay, and Loudoun returned.* Charles determined, on pretence of important business, to return to London.37 He had heard of some of the intended constitutional innovations in the Edinburgh Parliament, especially as affected the Lords of the Articles. He drew up, with the help of Hamilton, the instructions to Traquair as Commissioner, and that bishop-hater persuaded him that bishops were, legally, one of the Estates, and that an Act abolishing them, in their absence, and under their protest (which was handed in secretly), would not be binding.38 Charles informed Spottiswoode that he "gave way for the present," yet "shall not leave thinking in time how to remedy" what was prejudicial "both to the Church and our own Government." He had behind him his belief that the Act abolishing bishops, to which he would assent, was not binding. Charles II., later, by merely adopting the rescissory Covenanting tactics, rescinded it. The Assembly of August 1 2, without mentioning the Glasgow Assembly, repeated its work "at a gallop," says Gordon, and imposed the signing of the Covenant upon all Scotland.39
This was assented to by Traquair and the Council; Traquair, at least, looked on the whole thing as a farce, knowing the king's intentions. The ' Large Declaration ' was condemned, and Mr. Andrew Cant proposed that the author, Balcanquhal, Dean of Durham, should be hanged ! The Sheriff of Teviotdale, Sir William Douglas, humorously said that " being better acquainted with hanging," in the way of business, than the ministers, he would be glad to do all that was necessary.40 Thus pleasant were the godly among themselves, but earlier, Mr John Wemys, like Agamemnon in the ' Iliad,' had " wept like a waterfall," tears of joy " trickling down along his grey hairs like drops of rain, or dew upon the top of the tender grass." Nunc dimittis was the word of the ancient brethren, and the Moderator expressed his conviction that the king would have been sensibly moved by the spectacle.41 The Moderator perhaps had a sense of irony.
The whole desire of the Assembly was to " give Christ the highest * De Vic to Windebank, July 26.
THE LORDS OF THE ARTICLES (1639). 69
room." That meant giving supreme authority to the Prophets, such as the Presbytery of Fife. This policy could not endure. Preachers were already in full tide, denouncing Laud as " priest of Baal and son of Belial." 42 The king's God, and that of all England except non-Episcopalians, was Baal ! " The wark gangs merrily on ! " This example of the fanatical folly of the preachers is noteworthy. Rothes had deprecated the idea of forcing the true, the Presbyterian God, on the Baal-worshippers of England. But the Covenanters presently came, as in conscience they must, to that point, for it would be nefarious to tolerate Baal-worship.
Parliament met on August 31, for the first time in the then new " Parliament House." There was a large attendance : Huntly was present, so was his deadly foe, Crichton of Frendraght (he sat for Banff) ; in his house Huntly's kinsman had been burned. When Traquair and the nobles retired to choose Lords of the Articles, Argyll protested that this should not be a precedent. A Bill would be introduced whereby nobles, barons, and burghs should all elect their own representatives on the " probouleutic " board.43 Huntly, with six Covenanting peers, and Southesk, were lords for the nobles. The nobles elected the Lords for the barons and burghs — they were Covenanters, including that expert in hanging, the Sheriff of Teviot- dale, and the Laird of Lag, a name later disesteemed by the Remnant. The Lord Advocate, Hope, protested that only the king could elect the nobles as Lords of the Articles, while only the nobles could elect barons and burgesses.* This constitutional point is very obscure, as we have often seen : the Lords of the Articles, who had all the power, were elected, at various times, in all manner of ways, f
The question also rose (after much hairsplitting about an Act of indemnity for the rebellion), who were to supply the places of the lost fourteen episcopal votes ? Charles had told Traquair to try to
* Act. Parl. Scot., v. p. 254.
t Gordon gives an account of the arguments used by the party of Reform. On the king's side it was argued that in 1587, 1609, and 1612, and later, the nobles chose eight bishops, they chose eight nobles, and both sets chose eight from burghs and shires. The reformers argued that, till 1617, Lords of the Articles were chosen in Parliament publicly. Bishops had introduced the practice of going apart to elect. There was no statute law as to the whole affair, no Act of Parliament. Prescription and custom, since David II., could not bind Parliament. The burghs complained that they were called, not only to vote, but to debate and discuss, which the Lords of the Articles did not allow them to do (Gordon, Hi. p. 66). As to 1587 and 1609, the statement made is erroneous.
70 PARLIAMENT ADJOURNED (1639).
secure fourteen ministers, or other persons approved of by himself. (Burnet, ' Mem. Ham.,' 150). The Record of the Act of Parliament gives no debates on this topic, but many wrangles about precedence. Mr Gardiner, as to these matters, cites a news-letter (MS.) of October 7, 1639. Montrose, Lindsay, and a party were striving to secure fourteen laymen, in place of the lost fourteen bishops.44 Divers "known Covenanters" were of the same mind. Montrose became suspect, and on his door a paper was fixed, " Invictus armis, verbis vincitur." 45 The little rift within the lute of the Covenant had opened. Moreover, Charles would neither sanction the Parlia- ment in calling Episcopacy "unlawful" — for then where was the Church of England ? a mere temple of Baal, as the preacher said — nor would he be party to an act rescissory of the old Acts establishing Episcopacy. That would cut his plan for reintroducing Episcopacy, on the strength of these Acts, from under his feet. He would rather have his real intentions discovered than render them futile : ** he would risk a rupture rather than submit. Meanwhile, by one vote, Argyll carried his Bill about the election of Lords of the Articles. The Covenanters also demanded freedom of debate, not mere voting, on each Bill sent down from the Lords of the Articles,* and that keepers of the great castles should be Scots, and chosen by advice of the Estates, t
Charles could not submit. The changes demanded were revolu- tionary. Parliament would have passed at one step into its present measure of authority. Admirable as our constitution may be, this leap to it out of Tudor monarchy was apt to startle a king. Traquair prorogued Parliament : it protested, and he adjourned, for a visit to Court, till November 14. Charles gave increase of rank to several of his supporters — Ogilvy was made Earl of Airlie, Ruthven was created Lord Ruthven of Ettrick. The Covenanters now sent Loudoun and Dunfermline to Charles in London (November 8). He declined to see them, as they were not commissioned by Traquair, and he prorogued Parliament till next June. Traquair, coming up, was out of favour, but bought back his power by showing to Charles a singular document, which proved that the enemies of Baal were
* Rossingham, News-Letter, Oct. 28. Add. MSS. Brit. Mus. 11,045, fol. 68. Gardiner, ix. p. 53, note 2.
t Act. Parl. Scot, v. p. 303. There are traces of the Earl of Buccleuch's resistance to the claims of Francis Stewart, son of the Bothwell who so annoyed James VI. Act. Parl. Scot., v. p. 608.
COVENANTERS INTRIGUE WITH FRANCE (1639-1640). 71
seeking alliance with Baal, yea, with the idolatrous King of France ! So Charles regarded the matter. As to the incriminating paper produced by Traquair, Balfour (under 1641) says that Colonel Munroe " was imprisoned for delivering that letter to Sir Donald Gorme, which he gave to Traquair (as Munroe averred), written by the committee here to the French king to be a mediator betwixt the king and them."47 In April, one William Colville (a connection of John Colville, the spy ?) had been deputed to plead with France for intercession, by way of a treaty, "but had never been sent," says Baillie.48 The letter to France gave Traquair a new locus standi; in revenge the Covenanters later pursued him as " The Grand Incendiary." 49 In the good old times — so near and so far away — the imaginers of this letter might, if their party was out of power, have lost their heads. But we have seen how hard it was, even in the good old times, to punish Scottish nobles for the rankest treason. They soon began to show no mercy to loyal subjects.
The Covenanters again sent up Dunfermline and Loudoun. They intrigued with the French ambassador, Bellievre, proposing that, in any new treaty with Charles, their alliance with France was to be recognised, and Scots were to be put in the committee of Foreign Affairs, for the benefit of France. Richelieu would hear of no such policy.* Israel hath held forth the hand to Moab, she hath called even unto Midian ! The Regent Murray had been as ready for an idolatrous French alliance in 1567. But when James VI. was suspected of such dealings with idolatry, the pulpits rang from Dan to Beersheba. In January 1640 Traquair came from Edinburgh with Dunfermline and Loudoun. Ruthven was reinforced in Edin- burgh Castle, and the Scots at once sent Colville to Louis Treize, asking for mediation in the name of the ancient League. Montrose, on December 26, had declined to visit Charles, as men were still " filled with their usual and wonted jealousies." w Waristoun said that Montrose had done nobly, but he was also so noble as to sign the letter to Louis.61 As to the earlier letter to France, never sent, Loudoun was now placed in the Tower for his concern with it. But he had pleas which, legally, were adequate. The deed had been intended, not done, before the Act of Amnesty, in the Parliament of 1639 ; ne was covered by that Amnesty ; again, he could only be tried in Scotland.
Charles's dealings with the Scottish Commissioners in spring came * Gardiner, ix. pp. 91, 92. From French Archives.
72 PREPARATIONS FOR WAR (1640).
to nothing. The men, besides the two nobles, were the hanging sheriff of Teviotdale, Sir William Douglas, and one Barclay, formerly psedagogue of Argyll. In Edinburgh the prorogued Parliament was represented by a committee — Lothian, Dalhousie, Yester, Balmerino, Cranstoun, and Montrose's friend, Napier, with lairds and burgesses.52
All things in Scotland were unsettled. Ruthven wished to rebuild part of the works at Edinburgh Castle : the citizens treasonably refused to supply materials. The old works were shaken down by the guns fired on Charles's birthday (November 1 9, 1639) and mankind — as usual unable to see that effects follow causes, not vice versa — held that the walls crumbled from a prescience of bad fortune.53 Perhaps the death of Spottiswoode was boded ? He expired on November 27, 1639. His son, Sir Robert, was a better man.
In the new year, 1640, the Covenanters organised their fighting finance by "The Blind Band," taxing and assessing everybody. Many even of the godly did not relish these exactions. The castle was reinforced (February 10, i64o).54 The question of money now preoccupied Charles ; he was driven to call that three weeks' Parliament in England, the Short Parliament, which proved so ominous (April 13). In Edinburgh the Covenanters erected works commanding the castle gate, having heard that Charles had levied new forces under Northumberland ; hence their threatening conduct. Ruthven remonstrated with them and threatened to fire : the town's party seized and imprisoned loyalists.55 A wordy war of pamphlets, declarations, and protestations went on, and Ruthven occasionally fired upon Edinburgh (May i).
While the Scots were reorganising their army, and beating up for money, exacting a tenth, as if, says Burnet, for a sacred war, while the ladies contributed their jewels, in England the financial efforts of the king were paralysed. Every corner was raked for money, threats were held over the City and the merchants, in vain : Spain, France, and even (by the queen) the Pope, were supplicated for loans, and supplicated to no avail. The national temper, over- wrought by Laud (who had some thoughts of burning a heretic, and had imprisoned many Nonconformists), was in sympathy with the Scots. The Northern Counties could not be asked to serve again ; the pressed men from the Southern Counties robbed right and left as they marched, burned the communion rails in churches, and, in the ardour of their Christianity, threatened, and on occasion
PARLIAMENT DEFIES PROROGATION (1640). 73
murdered, their Catholic officers. Almost alone, the Catholics, scapegoats as they were, the whipping-boys of Charles's Protestantism, were now loyal to the king. At Newca'stle, Conway failed to keep order among the reckless unpaid levies that were sent to him ; the town could not be fortified, and in case of war it was the objective of the Scots, who meant to stop the coal supplies of London. Riots occurred in the capital, and were only calmed by calling out the trained bands.
In 1639, as we saw, Charles had his chance of fighting the Scots and rousing England against them, but he missed it. An offensive war against Scotland, successful or unsuccessful, would have been the saving of him ; a defensive war he could not wage, nor wait till want of supplies caused the Scots to disband. In 1640 he might have yielded all along the line, become a puppet king, or abdicated. The old kings, the Plantagenets, had yielded to constitutional pressure, when their backs were at the wall, or had been murdered, or had caused a diversion by foreign campaigns. Charles would not yield, he could not carry the war into France, and the hour for his murder had not sounded. Strafford, returned from Ireland, pressed the policy of force, — he would strike at the Scots or let that kingdom go. It seems conceivable that, in the heat of controversy in Council, he dropped some words about using the Irish army not only in Scotland but in England. The words, spoken or not, were written down by Vane, and were to be used against Strafford on occasion.* But Charles now listened to Strafford, and now wavered ; and, in May, prorogued to mid July the Scottish Parliament, which should have met, and did meet, on June 21. There was a technical informality, reported at length by Burnet, in the form of the prorogation, or there was something that the hairsplitters of the Covenant might reckon informality.56 So they constituted them- selves a Parliament, went through their destined work " at a gallop," and sent " two high declarations " to the new Scottish secretary, the Earl of Lanark. He was Hamilton's brother, a man of twenty-four, who had succeeded to the post on the death of the Earl of Stirling (Sir William Alexander).
* We have no doubt that the phrase of Strafford, even as given by Vane, did not bear the interpretation later fixed on it by the men who did the king's loyal servant to death. " You have an army in Ireland you may employ here " (that is, on the east side of St. George's Channel), "to reduce this kingdom" (that is, Scotland). Cal. State Papers, 1640, xxiii. p. 113). Mr Douglas Hamilton, editor of the Calendar, thinks this the probable interpretation.
74 MONTROSE OPPOSES THE CONVENTION (1640).
The argument for holding, by way of a Parliament, a Convention as illegal as that which swept away the Church in 1560, was, as Mr Napier states it : " Is it less unlawful for us simply to vote Lord Burleigh into the chair, than to declare King Charles no longer on the throne, distinctly implying that there was no other alternative ? " 57 There was no alternative. Charles had prorogued the Estates merely to gain time to muster his forces, and the Scots knew it. Charles had set the example of law-breaking. Tudor sovereigns had altered religion at their will ; so would he, on that precedent. The Scots ever had in their minds the precedent of James III. at Lauder Bridge, and the reasonings of George Buchanan in his ' De Jure Regni ' and his ' History.' It is futile to blame revolutions for being laws to themselves.
Montrose, as to the point of holding a Convention, opposed the new revolution, in which Lord Napier had a part. Waristoun wrote to Hepburn of Humbie, later (April 20, 1641), "Montrose did dispute against Argyll, Rothes, Balmerino, and myself; because some urged that, as long as we had a king, we could not sit without him ; and it was answered that to do the less " (dispense with the royal permission) "was more lawful than to do the greater" (declare Charles dethroned).58
Parliament adjourned to November 19, to prepare war, having organised " a monster committee " of the Estates, on which Argyll, for his own ends, declined to sit. There were about forty members, from earls to tailors and saddlers. Among the names were those of Montrose, Napier, and Stirling of Keir, all three soon to suffer for their loyalty. Montrose had his reasons for being in, as Argyll had his for being out of a committee far too large for the direction of a war. Outside the ranks of the Covenant were Huntly (who, Napier admits, " never showed better than a mere skulker, through- out the whole of the troubles "), Atholl, and Airlie.59 Airlie's son, Lord Ogilvy ; Huntly's son, Lord Gordon, stood out for the Crown. Now the Committee had ordered that private defensible houses should be handed over to themselves, or, in case of resistance, "reduced." Argyll therefore received a commission "of fire and sword," for the extirpation of malignants (such as Ogilvy and the benighted Celtic non- Covenanters) on the frontiers between his region, or principality, and those of Atholl, Airlie, and Huntly, in Badenoch, Lochaber, and Rannoch. The non-Covenanters were to be " brought to their duty," or else " utterly subdued and rooted
THE "BONNIE HOUSE O' AIRLIE " BURNED (1640). 75
out of the country," or to " become Christians," so says the Act of Indemnity to Argyll in 1641.™ This phrase, " rooted out," or its equivalent, " extirpated," later became notorious in the case of the Massacre of Glencoe. Here, perhaps, we may take it to mean, not universal massacre, but the driving of the anti-Christians out of their lands, " out of the country."
The people of Forfarshire, or Angus, were now threatened by Argyll's Campbells, whom they regarded much as England did the Irish army. The Celts, be they Campbells, or be they Macdonalds, were looked on as undisciplined savages by distant Lowlanders. To anticipate the savages of Argyll, Montrose dealt, by orders of Lindsay, it seems, with Ogilvy for the peaceful surrender of Airlie Castle " I did render my house to the Earl of Montrose for the use of the public," said Airlie in 1641, " neither would he accept of it upon any other terms." 61 Montrose then wrote to Argyll, saying that he need not enter Forfarshire, Airlie Castle being already surrendered. Argyll was not to be balked of revenge against Ogilvy, a feudal foe, but first he treated the Earl of Atholl exactly as the Covenanters (Montrose being " art and part") had treated Huntly. He broke a safe-conduct of Atholl's and sent him to Edinburgh.* Having dealt with Atholl, Argyll next marched against Airlie ; and gave orders to young Campbell of Calder to arrest Lord Ogilvy. He then, "goaded into savage exasperation by the intervention of Montrose," says Mr. Gardiner, ordered the burning of the Bonnie House o' Airlie, and Airlie's other house of Forthar, while the property was wrecked, and cattle were driven to stock Glen Shira.
To Campbell of Inverawe Argyll wrote, " See how ye can cast off the iron gates and windows, and take down the roof, and if ye find it will be longsome ye shall fire it well, that so it may be destroyed. But ye need not let know that ye have directions from me to fire it. . . ,"62 Argyll, at his trial in 1661, stoutly denied that he even knew of this deed of fire-raising.
* This is Mr Gardiner's view (ix. pp. 166, 167), and he is not a Highland partisan (cf. Napier, i. pp. 258-261), he quotes Guthry, who heard the statements of John Stewart of Lady well, executed in 1641 (cf. Spalding, i. p. 271).
In Huntly's case, one may suspect that he was not sorry to go. Charles, as we saw, writing to Hamilton, called him "as false as feeble" (Hist. MSS. Com. xi. Appendix, pt. vi. p. 102). Burnet gives the letter (York, April 23, 1639), but not this remark about Huntly. The editor of the Hamilton Papers in the Hist. MS. Com. refers to Burnet, but does not observe that the bishop expurgated the king's observation that Huntly " is both feeble and false." Compare page 56, supra.
76 SAVILE'S FORGERY (1640).
His letter to Inverawe, commanding the outrage, exists to bear witness against him. Gordon avers that Argyll drove Lady Ogilvy, who was about to have a child, from Forthar, and would not permit the lady's grandmother (who took permission), to receive her at Kelly.* "Atrocities " had begun, as usual, Argyll leading the way ; and, as always, they were invented even when they did not exist. Argyll, later, was to get his own kail through the reek, and to think himself as unjustly treated as if he had not set the first example of robbery and arson. Aberdeen and Huntly's country were soon compelled to sign the Covenant, and were plundered and burned by the Christians under Munroe. Everywhere non- Christians were suffering extremity.63
So passed May and June, at the end of which Charles released the captive Loudoun, and sent him to Scotland in some hopes ot peace.64 Loudoun, in London, had been conspiring with Savile, who had a hereditary hatred of Strafford. The intrigue, according to Burnet, began when Dunfermline was also in London. " A person of quality of the English nation, whose name is suppressed because of the infamy of this action " (Savile), entreated Loudoun and Dunfermline to begin a new war, bringing papers of adhesion to the Scots signed "by most of the greatest peers of England."65 In fact, on June 23, when Leslie's army was again mustering, Waristoun, the soul of mischief, wrote to Savile, suggesting the ruinous idea of an extension of the Covenant to England, with other treasonable proposals. Savile, with five other peers, answered through Loudoun. They refused to lend treasonable aid, their opportunity was not ripe, but they confessed a common cause. Later, Savile " sent them what they wanted " : to bring the Scots to invade England, he forged signatures of the peers to a letter inviting a Presbyterian invasion.! The forgery by Savile was
* That Argyll accused Montrose of " suffering Lady Ogilvy to escape "does not perhaps, as Mr Gardiner thinks, contradict Gordon's narrative. It is more important that Gordon clearly had a confused idea of the facts, for he dates the burning of Airlie Castle in 1639 ; repeats the story under 1640, and cannot imagine what more Argyll could find to do in that year.
t This is Mr Gardiner's view : he accepts the Letters published by Oldmixon (' History of England,' p. 141). Oldmixon, however, has confused the actual Letter (i) with the Savile forgery (2). Savile acknowledged the forgery later, as Mandeville (afterwards Manchester) records (Nalson, ii. p. 427. Add. MSS. 15, 567, a fragment of Mandeville's lost Memoirs. Gardiner, ix. pp. 179, 180, and 210, 21 1). Savile was a better forger, or employed a better than George Sprot, for the peers could not detect the imitation of their own hands. But Savile had
MONTROSE THWARTS ARGYLL (1640). 77
detected some months later, when the deluded Scots met the supposed signatories at Ripon.
Meanwhile Leslie advanced with part of his forces to Camp Moor, near Dunse. Here he lingered for weeks, awaiting supplies, and here the rift in the Covenant was widened. The Committee of the Estates, as we saw, was too large for military purposes. There was an idea of erecting a Triumvirate ; one man — Argyll — to be responsible north of Forth, and two men south of Forth. Montrose appears to have heard of the scheme through Archibald, brother of Sir James Campbell of Lawers. Montrose procured a modification of the draft commission, his own name was added to that of Argyll for the North, with those of Mar, Cassilis, and two others. Argyll, therefore, could not be a Dictator.* When Montrose joined Leslie, Argyll appears to have accused him of too much lenity (then his besetting sin) during the operations in the north. He was absolved by Leslie and the Committee. Next he was offered for signature a " band " in favour of Argyll's dictatorship.66
To check Argyll (whose vigorous methods of proselytising have been noted), Montrose presided over the drawing up of a private band, at Cumbernauld, the seat of the Earl of Wigtoun (Fleming), in the month of August. Any such association might be regarded as a breach of the Covenant, but, in Montrose's eyes, it was necessary to counteract the other band, and the movement in favour of Argyll, at once his personal enemy and a man cruel, revengeful, and dangerous to the internal peace of the north. The actual band of Montrose was later burned, but Mr Napier found a transcript (preserved, he says, by Sir James Balfour) of this "damnable" document, as Baillie calls it. The Cumber- nauld band avers that " the particular and indirect practising of a few " (in favour of Argyll's northern dictatorship) is dangerous to the country and to the duty of the signing parties to the Covenant itself. The signatories bind themselves to mutual defence "as far as may consist with the good and weel of the public," quite a new kind of clause in a band. The names are Marischal, Montrose, Wigtoun, Kinghorn, Home (who had been discontented as early as
only signatures to forge, and, to do Sprot justice, his signature of " Restalrig " defies detection.
* This is Montrose's account, given in May 1641. Napier, i. pp. 255, 256, Wodrow MSS.
78 MONTROSE CROSSES TWEED (1640).
June 1639), Atholl, Mar, Perth, Boyd, Galloway, Stormont, Seaforth, Erskine, Kirkcudbright, Almond, later Callendar (commanding under Leslie), Drummond, Johnston, Lour, D. Carnegy, and the Master of Lour.67 These names, though noble, carried, at this period, no very special weight. Mar was not what Mar had been, the Keiths had no great following, and Montrose's allies proved broken reeds, mere " respectables," helpless or treacherous in a revolution. For the moment, however, the feelings which prompted the writing of the Cumbernauld band were known to be strong enough to make a dictatorial triumvirate perilous — the ambition of Argyll was thwarted ; he bided his time, and the Committee of Estates went on as before. On August 3 Strafford received a Royal Commission empowering him to lead an army of Ireland, and of such as the king might add in England, to resist invasion and rebellion in all three kingdoms. The Scots sent a manifesto into England : they appealed to Parliament, they promised to work no wrong and pay for all supplies which they took south of Tweed. Charles determined to march north in person ; and Strafford, with no Irish army, was there to command. But, ere he arrived on the northern scene, all was over. On the night of August 20, Montrose was the foremost man to ford " the glittering and resolute streams of Tweed." On him the lot, by chance or cozenage, had fallen. He crossed alone, and, returning, led his men over. " I was, of all, myself the first that put my foot in the water, and led over a regiment in the view of all the army."68 By August 29 the royal cause was undone. Conway made a feeble attempt at resistance on the fords of Tyne : he was outnumbered, his position was untenable, and next day the Scots entered Newcastle, which cowardly surrendered, and seized the magazine.69
NOTES TO CHAPTER III.
1 Spalding, i. p. 137 ; Napier, ' Memoirs of Montrose,' i. pp. 166-168.
2 Burnet, 'Mem. Ham.,' pp. 115-117. 8 Gordon, ii. pp. 197 et seq.
4 Burnet, ' Mem. Ham.,' p. 113 ; Gordon, ii. p. 213.
5 Spalding, i. pp. 150, 151.
6 Spalding's account differs, and is more to the discredit of Montrose. Spalding, i. pp. 169-171.
7 Gordon, ii. p. 205, note I.
NOTES. 79
8 Hist. MSS. Com., Report XL, Appendix vi. p. 102.
9 Gordon, ii. pp. 210-237 ; Spalding, i. pp. 136-171.
10 Burnet, 'Mem. Ham.,' pp. 127, 128.
11 Hamilton Papers, pp. 89-92. 12 Napier, i. p. 200.
13 Baillie, i. p. 205. 14 Spalding, i. pp. 209-212.
18 Gordon, ii. pp. 270-281 ; Gardiner, ix. p. 41 ; Gordon, ' Britane's Dis- temper,' pp. 26-28 ; Spalding Club, 1845. is Peterkin, ' Records of the Kirk of Scotland,' p. 220.
17 Hamilton Papers, Camden Society, p. 83 ; Burnet, ' Mem. Ham.,' p. 131.
18 'Johnston of Wariston's Diary,' Scot. Hist. Soc., p. 41 ; Peterkin, ' Records of the Kirk of Scotland,' p. 223. 19 Wariston, pp. 43-46.
20 Wariston, p. 58. 21 Gardiner, ix. p. 23.
22 Hardwicke Papers, ii. pp. 130 et seq. Compare Wariston, pp. 76-92.
23 Wariston, p. 76.
24 Wariston, pp. 80-82. w Wariston, pp. 82-85.
26 Burnet, ' Mem. Ham.,' pp. 142, 143, with the Terms.
27 Baillie, i. pp. 218, 219. -8 Peterkin, p. 230.
29 Cal. State Papers, Domestic, 1639, pp. 386, 387.
30 Cal. State Papers, 1639, pp. 370, 371.
31 Burnet, 'Mem. Ham.,' pp. 144, 145.
32 Cal. State Papers, 1639, p. 387.
33 Cal. State Papers, 1639, p. 395.
34 Cal. State Papers, 1639, pp. 408, 409. 88 Hardwicke Papers, pp. 141, 142.
36 Hamilton Papers, Camden Society, pp. 98-100.
37 Cal. State Papers, 1639, p. 419.
38 Burnet, 'Mem. Ham.,' p. 149. Charles to Spottiswoode, Aug. 6. Ibid. pp. 153, 154. & Peterkin, pp. 269, 270.
40 Peterkin, p. 268. tt Peterkin, pp. 250-252.
42 Howell, ' Familiar Letters,' p. 276, cited by Hill Burton.
43 Act. Parl. Scot., v. pp. 252, 253
44 Gardiner, ix. p. 51, note 3. *> Guthry in Napier, i. p. 222. 46 Burnet, 'Mem. Ham.,' pp. 158, 159. 47 Balfour, iii. p. 76.
48 Rushworth, iii., i. p. 119.
49 Burnet, ' Mem. Ham.,' p. 160. M Napier, i. p. 228.
51 See Gardiner, ix. pp. 92, 93, for the Covenanters' Letter to France. Bib. Nat. Fr. 15, 915, fol. 410.
52 Gordon, iii. pp. 79-81. M Gordon, iii. pp. 86, 87. 84 Gordon, iii. pp. 80-100. K Gordon, iii. p. 126.
86 Burnet, ' Mem. Ham.,' pp. 166, 167. w Napier, i. p. 234.
88 Napier, i. p. 236. w Napier, i. p. 239.
60 Act. Parl. Scot., v. p. 398. 61 Napier, i. p. 245.
62 Gardiner, ix. p. 167, note 3, quoting the letter from 'Notes and Queries,' Series v. , ix. p. 364.
68 Gordon, iii. pp. 164, 165, 271 ; Willcock, ' The Great Marquess,' p. 107 ; Cal. State Papers, Sept. 12, 1640.
84 Burnet, ' Mem. Ham.,' pp. 170, 171. K Burnet, 'Mem. Ham.,' p. 165.
68 Napier, i. pp. 263, 264. w Napier, i. pp. 269, 270.
88 MS. in Montrose Charter Chest ; Napier, i. p. 271.
99 Baillie, i. pp. 256, 257 ; cf. Clarendon, i. pp. 204, 205, on this disgraceful surrender of Newcastle.
8o
CHAPTER IV
THE SCOTS INVASION OF ENGLAND. 1640.
THE presence of a Scottish army at Newcastle, confiscating the patrimony of St Cuthbert and the goods of Catholics or of Anglicans at will, would once have united England in arms. The Scots would have been driven from Tees and Tyne to the Naver, calling on their mountains to cover them. An England united and prepared would have done it : in a few years an England prepared, though not united, did it. But England was now neither united nor prepared. Strafford met the retreating levies of the king at Darlington. Terrified as they were, they were scarcely more uneasy than the Scots had been after their victory at the ford of Tyne. Some 4000 of the Scots army are said to have decamped, homesick no doubt, towards Berwick. Though the numbers are probably exaggerated, Leslie reports (September 2) "the evil carriage of our own soldiers," and " the multitude of runaways, who abandon the army."1 Says Baillie, who was present, "If Newcastle had but closed their ports, we had been in great hazard of present disbanding," but the garrison was at once withdrawn.
Only the gentlemen of England had fought well. Wilmot had cut down one or two opponents in a cavalry charge : Strafford, from Darlington, reported to Charles, at York, that Wilmot had slain Montrose, a rumour contradicted by Vane on September 3.2 The counties of Durham and York had begun to show some spirit ; even now, had Charles concentrated at York and advanced, the heart of England might have been aroused, whether by victory or defeat. It was not to be. England, apart from all other distractions, was in one of her fits of fear about Popery : as absurd as if Spain had been in terror of a Protestant plot. It was commonly said that whoever
MONTROSE'S LETTER TO THE KING (1640). 8 I
was not Scotch was Popish. In place of aiding the king, the chief Puritan peers were in London, agitating and petitioning. They and the middle classes stood towards the invading Scots, as Brunston and Ormistoun, Knox and Glencairn, and the Douglases, had stood of old towards the invading English. They called for a Parliament, for the trial of the king's ministers : while the Scots also now insisted on the punishment of "incendiaries," chiefly Traquair and Hamilton, Strafford and Laud. Baillie, by his pamphlets, was a chief agent in hounding Laud to the block ; " We pant," says this clergyman, " for the trials of Laud and Strafford."
We need not dwell on the tragedy of Charles, the familiar steps to ruin with dishonour. The petition of the city for a Parliament was added to the petition of the peers. Hamilton was in terror : he wished to fly the country ; that being forbidden he helped the Commissioners whom the Scots presently sent to London, with all his might. He "was very active for his own preservation." The Royalist garrisons in the castles of Edinburgh and Dumbarton yielded to scurvy and starvation. The great Council of Peers met, for the first time since Henry VII., at York. They appointed Commissioners to capitulate to the Scots at Ripon (October 2). In the Scottish camp there was trouble. Montrose, " whose pride was long ago intolerable, and meaning very doubtsome, was found to have intercourse of letters with the king, for which he was accused publicly by the General in face of the Committee," says Baillie.3 Montrose is said to have been betrayed by Hamilton and the gentlemen pickpockets of the king's bedchamber. Burnet says that his letter to the king happened to fall to the ground, and the address was noticed by Sir James Mercer, who picked it up. Wishart, Montrose's chaplain, blames the gentlemen of the king's bedchamber, who acted as spies for the Covenanters. Of these men, Will Murray, of old the king's "whipping-boy," is the most notorious. He is freely accused of being employed, now by Hamilton, now by Argyll ; he is mixed up in every intrigue : he was always suspected, never discarded, and could probably have explained many a problem that history cannot unravel.4 Montrose's letter was a mere protestation of loyalty, such as the Covenanters indulged in publicly. The king was not " the enemy," so Montrose was safe : he had not communicated with " the enemy." Mean- while, in the meeting of Scots and English at Ripon, the forgery of Savile was detected. He justified himself by patriotic motives ;
VOL. III. F
82 CHARLES RETURNS TO SCOTLAND (1640).
he too was safe ; who could denounce him, to whom ? The Ripon meeting haggled over the question of how much the Scots would take to remain quietly where they were. In the end they received a considerable sum of money, " brotherly assistance." The inevitable Parliament, the Long Parliament, met on November 3. Baillie, travelling south with the Scottish Commissioners, reports that the inns were " like palaces." The king at this time reprieved a Jesuit, sentenced to death for being one; the anti-Popish agitation went on; the presence of Rossetti, a papal agent, and the queen's futile dealings with him were resented. The utter uprooting of Episcopacy was clamoured for by the preacher Henderson, in a pamphlet which gave great offence to the English : " diverse of our true friends did think us too rash, and, though they loved not the bishops, yet for the honour of their nation, they would keep them up rather than we strangers should pull them down," says Baillie. The Scots cherished the ambition to see all England Presbyterian on their own model, a lovely dream, that came through the Ivory Gate.5 The Root and Branch party, however, was powerful and very noisy. But Cheshire petitioners on the Episcopal side objected to " the mere arbitrary government of a numerous Presbytery, who, together with their ruling elders, will arise to near forty thousand Church governors."6 The Cheshire petition was signed by four peers, more than eighty knights and esquires, seventy clergymen, three hundred gentlemen, and over six thousand freeholders and others. The anti-prelatists produced a counter-petition, in which the numbers all round were exactly doubled ! The thing was a forgery, or a Presbyterian joke.7
In March 1643 the satisfaction of the Scottish demands for money was postponed to the business of illegally condemning Strafford : " pleasure first, business afterwards." The Scots ac- quiesced in this arrangement. We do not dwell on a tragedy " too deep for tears," not the death of a brave man already near his end, but the moral overthrow and the worm that never dies in the breast of Charles. He appears to have yielded in fear of mob violence, which threatened the life of the queen. In August the arrangement with the Scots was completed, and, much to the wrath of the English Parliament, the king hurried northwards, to forget, if he could, in changed scenes : to save his servant, the incendiary Traquair, if he could ; to procure evidence of English treason in inviting a Scottish invasion ; to see whether the name of Stuart
MONTROSE FOR THE KING (1641). 83
might yet have a charm, and make Scotland a rallying -point of resistance against the English ; possibly to punish Argyll, who lay, as we shall see, under some suspicion of flat undeniable personal treason. Above all, Charles may have hoped to establish the less enthusiastic Covenanters in the chief offices of State.8
Already, in England, Catholics were dying for their religion. William Ward, a priest, was hanged at Tyburn, just as a friend of his, for no other crime than his creed, had perished thirteen years earlier. Resisting the fury of the House of Commons, and the pressure of the mob, as he should have done when Strafford was condemned, Charles now rode out of Palace Yard with his face to the north. The man should repent it, he said, who touched his horse's reins. If we may believe the Venetian Ambassador, the Scottish Commissioners had made him loyal promises.9 He was their native king : Scotland had ever been jealous of his prolonged absences. But if he expected to win Scotland, to awaken Scottish national sentiment, the king was notably deceived. He went to abase himself in the dust, to assent to all that his soul loathed. He had apparently bought Rothes, by money and place, but at this moment Rothes died.10 " From him his Majesty expected much service at the present conjuncture, he having given many assurances thereof." n He was to have enjoyed high office, in England, and to have married the rich Countess of Devon.12 We have, perhaps, no right to say that Rothes, the chief fomenter of the Covenant, was bought. He may have been pricked in heart and conscience by the situation of the king. However, there were promises and hopes held before him : to Montrose no bribes were offered. To regard his change of party as the result of personal jealousy and self-seeking, is the note of a mind incapable of understanding a noble motive.
"Though jealousy of Argyll had, no doubt, its full weight in sending Montrose to the king's side," says Mr Gardiner, " there can be little doubt that he was swayed in the main by higher considerations." There can be no doubt, except among the unre- flecting base. Rats do not desert to a sinking ship, as was the king's in 1639-1640. Had Montrose deserted the Covenant earlier, had he joined Strafford, had he led the king's army from Berwick to meet Leslie at Dunse, English history would have been other than it is. But when the Royal ship had foundered, when Strafford's head had fallen, when every month brought its new attack, it was then that Montrose, in Scotland, began to stir for his king. On one
84 PREACHERS AGAINST CONVENTICLES (1639-1640).
side he saw the representative of centuries of legitimate monarchy, on the other, zealots led by or leading Argyll : and power in the hands of whatever great House best pleased the populace and the preachers.
Returning to Scottish affairs after the capture of Newcastle, we find, in 1640-1641, first the beginning of a split between the less immoderate and the more enthusiastic preachers ; next, the affair of Montrose's so-called " plot " against Argyll. Before attending to these we may note a singular example of social manners. Ministers of the Gospel still carried daggers, "whingers," and used them. A preacher of the pleasing name of Lamb had been deposed, in the time of Episcopal darkness, by the Bishop of Galloway, as a quarrel- some person. The ministers of Edinburgh secured for this victim of prelatical prejudice a church in the Presbytery of Peebles. " They say he had stricken a man, whereof he died." His Presbytery suspended him, and he appealed to the General Assembly. They remitted him to his Presbytery, which irritated Lamb. On a Sunday, after hearing two sermons, he acted in an indescribably insulting manner to a young man unknown, and when the youth remonstrated, "with his whinger struck him, whereof presently he died." Mr Lamb then easily obtained a letter of Slains from the family of the young man, which means that he would pay the eric, or blood-wyte. " But we think the Constable will cause execute him," says Baillie, "murder (i), by a preacher (2), especially on the Sabbath day (3), while the Assembly was sitting (4), being a thing of dangerous example." 13
The ministers had trouble within their fold. As soon as bishops were turned out, amateur professors of religion came in. A tailor and a surgeon from England, " and from Ireland a fleece of Scots people," dissatisfied with official Presbyterianism, had introduced conventicles of their own. Among them were a gifted ploughman and the laird of Lecky. They "sought edification by private meetings " (than which nothing seems more praiseworthy), and were said to be supported by two notable divines, Mr Blair of St Andrews, and Mr Samuel Rutherford, the author of celebrated devotional letters, and of ' Lex Rex,' a political treatise of liberal complexion. Henderson, Guthry, and others opposed the private religious meetings, as savouring of Brownism, or of that New Independent heresy then raising its head in England. A conference was held by both parties, and it was agreed that private devotional meetings had been vastly well in times of corruption, but that now,
THE PROFESSIONALLY GODLY (1641). 85
when the Gospel shone in all its purity, such assemblies might break up congregations, " and by progress of time the whole Kirk," which was very true. But Covenanters forbidding conventicles reminds us of the Gracchi denouncing sedition. The circumstance may be remembered when we find bishops equally intolerant.
The members of the conference signed the document, but those who had been friends of " revival " meetings encouraged them more than ever. " Such as kept those private meetings were, by the rigid sort, esteemed the godly of the land," a thing naturally irritating to the official godly. An Assembly at Aberdeen followed (July 1640), when Dickson, Rutherford, and most of the ministers and elders of the West defended the meetings, and would have carried licence for them, but Guthry produced * the signed paper of the conference, disallowing these conventicles, and an Act of the Assembly against them was passed.14 This Guthry, later Bishop of Dunkeld, died in 1676. Always a moderate Presbyterian, he inclined to the Royal side. His evidence, in his book, is certainly not always accurate, though of value when he was personally concerned. In 1641 the conventiclers wished the Act of the Aberdeen Assembly to be revoked. Calderwood, the historian, was fiercely opposed to con- venticles, however limited in number, being a Presbyterian of the old rock : Blair and Dickson were moderate. An eirenicon was found, but Mr Calderwood continued to be "very peevish" on points of the constitution of the Assembly. " Likely he shall not in haste be provided " with a living, says Baillie ; " the man is sixty- six years, his utterance is unpleasant, his carriage . . . has made him less considerable." 15 Thus our old friend and authority who had bearded King James, became unpopular among the brethren : and indeed a certain peevishness and delight in hair-splitting may be remarked in his historical writings.
We now turn to the affairs of Montrose, whose advice was probably one of the causes that brought the king to Scotland in August 1641. It will be remembered that he had contrived the Cumbernauld anti-Argyll band, with eighteen other nobles, in August 1640, and had been known to write a protestation of loyalty to the king, from Newcastle. That gave no handle against him, for the Covenanters always kept up the farce of pretending loyalty to "his Majesty's sacred person and authority." But in November 1640 young Lord Boyd, on his deathbed, let out the * Not Mr James Guthrie, later a martyr.
86 MONTROSE PROPHESIES OF CROMWELL (1640-1641).
secret of the Cumbernauld band, and Argyll got wind of it, and drew the whole truth from Lord Almond, at Callendar House, where Queen Mary and Darnley had rested on their way to Kirk o' Field. Argyll reported to the Committee of the Estates, who summoned Montrose and the other banders before them. They acknowledged and justified their band, and, says Guthry, " some of the ministers and other fiery spirits pressed that their lives might go for it."16 But some banders commanded regiments, and were not lightly to be meddled with, and the quarrel was patched up, the Committee burning the band, whereof we have a copy. On May 26, 1641, at a sitting of the Committee new trouble began. Montrose had heard, from Atholl, Stewart of Grandtully, and John Stewart, younger of Ladywell, many things about Argyll's words and ways at the time when he was Christianising Lochaber, Angus, and Atholl with fire and sword, and took these gentlemen prisoners. Montrose sent Ladywell to collect evidence, and appears to have meant to denounce Argyll and Hamilton of treason when the king came (and for that reason Montrose desired him to come) to the Scottish Parliament.
Montrose was working at a paper on Sovereignty, in 1640-1641 ; it is printed by Mr Napier, and contains the ideas of the Great Marquis. They are peculiar. He acknowledges, of course, that sovereignty may, and does, exist in Republics, Aristocracies, as at Venice, and in Monarchies. He does not claim any more of sacredness for monarchy than for other polities, but he appears to hold that tampering with any form of sovereignty, once established — Republic, Aristocracy, or Kingdom — is so dangerous as to be positively wrong. The Scots, if they go too far, will suffer the worst of all tyrannies, that of subjects usurping power (he means Argyll, and other nobles with Argyll), and the end will be despotism : " the Kingdom fall into the hands of One, who of necessity must, and for reasons of State, will tyrannize over you." The One was then walking about England, in clothes ill-made by a country tailor ; his sword very close by his side ; a speck of blood noticed on his little white band. This One was to arrive, and tyrannize, and his officer was to turn the General Assembly into the streets. To revert to Montrose, the Doge of Venice, he says, " is no sovereign, is nothing but the idol to whom ceremonies and compliments are addressed." To this constitutional position of a Doge, Argyll, with his demand that the Estates should appoint the chief ministers of the Crown,.
MONTROSE ACCUSES ARGYLL (1641). 87
would reduce the Sovereign of Scotland. The Highland chief and his allies, with the populace and popular preachers, would really hold the sovereignty. Charles ought not thus to abdicate power, but ought to hold frequent Parliaments, and never encroach on religion and just liberties, as guaranteed by law.
Montrose desires a reformed Charles, a contented people, safety from the tyranny of preachers, populace, and Argyll.17
But the worst of these is Argyll.
Montrose made no secret of his ideas. He wrote them out in a treatise, perhaps addressed to Drummond of Hawthornden. Here he named no names, but in private correspondence he spoke out to Mr Murray, a minister who, in the beginning of the troubles, had helped Rothes to convert him to the Covenant. Murray told Graham, another preacher. Graham talked, and the affair, as we saw, in May 1641 came before the Committee. What had Montrose said about Argyll's sayings? Montrose had averred that Argyll had said to Atholl, Ladywell, Grandtully, and other prisoners, that he and his party had consulted lawyers and divines about deposing the king, and that they meant to do it. He cited Ladywell as having heard the words, and Lindsay as having mentioned, on another occasion, that Argyll was to be Dictator. Lindsay, summoned, did not remember having named Argyll, and, if he had, it was no great matter. The evidence of Ladywell would be more serious. Montrose sent for him, and he appeared before the Committee in May, and signed a written statement in corroboration of Montrose. It is obvious that Argyll was a very unlikely man to have used, in the hearing of opponents, the language reported by Ladywell. But, in these days, men often did speak, over the bottle, with surprising indiscretion. Argyll is never charged with intemperance, but a glass of wine, and the heat of discussion, may have betrayed him into hasty expressions. This would be a theory less tenable if the measures taken against Ladywell had not evinced a desire to silence for ever, with little or no regard to law and usage, an inconvenient witness.
Having signed his corroboration of Montrose's charges, Ladywell was sent to the castle, and there was so worked on by Balmerino and Dury that he " cleared " Argyll. He also confessed that, impelled by Montrose, Napier, Stirling of Keir, and others, he had sent a report of Argyll's treasonable speeches to the king. The messenger who carried the report, Captain Walter Stewart, was
88 THE DROMEDARY AND ELEPHANT (1641).
captured for the Committee on his return.18 In his possession was found a brief note to Montrose from the king, in which he merely promised to behave in Scotland on the lines laid down by Montrose in the treatise on sovereignty. On June 12 Charles wrote to Argyll, denying that he had promised high official places to Montrose and his associates. He avowed his letter to Montrose, taken with Walter Stewart, and maintained that it was such a letter as he ought to write. This was incontestable. But another paper, in cypher, or at least with cant names, " A. B. C." " the Serpent," " the Elephant," " the Dromedary," and so forth, was found in the captured Walter Stewart's possession. This paper was in his pocket, "and, with astonishment, he swore he thought it had not been in the world," writes Hope to Waristoun (June 7). This indicates that the cyphered paper really contained cryptic notes made by Walter Stewart of his own ideas, and that he probably thought that he had destroyed it. But he had casually kept it in his pocket ! This was the least likely way of concealing a document which, according to what was finally dragged out of Walter Stewart, really contained, not his own words, but messages from Montrose, Napier, Keir, and Blackball, taken by him to Traquair in London, and by Traquair to Charles, who gave "particular answers" to them.19 Where were the " particular answers " ? They were not found on Walter Stewart, or were not produced, and have never been dis- covered. And why, in place of the answers, was Walter bringing back the questions ? It may be guessed, on the other side, that he was unconsciously carrying back Montrose's messages to Charles, in his pocket, hence his astonishment when they were found there. Traquair denied all connection with the Elephant, Dromedary, Serpent, and the rest, as did the king.20 Montrose, Napier, and others averred that they had, indeed, sent Walter Stewart to Lennox, his chief, in London, but "only to speed his Majesty's journey to Scotland. . '. ." " There was some other discourses to that purpose in the bye, as, that it was best his Majesty should keep up the offices [of State] vacant, till he had settled the affairs here. . . ."*
This is not very satisfactory. Walter Stewart's cypher papers may have been made by him to assist his memory, in London, and may have been his notes of "other discourses in the bye."
* Montrose's and Napier's Replies unto the Libel, 1641-42. Montrose Charter Room, Napier, i. pp. 295-297.
MONTROSE AND NAPIER IMPRISONED (1641). 89
Whatever the document really was, it seemed like an attempt by Montrose's friends to secure office at the expense of Argyll, and the matter was carried to the long account of his enemies against Traquair. Lennox was more or less involved in an intrigue which employed so many of his clan. There are notes by Vane of a meeting of the English Privy Council on June 18, in which this business was discussed. Argyll, after the discovery of Walter Stewart's cyphered paper, appears to have informed Charles that he himself has been cleared (of the charge brought by Ladywell), by the Committee in Scotland. " He desires you to hear my Lord Traquair. A foolish business concerning Captain Walter Stewart. Whatsoever plot he was upon, your Majesty is not knowing of it, nor the Duke of Lennox. Great mistake." The notes are so confused that we cannot often tell who is being spoken about.21
The result was the separate caging of Montrose, Napier, Stirling of Keir, and Stewart of Blackball in the castle (June n). Montrose had certainly designed to denounce Argyll of treason in Parliament, on the strength of Ladywell's, and probably of other evidence. Ladywell, we see, recanted — he truckled to Argyll, but he was hanged for "leasing making." He was executed on July 28. Baillie writes " it is true that none ever died for no transgressions of that act" (against leasing making).22 However, "stone dead hath no fellow," and Ladywell (there is little reason to suspect that he had been tortured) was inconvenient to Argyll.* It was also convenient to keep Montrose and his friends in prison, to brand them as "plotters," and denounce them with fury.
Montrose declined the judicature of the Committee ; if tried he would be tried publicly, by his peers. Napier avoided the appear- ance of " contumacy," but gave negative answers without discussion. They had all, we saw, repudiated Walter Stewart's cypher, and the meaning which he chose to put upon it. Napier maintained, and his honour is not doubted, that if any were guilty he was, and he
* Ladywell's exoneration of Argyll was to the effect that his speeches about deposing kings, " I now having thought better of them, were general, of all kings : howsoever, by my foresaid prejudicate opinion of his Lordship's actions, I applied them to the present." He speaks of "my weakness, not being able either to stand or go." This suggests the Boot, but Guthry, who was with Ladywell on the scaffold, says nothing of torture, but of persuasion on hope of mercy (Guthry, pp. 93-95). He adds that Argyll consulted Hope, as to whether Ladywell might be spared: Hope and other lawyers replied, "it was necessary for Argyll's vindication that he should suffer. "
90 CHARLES IN SCOTLAND (1641).
could not be induced to accept release from prison as a favour. Napier's conduct was nobly constant ; he knew well why Argyll's Committee tried to separate him from Montrose. All the houses of Montrose were ransacked, and nothing worse was discovered than some old letters of euphuistic courtship. A copy of the harmless Cumbernauld band, with some of Montrose's thoughts on the subject, found in a charter chest, was made matter for outcry. On July 27 Montrose was called before Parliament. "My resolu- tion is," he said, " to carry along with me fidelity and honour to the grave." * He nobly kept his word. Such was the demeanour of this turn-coat plotter, as Montrose is called by the devotees of the Covenant.
Montrose lay in close confinement during the visit of the king to Scotland. Watched at Edinburgh by Hampden and other Commissioners from the English Parliament, Charles combined strenuous efforts to win popularity with feeble attempts to recover authority. Lennox, after some hesitation, signed the Covenant, as did Hamilton. There were festivals, much lip-loyalty, and the king almost convinced himself that all was going well. He attended the sermons of the preachers, and had to listen to abuse of bishops. Fanaticism had been making great progress. "The Lord's prayer began to grow out of fashion, as being a set form." 23 An Act for abolishing " monuments of idolatry " was passed.24 Already in the north, screens whose colours and gold had weathered the blasts in the roofless Cathedral of Elgin, were used as firewood. The ancient and beautiful seventh -century Cross of Ruthwell near Dumfries, with its Anglo-Saxon hymn in Runic characters, was broken into three pieces, f It had passed unscathed through the Border wars and the Reformation : it had for a thousand years proved that the dark ages knew more of art and poetry than Presbyterianism could provide or endure. In 1802 it found a shelter in the manse garden, and is now re-erected under the roof of the church. What the Vikings had spared in lona, with much work of later times, wild preachers desecrated and destroyed. In Aberdeen, Easter Day was perforce kept as a fast (1642), "no flesh durst be sold in Aberdeen," says Spalding.
* The report from the MS. in the Cumbernauld Charter Chest is published by Mr Napier, i. p. 346. Balfour, iii. 30.
t For a picture of the cross and decipherment, see Stephens's ' Handbook to the Runic Monuments,' p. 130.
DANGER OF MONTROSE (1641). gi
While Charles was in Edinburgh, old Lady Huntly was driven into exile to escape excommunication. Catholics were boycotted, and their property was confiscated. Charles accepted an Act by which he must choose his officers of State subject to consent of Parliament. Argyll now denounced one of these officers, Morton, who had brought him up.25 The barons wished to give their votes on election of officers by ballot, Charles decried this as cowardly. Morton begged leave to refuse office as Chancellor, he did not wish to be a cause of trouble.26 It will be remembered that while Roxburgh, "that awful man," had refused the Covenant, his son, Lord Ker, had taken it. But Ker now challenged Hamilton as a traitor to the king, for both Hamilton and his brother Lanark, the secretary, were suspected by all who held the ideas of Napier and Montrose. Ker was constrained to apologise before the House, and the Estates passed an Act acquitting Hamilton.27 Meanwhile the battle over the appointment of officers of State raged, and even in Balfour's brief jottings of the debates we see that the king's self-control nearly broke down. Would they accept Loudoun as chancellor, yes or no ? He pressed for a reply, " else he protested to God he would name none more to them."28
Meanwhile, what of "the plotters"? On August 28, Napier, Keir, and Stewart of Blackball were brought to Parliament, where Charles encouraged them by taking off his hat, and nodding in a kindly way ; but the hearing of their case was ever postponed.29 Sir Patrick Wemyss (September 25) wrote to Ormonde saying that the king had " engaged his royal promise to Montrose, not to leave the kingdom till he come to his trial. For if he leave him, all the world will not save his life."30 Would Charles be more loyal to Montrose than to Strafford ? The world knows by what chicanery Strafford was brought to the block ; doubtless Argyll would have found out a way for Montrose thither, as in the case of Ladywell. Perhaps Montrose, in criticising Argyll and Hamilton, and in accusing Argyll, had been guilty of " leasing making," and so might be righteously executed. But it was infinitely desirable that he should not speak in his defence, publicly, before his peers. "If this be what you call liberty," said the Earl of Perth, " God send me the old slavery again." 31 If Montrose lost his head for what he had done, then, as Argyll's Celts boasted, Scotland would serve King Campbell, not King Stuart.
While Loudoun had become Chancellor, Charles had nominated
92 MYSTERY OF "THE INCIDENT" (1641).
Lord Almond as Treasurer. Perhaps because Almond had signed the Cumbernauld band, perhaps because he was not of the Argyll clique, or merely because the king had proposed him, Parliament resisted Almond's appointment. At this juncture, when the most that Charles could hope for was to save the lives and estates of men like Montrose and Napier, when Hamilton had secured himself by an alliance with Argyll, and when men like the Earl of Perth were dreading the new " liberty " more than the old slavery, a dramatic event — did not occur. In place of a successful return to the old Scottish methods of kidnapping or assassinating, a feeble effort was made to revive these practices, and the result was THE INCIDENT.
The exact truth about this mismanaged mystery can never, perhaps, be ascertained. In exploring the evidence we meet cur- rents of cross-swearing; where only two witnesses can speak to certain details, they flatly contradict each other. Probably the first symptom of a brewing plot (which seems to have been overlooked by historians) occurs in a speech of the Chancellor Loudoun on October 5. He "remonstrated to the king and Parliament that there was a great confluence of people of late come into the town, upon what ground he did not know." A proclamation was issued against the gathering.32 Later we shall find that Hamilton and Argyll were said to have 5000 of their "friends" concealed in the city. It was the Scottish custom in any crisis to collect "friends." Ker is said to have been accompanied by 600 men when he apologised to Hamilton, and Hamilton also was accompanied by many gentlemen of his name.
The first overt movement was on October 12, when Charles, with some 500 gentlemen not of the godliest, went down to the House. He told the Estates that he had come to Scotland with intent to "settle their religion and liberties," and that he had done it. "None should ever draw him from that." "Yet, my Lords, I must needs tell you a very strange story. Yesternight " (October 1 1) " my Lord Hamilton came to me, I being walking in the garden, with a petition of very small moment, and thereafter in a philosophical and parabolical way, such as he sometimes had used, he began a very strange discourse to me," to the effect that enemies had provoked the queen against him by calumnies, and so he requested permission to leave Court that night.33 Next day (October 12) Hamilton, Lanark, and Argyll retired to Hamilton's house of Kinneil, some twenty .miles away. On the i2th, therefore, the advanced party found itself
"THE INCIDENT." 93
deprived of its leader, the extremely cautious Argyll, while he, Hamilton, and Lanark were to be regarded as victims of an intended plot. Their partisans would, of course, suspect the complicity of the king with the conspirators. Now Charles, as reported by Balfour in the passage just cited, knew not a word of a plot against the life or liberty of Hamilton ; but merely that he complained of having been traduced to the queen. Charles then produced a letter, full of loyalty, written to him by Hamilton, and received that day. " With tears in his eyes," the king complained of Hamilton's distrust of him: he had taken Hamilton, when accused of treasonable projects, to sleep in his chamber : yet his friend held him in suspicion.84
Our next source is in the statements of Hamilton and Lanark, written from their retreat at " Keneel," on October 22. Lanark had found, before October u, that Charles had some suspicions both of himself and his brother ; " he was pleased to say that he thought me to be an honest man, and that he had never heard anything to the contrary ; but that he thought my brother had been very active in his own preservation," a phrase already cited. Days went on after Charles spoke thus, and Lanark hoped that an accommodation with Parliament was probable, when all was ruined by The Incident of October 1 1. On that day Leslie had sent for Hamilton and Argyll to come to him privily.
In the circumstances now to be related, Leslie ought at once to have told to the king what he proceeded, on October u, to tell to Hamilton and Argyll. But " he said for excuse that he thought it a foolish business, and therefore omitted it."85
Going to Leslie's rooms, on October 1 1, Argyll and Hamilton had found him with Colonel Hurry, who " told them," says Lanark, " that there was a plot, that same night, to cut the throats both of Argyll, my brother, and myself." This fact Hurry had learned from Captain William Stewart, " who should have been an actor in it." The three nobles were to be inveigled into a room at Holyrood, as if to speak to the king on business. Two lords were to enter by a garden door (as Ruthven entered Mary's cabinet on the night of Riccio's murder) ; they were to be followed, as in that old crime, by a large company, who would slay Hamilton, Lanark, and Argyll, or convey them on board a ship of the royal navy. As there was but one witness, Hurry, Hamilton had told the king, in the garden, "in general, that he had heard there was some plot intended against his life."
94 "THE INCIDENT."
According to Charles, as reported by Balfour, and more fully by Nicholas, Hamilton then spoke only of being calumniated, and of desiring to retire on that score, and, from a letter of Hamilton's presently to be cited, it seems that he said no more than this. But Hamilton's speech, the king said, was "problematical." Later, on October n, Captain William Stewart confirmed Hurry's tale, and Hamilton and Argyll, sending for Lanark to Lindsay's house, told him all, and the three took measures for their safety. Next day (October 12) they wrote to the king, who, dissatisfied with their letters, went straight to Parliament, as we saw, with his " very strange story." In his escort were men whom Hurry and Captain Stewart had denounced. To avoid tumult, the three menaced noblemen did not go to the House " with our friends at our backs," but retired, as has been seen, to Kinneil. " I am most confident," adds Lanark, " his Majesty knows not of any such base design (if any such there were), yet I may say he injures himself much in striving to protect those that are accused."36
Charles, as a matter of fact, was praying Parliament vainly for a public trial of the case. On October 22 Hamilton also wrote, from Kinneil, to the king — to whom Lanark wrote we do not know. From Hamilton's letter of October 22, it seems that, in the garden, he only told Charles vaguely " that I knew not when I should be so happy as to attend on your Majesty again." Thus Charles did not know, from Hamilton, in the garden, on October n, that there was "some plot intended against his life." Nor did Hamilton tell Charles later, on that night, when he had now two witnesses, Hurry and Captain William Stewart, to his story. The king knew nothing : but next day Argyll sent a Mr Maule with all that they had learned. Hamilton explains that he left the town, on the i2th, to avoid a street fight, and he protested that he was not base enough to suspect the king's knowledge of the conspiracy.37 No more is known of Mr Maule, but his message proved to Charles that Hamilton was suspicious of a plot against his life and Argyll's.
We now come to the evidence of Captain William Stewart, interrogated by a Committee of the House, on October 12. He said that at nine o'clock P.M. of the previous day, he and Hurry were summoned to speak to Lieutenant-Colonel Alexander Stewart, who offered them drink. Both declined ; Hurry because he was to dine with the Earl of Crawford at eleven, a very early hour. Hurry departed, but Colonel Alexander Stewart took the captain to his
"THE INCIDENT." 95
rooms, where he revealed the plot, saying that Lord Almond was to take the rdle of entering from the garden, that he would denounce Hamilton and Argyll, and, with a force of three or four hundred men, convey them to a ship. William Murray, of the king's bed- chamber, was to lure the two nobles into a drawing-room proper for the purpose of kidnapping them, and the Earl of Crawford, recently returned from the Imperial Service, was to command the four hundred men. Crawford was for killing the nobles ; Almond intended merely to have them legally tried. Captain Stewart (though at feud with Argyll for the death of Ladywell and captivity of Stewart of Blackhall) refused to be concerned, but said that he might appear at Crawford's rooms where Hurry was to dine. On October 21 Captain William Stewart, again examined, gave similar evidence before a secret Committee of the House, for the public trial demanded by Charles was not granted. The captain now said that he had revealed all to Hurry, bidding him tell Leslie, which, as we know, he did, and Leslie then told Argyll and Hamilton. On October 12 Lieutenant-Colonel Robert Home, being examined, implicated Colonel Cochrane, who declared that William Murray had taken him to the king's bedside, for what purpose Cochrane did not say. On October n, however, Colonel Cochrane had sent for Home to come to Crawford's rooms, where he promised to make Home's fortune ; but Home declined to listen to his plan. Hurry, on the 1 2th and later, corroborated Captain Stewart ; he had been approached by Crawford, but declined to deal with him, though by Leslie's permission he dined with the earl. He declared that Crawford asked him to come to him "early next morning" (the 1 2th) "with three or four good fellows, and it would be a means to make him a fortune." But the plot, if plot there ever had been, was for the night of August 1 1 ! Hurry did not go, as he heard a guess that Crawford meant to liberate Montrose from the castle, and attack Argyll on October 12. If so, this was a second plot.
On October 22 Lieutenant -Colonel Alexander Stewart, under examination, gave his account of his interview on October 1 1 with Captain William Stewart. The captain had spoken ill of Hamilton, and said that he certainly was a traitor. But he despaired of success in petitioning Charles for the release of his own uncle, Stewart of Blackhall, "for the marquis" (Hamilton) "is of such power with the king," adding "all was true that my uncle said" against Hamilton. Captain Stewart then informed the colonel that
96 CRAWFORD'S EVIDENCE (1641).
the town was full of Argyll's and Hamilton's men to the number of 5000. Now five days earlier, Loudoun had told the king and the House that " there was a great confluence of people lately, upon what ground he did not know." ^ The Royalists maintained that Argyll and Hamilton did not wish for a happy accommodation with the king, and that The Incident exactly suited their designs. Hamilton and Argyll may have gathered their men into the town to attain their purpose in another way, by force, or they may have heard of an attempt to be made against themselves. The colonel replied to the captain that if Hamilton and Argyll made any treasonable enter- prise, Home, Roxburgh, Almond, and Mar could raise their counties against them, and Crawford would help. They could seize Hamilton in his coach, or in the king's rooms, " if the king were out of the way." They would carry their prisoner to a ship, and kill him, in the German fashion, if a strong rescue were attempted. Though the captain and the colonel thus differed widely in details, yet the idea of the plot clearly remained the same. It might be defensive, against the 5000 of Hamilton and Argyll, or these 5000 may have been summoned in anticipation of a Royalist attack.
When Crawford was examined (October 23), our knowledge of the plot was carried a day farther back, to Sunday, October 10. On that day the earl, and William Murray of the royal bedchamber, met Lords Ogilvy (of the bonnie House of Airlie), Gray, Almond, and Colonel Cochrane, and Murray asked the company if they had heard of a letter from Montrose to the king offering to accuse Hamilton of treason. (No such letter is known to have been written by Montrose.) Almond thought the charge improbable. As to his talk with Hurry on October n, Crawford said that it merely concerned the colonel's desire to serve abroad ; Lieutenant- Colonel Stewart had the same purpose. On Monday night (the nth) he and his friends met and drank at Cochrane's rooms. (By this time they must have known, through William Murray, of Hamilton's visit to the king in Holyrood gardens, that Hamilton had suspicions, and that the game was up.) On October 27 Crawford admitted that, from the talk held on Sunday night (October 10), he gathered that there might be an idea of arresting Hamilton. He had no further information. He " did not remember " having talked about cutting the throats of traitors. His request to Hurry to come with three or four others on the morning of the i2th, referred only to the purpose of their taking foreign service, which is
MURRAY'S EVIDENCE (1641). 97
natural enough, as the i2th would have been "the day after the fair." The nobles were to have been seized on the night of October 1 1 ; on the 1 2th they decamped.
On October 23 and 27 Cochrane implicated William Murray as having spoken to him about the desirableness of "sequestrating" Hamilton and Argyll, and as having sounded him about his regiment, then quartered at Musselburgh. He had made no attempt to tamper with Lieutenant -Colonel Home, and on Monday morning (October n), near Holyrood, had told Crawford that he would have nothing to do with "cutting of throats." He denied that he had been with Almond, Crawford, Murray, and the others on the Sunday night (October 10), and Crawford had already withdrawn his original statement that Cochrane was there. On October 23-27 William Murray said that, by Cochrane's repeated desire, he had taken him into the king's bedroom, where he had an interview with his Majesty. As to Hamilton and Argyll, he himself, he confessed, had said that if they really were traitors, they should be legally "sequestrated." On Sunday, October 10, his business with Almond was to tell him that the king wished him to resign the treasurership, the royal nomination being opposed by the House. A letter of Montrose to the king was spoken of, Murray saying that his Majesty would be loth to interrupt peaceful negotiations by noticing it. No names of Hamilton or others were mentioned in Montrose's letter (though historians are apt to say that Hamilton was named). Murray denied all knowledge of the plan that he should lure Hamilton and Argyll into a room where they should be arrested. He could not be expected to confess to that.
On October 25 Murray said that he had visited Montrose "casually" in the castle, and that the earl had wished to see the king. He had " high " matters to reveal. Murray offered to carry a note; next day a letter came from Montrose to the king, who thought the matter " neither so home, nor so high " as Murray had led him to expect. This letter, and another, the king regarded as deserving of neglect, for a man in Montrose's position " would say very much to have the liberty to come to his Majesty's presence." Murray sent information to this effect to Montrose on Saturday (October 9). About four o'clock P.M. on Monday, October 1 1, a third letter came from Montrose, which both the king and Murray thought worthy of consideration. Next morning Charles said that he thought of communicating the letter to Loudoun, Lennox, Argyll, Roxburgh,
VOL. III. G
98 THE "INCIDENT" NEVER UNRIDDLED.
Morton, and Leslie, with whom he would confront Montrose. But by that time (Tuesday the 1 2th) the nobles had fled.
This is the sum of the depositions : the document ends with a tabular arrangement of the contradictions in the evidence.39 The papers, published in 1874, were found among the MSS. of the House of Lords. The attention of the Estates was henceforth turned to The Incident. Charles said that he would not tell what he knew of Hamilton ; why Argyll had fled he could not say ; of Lanark he knew nothing but good. He could not tell what Cochrane had communicated to him in his bedroom, without Cochrane's permission. The king constantly demanded a public inquiry, even with tears in his eyes. " What would they grant him if not this, where his honour was concerned ? " Mary Stuart had as vainly appealed for a public hearing. They who refuse it, as the House did refuse it, confess, if not their guilt, their apprehensions. They chose, as Charles said, anticipating Bunyan, " a private way to Hell." The " private way," the secret inquiry, of which we have given the results, led to a blank wall, as we have seen in the depositions. Montrose's letter of the nth to the king was read; therein he had spoken of "a business which did concern the standing and falling of his crown." Montrose, examined, refused to be explicit. He would not wrong any particular person. This was not deemed satisfactory.40
In the end (November 15), Montrose, his friends, Sir Robert Spottiswoode and Sir John Hay (incendiaries), were released " under caution " ; Montrose, after seven months' imprisonmen^ had no trial.
The Incident remains as dark as ever it was. It is needless to discuss Clarendon's absurd statement that Montrose, in an interview with the king, offered to assassinate Hamilton and Argyll. Mr Gardiner has scouted this piece of gossip.41 William Murray, the groom of the bedchamber, had ever been suspected of treachery to the king. Crawford was a hot-headed soldier, who, if he meant a plot for the night of the nth, did not even recruit leaders till the morning of that day, when a crowd of Dalgettys dined with him.
The peculiarity of the whole affair is that there seem to have been several threads of enterprise, which no one hand held. Montrose, like Stewart of Blackball, knew, or, with the hopefulness of a prisoner, thought that he knew, enough to ruin perhaps Hamilton and perhaps Argyll. Had the plot succeeded, whether in
WILLIAM MURRAY SUSPECTED (1641). 99
Almond's more or less legal sense, or in Crawford's throat-cutting style, and had Charles listened to the prayers of Montrose, by the 1 2th of October Hamilton and Argyll would, if alive, have been prisoners, and Montrose would have been free to bring his charges in Parliament The king's pathetic requests for an open trial prove that nothing, in his opinion, could come out against his own honour. The usual stupidity of conspirators declared itself in the senseless conduct of Crawford, if the evidence against him be accepted. It seems not inconceivable that Murray arranged the whole affair, behind Charles's back, to give Hamilton an opportunity for dis- crediting, by the conspiracy, both his opponents and the king. Murray was suspected, we know, of picking Charles's pockets of letters, in the Covenanting interest. Clarendon accuses him of betraying the king's raid on the Five Members (in 1642), and perhaps the theory that he was the root of The Incident, though difficult, is not the most difficult explanation. Nothing, to our knowledge, was even hinted against Montrose, at the time ; the charge against him is due merely to the blunder of Clarendon. Against this conjecture a point must be noted. Murray, just after The Incident, rose in the king's favour. On November u Wise- man wrote to Penington, " Old William Murray, a friend told me, was this day sworn from a groom to be gentleman of the king's bedchamber ; if true, such a mark of trust has not been known to be given to men of his quality." ^ Murray had been with Montrose, with the king, with Cochrane, with all concerned, whether as agent provocateur, or as manager of a plot, differently viewed by different men engaged. But he increased in favour.
Another question is, What could Montrose know against Hamilton, now allied with Argyll ? Judging from, the charges brought against the marquis on a later day, Montrose knew no more than that he had ever been a treacherous double-dealer. Before the Assembly of 1638, he had privately, as a kindly Scotsman, advised the Covenanting leaders to go on with courage and resolution ; " if you faint and give ground in the least, you are undone." Montrose was Guthry's authority for this statement, having been present, and heard Hamilton's words. In 1643 the second charge against Hamilton was that he had said, " If they awed the king, he was such a coward, they might have of him what they would." This clearly refers to the story of his private advice, to the same effect, to the Covenanting leaders in 1638. Guthry reports the tale of
IOO IRISH REBELLION (1641).
1638, first on the evidence of Andrew Cant, given to him and others on the day after Hamilton spoke the words, and of Montrose, who " drew him to a window," at supper, and told him all, on the same day as Cant spoke to him.* There was no time for hallucina- tion of memory on the part of Cant and Montrose. Montrose, then, knew this treachery of Hamilton's, and would have revealed it to Charles, in October 1641. Probably he had no better evidence against Hamilton. In any case, the king continued to trust the marquis, while, on January 27, 1642, he sent to Montrose a verbal message by Mungo Murray, thanking him for his sufferings in his cause, and expressing reliance on his generosity, in a letter.43 The result of The Incident was to make the king hated and suspected, most unjustly.
While the inquiry into The Incident was at its height (October 28), Charles announced the news of the Irish Rebellion. Tradition, in Wodrow, says that the news was brought to him while he was playing a match at golf, and that he finished his game. Into the question whether the king had himself lit the flame of the Irish outbreak, we have not to go. The news excited England, then seething with remonstrances, tumults, the three-cornered duel of Puritans, Episcopalians, and Sectaries, and with terror caused by The Incident, and the usual dread of a massacre of 100,000 persons by the Papists. The Irish Rebellion in many ways resembled the Indian Mutiny, and, of course, increased jealousy of the king. Charles hurriedly abandoned everything to Argyll and the Estates, tossed about honours, making Argyll a Marquis,44 Leslie Earl of Leven, Waristoun a Knight, and so, on November 18, hurried back to England.!
Here it may be well to mark the effect of the Irish risings on political events. The precise number of English and Scots massacred, tortured, or left to die of cold and hunger, is matter of dispute. Mr Gardiner's remarks (x. pp. 64-69) are cautious,
* Guthry, pp. 40, 41. Burnet, 'Mem. Ham.,' pp. 254, 255. Sir James Turner gives Guthry the lie, because, he says, this charge was not urged in 1643. But it was. Turner, ' Memoirs,' pp. 234, 235.
t An odd reason is given by Patrick Gordon of Ruthven, for Argyll's accept- ance of the new title. The Argylls have usually been quite Celtic enough to lean to the second sight. " A cuss in ane old prophecie," says Gordon, declared that "the red-haired and squint-eyed Earl of Argyll should be the last Earl of Argyll," and the "cuss" was to be outflanked and turned by the new title. Argyll's son was earl, and the prophecy was false all round. ' Britane's Distemper,' p. 57.
GENERAL CONFUSION (1641-1642). IOI
yet 20,000 dead seems to be about his estimate. Mr Livingstone of Ancrum, a famous Covenanting preacher, says that some Scots in Ulster found the Scottish Covenanter army of revenge and relief more burdensome than the rebels had been. But what occurred was less important than what was believed. Horrible cruelties and outrages were attributed to the Irish, and it was taken for granted that every Irish or Scoto-Irish soldier or woman who came to aid the royal cause in England or Scotland, or to accompany her husband, had been engaged in the massacres. At all events each man, woman, and camp-follower was Papist and Celtic : in Scotland the men receive the worst character for lust and cruelty, from a Royalist writer, Patrick Gordon; and though these Irish troops were brave and well drilled, the Covenanters massacred them and their women, both in hot blood and in cold blood. They were looked on as Sepoys would have been, had Sepoys been brought from India, after the Mutiny, to take part in a British civil war.
To return to home affairs. A Commission of fifty-six members of the Estates was left in Scotland, as " Conservators of the Peace " (the details of the Army Treaty with England), and they governed the country. In London, Charles tried to win popularity with the city, and was countered by the passing of the Remonstrance, by the demand of Parliament for control over the militia, and over appointments to State offices, by riots near the palace, and the rising fury of the country on religious questions. All parties except the Sectaries were resolute against the toleration of any religion except their own, in each case. Parliament grasped at the executive. The queen's feeble plottings were known : the outcry of a popish conspiracy to murder everybody was raised : Parliament demanded a trained-band guard : the Commons clamoured for the blood of priests : in brief, the wound of the sting which the dis- carded Church had left in England was festering and inflamed. Civil war was at the gates. The Scottish Commissioners in London, allies of the English Parliament, were concerned about Ireland, and about religion. The English lords "preferred that Ireland should remain in rebellion, rather than that it should be conquered by Presbyterian Scotland. The Commons preferred that it should remain in rebellion rather than that the king should have an army at his disposal which he might employ against the liberties of England." «
IO2 STATE OF THE COUNTRY (1642).
In the matter of religion the Scottish Commissioners irritated the king by printing a discourse in favour of Presbyterianism (January 15, 1642). They had complained of English interference with the Kirk, why must they meddle with the Church ? Whatever might have been the case in Scotland, Episcopacy was by law established in England. Charles did not acknowledge that in England he was but a Baal-worshipper. He sent Mungo Murray to Scotland with a letter to Loudoun, the chancellor, on this matter : he also, as we saw, sent comforting words to Montrose.46 Motions towards uniformity of religion between the two countries Charles let pass. In April 1642, Scottish forces under Leven (Leslie) passed into Ireland. Charles himself wished to venture thither : this, of course, was not permitted, for Charles might clear his character as a Protestant, or he might win over the army. In any case the affair of the five members (January 1642), and of the attempt by the king on Hull, and his retiral to York, with the queen's to the Continent, had indicated that peace between him and his Parliament was a forlorn hope. Scotland refused to aid her prince. Baillie expresses the idea of the Covenanters. Prelacy must fall, for if Charles conquered in England, he would withdraw all that he had granted to Scotland.47 Hamilton was sent to Scot- land to do what he could, which was to do as he had ever done, and to engage his daughter to wed Argyll's eldest son, Lord Lome.48
The General Assembly met at St Andrews (July 27, 1642), with Dunfermline as Royal Commissioner. The heads of the Assembly were full of politics. In May the Scottish Privy Council had met, to do what they could for the royal cause, and the "Banders" (Montrose's party of the Cumbernauld band) had nocked into Edinburgh " with great backs " — that is, with armed retainers. Greater " backs " came to oppose the Council from Fife, the focus of Presbyterianism, and a petition of the banders, against giving armed aid to the English Parliament (May 25), was rejected, nor did the Council dare to " assay any accommodation." 49
Here it may be noted that, though Fife was the focus of Presbyterianism, and St Andrews its sacred town, yet "we found there," says Baillie, "in the people much profanity in ignorance, swearing, drunkenness, and the faults of the worst burghs." The records of the St Andrews kirk- sessions justify this description. " Notorious vices abound in the land," said the committee of this Assembly, and presbyteries are to give up to justice the names
PRESBYTERIAN MORALS (1642). 1 03
of "the adulterers, incestuous, witches, and sorcerers."50 Drink was also abounding. We later shall find all this corroborated by a letter from an English soldier in Scotland.
Now it is the way of the best historians, as of Mr Gardiner, to applaud the " never resting, ever abiding power " of the preachers, which " pried into men's lives and called them to account for their deeds as no lay government, however arbitrary, could venture to do." Though England, having already a virtuous middle class, did not need, and finally rejected Presbyterian inquisition, still in Scotland, thought Mr Gardiner, it had abated the excesses of "the fierce ruffians who, in the sixteenth century, had reddened the country with the feuds of noble houses," and of "the rude peasants who wallowed in impurity." The moral saviours of Scotland were, on this theory, the preachers. With all respect for the clergy, who meant well, it appears that neither the cessation of feuds nor of " wallowing in impurity " was due to their exertions. King James's mounted police and forty years of intercourse with civilised England gradually diminished the feuds, which now took the form of Argyll's burnings and plunderings, of the fire of Frendraght, and the Huntly-Forbes feud, and of Montrose's later retaliations. As for "impurity," people "wallowed" in it just as much as ever : public penances had no better effect on the morals of lads and lasses than on those of Robert Burns, while " the abund- ance and increase of the sin of witchcraft in this time of Reforma- tion is to be taken to heart by this reverend Assembly (i643)."61 Batches of witches were burned. Yet witches did not decrease in number any more than incest, adultery, simple fornication, and drunkenness decreased. Major Weir was a pearl of devoutness, but not incapable of " impurity " and witchcraft A people cannot be persecuted into propriety ; and the Presbyterian discipline was not only intolerable, but a failure. It is not by espionnage that religion works for righteousness.
The Assembly of 1642 began by taking severe measures against Papists and other non -communicants. They supplicated the king to labour for " blessed Unity in Religion, and Uniformity in Church Government," that is, of course, for the establishment of Presby- terianism in England. If he consented, the tumults of resistance would be but "as the voice of a great thunder before the voice of harpers harping with their harps, which shall fill the whole island with melody and mirth." The difficulty was that the king, and
104 ASSEMBLY AND PARLIAMENT (1642).
a great party, did not want Presbyterian mirth, which was equally undesired by the Sectaries, or Independents, of all colours.52
The question of Patronage, which in the nineteenth century helped to split the Kirk into two, came up, and Argyll offered popular election, if "intrants would accept modified stipends." Lauderdale opposed, Baillie was not satisfied, and the matter dropped.53 The English Parliament sent to the Assembly their petition to the king for peace : rendered impossible by bishops, Papists, " the corrupt and dissolute clergy," and, generally, by Malignants. Many bishops had been impeached and imprisoned, and Malignants resented it.
Get animal est tres mechant Si Ton 1'attaque il se defend.
The Assembly replied that, for anything they knew to the contrary, the Lord had a controversy with England for not being Presby- terian, and the controversy might not cease "till the government of his House be settled according to His own will," which is Presbyterian. On December 25, 1566, the Assembly had written a letter to England "against the Surplice, Tippet, Corner-cap," and other stones of stumbling, which they appear to have regarded as especially odious to the Supreme Being. They had on other occasions interfered with the English Church in this friendly way, and " were heartened to renew the proposition " for making Presby- terianism universal and compulsory : " the Prelatical Hierarchy being put out of the way," and deposited elsewhere. The Reformed Churches, the preachers argued, held their organisations to be jure divino, whereas most of the bishops, even, recognised that their system was "introduced by human reason." Therefore "no man's conscience" could possibly be aggrieved by the desirable reformation ! The Kirk would be happy to " agree upon a common confession of faith, catechism, and directory for worship."54
The gentlewomen in Galloway had been rioting in church " with clubs and staves," against certain proceedings of the Kirk herself. As Prelacy was not the victim of their clubs, their conduct was reckoned unbecoming.55
Lord Maitland (later Lauderdale) carried the Kirk's letter to the English Parliament, and brought back their reply to the Commission and the General Assembly, a body which, says Baillie, "was of so high a strain, that to some it is terrible already." In a few years it came to be regarded as tyrannical even by Mr
TYRANNY OF PREACHERS (1642). 105
Spang, Baillie's cousin and correspondent. The English "granted all our desire, in abolishing of bishops," and required the attendance of some of the brethren at their synod, the Assembly of Divines at Westminster. Henderson, Douglas, the emotional Rutherford, Gillespie, and Baillie were chosen to go, for the preachers : Cassilis, the pious Maitland, and Waristoun, for the laity. The early fights of the great rebellion had taken place : the Court was at Oxford, and what Hamilton did for his king in Scotland was to " keep down the malcontents " (Montrose's party) in union with Argyll. So Baillie tells us.56 Things going ill with the Parliament, they appealed in a letter to Scotland for aid : Charles replied, on his side, and Hamilton persuaded the Council to print the royal declaration (December 20, 1642). Argyll was for publishing the Parliament's note as well as the king's, or neither; and, against the Council's desire to publish the king's alone, the usual agitation was organised (January 1643). A petition in favour of this course was put in by the Covenanters, and a counter- petition was drawn up by Traquair and Hamilton. This " was flown upon by the Commissioners" (of the Assembly) "and Conservators of the Peace" (the standing committee of the Estates), says Baillie. The Traquair document merely expressed a hope that nothing would be done to weaken Scottish loyalty to their king.67 A petition could not be more temperate, courteous, and conciliatory. But it was " flown upon."
The right of petition was denied by the Kirk party to their fellow - citizens, who were threatened with citation before the General Assembly, which probably meant excommunication and outlawry. By " the new liberty " a mere political move was to be judged of by the preachers ! The petitioners declared that (as bound by the Covenant) they would defend the king's authority and person. They objected to " imposing rules or laws of reformation to our neighbour kingdom," and probably that was their chief offence. In reply the Kirk party "took a very good and necessary, but a most peremptory and extraordinary course," says Baillie.58 They published " A Necessary Warning " to be read in all pulpits, bidding the presbyteries to take measures against all who tried to procure signatures to Traquair's petition. We may imagine what historians would say had Charles tried to stop, by the agency of the bishops, the signing of the " supplications " of 1638-1640.
106 MONTROSE DISREGARDED (1643).
The governing faction of Scotland found in the Kirk a useful instrument of political tyranny. They sent Loudoun, Henderson, a Mr Barclay, and Waristoun, to the king as mediators for peace on the basis of Presbyterian uniformity in England, and to ask for an Assembly and a Parliament. Meanwhile (February 1643) Ogilvy and Aboyne went to Charles at Oxford, while Montrose met the queen on her return from abroad. Her Majesty had landed in Burlington Bay, where Vice- Admiral Batten, for the Parliament, fired into her bedroom, and drove her into the fields.59
Montrose advised the queen, at York, to strike the first blow in Scotland, otherwise the Covenanters would assuredly send an army to help the Parliament.60 But Montrose was not heard till too late. Hamilton and Traquair hurried to York with the opposite advice ; from the first, in spite of every failure, the marquis believed in his own powers of intrigue as more potent than the sword,
Charles had secured the "cessation" of war in Ireland: trafficking with idolaters for an armistice, he could now release his army in Ireland to defend Episcopacy in England. It is vain to say that he might have made "concessions to Puritanism in London." No party of his subjects would be satisfied to let other parties be religious in their own way. Abolition of bishops " out of the way " (into the next world, probably) was the only concession that would satisfy the preciser sort. Charles could not meet them here, but he now rejected the idea of Montrose — to strike the first blow in Scotland, — the only practical idea, and he had cause, as usual, to repent having listened to Hamilton. Montrose, to be sure, would have enlisted Catholics, but they had as good a right to their creed as Baillie or Argyll — a point apt to be overlooked. Yet if the Argyll of 1685 might recruit murderers, like Balfour called Burley, and Fleming, it would appear that a king might use the arms of his Catholic and guiltless subjects.
The Scottish Commissioners were " uncomfortable " at Oxford, Baillie says : Charles would not let them go to meet the Parliament in London ; and, when they persisted, the Earl of Crawford told them that their throats would be cut on the way. Crawford had this very practical idea.61 The Commissioners therefore returned to Scotland, and, on May 10, resolved to summon a Convention of Estates for June 22. Meanwhile the Kirk party of politicians knew that Montrose was on bad terms with Hamilton, and they approached him with offers of promotion by their faction. Probably nothing
A CONVENTION (1643). !°7
was said or done by them that could not be disclaimed ; but enough passed to cause a rumour that Montrose " had struck up an alliance with certain persons " — so the queen wrote to him from York (May 3i).62 Guthry tells that Argyll's faction, through Sir James Rollock and Sir Mungo Campbell, offered to pay Montrose's debts, and make him Lieutenant -General, under Leven, if he would join them. Montrose, to drive time, gave an indecisive answer, and expressed a wish to consult the preacher, Henderson, on the return of the Commissioners from Oxford. After summoning, by their own authority, the Convention for June 22, the Covenanters sent Henderson to meet Montrose at Stirling Bridge.63 Wishart, who was deep in Montrose's confidence, tells a similar tale, and adds that the earl hoped to fish out from Henderson the Kirk party's secrets. Henderson replied to Montrose that his party meant to aid the English Parliament with as strong an army as possible, and hoped for the earl's help. Not knowing how to answer without either a dishonourable promise or a blunt refusal, Montrose asked Rollock whether Henderson had a commission to make his offers ? Sir James thought that he had ; Henderson denied it, but expected that the Convention would make good his promises. All this was vague ; and indeed, without consulting Henderson, Montrose could easily guess the designs of his party.64
Charles, before the Convention of June met, had issued a declaration to the Scots, proclaiming his own wrongs at the hands of Parliament. He assured the Presbyterians that the fomenters of the war were not of their faith, and never would be — they were Sectaries of all kinds. It would have been well for the Scots had they believed the king; but the glorious prospect of spreading Presbyterianism dazzled them. The king added that he was maliciously accused of having an army of Papists, who were regarded by the godly much as Basuto and Zulu troops are regarded by the white races of South Africa. No one could wonder, Charles said, if he received assistance from any of his subjects, whatever their creed (Captain Smith, a Catholic, had rescued the royal standard at Edgehill) ; but in fact he had forbidden Papists to repair to him. Meanwhile Papists were fighting for the Parliament — his men had captured twenty or thirty of them. He solemnly protested his loyalty to the Acts of the late Scottish Parliament.65
For his part, Hamilton advised the king to allow the Scottish Estates to meet in June, provided they did nothing towards raising
108 TERRORS OF THE GODLY (1643).
forces for the use of his enemies. The Estates did meet, and voted themselves in possession of all sorts of powers. Hamilton had not the courage to protest, formally, but he feebly demurred. For a long series of such services he had lately been created a duke. Burnet explains that Charles was resolved, as in the first bishops' war, not to be the first to strike a blow, which was not wise in a military sense, and, politically, was futile. Hamilton was a veteran in the art of not striking blows ; though, as Montrose said in a copy of verses, he had just " fleshed his maiden sword," at York, — in a dog ! w
Meanwhile, in early July, the incompetent Scoto-Irish Royalist, the Earl of Antrim, a Macdonnell, was caught near Knockfergus, with letters from Nithsdale, Aboyne, and others in his pockets. He had, or was said to have, a commission to treat with the Irish rebels : Monroe, the Scottish Covenanting commander, was to be bribed to carry Charles's Irish army to England — if he declined, the Scots of Ulster were to be massacred ; Charles's forces were to sail to the Solway, Nithsdale with the Maxwells was to join them; the Macdonalds, under young Colkitto ("left handed" or " ambidextrous " Col, of the Islay family), and Clan Gilzean were to assail the Campbells ; Huntly, Aboyne, Montrose, and Marischal were to raise the North. " Great probability for all this, albeit no certain evidence can be had for some parts of it," says Baillie.67 He adds that Huntly had marred all by refusing to aid — very like Huntly ; and hints that this refusal drove Montrose to his conference with Henderson. As it was also -said that Hamilton was to rise in arms — the very thing which he had prevented Montrose from doing, — we may deem it probable that the discovery of this large Royalist scheme was exaggerated, though Montrose, Aboyne, Huntly, and others had certainly been together at Aberdeen, in the early June.68 But this was after the queen heard that Montrose " had struck up an alliance" with the Kirk party (May 31). About July 9 the Royalist scheme was announced, and when the Convention met, they sent the papers seized on Antrim to the English Parliament. They had now a good certain Popish plot such as their souls loved. The Papists were resolved "utterly to extirpate the true Protestant religion in England, Scotland, and Ireland " — D'Ewes recorded this terrible fact in his diary.69 Such were the habitual tremors of the truly pious, who found in them a fearful joy, as children do in ghost stories. Parliament had decided to send emissaries into Scotland, not to ask for an army — a brotherly Scottish army was expensive, — but to
SOLEMN LEAGUE AND COVENANT (1643). 109
demand the services of a contingent of divines for the Assembly at Westminster. But two Royalist victories now made men-at-arms fully as desirable as preachers, and (July 1 9) four members of the English House were despatched to ask for a Covenanted army. The deputation was dilatory ; the Scottish Convention, puzzled by its delay, prosecuted some "incendiaries," and waited for the meeting of the General Assembly (August 2). After this the ecclesiastical and lay politicians worked hand-in-hand.
The chief business of the Estates, the Assembly, and the English Commissioners was the compilation of THE SOLEMN LEAGUE AND COVENANT between Presbyterian Scotland and Presbyterian England, The religion of the Kirk was to be preserved, that of England and Ireland was to be reformed, " according to the Word of God, and the example of the best Reformed Churches." Prelacy in England was to be abolished ; what was to take its place ? The exact phrasing, "according to the Word of God," is attributed to the younger Vane ; the Scots can scarcely have failed to see the wide loophole for the evasion of Presbyterianism, but they accepted the article as amended. With the brazen and habitual hypocrisy of all concerned, they vowed " to preserve and defend the King's Majesty's person and authority, in the preservation and defence of the true religion, and liberties of the kingdoms." 70 One opinion was that the Scots should only enter England as armed mediators or "redders." But Waristoun knew the proverbial danger of " the redder's stroke," the thrust that slew Mercutio.71
The Solemn League and Covenant proved fatal in its consequence to the liberties of Scotland. From her struggle for the League she emerged a conquered people ; the foot of Cromwell on her neck ; her towns and pulpits occupied by Sectarian soldiers ; her General Assembly put to the doors. This might not have occurred had the Scots simply broken their pact with the king, and sent their army to fight against his, lest he, if victorious over his Parliament, should break his pact with them. Had the Scots merely done this, the defeat and death of Charles would have left them tranquil. England would not have meddled with their beloved religion. But, by the Solemn League and Covenant, they deemed themselves sworn to thrust the Kirk on England, and to make war on her unpresby- terian " bloody and blasphemous sectaries." * They reaped as they had sown : at Dunbar, Worcester, and in the massacre of Dundee.
* " Bloody " was ever the favourite epithet in the mouths of the Covenanters.
no MONTROSE'S VENTURE (1643).
The Covenant was accepted on August 1 7, taxation was imposed, and financial terms were arranged with the English rebels. Proclamations for levies were issued, and Leven was appointed general. "It is true he passed many promises to the king that he would no more fight in his contrary," says Baillie, but he salved his war-worn conscience with some words about "religion and country's rights " being in danger.72 This apprehension was justified, in general opinion, by the " cessation," or truce, with the Irish rebels.73 Mr. Henderson did not think that the divines at Westminster would pronounce for Presbyterianism till the Scots were over the Border. This was a good reason for haste; but English delays in sending money did not permit the Scots to cross Tweed till January 1644. The English Parliament accepted the Solemn League and Covenant in the meantime, and Baillie, with Gillespie (a very precious youth), Henderson, and other theologians, joined the Westminster Synod, where they found the Independents, "the bloody and blasphemous sectaries," active in obstruction. The Scots had difficulties in getting " ruling elders " accepted : there was hair-splitting over texts of the Greek Testament : Baillie foresaw the democratic anarchy of " particular congregations," but one thing was fortunately directed : " Both Houses did profane that holy day " (Christmas Day) " by sitting on it." 74
The king, says Baillie, "was made ever to believe" that the Scots would not join his armed enemies. This was by the fault of Hamilton. Already Montrose, with Ogilvy, had set out, and carried far other news to the queen at Oxford. She would not believe Montrose, and wrote (August 28) to Hamilton expressing her confidence in him.75 Montrose rode to Gloucester, which Charles was besieging, and implored him to strike a blow in Scotland before the Scottish could join the English rebels.76 But "worthless courtiers" persuaded the king of Montrose's youth, rashness, and ambition. Montrose was completely baffled. Presently the Scots were mustering on the Border, and the letters of the Hamiltons announced their despair. Charles now listened to Montrose, who showed him that his change of mind came too late. The cavalier himself was ready to venture his life, and advised fight. Irish soldiers should be landed on the west of Scotland; the Marquis of Newcastle, commanding in the north, should lend a party of cavalry ; German and Danish troops should be hired, and arms obtained from abroad. If it is unpatriotic to
HAMILTON A PRISONER (1643). I I I
use foreign forces, then the Hanoverian Government sinned when, in 1745, they brought over Dutch and Hessian troops to oppose the king's great-grandson. Antrim, who had escaped from his captors, was at Oxford, and promised 2000 men, probably Mac- donalds settled in Ireland, whose lands in Kintyre the Campbells had eaten up.77
These things occurred in December 1643, and in the same month Hamilton and Lanark came to Oxford from Scotland. If they had been warned, as Baillie says, that their " pye " was cooked in England, they took the risk. They were arrested and imprisoned, Hamilton on charges of treason. The accusations, with his replies, are printed by Burnet. The allegations prove, what scarcely needed proof, that Hamilton was wavering, incompetent, a Mr Facing- Bothways. His behaviour before the Assembly of 1638, his encouragement to the leaders to persevere, if correctly reported, might certainly merit disgrace, if not death. That he aimed at the crown for himself no man can believe. Montrose, says Wishart, told the king that, if Hamilton and Lanark were to be in favour, he must ask leave to seek employment abroad ; " not that he desired any severity towards them, but entreated his Majesty to beware of further harm from them." 78 Lanark escaped, disguised as a groom, and joined the Covenanters. Hamilton was sent to Pendennis Castle, and later to St Michael's in Cornwall, whence he was released by the Parliamentary forces in 1646. Both of the brothers became more or less actively and fatally loyal too late, changing when the majority of their countrymen changed. The Oxford Parliament proclaimed the king's enemies traitors. Traquair and the dubious gentleman of the bedchamber, William Murray, were reluctant to sign a similar " band " of Montrose's, says Wishart : Murray was now created Earl of Dysart, his daughter later became the ill-famed second wife of the godly Lord Maitland, when that hero, as Duke of Lauderdale, was misgoverning Scotland for Charles II.
Montrose had many enemies at Court ; in Scotland, among the nobles, he had scarcely three faithful friends. What he did was his own work ; and though he received the title of marquis, and the commission of lieutenant-general under Prince Maurice, he was probably none the better for these honours. They "caused the incapable, impracticable Huntly, for ever lurking in the caves of Strathnaver, to hug and mumble the old bone of his lieutenancy benorth of the Granbean," says Mr Napier in his picturesque way.
112 LEVEN BESIEGES NEWCASTLE (1644).
It is probable that Huntly, who, like his father, had fled to the wilds of the Naver, resented Montrose's elevation more than his own perhaps collusive capture by the Covenanters at the beginning of the troubles. Crawford of the practical ideas about throat-cutting was not conciliated; Douglases, Carnegies, Kers, Maxwells "in different degrees, refused to minister to the glory of Montrose, and left the king to ruin." 79 Scottish jealousy of a great man fermented in the minds of the Royalist nobles. It was not till March 1644 that Montrose rode north from Oxford with Aboyne, Ogilvy, Craw- ford, Nithsdale, Reay, and the Colonel Cochrane of The Incident. At York (March 13) he communicated with the Marquis of New- castle, who, in his elegant way, was undertaking the defence of his title-giving town against Leven and some twenty-two thousand Scots. From Newcastle, as Montrose wrote to Spottiswoode, there was scant promise of help, but he hoped to see some fighting ; and Argyll had returned to Scotland, whither Montrose intended to follow him.
Leven was now confronting the Marquis of Newcastle. He had crossed Tweed at last on January 19, 1644, with twenty regiments of foot, three or four thousand horse, and 120 guns of various calibre, including light field-pieces invented by "dear Sandie," as Alexander Hamilton, brother of Tam o' the Cowgate, "auld Melrose," the first Earl of Haddington, was affectionately styled. Second in command was Baillie (not the letter-writer) ; and Leven's nephew, David Leslie, was with the army, a better soldier than the uncle. Tweeddale marched under the Earl of Buccleuch, who had borne no conspicuous part in the troubles. The town records of Selkirk show that the preachers, to stimulate recruits, told them that the English were being oppressed — by Papists ! Loudoun, Dun- fermline, Lindsay, Cassilis, Marischal, Livingstone, and Maitland were among the noble leaders of the Scottish rebels, and the fugitive Lanark tampered with the loyalty of the Mayor of Carlisle, while Sir Alexander Hamilton commanded the soldiers of his name. A Douglas led Nithsdale and Annandale, the Galloway Whigs followed Colonel William Stewart, and a Hepburn of Humbie was commissary -general. On how many fields had these old family flags been raised against king and queen !
The advance was slow ; the siege guns for battering Newcastle had been sent to Blyth by sea, and arrived late. Morpeth was taken and garrisoned by Leven on January 2 6 ; on February 3 he was before Newcastle ; but the Marquis of Newcastle had entered
TURNER ON LEVEN (1644). 113
the town in force, though he held it without energy. Leven had been joined by that charming writer of memoirs and honourable soldado, Sir James Turner, a kind of Dugald Dalgetty. Turner had come back from the Scottish army in Ireland, where he had saved many women from massacre and drowning.80 The Scots forces were wasting from hunger and disease in Ireland, at Newcastle he found Leven's force lusty, well provisioned, but raw, untrained and undisciplined, with inefficient officers. Had Newcastle beat up the quarters of any of their bodies, Turner thought that they would have run. The Scots tried one night to bridge the Tyne with boats, and might have been cut to pieces in the manoeuvre, so Turner suggested a diversion to alarm the garrison. It was a bright moon- light night, and old Leven, whom Turner despised, said that the matches of the Scots matchlocks would thus be too visible to the Royalists on the walls. Turner pointed out first that the moonlight would eclipse the match light ; next, that for the purposes of an alarm, the more the matches were seen the better. In fact, they frightened " certain great people " on the Scottish side, who fled in panic from their own men, and, a neap tide flowing (which Argyll, a skilled sailor, should have observed, says Turner), the attempt was abandoned. Turner was much amused by this amateur soldiering ; but it was better than the imbecility of Newcastle.81
Newcastle found himself between the armies of Leven in the north and of Fairfax in Yorkshire. On February 22 Leven left forces to watch Newcastle, crossed Tyne near Corbridge on the 28th, and entered Sunder land on March 4. Newcastle had been reinforced ; but, after making a show of fight, retired, suffering considerable losses from want of supplies, and heavy storms of snow. Leven also, after moving on Durham, withdrew, and (March 17) stormed a fort at South Shields.82
Now Montrose joined the Marquis of Newcastle. Under that commander, and under a black banner, with a naked man hanging from a gibbet — motto, / dare, — fought a Miss Pierson, captain of a troop of Lord Carnwath's horse ! Carnwath himself, like other Scottish Royalist nobles, was disgusted at the promotion of Montrose, and threw down a commission of lieutenancy of Clydes- dale brought to him by the marquis from the king.* On March 23
* This Carnwath seized the king's bridle at Naseby, and turned him from charging with the Guards. Charles ought to have pistolled him ; but when did king ever resent this affront ?
VOL. III. H
114 MONTROSE DISAPPOINTED (1644).
Newcastle faced Leven. But Newcastle, said Montrose, "was slow," and two days of irresolute skirmishing preluded to a retreat. Had the Graham been commander, there would be another tale to tell.* Montrose, with a very ragged regiment and broken-down horses, now crossed the Border, and had reached the Annan Water when his English levies deserted him (April 13).! Nevertheless, Montrose pushed on to Dumfries, where the provost, Sir James Maxwell, received him well : for this crime he was executed by the Covenanters.^ Of Antrim and his Irish no news came, and Callendar (Montrose's old ally as Lord Almond) was bringing a force against him. At this time, as Turner says, Huntly "was making some bustling in the North," and the Estates sent regiments to Stirling and Perth ; one of these was Lord Sinclair's. Now Turner took counsel with his conscience, having been hitherto of Dalgetty's mind as to serving any side which paid him well, and came to the opinion that Covenanting was treason. With Lord Sinclair himself, he determined to carry his regiment over from the Covenant to Montrose, a course which the civil conscience must condemn. With Napier, the Master of Napier, and Stirling of Keir, they sent messengers to invite Montrose to Stirling, whence he could raise the clans. But Montrose, understanding that Callendar had turned traitor and had a large force to intercept him, withdrew into the north-east of England, "and thus, by Montrose's negligence and Callendar's perfidy, was lost the fairest occasion that could be wished to do the king service." § More light is thrown on Montrose's failure at Dumfries by a letter of instruction for Lord Ogilvy from the hero. This was intercepted when Ogilvy was later taken prisoner. He was to tell the king that the Earl of Hartfell (Johnstone of Johnstone), Morton, Rox- burgh, Annandale, and Traquair had (like Carnwath) refused the royal commissions, "crossed the business, and went about to abuse us who had undertaken it." 83 Moreover, Montrose was neglected by Newcastle, disappointed by Antrim, and all but betrayed by Hartfell.
* Napier, ii. pp. 393-395. From Montrose papers, depositions before the Committee of Estates, in 1644, 1645 ; cf. Sanford Terry, pp. 207-212.
t Wishart, pp. 43, 44. Wishart glances at " the envy of some," which caused Montrose to be so ill provided ; probably Carnwath is intended.
J So Spalding, ii. p. 391. The editors of Wishart (p. 45, note) find, in M'Dowall's ' History of Dumfries,' the name of John Corsane as provost.
§ So writes Turner. Wishart says nothing of the invitation to Stirling.
HUNTLY'S BUSTLING (1644). 115
Here we must desert Montrose on the eve of a gallant exploit in England, and return to the fortunes of the cause of Presbyterianism at Westminster. The Scottish visitors had gleams of happiness, for organs and carven wood -work of churches, and old church windows, and " many fine pictures of Christ and the Saints," were being burned and broken.84 Devout Hollanders sent sympathetic messages, but the English divines did not seem anxious for the advice of the Dutch.85 Baillie preached before Parliament, "wherein I was graciously assisted"; but the Independents obstructed business over the question of many congregations under one Presbytery — they preferred each congregation to stand on its own feet. The ideal of the Independents was rather like that of the Scottish candidate for the House of Commons, who, in answer to a question about his religion, said that he "was a member of his own private chapel." They averred that the Synod of Divines at Westminster " was but ane Antichristian meeting, which would erect a Presbyterie worse than bishops," a blasphemy recorded by Baillie.86 Baillie wrote thus at the time when he heard of the skirmishes between Leven and Newcastle, at which Montrose was present. Meanwhile books were published which pleaded openly for toleration and freedom of conscience — the climax of wickedness ; and every kind of wild heresy prospered in the army, especially under the illumin'e Cromwell. Already, it may be, he held the Scots in a slight aversion, which heaven was pleased to increase on better acquaintance.
Before returning to Montrose's deeds in Northumberland, we should advert to the " bustling," or rather fumbling, of Huntly in the north. It is recorded by Patrick Gordon, who makes out the best case possible for his chief. Argyll, he says, had engaged his nephew, Huntly's son, Lord Gordon, for the Covenant on the old plan of insurance — the father on one side, the son on the other. Lord Gordon was to bring out his "name" for the Covenant, Huntly sitting still; just as Argyll later sat still under Cromwell, while his son, Lome, was out for Charles II. But Huntly's kin, the young lairds of Drum, Haddo, and Gight, would not let him sit still ; they rode into Aberdeen, and took the Covenanting officials prisoners about the time of Montrose's march to Dumfries. Huntly now mustered men at Aboyne ; was dissatisfied with his forces ; heard at Aberdeen of Montrose's retiral to the English border, and also that Argyll was approaching in force. Drum and
Il6 MONTROSE TAKES MORPETH (1644).
Nathaniel Gordon, scouting south, plundered the Covenanting town of Montrose ; but Huntly fled, as usual, to Strathnaver, and Argyll took Haddo and Gight in their castles, and sent them to Edinburgh, where Haddo was imprisoned in Haddo's Hole and executed : the Covenanters now resorting to that short way with Cavaliers. Argyll then garrisoned Aberdeen, leaving Lord Gordon in command, with a committee.87 This was the result of Huntly's "bustling," — this, and his increased jealousy of Montrose's commission.
While Argyll (March 30, 1644) was leaving Aberdeen for Edin- burgh, Montrose was advancing through Northumberland to attack the Covenanting garrison which Leven had thrown into Morpeth. Not troubled by the neighbourhood of the armies of Leven and the recreant Callendar, he joined Clavering, and, accompanied by the Earl of Crawford, tried to take Morpeth by assault without guns. Montrose " did not know the word impossible," but this task was beyond him. His first effort failed at daybreak ; under cloud of night he threw up earthworks close to the fort, he brought six guns from Newcastle, and made a practicable breach. If one of the defenders, Captain MacCulloch, who then parleyed with Montrose, tells truth, the marquis gave him a romantic, discouraging, and perfectly false account of a great disaster to the main Scots army at York, of the success of the force at Huntly, and other matters. So the citadel of Morpeth surrendered and was destroyed, and Montrose had a similar success against a fortress at the mouth of the Tyne. He scoured the country far and wide, but was summoned by Rupert to his aid, and arrived the day after Rupert and Newcastle, by confidence and carelessness, lost the fatal field of Marston Moor (July 2). In that strangely amateur but bloody contest, Cromwell fought like an expert, Leven fled from victory to Leeds, the regiment of Buccleuch rushed wildly from the field, and David Leslie got no gratitude from the English for his share in the Parliamentary victory. He and his Scots helped to massacre the men who keep the honours of the day — Newcastle's White Coats, who, refusing quarter, died in their ranks, like the Spartans of old. So many Scots fled that a bitter feeling broke out between the two countries, the Covenanters claiming for David Leslie the merit due to Cromwell, and even averring that Cromwell showed cowardice after receiving a slight wound.88
Montrose came a day too late for Marston Moor ; Newcastle had fled by sea, Rupert deprived Montrose of all his men, and the great
MONTROSE CONTRA MVNDUM. llj
marquis was left to undertake, single-handed, the most romantic adventure in our chronicles — the greatest enterprise in the history of Scotland since Bruce was a solitary fugitive. Bruce triumphed ; Montrose failed because, by no fault of his own, his effort was made too late. But only they who measure merit by success can sneer, as modern historians have actually done, at the unfaltering heroism, unquenchable loyalty, and resourceful genius of the great Montrose. *
NOTES TO CHAPTER IV.
1 Terry, ' Life of Alexander Leslie,' p. 128.
2 Cal. State Papers, 1640, p. 649 ; 1640-41, p, 9.
3 Baillie, i. p. 262.
4 Wishart, 'Deeds of Montrose,' p. 15, and note. Murdoch and Morland Simpson: Longmans, 1893. Napier, i. pp. 271, 272.
8 Baillie, i. p. 306. 6 Gardiner, ix. p. 285, note.
7 Cal. State Papers, 1641-43, p. v.
8 Cal. State Papers, 1641-43, pp. 81, 104; Gardiner, ix. pp. 409-412.
9 Giustiniani, Gardiner, ix. p. 417, note 2.
10 Cal. State Papers, 1641-43, p. 105.
11 Bere to Pennington, Aug. 28 ; Cal. State Papers, 1641-43, pp. 106, 107.
12 See Rothes' ' Relation,' Appendix, pp. 225, 226. His letter to Waristoun.
13 Baillie, i. pp. 367, 368. 14 Guthry, pp. 78-82, 1748. 18 Baillie, i. pp. 361, 362-372.
16 Guthry, p. 90. « Napier, i. pp. 280-292.
18 Guthry, pp. 89-94. Letter of Thomas Hope of Kerse to Waristoun, June 7, 1641. Napier, i. pp. 308, 309. 19 Napier, i. pp. 321-323.
20 Napier, i. pp. 317, 318. Advocates' Library MSS.
21 Cal. State Papers, 1641-43, p. 20.
22 Baillie, i. pp. 381, 382. » Gordon, iii. p. 250.
24 Balfour, iii. p. 60. Act. Parl. Scot. v. p. 351.
25 Balfour, iii. pp. 69, 70. * Balfour, iii. pp. 71-73. 27 Balfour, iii. p. 86. » Balfour, iii. p. 79.
29 Napier, i. pp. 353-355- Balfour, iii. p. 55.
80 Carte, Ormonde Papers, i. p. 5.
31 Gardiner, x. p. 19. Citing Webb to Nicholas, Sept. 5. Nicholas MSS.
K Balfour, iii. p. 90. ^ Balfour, iii. pp. 94, 95.
84 Balfour, iii. p. 95; Cal. State Papers, 1641-43, p. 138.
35 Nicholas's Notes. Cal. State Papers, 1641-43, p. 138 (October 14, 1641).
36 Hardwicke Papers, ii. pp. 299-303.
37 Hamilton Papers, Camden Society, pp. 103-105.
* Many years ago the author was fishing in the Beaulie, attended by an old Highland gillie, whom he met for the first time. " My name is Campbell," said the gillie, "but my heart is with the great Montrose."
I I 8 NOTES
38 Balfour, iii. p. 90.
39 Hist. MSS. Commission, iv. pp. 163-170.
40 Balfour, iii. pp. 96-134. 41 Gardiner, x. p. 26, note 2.
42 Cal. State Papers, 1641-43, p. 163, cf. p. 179.
43 Napier, i. p. 366. ^ Balfour, iii. pp. '164, 165.
48 Gardiner, x. p. 101.
46 Burnet, ' Mem. Ham.,' pp. 188, 189.
47 Baillie, ii. p. 34. ^ Napier, ii. p. 374.
49 Baillie, ii. pp. 43, 44. Napier, ii. p. 373.
80 Peterkin, i. p. 327. 81 Peterkin, i. p. 354.
82 Peterkin, i. p. 323. 83 Baillie, ii. pp. 47, 48.
84 Peterkin, i. pp. 325, 326. M Baillie, ii. p. 53.
86 Baillie, ii. p. 58.
87 Burnet, ' Mem. Ham.,' pp. 206-209.
88 Baillie, ii. pp. 59, 60, Feb. 18, 1643.
89 Napier, ii. p. 375. ^ Wishart, p. 26.
61 Burnet, ' Mem. Ham.,' pp. 216, 217.
62 Napier, ii. p. 380. ^ Guthry, pp. 129, 130.
64 Wishart, pp. 31-33, 1893 ; cf. Baillie, ii. p. 74.
65 Burnet, ' Mem. Ham.,' pp. 221-224.
66 Napier, ii. p. 377.
67 Baillie, ii. p. 74. * Spalding, ii. p. 253.
69 Gardiner, ' Great Civil War,' i. p. 178 (1893).
70 Burnet, 'Mem. Ham.,' pp. 238-240; Gardiner, i. pp. 229, 230.
71 Baillie, ii. p. 90. 72 Baillie, ii. p. 100.
73 Baillie, ii. p. 104. 74 Baillie, ii. pp. 115, 120.
73 Burnet, 'Mem. Ham.,' p. 241. 76 Wishart, p. 35.
77 Wishart, p. 38, note 4. w Wishart, p. 39.
79 Napier, ii. pp. 388, 389. ^ Turner, pp. 20, 21.
81 Turner, pp. 31-33.
82 Sanford Terry, ' Life of Alexander Leslie,' pp. 176-207.
83 Napier, ii. p. 407. M Baillie, ii. p. 134. 88 Baillie, ii. p. 144. w Baillie, ii. p. 145.
87 ' Britane's Distemper,' pp. 55, 56.
88 Sanford Terry, p. 259. Note on David Buchanan's pamphlet.
\
CHAPTER V.
THE YEAR OF MONTROSE. 1644-1645.
THE time was apt for prodigies. Two airy armies, near Banff, were seen to fight upon a hill, clash of arms and sound of guns were heard ; the neighbouring people concealed their property. The minister and other persons of Ellon, in Buchan, saw, at midnight, the sun shine clear as at mid-day, the sun of Montrose ! At Rethine, in church about the time of morning prayer, was heard for several days together music of organs and other instruments, which numbers resorted to hear "with unspeakable transport and never- wearied delight." It was long since the Kirk had silenced church music. When the preacher and people entered the church " the music ceased with a long note," like the last wail of the last oracle from Delphi. As, on the day when Prince Charles landed in Moidart, a gun-shot was heard all over the north, so " a heavy mounted piece of ordnance " rang in the ears of the kingdom when young Colkitto landed in the west, bringing home again the Macdonalds driven to Ireland by Argyll a generation ago, — unluckily, with their wives and children. So writes Patrick Gordon.1
Montrose, after Marston Moor, had returned to Carlisle, sending Ogilvy, who was captured, as we saw, with despatches to the king. Then the great marquis vanished from the eyes of men. Disguised as a groom of Colonel Sibbald, he rode alone with that gentleman and with Sir William Rollock across the guarded Border. He was recognised, and loyally saluted, by a Scot who had been in New- castle's army. The man kept the secret. Riding hard for four days, Montrose reached Tullybelton, a house of his cousin, Patrick Graham of Inchbrakie, near the Tay, between Perth and Dunkeld. " It may be thought that God Almightie sent his Angel to lead the way, for
120 THE MAN WITH THE FIERY CROSS (1644).
he went as if a cloud had invironed him through all his enemies," says Patrick Gordon. Sibbald and Rollock he despatched to Napier and the rest of his near kin. They returned " corby messengers," with tidings of the triumph of Argyll, and the flight of Huntly, " without a stroke stricken " ; evil news for the solitary leader lurking in cots and among the forests. " As he was one day in Methven wood " (where Bruce suffered his first defeat), " he became transported with sadness," and besought the Divine Majesty to make him an instru- ment in the cause of the king. " Lifting up his eyes he beheld a man coming the way to St Johnstoun with a fiery cross in his hand, and hastily stepping towards him, asked him what the matter meant ? "
It meant that Alastair Macdonald, son of left-handed, or ambi- dexter, Col, and called Young Colkitto,* was marching into Atholl from the north, and that the Covenant was raising the country to encounter him. Colkitto was a man of great courage ; indeed the Macdonalds attribute to him the triumphs of Montrose. Sir James Turner says that " though stout enough, he was no soldier," and that he was addicted to strong waters. He was of gigantic strength, and, in Ireland, had so impressed Leven that he sent the chief over to be reconciled to Argyll, who held his father and two brothers in prison, and had seized their lands. Argyll slighted Colkitto, who returned to Ireland bent on revenge, and received from his kinsman, Antrim, the command of 1500, called "Irishes," but probably exiled Macdonalds, M 'Leans, and other victims of the Campbells. With letters from the king to Seaforth, chief of the Mackenzies, and to the heads of his own clan, Colkitto then sailed for Argyll, capturing two Covenanting provision ships on the way. He wasted Argyll's country far and wide, mastered two castles, Mingarie and another, and appealed to the M'Leods, M 'Neils, and M 'Leans, in vain — the fear of Argyll was on them. Meanwhile Colkitto's ships were taken and burned by English vessels of war; his retreat was cut off; he marched through the trackless mountains into Lochaber, and hoped to join hands with Huntly.
Finding that Huntly, had fled, he marched on to Seaforth, but the Mackenzies had gone over to the Covenant, and only free passage and victuals were given to Colkitto. Gathering recruits, he set off for the Gordon country, but was faced by the Grants, and the forces of Murray and Ross. With Seaforth behind him, and Argyll
* See vol. ii. p. 533, for Old Colkitto. They were of the lively House of Dunyveg in Islay.
MONTROSE RAISES THE STANDARD (1644). 121
gathering on his rear ; with the Covenanters of the north-east in front of him, Colkitto was driven to descend the hills into Atholl and the valley of Tay. But there were mustering all Covenanters — Fife, Perthshire, and Angus — at Perth, and never was leader so hard beset as Colkitto : however, encouraged by a letter from Montrose, purposely misdated from Carlisle, he seized the castle of Blair Atholl, which Montrose held all through his year of victory.
A force of Atholl men, Stewarts, and Robertsons, and Hurrays, was now watching Colkitto ; the two armies were drawn up on two neighbouring hills, and some Badenoch men went to and fro between them, in the interests of peace. Colkitto himself "in a deep con- templation and profound silence, lifts up his eyes to heaven with a short mental prayer." As he ended his appeal, two men in plaid and kilt approached him ; the first was Montrose ! * In a moment the hostile Atholl men, arrayed on their hill, saw the air dark with the bonnets that the Macdonalds tossed up, and heard a salute of a thousand muskets. They expected an assault ; but the news coming to them that Montrose with the royal commission was here, the thousand of Atholl rushed into the embraces of Colkitto's twelve hundred, and the marquis raised the standard of the king. It floated over a strange array, many armed with muskets, more with bows and arrows, clubs, rusty skians, and whatever they could pick up : of ammunition there was but one round for each musket. In this all but incredible manner did Montrose find the nucleus of forces which, if they did the king's cause little good (they came too late), wrought endless scathe to the Covenant.2
Surrounded as they were by hostile forces, Colkitto and Montrose aimed first at the Covenanting army in Perth. Avoiding the road down Tay and through Killiecrankie, to be rendered famous by a later Graham, they crossed the hills to Loch Tummel, broke through the opposition of the Menzies clan, forded Tay on August 31, and advanced on Glen Almond. Their Atholl contingent were in touch with a force of reluctant Covenanters, under Lord Kilpont, son of the Earl of Menteith who, as of " too red blood," had been obliged by Charles to take the title of Airth. Kilpont and Drummond, son of the Earl of Perth, joined Montrose, on sight of his royal com. mission, with about 500 men. He had now some 3000, Macdonalds, Stewarts, Robertsons, Murrays, Kilpont's Lowlanders, and broken
* Wishart says Montrose was in Highland dress ; he may have worn the trews. The separate philabeg had probably not come into use.
122 VICTORY OF TIPPERMU1R (1644).
men of Huntly's out of Badenoch. In Perth, Lord Elcho (eldest son of Lord Wemyss) had 7000 foot and from 700 to 1000 horse, with nine guns, a weapon strange and terrible to Highlanders. Kilpont commanded the artillery of Montrose — bowmen; the marquis led his followers on foot, in Highland costume, with targe, and Dalgetty's "darling weapon," the pike.* He took a strange step, asking Elcho to put off the battle in honour of Sunday, September i, 1644. "Their answer was, they had made choice of the Lord's day for doing the Lord's work." The preachers had promised success — the Rev. Frederick Carmichael, of Markinch in Fife, is reported to have said, " If ever God spoke certain truth out of my mouth, in His name I promise you to-day a certain victory." 3 It seemed safe inspiration, Montrose being outnumbered by three to one, and having no guns or cavalry ; while, if the Covenanters agreed to a Sunday truce, he might retreat in the night.
The scene was Tippermuir, a wide plain, three miles from Perth. Elcho held the right wing of the Covenant, Sir James Scott the left, Tullibardine the centre ; the cavalry, all gentlemen, were on the wings. To avoid being outflanked, Montrose extended his thin and ragged line only three deep. They had orders not to fire till they came to close quarters, and after a volley to charge with swords and the butt : bayonets were not in use. Colkitto held the Royalist centre, Montrose the right, Kilpont the left, for the Macdonalds lacked swords and pikes ; with the butt they were to play. The Master of Maderty, sent in by Montrose as an envoy, was taken prisoner — such respect the Covenanters ever showed to the royal commission. Montrose drove in the enemy's skirmishers ; in retiring they confused the first Covenanting line, and then, with a yell, the whole force of the Royalists charged, fired into the beards of the foe, seized the guns that did little scathe ; met the advance of the Covenanters with swords, pikes, and stones picked up on the field, and drove the untried levies in wild flight. Montrose's men racing against Scott's for a hill, took the position, charged down with the claymore, and cut up their opponents. The Covenanting cavalry made a vain attempt to rally, and though Montrose forbade his men to turn the captured guns on the fugitives, " men might have walked upon the dead corpses to the town," writes the Irish officer, so active was the pursuit. Guns, ammunition, and supplies
* Carte's 'Original Letters,' i. p. 73, 1739. The account is "by an Irish officer in Alexander Colkitto's forces," perhaps the brave MacGahan.
MURDER OF KILPONT. 123
were the reward of the victors. Some 2000 men are said to have been slain, many were taken prisoners : of the burghers ten " bursted with running." The deposition of the provost of Perth (January 31, 1645) puts the prisoners at only three or four hundred. Montrose set guards in the town : the suburbs are said to have been plundered ; but he caused to be written " a general protection " for the inhabitants of Perth. The Rev. George Halyburton, minister of Perth, said grace before the dinner of the Malignants.4
The country gentlemen near Perth did not crowd to the royal standard : excommunication and the loss of their estates and lives, if captured, were too obvious dangers. Argyll was following cautiously in Montrose's wake, who (September 4) moved north- east, heading for his own country, and encamped at Collace. Here, on the 6th or 7th, Lord Kilpont was stabbed by one of the gentle- men whom he had led to join Montrose, Stewart of Ardvoirlich near Loch Earn. The murderer escaped, was welcomed by the Covenanters, and became an officer of Argyll. The cause of the crime is uncertain. Wishart says (as matter of report) that Ardvoir- lich tried to inveigle Kilpont to assassinate Montrose, and slew him when he refused. A member of the Ardvoirlich family gave Scott the family tradition, that a private quarrel arose, and that the deed was unpremeditated. The official Covenanting version runs that Ardvoirlich was an unwilling recruit ; that he spoke to Kilpont of deserting with several of his name ; that Kilpont resisting him, was slain, and that the act was "good service."5 Mr Gardiner says " the favourable reception given by Argyll to the supposed murderer was a sign that all who joined in a Highland Rising might be assassinated with impunity, as far as the Covenanting authorities were concerned."6 As a further proof, and as additional cause of the ferocity of the war, on September 1 2 the Committee of Estates put a reward of over ^1500 sterling on Montrose's head.7 We do not hear that Montrose offered any price for the head of Argyll.
As Montrose, moving north, neared Dundee Law, Lord Airlie, with two of his sons, came in ; Lord Ogilvy, the eldest, lay in the Tolbooth prison in Edinburgh : his kindred were truly loyal. They and Nathaniel Gordon brought a handful of forty or fifty mounted gentlemen, but many Highlanders had, as usual, gone home with their loot ; and most of Kilpont's force had deserted. The Gordons practically stood neutral in their own country ; Huntly was skulking ; Lord Gordon was with the Covenanters. The enemy had 2000 foot
TIPPERMUIR AND ABERDEEN
tNCLlSN MILtS
126 VICTORY OF ABERDEEN (1644).
and 500 horse ; Montrose had, it is said, but 44 horse and 1500 foot. On Friday, September 1 3, Montrose, still marching north, summoned Aberdeen to yield : " Otherwise, that all old persons, women, and children, do come out and retire themselves ; and that those who stay expect no quarter." A gentleman and a drummer were sent into the town with this message. The provost and baillies, in reply, summed up Montrose's offer thus: that they were invited to surrender, " otherwise no quarter except to old persons, women, and children," which was not exactly in accordance with Montrose's threat.
Why did he, usually humane, threaten at all ? Partly to terrify ; partly, perhaps, by promise of a sack of the town, to encourage his army, much outnumbered by the Covenanters, who were under Burleigh. The murder of Kilpont may also have exasperated him. The magistrates of the good town, behaving like gentlemen, had given Montrose's poor little drummer boy a coin valued at £6 Scots. But as the lad with the flag of truce passed the Covenanted heroes of Fife, one of them shot the little fellow, whether in an excess of piety, or for the sake of the coin, is unknown. This cruelty may have enraged Montrose, whose bearer of a flag of truce at Tippermuir had been captured, and, if unreleased, would probably have shared the fate of Haddo.8 The Aberdeen magistrates did not send out the women and children, as desired ; confiding, perhaps, in the strength of their position and their superior numbers.
Montrose drew up his little force, and placed his handful of horse on the wings, intermixed with his musketeers for their protection ; for the Covenanters had 500 horse, and 2000 foot to his 1500. The battle, fought on ground now covered by houses and the railway line, cannot be easily understood. Lord Gordon, on the Covenanting side, was not present — the Forbeses and the Crichtons refused to serve under him, — but Lord Lewis Gordon had eighteen horsemen of his own. The Irish of Montrose drove the Covenanters out of some gardens and houses, and repelled a charge of lancers. Mr Gardiner says that Lord Lewis now charged the Royalists on their right wing, with his eighteen horsemen, who did not come to the shock, but fired pistols and retired ; and this does appear to be the meaning of Patrick Gordon. But his discourse is so obscure that we know little except that the Covenanters made a well-conceived turning movement on Montrose's left flank ; then failed to charge, and were routed when Montrose brought two dozen cavaliers with a party of Colkitto's force across from his right to his left ; whereon
ALLEGED CRUELTIES TO WOMEN (1644). 127
Nathaniel Gordon charged at their head and cut to pieces the enemy, who had the tactical superiority. On the right, Montrose's Irish being charged by Sir William Forbes of Craigievar's horse, opened their ranks, and enfiladed their assailants as they galloped through. The Royalist infantry then broke the Covenanting foot, and pursuers and pursued swept into the town in a mass.9 " The Royalists lost but seven men, the Covenant men a thousand," says Patrick Gordon, — a monstrous exaggeration.
Would that the tale could pause here, but, as was inevitable, the flight being through the town, many were slain in the streets. This could not be prevented, but Spalding, here a good authority, tells us that Montrose at once returned to " the body of his army," while the Irish (who, of course, were "the body of his army," — Spalding may mean " to his camp ") cut down the flying townsmen, and would strip a man before slaying him, " syne kill the man." " Sum women they preissit to defloir " (to " press " to do a thing is to make an attempt in that direction), "and uther sum thay took away perforce to serve thaim in the camp." Thus the women later massacred by the Covenanters at Philiphaugh may have, in part, been Aberdeen lassies, if Spalding speaks true. Women were slain if they were heard to mourn their men, he says, a thing not easily credible.
In spite of all this, Spalding can muster but 115 named, and three anonymous men slain, in the battle, the pursuit, the sack, in the streets, and in the adjacent country ; nor does he, when he comes to details, mention a single woman. The Burgh Records are entirely silent as to any cruelties to women, unless they be included in " old and young " slain in the streets. Baillie, then in London, was apt to hear exaggerated reports, but merely says " the town was well plundered." * I find no mention of slain women beyond Spalding's, except in the Diary (really Reminiscences) of Alexander Jaffray, later one of the commissioners to Charles II. at Breda (1650). Jaffray was in the battle, but, like other mounted men, rode away as fast as his horse would carry him. He says, "about seven or eight score men, besides women and children, were killed," 10 a higher estimate than Spalding's 118, which is minute and probably correct. The contrast between the long and cruel story of Spalding, and the quiet chronicle of the Burgh Records, makes it * Cf. Baillie, ii. pp. 234-262.
128 MONTROSE BAFFLES ARGYLL (1644).
hard to ascertain the full truth. But as far as the evidence of Spalding goes (and he was a Royalist), Montrose made no attempt to check Colkitto's men, yet Farquharson, one of his officers, befriended the town, says Patrick Gordon. This affair, if Spalding tells truth, must be reckoned the deepest blot on Montrose's char- acter, whether as a soldier or a man ; whatever blame may fall on the Covenanting magistrates for not withdrawing women, children, and the aged, and on the Fife man who shot the drummer.
Aberdeen was a town notoriously attached to the Royalist cause, though at this time under Covenanting magistrates. Montrose, then, in leaving his Irish loose for four days within its walls, did what he himself could not expect his most earnest advocate to palliate, much less to defend. Yet the matter is not commented on at the moment, as far as I can discover, by any writer, which is curious,* and leaves a doubt as to the slaughter of women. Why does Spalding mention none in his list of victims ?
After the battle of Aberdeen, Montrose sent Sir William Rollock to Charles at Oxford. Captured on his homeward way, Rollock was released by Argyll on his promise to murder Montrose, says Wishart (cf. Napier, ii. p. 459). Argyll and Lothian, with some 2500 foot and 1200 or 1500 horse, were now pursuing Montrose, and his main object was "to lead them a dance." The Gordons, far from aiding him, were in arms against him, with Lord Gordon and Lord Lewis. The skulker, Huntly, was aggrieved, it seems, by not receiving his royal commission from Montrose.11 Burying his guns, Montrose moved on the Spey, where he was faced by an overwhelming force of the Grants, Frasers, and other Covenanting clans, while Argyll from Strathbogie ravaged the Huntly country. Montro-ie worked round to the head of Spey, into Badenoch, where he hr.d a severe illness ; thence he moved into Atholl, then through Angus, whence he crossed the Grampians northwards, and again reached Huntly's country, galling Argyll by night onsets. On October 24 he left Strathbogie and seized Fyvie Castle. Argyll had usually been a considerable distance behind his heels, destroying
* Mr Gardiner cites (ii. p. 148), for the atrocities, not only Spalding, but 'Patrick Gordon, So.' There is not a word about the slaying of women in 'Patrick Gordon, 80,' if his ' Britane's Distemper' be intended; though on p. 161 he gives the Irish a bad character for callous cruelty, lust, and plundering. This is just after he has described (p. 160) the massacre of 300 Irish women, many of them about to be mothers, by the Covenanted troops of Leslie at Philip- haugh. The tender mercies of Monk at Dundee, later, were on a large scale.
ARGYLL RETREATS (1644). 129
such lands as Montrose had spared. At Fyvie, however, he came, unlocked for, within two miles of Montrose, whose weakened force was destitute of lead for bullets. Here such mounted men as he had recruited among the Gordons deserted, leaving him with but fifty horse. He occupied a hill above Fyvie Castle, but the enclosures on the lower slopes were seized by Argyll's musketeers. An Irish officer, O'Gahan (the name is variously written), scattered these assailants by a charge, and captured their gunpowder.* For bullets Montrose melted down all the pewter plates and vessels in the castle, and after more skirmishing, Argyll withdrew, missing his opportunity : he was not very keen to come to handstrokes.
Montrose, finding that the Campbell was trying to bribe his men, and that Sibbald and Rollock, the only companions of his first adventure, were treacherous, and had deserted, deceived Argyll by a ruse, and gained the Fiddish at Balveny.f Except the Ogilvies, most of his gentlemen and many of his men now deserted Montrose. He did not despair, but from Badenoch, by a march across the snowy mountains, came down on Atholl. So Argyll retired from Dunkeld to Perth, and threw up his commission, as did Lothian, while Argyll went home to Inveraray. They were suc- ceeded by a professional soldier, General Baillie, released for home service by the recent capture of Newcastle — a great blow to the Royalists in England. We know, from South African experience, the difficulty of dealing with such a man as Montrose. But in Africa our gallant adversaries were well -mounted men; Montrose's levies did their twenty-four miles of mountain march on foot. The Boers had abundant ammunition ; Montrose had to use melted pewter pots. Yet he had driven the army of the Covenant out of the country, and Argyll to Inveraray. There Argyll deemed himself safe ; the passes into his country were difficult, little known, and obscured by snow. Moreover, he had the sea at his castle door, and galleys ready for flight. Montrose, though he had lost his Lowlanders, was now reinforced by Clan- ranald, brought in by Colkitto; the Macdonalds had their old grudge against the Campbells, and Montrose determined to winter in the Campbell country.
* Patrick Gordon, however, gives the credit to Donald Farquharson, and his description of the ground, and the failures of Argyll's cavalry charges, seems more authentic than the narrative of Wishart (' Britane's Distemper,' p. 91).
t The evidence as to Rollock is hazy (Wishart, p. 77). VOL. III. I
130 MONTROSE DRIVES ARGYLL FROM INVERARAY (1644).
To Argyll at Inveraray came flying his shepherds from the hills south of Loch Awe, and about its head. Montrose, with Colkitto and all the western clans, had devastated the Menzies, and the Breadalbane Campbells ; and while Argyll fled, he ruined the country of that potentate * (December 13, 1644 ; January 28, i645).12 Two hundred men, Montrose said, could have stopped him in a pass, but the Campbells had no leader. Of this pass, Patrick Gordon tells us that it skirted a loch, and was commanded by a castle on an island within pistol shot : the invaders having to march by a path cut in the rock between the castle and the overhanging precipice. Happily, the Macnabs were the local clan, dominated by, and hating the Campbells. At dawn a party of them hailed the castle, asking for a boat, as they carried letters from Argyll. They were ferried across to the castle, mastered it, most of the garrison being in bed, and so gave the command of the pass to Montrose. f
Argyll, meanwhile, cannot have been happy. General Baillie, having his commission as commander -in -chief, would not be at Argyll's orders. " If he lived he should remember it," was an expression of the marquis, as Baillie was informed, "wherein his lordship," quoth Baillie, "indeed hath superabundantly been as good as his word." 13
Baillie, on January 1645, had to march to Roseneath and leave with Argyll noo of the Scots army that had fought in England. These were meant to stiffen the Campbells ; quite contrary was the result. From Roseneath Baillie took the rest of his command to Perth.
On Saturday, January 18, 1645, tne Estates, then in session, heard from Argyll that "he had got a fall and disjointed his shoulder, but would be well ; that the rebels " (Montrose?s army) " had fled to Lochaber," and were in Glen Urquhart.| Montrose, in fact, was moving from Inveraray north through the countries of friendly Macleans, Appin Stewarts, Camerons, and Campbells,
* Montrose had now 3000 men (' Britane's Distemper,' pp. 95, 96).
t ' Britane's Distemper,' pp. 96, 97. The loch was Loch Dochart ; the Macnab country ran westward from Killin, at the head of Loch Tay. Inspection of the scene and little island tower does not seem to corroborate Gordon's description.
J Balfour, iii. p. 256. This date proves that Wishart's date for the departure of Montrose from Argyll is erroneous. He must have decamped about January 14. Argyll's hurt did not occur on the march to Inverlochy, as Scott says in the * Legend of Montrose. '
INVERLOCHY
ATonxr-o.se 'a Jforrfe. «-
132 ARGYLL "OVERTAKES THE ROGUES" (1645).
towards the Seaforth region. Behind him followed slowly Argyll, with the Campbells and the Lowland force from England. Baillie, with our old friend Hurry of The Incident, lay in Perth ; Aberdeen and Inverness were strongly held for the Covenanters, the Grants and others guarded the Spey. Wherever Montrose met and fought a hostile force, he would have Argyll on his back. He encamped on the site of what is now Fort-Augustus, equidistant almost between the armies of Seaforth and Argyll. Here he held a council, and of the forces hemming him in, " resolved to discuss Argyll's army first," says Patrick Gordon. After the chiefs — Montrose and his young son, Lord Graham, and the rest, with Airlie — had signed a band at Killiewhemen (January 29, 30) they turned on their tracks, and made a two days' march southward, with dramach (oatmeal and water) for their best cheer, and, scaling the central mountains of Lochaber, beheld the northern sides of Ben Nevis.*
It was a march as unexpected as unprecedented, yet Montrose con- trived to bring through a handful of horse. But Argyll, little as he expected Montrose to debouch from the skirts of Glen Nevis, was not taken by surprise. Lying at the old castle of Inverlochy, where the Lochy reaches the sea after flowing through a marshy plain, he heard, before he slept, that his outposts had been in touch with Highland patrols. It appears that at once, and in the moonlight, Argyll sought the shelter of his galley (the lymphad of his shield), whence he despatched orders to Sir Duncan Campbell of Auchen- breck, an accomplished and brave soldier who had fought in Ireland, but, says Baillie, "a vicious man."14 Argyll had now " overtaken the rogues at Inverlochy," as Baillie says, or rather they had come to look for him there. It was about three weeks since Argyll had dislocated his shoulder ; but, whether by reason of that accident, or because his chieftains with a preacher, an Edinburgh bailie, and other friends, dissuaded him from rushing into the fray, or because a second-sighted man, Allan M'Coll dubh, had prophesied defeat, Argyll at once placed himself in safety on board ship.f Both
* They marched up the Tarff to the pass of Corrieairack, down the sources of the Spey, crossed into Glen Roy, and so by Roy Bridge and Keppoch to the Spean, and then along the shoulder of Ben Nevis: "the ordinary route would have been down the great valley now traversed by the Caledonian Canal." Wishart, p. 83, note 13.
f Patrick Gordon, p. 100, mentions the second-sighted seer's warning. The author has known a second-sighted M'Coll in Glencoe, a most interesting person. Cf. Guthry, pp. 178, 179 ; Baillie, ii. p. 263.
THE TRUMPETS AT DAWN. 133
armies stood to their arms through the moonlight night.16 From his galley on the morning of Sunday, February 2, Argyll heard the trumpets of Montrose salute the royal standard in the dawn. The pibroch of the Camerons (who had deserted Argyll) sent out its cry to wolf and eagle, "Come to me and I will give you flesh."
Auchenbreck placed the battalions given by General Baillie to Argyll on the right and left wings; the centre consisted of Campbells and other clans, with two guns, and a strong reserve. In Montrose's force, Colkitto took the place of the Macdonalds since Bannockburn — on the right; O'Gahan commanded the left; the Stewarts of Appin, the Maclans of Glencoe, the Atholl men and Camerons were in the centre; Clanranald and Glengarry led the second line, and the reserve was of " Irishes and other Highlanders." Colkitto and O'Gahan led the Royalist wings, which charged with fury, not firing till they poured their shot " into the beards " of the enemy. The Campbell centre, unsupported, broke, and confused the second line ; all the Covenanters fled, and Sir Thomas Ogilvy, with his little squadron, drove the fugitives into the sea, himself receiving a mortal wound. Auchenbreck and fourteen lairds of the name of Campbell were slain, and twenty-two were taken prisoners. Hundreds perished in the flight, others in Inverlochy Castle surrendered. Of these the Lowlanders were spared, the Macdonalds butchered the Campbells with clannish ferocity. The ground being level, offered no chance of resistance after "the break of the battle." 16 Montrose says that he did his best to save life : a few lines in the extant copy of his letter were deleted, " for the honour of some families." Concerning Argyll the letter, as it stands, says nothing.*
* Cf. Napier, ii. pp. 485-488, note. It does not well become civilians to censure the personal courage of men of the sword, as clergymen, like Baillie, Swift, and Burnet, have cast doubt on the valour of Montrose and Marlborough. Possibly the Campbells might have stood at Inverlochy had their chief been among them. But stand they did not, according to what Baillie heard. "All our people overtaken with a panic fear, without any necessity, turned backs and fled," save the gentlemen of the name, who died bravely (Baillie, ii. p. 263). Wishart (pp. 84, 85) gives the same account. Gordon says that the Campbell centre, the wings being broken, fell back on their second line, " who, instead of opening their ranks to receive them, and give the enemies a new charge . . . breaks their order and flies confusedly" (' Britane's Distemper,' p. 101). The Covenanters "drew up in line with alacrity," at first, says Wishart, "for as the prisoners afterwards admitted, they thought that Montrose was not present," till
134 VICTORY OF INVERLOCHY (1645).
In his despatch Montrose held out the fairest hopes for the summer, and deprecated concessions (the attempted Treaty of Uxbridge). " I have too much reason to know that they will not rest satisfied with less than making your Majesty a king of straw." He trusted soon to lay an obedient Scotland at the king's feet : "Come thou thyself, lest this country be called by my name." Among the many charming qualities which make Montrose the most sympathetic character in the history of Scotland, his undying youth of nature is not the least amiable. His "whimsies," the Blue Ribbon ; the wisps of oats in the bonnets of his men ; the trumpets that among the mountains salute the standard of the king, are marks of the high boyish spirit that does great things gallantly, and with an air. As boyish was his hope of recovering Scotland, that " dour " country, whose historians, to this day, drop their dis- paragements on Montrose as the sullen drippings from a cottage thatch, in time of thaw, descend and stain the whiteness of the snow.
Montrose was victorious ; the great Whig clan was put out of action ; but Newcastle was lost to the king, his diplomacy had failed, his finances were ruined, the new model of the Army of the Saints had arisen, and was not to spare nor to dally, but to strike at the king, and strike hard. The star of Cromwell was in the ascendant ; and here Montrose was prophesying a royal triumph ! He should have known better the fickle futility of the Seaforths, Huntly, the Homes, Roxburghs, and Traquairs — these were not Ogilvies or Napiers. And yet there were elements of hope in the situation, though it was hope deferred. Briefly, the campaign of Montrose, by calling Leven with his army to the Cumberland border, for the purpose of preventing the king from joining the marquis in Scot- land, increased the growing hatred between Scots and English ; for the English Parliament desired the services of Leven's army in the
they heard his trumpets, "a sound of terror." They also knew that, while Montrose was present, their chief was absent — had retired on the previous night. This knowledge cannot have been reassuring. It was Argyll's presence, not his good sword (which his accident prevented him from wielding), that was needed. Patrick Gordon, disdaining to suspect Argyll's honour, tells his story of the prophecy, of the pressure put on Argyll to retire, and "he, it is to be thought, with great difficulty yielded to their request." This is the view taken by Scott. When every one combines to assure a man that a life so valuable as his ought not to be risked, above all when he is incapable of self-defence, he is apt to be persuaded.
THE PREACHERS' CRY FOR BLOOD (1645). 135
south and west. In religion and in politics, the interests of the brethren south and north of Tweed were dividing, and a war — of Scotland for the king, and England against him — was inevitably approaching. The beginnings of religious and political discord between the two countries went hand in hand. The Scottish aid to England had been of the nature of a religious crusade against what the Estates, met in July 1644, called "the popish and malignant party." 17 Some enthusiasts, like Lord Maitland (later Lauderdale), hoped to establish the sacred standard of Presby- terianism not only in England but on the Continent.
Things did not take that course. On January 23, 1645, the General Assembly at Edinburgh welcomed the Rev. Mr Baillie, bringing a letter from Loudoun, Maitland, Henderson, and Samuel Rutherford at Westminster. They regretted that their country had been invaded by " the basest of the children of men," the Irish Macdonalds. But they sent "the Directory of Public Worship, concluded," at last, and Presbyterian, " in both Houses of Parlia- ment, and the principal Propositions of Church Government passed in the Assembly, all of them according to the Solemn League and Covenant." They begged that there might be no quarrelling over slight divergencies in absolute uniformity,18 The English divines sent a similar letter. The Assembly presently petitioned the Estates to punish such allies of Montrose and the king as might be come at ; among whom were in prison the Earl of Crawford, Lord Ogilvy, and Wishart, the historian of Montrose. Others were Nathaniel Gordon, Sir Robert Spottiswoode, and Will Murray.19 The nobles were forfeited ; Montrose lay under excommunication ; Carnwath was to be murdered if an assassin could be found, — " whosoever shall kill him is declared to have done good service to his country."20 It was not so easy to execute Crawford and Ogilvy, as Montrose might retaliate,21 and even the Estates found " some harsh expressions " in a manifesto of the preachers, and " entreated the Assembly to amend the same." ^
" The Humble Petition of the General Assembly " may, perhaps, be defended as a mere request that men like Ogilvy, Spottiswoode, and Wishart should not be kept untried in prison, — and such a prison, where rats gnawed Wishart, and left indelible marks of their teeth. But the words of the clerical petitioners are, " May it there- fore please your Lordships, in the zeal of the Lord, to proceed with some speedy course of justice against such persons as are known to
136 THE KIRK UPBRAIDS THE KING (1645).
have joined themselves either actually in arms, or by their counsels, supplies, encouragements, have strengthened the hands of the" (usual adjective) " enemies, whereby a cause of the controversy shall be removed, the land cleansed of the blood that is shed therein," and so forth. It does not appear that any chance of acquittal and release is contemplated ; blood is to be " cleansed " by the blood of prisoners : " the zeal of the Lord " means zeal even unto slaying : the " controversy " is between the Eternal and his people, who have been sparing the Amalekites, unlike Samuel. In short, it does not seem as if any quibbling could clear the ministers from the charge of blood-thirst.
So far (except that the prisoners were not then slain) Kirk and State (the State of the Covenanters) had worked together with- out friction, but the ancient feud between the prophets and the secular rulers, Covenanted as they now were, was but sleeping. The Assembly sent a stiff exposure of his crimes to the king. He had permitted the mass in his own family (his wife being a Catholic), and had authorised The Book of Sports, enjoining the public to play games after church, on Sundays. In consequence of such sins, the Kirk would hold herself guiltless of " the sad consequences which may follow." ^ During this Parliament, Lauderdale died — Lord Maitland is henceforth Lauderdale; Lanark took part in the proceedings against his king, and Traquair was heavily fined. Argyll, who arrived ten days after Inverlochy, with his arm still in a sling, "as if he had been at bones-breaking" says Guthry, was thanked for his military conduct, and " intreated to continue in so laudable a course." He continued. Balmerino actually announced that Argyll had lost but thirty men at Inverlochy ! " The contrary being certainly known, many thought strange that he, who was a nobleman, could speak so in a public audience." 24
In England, the new model army of Cromwell and his fighting sectaries, who hated the Scots and their religion, or rather its imposition on England, was constituted (February 15, 1645). In March, Leven, now at Carlisle, would not move south to help the English, the danger at home was too pressing, and probably Charles then really thought of attempting a junction with Montrose.* Leven had been weakened, as we know, by detaching forces, under Hurry and Baillie, against Montrose; matters grew hot between
* So Guthry, p. 186. Small, a messenger to Montrose from the king, with letters, was caught, disguised as a beggar, and hanged, May i, 1645.
MONTROSE TAKES DUNDEE (1645). 137
him and the English in the end of May, and, at Carlisle, which he was fortifying, Leven told his English colonel that, if he would not yield to him a fort at Carlisle, " I desire no better occasion to cut you all in pieces."25 Leven was to have another and much better " occasion," but he was no Montrose, — rather, according to Turner, was now verging on the imbecile. However, on June 14, the crushing defeat of Charles by Cromwell at Naseby relieved Leven from all anxiety about the king's junction in Scotland with Montrose.
We left the great marquis at Inverlochy, on February 2. By February 1 4, thanks to the unparalleled mobility of his infantry, he had occupied Elgin. He was presently joined by Lord Gordon and Lord Lewis Gordon, who broke loose from Argyll, and by the shifty Seaforth. But, though Lord Gordon brought in a few horsemen, the Gordons at large did not yet rise, and the county people were all Covenanters. Now died Montrose's eldest son, Lord Graham, outworn by war; and at Aberdeen the gallant Farquharson, who fought so well at Fyvie, and " had been a great friend to the town at the late battle foughten there," was murdered by Hurry's Covenanters in the street.26 Hurry, too, who was in the ranks of the Covenant, descending on the town of Montrose, seized the marquis's second son, James, now Lord Graham, and the boy, aged fourteen, was imprisoned in Edinburgh Castle. Eight hundred foot were at this juncture detached by Montrose to convey old Lord Airlie, in bad health, to Strathbogie. Montrose wasted the lands of the Earl Marischal, and of others who refused to come in to the king's standard. He held Hurry and Baillie at bay by a series of rapid marches, though Hurry had 700 horse to his 300. Baillie,' after refusing battle, retired towards Fife. Montrose's own army was outworn ; many went home, Lord Lewis Gordon gave perpetual trouble, and, his force melting away, Montrose could not move from Dunkeld on the Lowlands.*
Montrose, badly or treacherously informed by his scouts, now supposed that the enemy had crossed Tay, and were watching the fords of Forth. Sending part of his shrunken army to Brechin, he, with Lord Gordon, perhaps with Lord Lewis, and with 600 men and 200 horse, made a swoop on Dundee, which Baillie learned from
* Wishart makes Lord Lewis the very soul of mischief, and the cause of the desertion of the Gordons. Patrick Gordon defends him (Wishart, p. 91 ; ' Eritane's Distemper,' pp. 115, 116 ; Gardiner, ii. p. 218).
138 MONTROSE'S REMARKABLE RETREAT (1645).
his spies, and so followed at speed. The town had raised volunteers for defence, which provoked an armed mutiny among the "malt- men," on whom the burden of their quartering fell. Repairs to the walls and ditch were also in progress. Montrose arrived, and summoned the town by a messenger, who was caught, and later was hanged. Such injudicious measures were usually taken against the holder of the royal commission, and were apt, as the town of Dundee now learned, to lead to unpleasantness. The town was then a parallelogram ; two streets from the east and two from the west converged on the church and market-place. Within the walls, at the north-west corner, was Corbie Hill or Windmill Brae, with its guns. From this eminence, not from Dundee Law, Montrose must have watched events after breaking in at the unrepaired part of the wall, and seizing the artillery, which commanded the West Gait and Nether Gait " ports." * "A great part of the buildings of the town and much corn and moveables were burned," so the burghers reported.!
Now came scouts to Montrose with warning of Baillie's approach, with 3000 men, and of Hurry's, with 800 horse. Montrose's men had more or less been drinking, after a march of twenty miles. Some advised Montrose to fly, and seek his own safety, a reward being set on his head. Others desired to fight and die with honour. Montrose did neither. He called off the spoilers, " a feat beyond the power of any other commander in Europe," says Mr Gardiner; he used his 150 horse as a rearguard, accompanied by his best marksmen, and sent the rest of his force ahead. They cannot have been drunk, for they marched all night, while Baillie's pursuing cavalry were driven back by musketry fire. Montrose's natural course was to take to the Grampian hills, but he knew Baillie too well to suppose that he would leave the passes unguarded ; so, calling a brief halt near Arbroath at midnight, he doubled back to the south-west. Baillie failed to drive him to the sea, he slipped past the Covenanters under cloud of night, and, in the dawn of April 5, reached Careston Castle on the South Esk. Baillie came up when but three miles severed the Royalists from the unguarded hills, but Montrose's men were so out wearied after sixty miles' march, a fight, and a feast, that they could scarcely be roused
* Wishart, p. 92, note. Maxwell's ' Old Dundee,' ii. pp. 491-495. t Act. Parl. Scot., vi., i. p. 519. Mr Lamb's " Dundee" (1895) is a portentous tome, paged in the wildest manner, and it baffles scrutiny.
140 PRESBYTERIAN EASTER FEAST (1645).
from sleep by the sword points of their officers. Roused they were, however, and reached ground where Hurry's horse could not follow them.27 Says Wishart, " I have often heard officers of experience and distinction, not in Britain only but in France and Germany, prefer this march of Montrose to his most famous victories." As we hear of no carnage or outrages on women in Dundee, historians are obliged to lament the lack of a chronicler like Spalding,28 who, in fact, merely mentions the burning of some houses.
It is usual for modern Scottish historians to write as if Montrose encountered no regular troops, " had not been face to face with any commander who was a trained soldier," says Mr Hill Burton, who persistently belittles the great marquis. Mr Hill Burton, admitting that Baillie was "a trained commander, "says nothing about Montrose's extraordinary retreat, admired by continental experts and duly appreciated by Mr Gardiner. The " trained commander," and the " thousand trained soldiers belonging to the army of the Covenant " (Mr Hill Burton admits their presence), found no grace at Montrose's face. But Presbyterian hatred bequeathed by tradition still in- fluences Scottish historians, even as regards the military qualities of the marquis. Baillie had four regiments of infantry, and two of horse, with Loudoun's and Lothian's regiments of foot, "besides other great forces coming, as 1500 red coats out of Ireland, and some other regiments, yet were but 600 red coats." w Meanwhile, what the black coats could do against Montrose, they did. Easter day in Aberdeen was kept as a fast "to his intention." "No meat durst be made ready : searchers sought the town's houses and kitchens for the same." 30
The next manoeuvre in the attempt to surround Montrose was a combination of Hurry, with 1200 foot and 160 horse, and the Covenanting levies of Seaforth, with Marischal, Sutherland, the Forbeses and Frasers. While Lord Gordon was raising his clan, and equipping 200 gentlemen of his name as cavalry, Colkitto and Inchbrakie recruited in the Macdonald, Cameron, and Stewart glens, and in Atholl. Hurry moved to watch Lord Gordon, Montrose, with about 600 men, visited Baillie's neighbourhood near Perth. He drew Baillie out, in four times his own numbers, covered his men's retreat with half a squadron of horse, moved up the Earn to Lochearnhead, and probably did no good to the lands of Ardvoirlich, murderer of Lord Kilpont. Marching from Loch- earnhead to the braes of Balquidder, he picked up some recruits of
THE EVE OF AULDEARN (1645). 141
the nameless clan, and met Lord Aboyne. This heroic youth worthy of the name of Gordon, had been fighting in England. Besieged in Carlisle, he cut his way through the Covenanting lines at night, with sixteen horse, dislocated his shoulder and injured his collar-bone by a fall, rode some sixty miles through hostile country before his hurt was attended to, and proved to Argyll that a dislocated shoulder need not incapacitate a resolute man.31 At Loch Katrine Montrose heard of Hurry's march against Lord Gordon : he was occupying Aberdeen, where Lothian's regiment mutinied for clothes and pay. These, with Lady Hurry, arrived in a ship, and, on April 19, Hurry marched out of Aberdeen, having vainly tried to raise dragoons in the country.82 Reaching the Dee on his northward march, Montrose was joined, at Aboyne, by Lord Gordon and his friends, the Master of Napier, and young Stirling of Keir, Colkitto also effecting his junction. Gordon had 1000 foot and 200 horse; Montrose had never been in such strength, and he went to discuss Hurry.
That able commander lured him on by Elgin and Forres, fighting rearguard actions, and drawing Montrose through a hostile country, towards the mass of the Covenanters under Sutherland, Seaforth, and others, near Inverness. Destitute of intelligence, Montrose halted nine miles from Inverness at Auldearn.* The night was very wet, and Montrose's patrols sought shelter (as the preachers' sons and other amateur officers did on the eve of Dunbar), not knowing that Hurry was rapidly marching back against them, with the whole army of northern Covenanters (May 8). Patrick Gordon blames Montrose for inefficient scouting, and indeed this great master of surprises, when in hostile country, with men outworn by scarcely credible marches, was himself apt to be surprised. Wishart, however, says that Montrose, hearing of the approach of Baillie from the south, " was now very anxious to retire." Wishart omits Gordon's story, that Hurry's army, in their morning march back to surprise the marquis, discharged their pieces, damped by the rain, and so gave Montrose the alarm, the sound being carried away from the sea by a providential shifting of the wind. Again Wishart makes Montrose deliberately choose an excellent position ; while, according to Gordon, he had to make his dispositions hurriedly, his troops being half asleep when Hurry came into touch with them.
* Really Altdearn, which must surely mean " Burn of Dearn," not " High Dearn," as the editors of Wishart say, p. 98, note 2.
THE
BATTLE OFAULDEARN
Montrose MH
Hurry CD
A tiili. ncn* &jvcrtjA,-w\Si*vtno(t. tind.
THE VICTORY OF AULDEARN (1645). 143
Following the plan of Mr Gardiner, who carefully examined the ground, we see the village street of Auldearn running due south from the church ; Hurry advances by a road at right angles to the street. On the north (and right wing of Montrose), Colkitto's men were drawn up on hilly and broken ground, at a slant from north- east to south-west, covering the church, and the upper part of the village street, and protected, on their right, by the hill and bushy cover ; on their left, by the walls of the gardens behind the houses of the villagers. Then came a gap : Montrose had no centre, but a few musketeers, as tirailleurs, were placed where his centre should have been, between Hurry's left and the cottages of the lower part of the street. South of the street, Montrose's left wing, with Gordon's horse, stretched from north-east to south-west, the horse outflanking those on Hurry's right wing. Behind Hurry's line was a hill now called the Dead Man's Wood. To Colkitto's wing Montrose entrusted the royal standard ; this naturally was Hurry's point of attack ; here the head of Montrose, and the price set upon it, might be won, for he would be with the standard of the king. Meanwhile Montrose's own command, the left, was hidden by the southward slope of a hill from the advancing Covenanters, their "trained commander" not suspecting its existence. It appears that Patrick Gordon is wrong when he places Lord Gordon's horse on the right of Colkitto, Aboyne's on the left of Montrose : all the horse were on Montrose's own left. On Colkitto's right, it is clear that the steep hill and broken and enclosed ground would have made the use of cavalry impracticable.33 Montrose's dispositions, with no horse on his right, with no centre, but with the gap masked, and with his left concealed, like the Duke's infantry at Waterloo, by a dip of the ground, were as successful as they were unusual.
The brunt of the battle fell on Colkitto, who was charged by relays of foot and cavalry, the latter probably firing their pistols in the old style, and not pressing home, which the ground did not permit. Colkitto was driven back to the walls of the village gardens, where he delivered a hot fire, and attempted a charge, but the boggy ground threw his line into confusion. Now he was charged again by two regiments of foot and one of horse, whose supports came up and seconded them. His men gave ground, but not in disarray, while he, in the front, took several pikes in his targe, and cut them through with one sweep of his claymore. The enemy dared not come within the swing of his weapon, nor could the cavalry reach him ;
144 THE VICTORY OF AULDEARN (1645).
but his force was almost surrounded. "Let us die bravely," he whispered to those near him. A galloper brought the news of Colkitto's plight to Montrose, who called on the gay Gordons to mount the slope which hid them and charge. They topped the slope, they swept through Hurry's horse on his left, taking several colours, and slaying as they drove the Covenanters. "Now," said Colkitto, "those are indeed the valiant Gordons, and worthy of that name which Fame hath carried abroad of them." They fought as they fought at Glenrinnes fight ; and Hurry's horse fled as had fled the footmen of Argyll. Montrose now led his infantry against the flank of Hurry's foot soldiers, confronted as they were by Col- kitto, and in broken ground. Aboyne also charged with his horse ; Colkitto again advanced ; the Royalists, with yells of " Remember Donald Farquharson and James of Rynie ! " (murdered by the Covenanters) broke clean through the Lowland ranks, and the murder was grim and great. Sutherland, Seaforth, and young Innes, being well mounted, easily escaped ; Hurry did not attempt a charge with the two hundred horse of his reserve, a match in numbers for all Montrose's cavalry, but fled with them to Inverness.
" Montrose had shown himself master of cavalry tactics. ... In whatever form the enemy attacked him, whatever might be the varying components of his own army, he was always ready to take advantage of the weakness of the one, and of the strength of the other," says Mr Gardiner. With the thousand horse which Rupert would not spare, what might not Montrose have done !
Sf Pergama dextra !
But all was in vain. The successes of Montrose, we have seen, drew Leven back to the English border ; this withdrawal bred bad feeling between England and Scotland ; Leven's men received scorn instead of pay, and plundered for their living. Montrose had driven the wedge into the Anglo-Scottish Covenanting alliance, whence were to follow great results, but not now. For Montrose could not be everywhere, and, on June 14, the rashness of Rupert, the irresolution of Charles, with the superior skill and superior numbers of Cromwell, dealt to the royal cause the deadly blow at Naseby. Cromwell then, to the letter-writing Baillie's horror, "desired the House of Commons to come out expressly with their much-desired freedom of conscience." Never now would the Blue Banner of State Presbyterianism be set up south of Tweed. That cause was lost Toleration was in, and Presbytery was out. But, says Baillie, " If
MANOEUVRES OF MONTROSE (1645). 145
we settle affairs here, Montrose will melt like a snail." M So it must inevitably be when affairs were settled in England. Montrose's army, thanks to the jealousy of Huntly and the habits of the Highlanders, did "melt like a snail" after every victory, and the marquis had again to bring together a new army. After Auldearn he did not occupy Inverness, where he would have found supplies, and caused a great loss of such a source to the Covenant He halted at Elgin, where his wounded were cared for, and made arrangements for his invalids and prisoners at his central base, the castle of Blair Atholl.
His Napier friends — even the old Lord, a man of seventy, even the ladies of the family, and Napier's brother John — were being fined, imprisoned, and examined. But at Blair, Montrose held the brother of Campbell of Crinan, and hinted that if John Napier were executed " in a seeming legal way," the Campbells might expect reprisals. Montrose, none the less, never made reprisals on his prisoners, though urged so to do. At present he secured an exchange of prisoners with Argyll ; at the same time he bade his lieutenant at Blair punish the excesses of Irish deserters.36 He hoped, vainly, for good news from the English border, and intended to come down on his old college friend, Lord Lindsay, who, having usurped the title of Crawford, was now taking command in the south. (We continue to call him Lindsay.) General Baillie, with Lindsay's, Cassilis's, and Lauderdale's regiments, joined by Hurry with the remnant of his horse that fled at Auldearn, now marched towards Strathbogie, but found that Montrose, having left Elgin, was there before them. The armies faced each other all day ; through the night Montrose moved to Balveny. Baillie followed ; again he was outmarched and outmanoeuvred ; he found the foe in a strong position fortified by a river and rocks, and drawing supplies from Ruthven in Badenoch. Here his "red coats" and two other seasoned regiments let Baillie know that they regarded Montrose's commission and cause as at least as good as that of the Covenant ; so Patrick Gordon says. His narrative is closely parallel here to Baillie's own vindication of his conduct, but Baillie avers that he now decamped to Inverness in search of supplies, not on account of a mutiny. The truth probably is that his hungry men were also angry men and spoke their minds.*
* ' Britane's Distemper,' p. 128 ; Baillie, ii. p. 418. It is possible that Gordon and Baillie do not refer to the same occasion.
VOL. III. K
English Milea.
CAMPAIGN OF ALFORD
ALFORD FIGHT (1645). 147
Montrose now marched south to deal with Lindsay, whom he would have caught at Newtyle, in Angus, but for some reason most of the Gordons went home, and Montrose had to wait — Aboyne being absent on sick leave — till the trusty eldest son of Huntly, Lord Gordon, could again call in his retainers. Throughout Huntly was obscurely making mischief; Lewis Gordon was a mere freakish featherhead, Aboyne was inconstant, only Lord Gordon was as true as steel ; and Montrose often could not muster, in all, the full strength of a regiment. He had to leave Lindsay, who would have been a mere mouthful to him if in force, and to follow Nathaniel and Lord Gordon north, in search of the clan. They concentrated at the head of Strathdon, but Colkitto went west to bring in the Celts.
At this juncture Baillie was thwarted by the War Office of the period, the amateur strategists of the Committee of Estates. Censured for slackness, he wished to send in his papers. He met Lindsay and Marischal at Drum, on the Dee, and learned that Argyll was to take command and "pursue the rebels." Argyll would take over Hume's regiment, from Ireland (the Red Coats ?) a force of 1200, with Crawford's and Lauderdale's, and a hundred of Balcarres's horse, raising also his own clan. In exchange Baillie was only to receive Cassilis's 400 infantry, and was reduced, he says, to 1300 foot and 260 horse. But "The Marquess of Argyll refused the employment; his reasons I know not," says honest Baillie. Taking the forces which Argyll declined to lead, Lindsay merely wasted Atholl, which Baillie had already done.36 Montrose now marched south, crossed the Don, and paused at Alford. Baillie must fight or leave the low country open to the marquis. Colkitto was still absent in the west, recruiting, and probably the forces on either side were about equal in numbers. It also seems possible that Lindsay had gone into Atholl to watch Colkitto, otherwise his movement thither, which he certainly made, was sheer folly ; Blair Castle he could not hope to take. At Keith, Montrose challenged Baillie to fight in the open, but the old campaigner was not James IV. At Alford, concealing part of his force as at Auldearn, he lured Baillie across the Don.
"In front was a steep hill which concealed him from the enemy, so that they could hardly see his front ranks." * Gordon's and Aboyne's handfuls of horse, on the right and left wings, were
* Wishart, pp. 108, 109, cf. note 18, where there seems to be some confusion.
:^?.^ Ifc 'mi '- "'•"•' -': ' '— l£3
Edv* Wetter
VICTORY OF ALFORD (1645). 149
protected by Irish musketeers, as at Aberdeen. The Master of Napier commanded the reserve, which was quite out of view, the centre was composed of Farquharsons and Badenoch men. Two squadrons of Balcarres's horse and Lord Gordon's horse on Montrose's right, charged each other with resolute fury; Gordon and Balcarres fought with splendid courage, but Balcarres's third squadron refused to support him. The fight was equal, till Nathaniel Gordon bade the musketeers throw down their useless pieces, draw swords, and hamstring the enemy's horses. In a moment the Covenanting cavalry broke ; Montrose's infantry, says Baillie, arrayed six deep, charged his line, which was only three deep. The Master of Napier now came on with Montrose's reserve ; Baillie's infantry was taken in flank by Aboyne ; the rest was slaughter. The boys among Montrose's camp followers mounted the sumpter horses, and charged into the mellay. But Lord Gordon was shot, Napier says, in the act of seizing Baillie by the sword belt. Baillie does not mention this : " our foot stood with myself, and behaved as became them," till the Master of Napier came on. The Covenant lost some 1600 ; Montrose not a dozen, but Lord Gordon's death meant a yet more wavering support from Huntly's clan. As for Baillie, he complains of the jealousy of Hurry, and of the weakening of his forces. He was exonerated by Parliament, which, driven from Edinburgh by plague, was to meet at Perth.37 Though Montrose had won another fight, he had lost by Lord Gordon's death more than he had gained. None but Lord Gordon could have led into the southern Lowlands the great clan whose name stands as high as ever for chivalrous courage : as was seen at Dargai and Elandslaagte, as at Harlaw, Glenrinnes, Alford, Auldearn, — and Khartoum.
The essential condition of success for Montrose's enterprise had ever been that the king should join hands with him from England. But even the efforts of the queen to procure supplies from abroad for her champion had failed.* There had been promises of a regi- ment of horse from Charles — promises never fulfilled ; there had also been an attempt by the Covenanting Lords with Leven's army to come to terms with the king. One of these lords was Callendar, no Covenanter in his heart, — indeed only a strong sense of his own interest probably prevented him from carrying his levies over to the royal side before Montrose's disappointment at Dumfries, in 1644.**
* Cal. State Papers Scot., 1645. Montrose is scarcely mentioned in this volume of the State Papers, except on these occasions.
150 CHARLES FAILS TO JOIN MONTROSE (1645).
Callendar's force contained many officers, especially in Sinclair's regiment, who now, with Lord Sinclair himself, probably desired nothing better than to serve the king. But Charles would not promise to establish Presbyterianism in England (July 2 1 ; August 5) : all negotiations were shattered on that reef.39 He would rather (July 28) march north and join Montrose. Even Rupert dissuaded him from so perilous an enterprise ; better were peace at almost any price : " I believe it a more prudent way to retain something than to lose all."40 Desperate, indeed, was the cause when Rupert waxed prudent ! Charles replied, " I confess that, speaking as a mere soldier or statesman, I must say there is no probability but of my ruin." He had the alternatives of entire submission — which meant infliction, by him, of Presbyterianism on England, and the desertion of faith and friends ; or of fighting on " without expectation of good success more than this, to end my days with honour and a good conscience" (August 3).41
No Stuart save Mary ever spoke braver and more constant words : and in this faith Charles chose to live and die. But he could not join hands with Montrose though he made an effort. He reached Doncaster (August 18), but found himself between the army of Poyntz, and the overwhelming cavalry of David Leslie, 4000 horse marching north from Hereford to ruin Montrose. Ere Leslie could arrive Montrose had snatched his final victory.
After Alford fight Montrose moved to the Dee : his Highlanders had dispersed as usual, and Aboyne was sent to recruit Huntly's men. Montrose waited at Craigton on Dee,42 seven miles from Aberdeen. Aboyne was dilatory, and Montrose went south to Fordounkirk, the birthplace of Fordun, the old chronicler. Aboyne, when he came, brought few recruits, and was sent back for more, while the fighting clans — the Atholl men, Colkitto with Clan Gilzean, Clanranald, the Macgregors and the Macnabs (who took Loch Dochart Castle), the Farquharsons, and young Glengarry (^Eneas Macdonnell), with Glencoe and Glen Nevis (Macsorlies calling themselves Camerons) were gathered to the standard. The Estates, driven out of Stirling by the plague, met at Perth (July 24). From Stirling they had issued summonses to levy 10,000 foot and 500 horse. They retained Baillie, as a semi-official general, under, or with, a committee of noble but helpless amateurs, such as Argyll.
Though still destitute of cavalry save for a hundred horse, Montrose, not waiting for Aboyne and the old Earl of Airlie
COVENANTERS BUTCHER WOMEN (1645). 15 I
(then recruiting among the Ogilvies), descended the Almond, and encamped in the wood of Methven, near Perth. The forces of the Covenant had their headquarters at the Bridge of Earn, where Baillie awaited the regiments summoned from Fife. That focus of godliness, then curiously unfortunate in its military children, sent 3000 men. Montrose alarmed the Estates by approaching Perth with musketeers mounted on baggage horses, to resemble cavalry.43 The Estates sent out all their forces; they now had good intelligence, and hoped to fight Montrose without Aboyne and Airlie. By an ingenious ruse Montrose retreated safely to the passes, leaving twenty Highland marksmen under cover who emptied the saddles of the foremost Covenanters. The army of the Estates retired to the wood of Methven, and butchered, says Wishart, " the wives of the Irish and Highlanders, who followed the camp for love of their husbands."44 We must ever remember that some modern Presbyterian writers disbelieve that the women were "wives," — which makes a great difference. Meanwhile, at Little Dunkeld, south of Tay, Montrose welcomed Aboyne with 400, and Airlie with 60 horse, gentlemen as a rule. Patrick Gordon dwells on the superiority of Montrose's material to that of the Lowland levies ; the southern peasantry being " by continual custom, born slaves and bondmen, their ordinary food pease and beans"; "pease-bannocks," indeed, were a staple on the Border even in the nineteenth century. The Highlanders lived on oats and barley, fish and game.45 Sir James Turner, however, speaks very highly of the west Lowland fighting material, hardy soldier-like men, whom, as their prisoner, he observed in the Pentland Rising of 1666. Having now the strongest force that he ever led, Montrose wished to attack before the Fife levies could join the Estates from the east, and the Hamiltons, under Lanark, arrive from the west. He marched to Kinross, burning Castle Campbell, as Argyll had just burned the House of Menstrie, the seat of the late poet secretary, the Earl of Stirling.*
* Guthry, p. 193. Argyll denied this act at his trial, in 1661 (State Trials, v. r395)> but he also denied burning the House of Forthar, which was done by his own order, as a letter of his, already cited, proves. Moreover, General Baillie says, as to the military committee of which Argyll was a member, " Did they not, in that capacity . . . sometimes such acts of hostility as I, without a special warrant from the Estates (though I had been in charge by commission), could not now have answered but at the rate of my head. ..." (Baillie, ii, p. 424). Both parties were wasting and burning as usual.
Campaign of
KILSYTH
M<mti-ose,s March. .«
ENCUSH MILES
BAILLIE THWARTED BY ARGYLL (1645). 153
In some perilous scouting, by Nathaniel Gordon, prisoners were taken, and it was learned that " the kail-eaters of Fife " had almost mutinied, declining to cross Forth, but were still lured on by their preachers, " who told them jolly tales " of the approach of Lanark's contingent.46 Montrose crossed Forth by a ford four miles above Stirling, and encamped at Kilsyth, half-way to Glasgow. The enemy next day crossed Forth by Stirling Bridge, the castle being held for the Covenant. They camped (after the interview between Baillie and the committee presently to be described), within three miles from Kilsyth, while Lanark, with 2000 foot and 500 horse, and Cassilis, Eglintoun, and Glencairn from Ayrshire were moving to join them. Montrose had the disadvantage in numbers, and, if defeated, Forth cut him off from the hills. But his men were in high heart ; a great body of the hostile force, the soldiers of Fife, were shaking in their shoes ; and the Committee of Argyll were certain to paralyse the skill of Baillie.
We have that general's account of Kilsyth fight, and what preceded it, and though he writes as a man on his defence, he may be trusted.
When the legions of Fife had arrived, Argyll, Lindsay, Burleigh (the fugitive of Aberdeen fight), Tullibardine, Elcho (the defeated of Tippermuir), and Balcarres, the Rupert of the Covenant, met Baillie, and Argyll asked, "What was to be done?" Baillie said that he would take the orders of the Marquis and the Committee. " Why so ? " asked Argyll. Baillie stated his grievances. Without his knowledge prisoners were exchanged (by Argyll), without his orders houses were burned (by Argyll). "While I was present, others did sometimes undertake the command of the army." So they, in this happy temper, advanced within three miles of Montrose, and there slept.
Next day, Argyll was hot for an advance. The road, Baillie answered, was difficult; Argyll therefore proposed to go across country, through the corn. Baillie obeyed, and broke up his position which he had deemed impregnable (August 15). The Covenanters held the heights ; below, Montrose was drawn up on a plain. He was out of range of musketry fire, nor could he be attacked, as Baillie's position was so steep and rocky in front that an orderly advance down hill was impossible. Montrose's men threw off their plaids, and stood to arms in their saffron shirts, a kind of fustanella, knotted, and leaving the legs bare. The Committee caused Baillie
C Ftrst.posifLan. oftfie Ctrvtyiafitiruj Ar O FlanJt. TTiarch, outfit C0ve?i4in£ing Mrrrzf
VICTORY OF KILSYTH (1645). 155
to make a flanking march along the front of Montrose, to cross a brook that ran through a steep cloven glen, and to gain a hill on the Royalist left, whence they could descend with ease on Montrose's left flank : they had reconnoitred the ground, and thought that all this was feasible. Baillie " liked not the notion : there was all to be lost, little or nothing to be gained." The Committee voted, and all but Balcarres, — a soldier, — agreed with Argyll. Baillie, against his will, sent a force to occupy an enclosure on the desired heights, with the horse of Balcarres.
This movement seems to have been made behind a sheltering slope; on approaching its summit Baillie saw the Highland skirmishers climbing the steep cloven glen towards the cover of some low wooded ground. Returning to Argyll, he beheld Haldane attacking, without his orders, some cottages held by Maclean of Treshnish ; the Clan Gilzean and Clanranald, as supports, were looking on. Baillie sent two gallopers to bid Haldane retire from his attack on this Hougoumont: Haldane refused, but was beaten back by Maclean, and then Macleans and Macdonalds, acting on impulse, and without order, charged straight up the difficult glen, racing for first place, leaped a stone dyke, and plunged into the centre of the Covenanting line, taking it in flank.* They thus cut through the army of the brethren as it marched across the head of the glen to its chosen hill ; but they themselves were now "in the air," without flanking force or supports. On their left, Hume, Argyll's men, and three other regiments, had reached the desired hill on Montrose's left, where Adjutant Gordon charged their cavalry with his horse, and drove them back on their infantry, but was surrounded and enfiladed. Aboyne had been placed by Montrose in the rear, the Marquis deeming his a valuable life. Now, beholding the Gordons in jeopardy, Aboyne with his tiny guard wheeled on the flank of the red-coat Covenanting infantry, broke through, and joined the Gordons who were struggling against footmen and cavalry. The Gordons took heart, and held their own, till, after a message sent by Aboyne to Montrose, Airlie charged at the head of the Ogilvies; Nathaniel Gordon led on the rest of his clan, and from the desirable mountain of the strategical Committee, the Covenanted horse and foot fled pell-mell.
At the same time the Macdonalds and Macleans, isolated as they were, rushed, crouching behind their targets, into the infantry whom
* Mr Hill Burton makes the Highlanders charge "down the brae," vi. p. 373.
156 MONTROSE DESERTED (1645).
they had attacked ; Baillie galloped to call up the reserves of Fife, but they were running with the claymores at their backs, and many a St Andrews burgess " burst without stroke " says Baillie (the Rev. Mr). Their officers vainly tried to rally them : few escaped from that field out of 6000 men, except the mounted officers. Argyll galloped to the Firth, took boat, as usual, and made for Newcastle to seek reinforcements from England. These were already riding north under David Leslie, 4000 strong ; they picked up infantry at Newcastle. The other Covenanting nobles fled from Kilsyth, some to Berwick, some to Ireland ; Montrose had cleared the country.
Few and gloomy words may tell what followed. Montrose marched to Glasgow, which he saved from plunder. This cost him the desertion of 3000 Highlanders, and of Colkitto, who went to sate his vengeance against Argyll in Kintyre. From August 20 to September 4, Montrose lay at Bothwell, where Aboyne and the Gordons left him, upon some pique about a pamphlet, in which their merits were not recognised ; or because Crawford, released with the other captives from prison, held the king's commission to command the horse. Indeed Wishart and Patrick Gordon give totally different accounts of the Gordons' conduct at Kilsyth. Montrose gladly received his friends, Crawford, the Napiers, the Stirlings of Keir, Wishart, and others, emancipated by the trembling officials from their prison in Edinburgh. Home and Roxburgh invited Montrose's coming to the Border, where they deserted him (Montrose to Ogilvy, Bothwell, August 28, i645).47
Some raw levies were raised for Montrose in Annandale and Nithsdale ; the Catholic Marquis of Douglas added more from his estates; and the marquis, fatally trusting to broken reeds like Roxburgh, Home, and Traquair, moved to Kelso, in hopes of being joined by English Royalists. Hence (Sept. i o) old Sir Robert Spottis- woode wrote to Digby, in England, a letter which was never posted. You have let David Leslie loose on us (he says) and sent no force to follow him. Montrose, here, has only "seeming friends." Roxburgh and Home, who called him to come, have yielded their houses to Leslie, when Montrose " was within a dozen miles of them," and have gone not unwilling prisoners to Berwick. Traquair "has promised more than he hath yet performed," — or meant to perform. Montrose, undismayed, "with his small force is ready to pursue David Lesley," of whose strength he must have been misin- formed.48
DEFEAT AT PHILIPHAUGH (1645). 157
Counselled, it is said, by Traquair, and having secured Home and Roxburgh, willing prisoners as was deemed, Leslie marched not to Edinburgh, but suddenly down Gala, towards Tweed. Montrose, finding that he had been vainly lured to Tweed by the treachery or cowardice of Roxburgh and Home, had retired to the banks of Ettrick, opposite Selkirk. Leslie now lay in the deep valley of Tweed, and on the long haugh at the meeting of Tweed and Ettrick at Sunderland Hall. Montrose's force, " a few raw, undisciplined horse," Border lairds perhaps, and 500 Irish, with Airlie's little squadron of cavalry, occupied the haugh on the left of Ettrick and the present cricket-ground of Selkirk, and had partly fortified the steep bank above the existing Yarrow Road. A news-letter (official) describes the works as strong and well placed. The scouts of Ogilvy of Pourie, serving with Montrose, declared that there were no- enemies within ten miles, but Charteris of Hempsfield (Amisfield) brought in news that Leslie was at Sunder- land Hall, three miles away ; he himself had lost several men in a skirmish with them. Montrose, with a strange lack of care, passed the night in Selkirk ; it seems doubtful whether Hempsfield's report was ever brought to him. Patrick Gordon says that Hempsfield and his men "were esteemed to have brawled among themselves in a drunken fray " ; so their report seems to have been distrusted and not sent in to the general.
As Montrose breakfasted next day at Selkirk, Blackadder came with tidings that Leslie was at hand. Montrose galloped downhill, crossed the Ettrick, and found his camp in confusion. The mounted gentry of the Border held off in parties, large or small, and did not venture their persons : so Patrick Gordon says. He adds that they numbered 1200 — a thing incredible, the Border lairds of that time having no love of fighting. They did not fight. A news-letter of September 16 from Haddington speaks of a charge of 200 of Montrose's musketeers who were driven in, after which, despite Leslie's overwhelming numbers, there was an hour of hard fighting ; " our horse endeavouring to break through, and the enemy with great resolution maintaining their ground." Leslie himself charged with his regiment, and penetrated the ranks. Airlie's horse, "wanting their foot, were not able to make great opposition." Patrick Gordon says that they made successful charges, but, surrounded by 2000 cavalry, cut through them and escaped. Ogilvy and Nathaniel Gordon were taken by
158 PERFIDY AND MASSACRE.
the peasantry. Of 300 Irish, 250 fell; the rest, says Patrick Gordon, surrendered " upon promise of safe quarter, but it was not kept." 49
Quarter, in fact, by a vile equivocation, had been granted to Stuart, the adjutant, but not to his men, says Mr Gardiner.50 Wishart and Guthry (p. 203) are the authorities, with Patrick Gordon, for breach of promise of quarter. Whether this was so or not, some gentlemen, averring that they had received quarter, and yielding themselves prisoners, were later doomed by the Estates.51 At their trial it was alleged that Leslie had forbidden quarter to be given to any Irish, which, if true, settles the question about them.* Sir George Mackenzie, Lord Advocate under Charles II., writes that, of the camp followers, " fourscore women and children were drowned, being all in one day thrown over the bridge at Linlithgow by the Covenanters, and six more at Elgin, by the same faction. ..." (Napier, ii. 584-596). Sir James Turner witnessed a similar scene of Covenanted mercies and drowning of women in Ireland ; he was fortunately able to stop the massacre. Guthry attributes the slaughter of the surrendered Irishmen to the advice of the preachers with Leslie. Patrick Gordon describes in very realistic terms the
* It is impossible to ascertain the truth about Philiphaugh fight. Tradition speaks of a heavy fog and a surprise ; Leslie's approach, concealed by the Linglee hill, not being discovered till he was within striking distance. Wishart agrees : was he present? According to his editors, Messrs Murdoch and Morland Simpson, he was. The Covenanting news-letter of September 16 from Had- dington ('A More Perfect and Particular Relation,' Published by Authority. Robert Bostock. London, September 25, 1645), seems to have escaped Mr Gardiner's notice. It makes both parties " continue all night in arms," alleges that Montrose was well entrenched, the battle began at 10 A.M., and the heat of the contest raged from n to noon. The Cavaliers rally, and lose Ogilvy and Nathaniel Gordon in their last stand. "It is conceived there is between two and three thousand killed," which must be mere rumour. " A hundred Irish were all since" (when?) " shot at a post." On this showing, there was no surprise and there was a stout resistance, the horsemen fighting on after the capture of the infantry. The tract is cited in Mr Craig Brown's ' History of Selkirkshire.' Mr Steel of Philiphaugh kindly lent me the brochure, which is rare. As against this news-letter, we have David Leslie's own statement that the fight was very easily won : apparently by a surprise ; cf. p. 237 infra,
Guthry attributes the massacre of the women to the preachers' exhortations. Argyll and Lanark and Buccleuch, and other nobles, returned in Leslie's train, were present, though, as they say that part of Leslie's force was at a distance, we do not know what share they took in the fighting, they may have been with the distant division. See their letters in Mitchell, ' Commission of the General Assembly Records,' Introduction to volume i. Another in Willcock, ' The Great Marquess,' appendix vii. p. 387.
ESCAPE OF MONTROSE (1645). 159
slaughter of 300 women, " married wives of the Irish." Wishart also tells of the murder of women and " cook boys," and the later drowning of stragglers, women, and children. Montrose, Crawford, the Napiers, and some forty horse reached the hills above Yarrow, and after repelling an attempt to take them, arrived at Traquair. The earl, with his son, Lord Linton, who had deserted before Philiphaugh, "was not at home." Traquair died a street beggar.
Montrose, escaping north, had lost, indeed, no part of his victorious forces except the 500 Irish. But he never could collect his men. Colkitto would not come in; Lord Lewis Gordon behaved like the wretch he was ; for one reason or another Aboyne first wavered, then deserted; and Huntly, though he sacked Aberdeen, thwarted every plan of the great marquis.
Such was the end of the success of the unparalleled adventure by which, in a year's time, he who began as a solitary and disguised fugitive, drove the leaders of the Covenant out of Scotland and shattered their armies. Montrose had not understood that the once warlike Border was now a land of pacific pease-fed peasants, and of lords who had no following and neither head nor heart. Fifty years earlier he would have been backed by the spears of Home and Hepburn, Maxwell, Ker, and Scott. Nor did Montrose understand that his politics were ideal, not practical, nor appreciate the hatred which he had incurred as a leader of Catholic Celts, whose outrages are attested by the Royalist contemporary, Patrick Gordon.
I ' Britane's Distemper,' pp. 62, 63.
3 ' Britane's Distemper,' pp. 63, 71-73 ; Wishart, pp. 51-57.
3 Wishart, p. 59.
4 Napier, ii. pp. 433-443. For the battle, Wishart, Patrick Gordon, and Carte's ' Original Letters,' ut supra,
5 Wishart, p. 64; Act. Parl. Scot., vi., i. pp. 359, 360.
6 Gardiner, ii. p. 142.
7 Napier, ' Memorials,' ii. p. 163.
8 Spalding, ii. pp. 406, 407 ; Napier, ii. pp. 452, 453.
9 Gardiner, ii. pp. 147-148 ; ' Britane's Distemper,' pp. 80, 81 ; Wishart, pp. 66-69.
10 ' Diary of Alexander Jaffray,' p. 50. Aberdeen, 1856.
II ' Britane's Distemper,' p. 89.
u Wishart, p. 81. " Baillie, ii. p. 421, bis.
1 60 NOTES.
14 Report of an Irish officer with Montrose. Carte's ' Original Letters,' i. p. 76.
18 Montrose to the king, February 3, 1645. Napier, ii. p. 485.
18 'Britane's Distemper,' pp. 101, 102; Wishart, pp. 84-86; Carte's 'Original Letters,' i. p. 76 ; Montrose to Charles, Napier, ii. pp. 485-488, note ; Guthry, pp. 178, 179 ; Baillie, ii. p. 263. 17 Balfour, iii. p. 230.
18 Peterkin, pp. 416, 417. 19 Peterkin, pp. 420, 421.
20 Balfour, iii. pp. 254, 255, 282. a Guthry, p. 181.
22 Balfour, iii. p. 273. ffl Peterkin, pp. 429, 430.
24 Guthry, p. 180 ; Balfour, iii. pp. 272, 273.
25 Cal. State Papers, pp. 558, 559, 1644-45 J Terry's ' Leslie,' p. 361.
26 ' Britane's Distemper,' pp. Ill, 112; Spalding, ii. p. 455.
27 Wishart, pp. 92-95; 'Britane's Distemper,' pp. 116, 117; Napier, ii. pp. 495-497 5 Gardiner, ii. pp. 218-220.
28 Maxwell, 'Old Dundee,' p. 495 ; Burton, vi. pp. 370, 371.
29 Spalding, ii. p. 461. *° Spalding, ii. p. 464.
81 'Britane's Distemper,' pp. 117-120; Wishart, pp. 96, 97.
82 Spalding, ii. pp. 467-469.
83 Gardiner, ii. pp. 224, 225, note 2. M Baillie, ii. p. 280.
88 Napier, ii. pp. 515, 516. M Baillie, ii. pp. 418, 419.
87 Wishart, pp. 109-112; 'Britane's Distemper,' pp. 128-134; Baillie, ii.
pp. 4I7-419-
38 Turner, pp. 37-38. * Gardiner, ii. pp. 285, 286.
40 Gardiner, ii. p. 287 ; Warburton, iii. p. 149.
41 Rushworth, vi. p. 132. *2 Wishart, p. 113, note 3.
43 ' Britane's Distemper,' p. 136; Wishart, p. 116.
44 Wishart, p. 117. *> 'Britane's Distemper,' p. 138.
46 Guthry, p. 193 ; Wishart, p. 121.
47 ' Memorials of Montrose,' ii. p. 229.
48 ' Memorials of Montrose,' ii. p. 233, 234.
49 ' Britane's Distemper,' p. 160. 5° Gardiner, ii. p. 356. 61 Act. Parl. Scot, vi., i. p. 506.
CHAPTER VI.
THE REVENGE OF THE COVENANTERS. 1645.
MONTROSE, who never lost heart, passed the winter in marching and countermarching from Atholl to Huntly's country, and even threatened Glasgow in October, but was deserted, much against their will, by Huntly's clansmen, obedient to their jealous chief. The wife of the great marquis died ; his old and dear friend, Lord Napier, died, outworn in Atholl.* A force of Campbells, quartered by Argyll on Lord Napier's lands in Menteith, were routed by the local band of Royalists. But " the Dagon of the Covenant " was being worshipped with bloody rites : ten prisoners, with Sir William Rollock, Sir Philip Nisbet, and Ogilvy of Inverquharity, " a lovely young youth " of eighteen, were beheaded at Glasgow in October.1 " The English Parliament," says a modern writer, " by the execution of Strafford and Laud, had set the example how to deal with political adversaries, and the Scots were energetically emulating it." 2 This was not exactly Baillie's view of the matter. He writes (October 17, 1645), "It's thought Johnstone, Ogilbie (Lord Ogilvy), Sir John Hay, Sir Robert Spottiswoode, and divers others of the prisoners will, at that meeting" (of the Estates at St. Andrews, December 1645, January 1646), "lose their heads, . . . albeit to this day no man in England has been executed for bearing arms against the Parliament." 3
The preachers were "rowping like ravens" for blood. The standing commission of the General Assembly, also several presby-
* The late Lord Napier and Ettrick informed the author that, in Atholl, he met a very old man, who pointed out a tree under which the internal parts of Montrose's friend were buried : a curious proof of the tenacity of tradition, for Lord Napier knew that this, in fact, was done.
VOL. III. L
I 62 THE THEOLOGY OF ANAHUAC.
teries, with individual preachers, and Waristoun addressing the Estates, were not to be denied. Waristoun's argument was in a tone of ferocious superstition. Their previous delay to shed the blood of men bearing the king's commission (a delay probably caused by dread of reprisals which Montrose never took) "had provoked God's two great servants against them, the sword and plague of pestilence." More blood must be shed to propitiate the Deity. This is the theology of Anahuac or of Ashanti ; an insatiate god calls for human victims ; thus the fanatics read the Gospel. With regard to the massacre of prisoners and women on the field of Philiphaugh, and to the later slayings in cold blood, it is not necessary to agree with Mr Hume Brown that " Montrose himself was primarily responsible." He never gave orders to slay prisoners ; — to be sure his Highlanders and Irish took very few, and certainly the Macdonalds massacred Campbell prisoners after Inverlochy. Again, before Montrose's war, all Irish and Catholics born in Ireland, taken in arms, were ordered to be massacred by the English Parliament. But reprisals by Rupert, and anxiety for English prisoners in Ireland, caused a relaxation of this rule, after some Irish prisoners had been drowned at sea. Finally, the executions ordered by the Estates were designed to please the Deity as conceived of by the preachers and Waristoun ; no one can accuse Montrose of that blasphemous folly.4
To the plea of those who had yielded on receiving quarter (and that in a war in which prisoners had already been exchanged), it was replied that " if quarter be sustained, the whole nation, and especially the Estates of Parliament, will violate the oath of the Covenant." 5 Need more be said against these men's view of their contract with the Creator than they here assert? Leslie, at Philip- haugh, had only forbidden to give quarter to the Irish ; Sir Robert Spottiswoode was, for example, not Irish ; his quarter ought to hold good. But, it was replied, the Estates must "judge before God, and avert his wrath" — by slaying Malignant prisoners. How far his wrath was averted by human gore, Scotland had yet to learn. Waristoun noted that even Parliament, like Noah's Ark, "contained both foul and clean creatures." The foul creatures, a large majority, condemned Sir Robert Spottiswoode (a non-combatant), William Murray, brother of Tullibardine, Nathaniel Gordon, Lord Ogilvy, and others. They died like gentlemen (Ogilvy escaped), but were much vexed by the preachers in their last hours.6 A Roman
MURDERS OF WOMEN (1646) 163
brother, Tullibardine did not desert the slayers of his kinsman. Ogilvy was of kin to Hamilton and to Lindsay. By the old ruse, he escaped disguised as his sister, who had been allowed to visit him in prison. The lady was protected against Argyll by Lindsay, Hamilton, and Lanark ; and it is probable that, as usual, the escape was connived at7
"The House ordains the Irish prisoners taken at and after Philiphaugh, in all the prisons of the kingdom, especially in the prisons of Selkirk, Jedburgh, Glasgow, Dumbarton, and Perth, to be executed without any assize or process, conform to the treaty between the two kingdoms, passed in act."8 A bad example, too closely followed. Under Charles II., Cameronians were "executed without any assize," of which we hear many complaints. Of the Covenanting precedent much less is said. Not only the men, but six poor Irish women, prisoners at Selkirk, were ordered by the Estates to be put to death in cold blood, if they had been on the field, or in the " rebellion." * The cruelty of the Estates and of their preachers thus far outdid that of soldiers who, at Naseby and Philiphaugh, while still hot from battle, butchered women. Yet "the two servants of God," profanely invoked by Waristoun, Plague and Sword, did not cease from their labours in Scotland.
The time was approaching in which the Scots were to follow the star of the Covenant into the deepest national disgrace. The excuses made for their handing over the king to the English in return for a portion of their arrears of pay, are to some extent valid ; they had, in fact, no alternative, save — not to take their wages. But it was the blindness of mind which made them slaves to the preachers and interpreters of the Covenant, who put so strange and sanguinary a sense upon the contract, that brought them into a situation not to be escaped from with safety and honour. It was their desire to force upon unwilling people their Presbytery by Right Divine, and their bargain with Omnipotence (the fevered dream of theologians), that led Scotland through shame and disaster, till she and her Kirk lay under the heel of the English conqueror.
The position of the unhappy king, after Philiphaugh, was not unlike that of his grandmother, Queen Mary, in her English prisons. He was not yet a captive, but, as we have seen, he had abandoned hope of success in the war, and was prepared to die rather than to
* Craig Brown, ' History of Selkirkshire,' i. p. 193. Act. Parl. Scot., vi., i. p. 492. Five of the Irish had died in Selkirk gaol.
164 SCOTTISH COMMISSIONERS TURN TO FRANCE (1645).
impose Presbyterianism and the Covenant on his subjects. But he still hoped to make the best possible bargain, now with the Parliament, now with the Independents and their section of the army, and again with the Scots. As Mary had been told, he " had too many irons in the fire." The Scots had long been on ill terms with their English paymasters, who did not pay them, so that they made themselves unpopular by plundering the country ; while their interests of self-defence, during Montrose's victories, caused Alexander Leslie, as we saw, to cling to the Border, in place of falling in with the strategy of the English generals. The English were longing to see them evacuate Carlisle, Newcastle, and other towns, and the military jealousy as between Cromwell and David Leslie has been noticed.
In September 1645 Loudoun not only spoke very freely to the English Parliament, being as freely answered, but candidly communi- cated to Montereul, the French ambassador, his private opinion of his English allies.* An arrangement for peace through French mediation, between the Scottish Commissioners in England, the English Presbyterian party, and the queen, then in France, was thought feasible. Lord Holland, in talk with Montereul, said that Charles might introduce a kind of Presbyterianism in England, without the name but with some shadow (quelque image] of bishops (as under the Restoration in Scotland), return to London, and meet Parliament. The former step could not be contrary to his conscience, as he knew that the safety of his soul would not be endangered, nor the second to his honour. (August 14/2 4.°) But a door must be open or shut ! Charles would never definitely promise to force Presbyterianism on England.
The news of Kilsyth only made the Scots more dependent on the English. On September 18/28 Montereul spoke of sub- mitting certain terms, mainly arranged by Balmerino and Holland, to the queen, and to Mazarin. If all went well, the united parties might be too strong for the Independents. France, if the plan succeeded, "would separate Scotland from England." But the defeat at Philiphaugh was now known, and, as Montereul wrote, came Rupert, with news of a treaty to be negotiated between the king and the Independents. The Scottish Commissioners, therefore, dreading the sectaries, looked to France. Balmerino (September 2 5 /October 5) still was unwilling to break the Solemn
* Montreuil seems the right spelling, but it is Montereul in the published edition of his despatches.
THE SCOTS AND THE KING (1645). 165
League and Covenant. To France, however, Sir Robert Murray was to be sent. Montereul (October 16/26) pressed on the Scottish Commissioners the idea that the state of their country was nearly as perilous as that of the king (which proved true), and also expressed his natural surprise about their zeal for thrusting an unwelcome religion on England, " a matter which did not concern them, but their neighbours." They replied : first, that they had consciences ; next, that the Covenant was sacred ; thirdly, that they could not be safe unless England was Presbyterian. That the English also had consciences does not seem to have occurred to them. Montereul made the obvious replies : he also told Mazarin that, since England would never accept Presbytery as de jure divino, Charles might do away, in a later Parliament, what he might establish in this. The institution of Presbyterianism, if introduced, would confessedly be of human origin, — the king, it would seem, having the Tudor power of changing his subjects' religion if he changed it to Presbytery — that is, with aid of the Presbyterian Parliament. But Charles could never accept the Covenant thus : he would be perjuring himself if he did so, — thus he would reason ; and it was the Covenant and" Solemn League that fatally severed the king from the Scots.
Already there had been a plan for the king to commit himself to the Scottish army, approved of by Balmerino.10 Charles was now trying to come to terms with Leven (Alexander Leslie), who wisely confined himself to his military duties. On October 17/27, the Scottish Commissioners accredited to the English Parliament sent a note in cypher to Montereul. They conceived that the Scots and the " well disposed " (that is, Presbyterian) English would act together "if the king will condescend to establish ecclesiastical affairs as it may be resolved in the Parliaments and Assemblies of the two kingdoms, and according to what is established in the other reformed churches." If so, Charles would be met half way on most points. If the king accepted, and proposed peace on these lines, and if the English refused, the Scots would employ the best means compatible with the safety of the king to obtain peace.11 Of course, the Scottish Estates could disavow the Commissioners if they chose.
Sir Robert Murray was sent to Mazarin with these terms, but the capture of Digby's papers at Sherburne, and the discoveries thereby made as to Charles's foreign dealings, infuriated the English Parlia- ment. Meanwhile, the Scottish Commissioners at once feared that
1 66 MONTEREUL AND CHARLES (1646).
the queen would not come into their proposals, and dreaded a new negotiation between Charles and the Independents.12 But Charles now rejected, from the Independents, terms much better than he ever again had a chance of obtaining, and Montereul says, on the authority of the Countess of Devonshire, that Dorset, Southampton, Hertford, and Lindsay plotted to give him up to the Parliament ! 13 The king reeled from plan to plan and from plot to plot — to one thing constant never, except to a generous enthusiasm for Montrose. " From henceforth," he told Montereul in January, " I place Montrose amongst my children, and mean to live with him as a friend, not as a king." " Balmerino and the Scots believe that the king ought to throw himself into their army, and that I ought to incline him to do so," wrote Montereul, on January 4/14, 1646. In the opinion of the French ambassador both ideas were wrong.
Early in January Montereul obtained permission to visit Charles at Oxford, where he remained for six days.*
The long despatch of Montereul to Mazarin, concerning the attitude of Charles, is most instructive. The young French diplomatist, a canon, whether he was a sincere Catholic, or whether he was of the faith of Aramis, Abb£ d'Herblay, stood as much detached from the consciences, religious scruples, and religious ambitions of Scottish and English Presbyterians, of the Independents, and of the king, as if he had been a native of another planet, or a child of the twentieth century. Nothing to him were Anglican bishops, nothing to him were lay elders, prophets, presbyteries, and assemblies. He wished to secure the safety of the king, to whom came daily Job's messengers of surrender, and he wished to do so through the Scots, the queen, and France : for the weaken- ing of England by separation from Scotland. While Charles dallied with the alternative of throwing himself on Parliament or on the Independents, Montereul was able to tell Mazarin that, as was reported, the chief room in the Tower was being furnished for the king's prison.14 Such were the tender mercies of the Independents. As soon as Montereul, in his conversation with Charles, approached the point of religion, he saw that there was no hope. The Scottish Commissioners would be content with nothing less than the king's consent to the imposition of the Kirk upon England. " Misfortune
* The dates here are confusing, because, where Mr Gardiner heads a letter of Montereul "January 5, 1646," Mr Fotheringham, in his edition of the letters, heads the same epistle, January 15/25, and so on.
THE KING'S SCRUPLES (1646). 167
dogs him, or destiny leads him to his doom," for this point Charles would never grant. " He would rather lose his crown than his soul." He had his own Covenant, his Coronation Oath, and if the Scots were bound to their band, so was he to his vow. He spoke of some compromise, by which the door might be both open and shut. Montereul suggested his acceptance of the three propositions of Uxbridge (1645), l^e ^rst of which modestly demanded that the king should take the Covenant. At Uxbridge, Charles had told Nicholas that if he reminded the proposers of this idea that they would infallibly be damned " it might do good." u The king would see the Brethren damned before he would swallow their band. But he was ready enough to go to the Scottish army, as soon as he had assurance from the Commissioners that he would be well received. The question arises later, Did he get this assurance or did he not?
Afterwards Charles told Montereul what he thought of the Scots and of compromise. The Scots wanted Presbyterianism in England — first that they might get their arrears of pay (" mes gages ! mes gages") out of the revenues of disendowed bishops; next, lest if bishops survived in England they might one day reappear in Scotland. He would provide the Scots' wages out of an Irish fund, and would promise never to alter the Kirk in Scotland. Montereul still urged submission. Charles, he said, could not save both Crown and Church. Though no casuist, Montereul thought that, the Church being as good as lost, the king might honestly save the Crown — and restore the Church later. Charles was firm, and next Montereul met Nicholas and Asburnham. They said that with the Scots, Presbytery was a mere matter of self-will, but the king was guided by conscience. No party ever dreamed that any other party could possess a conscience.
The king at last came to this, more, he declared, than the Scots " could reasonably expect " : he would tolerate Presbytery in England. Montereul said that was of no avail — the Scots " had taken arms to put down every other form of worship " ; they did not want to be tolerated, they wanted to be supremely intolerant. He advised Charles to try to purge his conscience of scruple by discussion with a Scottish theologian, which the unfortunate king did later. There was also trouble about Will Murray, whom Charles did not wish to receive, as he was on ill terms with Montrose, while he had a foot in the camp of the Scottish Commissioners. Montereul said that
1 68 SCOTTISH "UNBLUSHING EFFRONTERY" (1646).
it was useless to carry to them the king's memorandum of his new proposals ; and returning to town, found that he was right. His one hope now was that the queen, from France, might put pressure on her husband to yield. Charles (January 17/27) wrote to ask what assurances for his safety and liberty the Commissioners would give, if he joined their army, and whether they would combine with Montrose — an excommunicated man with a price on his head ! " You have my last word," he wrote to Montereul. " I foresee their entire ruin, if they do not come to terms with me." His prophecy was fulfilled. The king's other proposals to the Parliament were at this time declined. That iron was out of the fire. His idea of joining the Scots got wind, and the Independents planned to depose him, and to crown the child Duke of Gloucester. The Prince of Wales would not lay down arms ; the Duke of York was unlikely to accept their offers. The report 16 was probably incorrect.
The Scottish Commissioners now let Charles know that they could not answer for their army's reception of him " unless he performed, before leaving, all that had been promised here," — toleration, and a national synod to decide about religion. Yet Montereul thought that he had the Commissioners' verbal assurance, copied out, for the king's safety. No more, practically, was ever obtained in the way of assurance — the Commissioners would give none in writing ; and the various subterfuges as to the royal safety were worthless. The somewhat disputable affair of Glamorgan's Treaty in Ireland was now discovered, and inflamed the suspicions of the English.17 Moreover, the fact that Will Murray had been dealing in France with the queen, in the interests of the Scottish Commissioners, and on the chance that the queen would induce Charles to come to terms with the Scots, was revealed to the English Parliament.18 "The Scots," says Mr Gardiner, "with unblushing effrontery publicly declared that the charges were absolutely false from beginning to end." Charles also repudiated Glamorgan ; in this course he has found a modern defender.
On February 5 Will Murray, returning from France in disguise, was arrested at Canterbury. Montereul, however, received his packet safe with the queen's letter to Charles, and Sir Robert Murray managed to have a few words with Will, his cousin, who said that the king must take the Covenant.19 Will escaped later from being hanged as a spy, by the justice of the court which tried him. It had become plain that if the king did not
"A GHOST OF ASSURANCES" (1646). 169
take the Covenant he was doomed, for Montereul, in the letter just cited, says, fay eu bien de la peine a tirer des Ecossais une image de seureti, "a ghost of an assurance of Charles's safety" (Feb. i9/March i). A minute of it had just been drawn up.20 But Charles, if he knew himself, never would sign the Covenant. He would not " leave those grounds which upon no consideration must I quit." He adds, writing to the queen, " even in those things I shall go as near the wind as I can, according to that wit which God has given me" (Oxford, Jan. 22, i646).21 Now the intricate arrangements between the king and the Scottish Commissioners, as to assurance for his safety and liberty, were characterised by the fact that both sides throughout went " as near the wind " as they could; Charles playing for his life and crown, the Scots for the valuable guarantee of their wages which the custody of his person would give them. The wind into which Charles never would sail was the Covenant, — of that he assures the queen again and again (Feb. i, 1646). He met all the queen's arguments in favour of this final shame with conclusive replies. He would not promise what his conscience forbade, on the faint chance that " I shall not be put to it." " I do not understand how the Independents' wilful- ness against Presbyterian Government can free me from my promise to the Scots "(Feb. S).22
In March (no date) Sir Robert Murray wrote down a verbal assurance from the Scottish Commissioners, for honour, respect, and safety to Charles in their army, but only if Charles would accept the Uxbridge propositions and the Covenant, which the king was to announce in one letter to Parliament and the Commissioners, and in another to the Scottish Estates.28 The king (March 2) had approached the Independents with an offer of general (Protestant) tolerance, but as they knew he was dealing with the Scots they supposed that he must be ready to accept the intolerance of Presbyterianism. He was not; but this the Independents could not understand, knowing that the Scots would accept nothing less.24 Meanwhile Loudoun, the chancellor, arrived from Scotland, probably with leave from a quorum of the Estates, to treat with the king.* Knowing that the king would never accept the Covenant, Montereul engaged the Scots Commissioners to sail as near the wind as this : Charles should allow ecclesiastical matters " to remain established as
* See Gardiner, iii. p. 74, note I. Montereul asserts that Loudoun had very ample powers from the Scottish Parliament " (i. pp. 170-173), so he " had learned."
ENGLAND REJECTS TYRANNY OF PRESBYTERS (1646).
they had already been, and might be established in future by both Parliaments and by the assembly of the clergy of both kingdoms, while he should not sign, but simply approve the Covenant by letter."25 Montrose would be obliged, in this case, "to leave the country for a short time," without other loss. The king, remembering Strafford, was absolutely firm about the safety of Montrose. Four days later (March 16/26) Montereul wrote that Loudoun assured him that Leven and the army of Scotland "were fully informed of our design," and that their chief cavalry general would meet the king.26 And now Montereul averred that the king need not even approve of the Covenant by letter, nearer the wind was that approval than Charles could go.27
This new assurance, satisfactory as regarded the Covenant, was only Murray's attested written report of what the canny Scottish Commissioners had promised verbally.* Men who refuse to set their hands to their promises, clearly are " already looking how they shall step over their word," as Ranald of the Mist said to Argyll. But the Commissioners expected to carry with them the Presbyterians of the Parliament and of the city, with an army of 20,000 men.28
Things were going ill in Parliament for Presbyterian claims. " The pope and king were never more earnest for the headship of the Church than the plurality of this Parliament . . . yet almost all the ministry are zealous for the prerogative of Christ against them,' says Baillie (March i;).29 The prerogative of Christ meant that of the Presbyteries. Just as James VI. was "Christ's silly vassal," according to Andrew Melville, so the Parliament were to be Christ's silly vassals. Englishmen would not endure this tyranny of preachers and elders : Parliamentary Commissioners, they decided, in certain cases, were to oversee, and, if necessary,
* Here Mr Fotheringham, editor of the Montereul papers, makes, I think, a slip. He writes (i. p. 177, note i), commenting on his translation of Montereul's letter of March 16/26, where Montereul says that even the approval of the Covenant is dropped, " This is evidently an error, since the letter of security given by Sir Robert Murray (see p. 163) makes special mention in the last sentence, of the king having to sign the Covenant." But that is an earlier document of March, — without date of day. In Murray's assurance of March 16/26 (the day on which Montereul is writing), there is no mention of the Covenant at all, the document is printed by Mr Gardiner, iii. p. 75, note I, citing Ranke's 'Engl. Geschichte,' ?iii. p. 174. Montereul, as his letter of March 16/26 shows, sent a copy of this assurance to Mazarin (Montereul, i. p. 175). The importance of Mr Fotheringhanvs mistake is conspicuous.
THE KING'S HONOUR (1646). 17 I
quash Presbyterian excommunications.30 The City petitioned in favour of Christ's prerogative : the City was snubbed. This drove the devout of the moneyed class into closer union with the Scots ; but Charles would not accept the Scottish Commissioners' slippery assurance, even when, as now, the mention of the Covenant was dropped. The king already (Feb. 1 9) had written to the queen, " I assure thee, I put little or no difference between setting up the Presbyterian Government or submitting to the Church of Rome." This was not tactful, the queen being a Catholic. He spoke of his shame and grief about surrendering Strafford, ..." yet I believe if thy personal safety had not been at stake I might have hazarded the rest," . . . the Church of England he would not surrender.* " God hath favoured my hearty tho' weak repentance." In answer to the queen's prayers (for in what did one shade of heresy differ from another, to the queen? especially if the promise could later be broken), Charles, like Lovelace, said, —
/ could not love thee, dear, so much, Loved 1 not honour more !
" Consider that, if I should quit my conscience, how unworthy I make myself of thy love." Thus strong on the point of his own conscience, Charles styled the conscience of the Scots as to their Covenant oath, "a pretence, really no more."
He was now ready to tolerate Catholics, in return for 5000 soldiers from France, hoping " to suppress the Presbyterian and Independent factions."31 The good king believed that these factions must be damned for want of sacraments. None of the reformed churches except the Anglican and Lutheran "can justify the succession of their priests, which if this (Church) could not undoubtedly do, she should have one son less for me." Charles, being in this mind, was not likely to be converted by the Rev. Mr Henderson of Leuchars in the county of Fife. Henderson was, however, for the times, a reasonable man, though he preached against Amalekites.
On March 18 Montereul was with the king; by the 23rd Charles's last army had surrendered. But would Charles accept the assurance even without the Covenant ? Not Charles, he would not assent to the temporary banishment of Montrose, whom, of course, he could not consult. " Montrevil's juggling" he despised
* ' Charles I. in 1646,' p. 19. The king does not mention Strafford by name, but his meaning is obvious.
172 THE KING BELIEVES HE HAS ASSURANCE (1646).
(Oxford, March 22).32 He now wished to return to London on no definite promises, which terrified the city with fear of a Cavalier rising, and united the men of trade and the Houses, but disgusted Baillie. Too obviously the prophets were now to be left in the lurch, and presbyteries to be hampered in their excommunications. Charles had now to use one of the too many irons always in the fire — the Scottish Commissioners. The result was that he promised, if he came to the Scottish army, "to be instructed concerning the Presbyterian Government," and to satisfy them as far as his conscience would then permit. What did the Scots promise on this occasion? Charles, on April 4, from Oxford, writes to the queen, " Montrevil and I are agreed. He went yesterday " (April 3) "to the Scotch army, who are to send their horse to meet me at Harborough." On April 6 he says that " I shall be received into the Scotch army as their natural sovereign, with freedom of my conscience and honour. . . ." He was sending a message to London, but it was not despatched till it could be dated May i8.33 The king's belief that he had assurance and would be met by the Scottish cavalry was disappointed.
He wrote to the queen while Montereul was riding to the Scots besieging Newark. (His letter is of April 11/21). There Mon- tereul found that the Scottish Commissioners, now with their army, knew nothing about the matter of the king's retreat to them, so pressingly urgent as it was. Balmerino, indeed, had been sent from town to inform them, but with the folly of fanaticism, had declined to "desecrate the Sabbath" by riding to Newark on that day ! He tarried at a place thirteen miles distant. When Montereul rode to him there he merely drivelled so feebly (// s*est comporte si faible- ment] that the Scottish Commissioners with the army would neither send cavalry to meet the king nor even permit Montereul to warn him not to leave Oxford. This first betrayal must have assured Charles of the worth of the slippery Scottish promises made to him through Robert Murray (March 16/26). Had he left Oxford when he had arranged to do so, he would probably have been taken ; but he waited for news from Montereul, who wished still to believe in the good faith of Loudoun (a Campbell). But he augured ill for Charles ; the Scots at Newark were utterly callous as to his probable capture and ruin.34
On April 16 Montereul wrote from Newark to Secretary Nicholas, who was at Oxford with Charles. He had met Loudoun
PUN 1C A FIDES (1646). 173
(the chancellor), Balcarres, and Dunfermline at Royston. They would send cavalry to meet the king at Burton, and have a larger force to join him at Bosworth. For what concerns the Presbyterian form of Church Government, they wish his Majesty to grant that to them as promptly as possible. They at first proposed " some- thing more rude," in fact they had already "stepped over their words " given at London to Montereul. The king, said Montereul, should not come to the Scots if he could do any other thing : it was a last despairing resort.35
No wonder that, on April 21, Charles wrote to the queen, " The Scots are abominable relapsed rogues, for Montrevil himself is ashamed of them." And this was the second betrayal, — "the relapsed perfidiousness of the Scots," said the king.36 He had actually written (April 18) to bid Montrose join the Scots at Newark, if the marquis heard from Montereul that all was happily arranged!37 On April 22 the king thought of going to Lynn, or of trying to join Montrose by sea. Fairfax was marching from fallen Exeter on Oxford ; Fairfax was the man to whom Charles might have turned with least danger. He was a gentleman; and the Independents might have made terms with their king even yet — they would not, at least, have sold him. Meanwhile in London, the Commons treated as breach of privilege a petition from the divines at Westminster, in which they averred that Presbyterianism was jure divino. They pursued the Brethren into their biblical entrenchments with a fire of annoying inquiries. It was more clear than ever that the Solemn League and Covenant would not be kept as the more enthusiastic devotees of presbyteries had expected it to be.
Charles had little better occasion to hope that the Scots would keep their shifty promises to him (the names of the givers of the promises being obscured), yet to them he must now fly. The questions are, were the Scots or Charles most deceitful, was Charles or were the Scots most deceived ? It is for the purpose of dis- covering the answers to these questions that we have dwelt on the details. Nobody can clear Charles of " double dealing," when he was at once treating with the Presbyterians and treating for Catholic help to " crush the Presbyterian and Independent factions " them- selves. But while he was thus offering himself at auction, with the reservation of his conscience, to the highest bidder, he meant to keep his terms with the highest bidder. His profession of readiness to " be instructed " by a Caledonian theologian was a mere attempt
174 THE KING GOES TO THE SCOTS (1646).
to conciliate good will : the Catholic nobles under James VI., and Mary herself, had submitted to " be instructed," as the Scots knew, without edifying results. The Scots promised more. The details are obscure, at least " their disposition was all that the king could wish," and they were sending troops to Burton (April 20-26), and averring that Charles should be met at Harborough by David Leslie with 2000 horse. The letter (Montereul to Nicholas, announcing this)38 seems to have reached Oxford on April 26, and before the dawn of April 27, Charles, disguised, his long lock cut, his beard altered, rode over Magdalen bridge, with Ashburnham and Hudson, a sporting chaplain, and began his circumcuitous journey to the Scottish camp.
Hudson's account of the whole adventure is most interesting.89 At Baldock, Charles sent him to Montereul, "and desired him to make an absolute conclusion with the Scots " — if he got that in the terms he demanded, he would come among them. The terms (safety, honour, and conscience) were again verbally promised, and the promise was copied out (by Hudson), but was not signed by the Scots. Montereul adds that the king was to be received avec honneur ; but here a lacuna occurs in the despatch, followed by the word aupres du Parliament d* Angleterre. This clearly corresponds to Hudson's version, " That if the Parliament refused, after a message from the king, to restore the king to his rights and prerogatives, they (the Scots) should declare for the king, and take all the king's friends into their protection." M Montereul assured Hudson of the serious purpose of the Scots, and wrote a note to beg the king to " accept such security as was offered." They deceived Montereul.
Mr Gardiner thinks that the Scots "may very well have been somewhat unscrupulous in their dealings with the king," just as they had lied " with unblushing effrontery " to the English Parliament.41 But what was the " message " which Charles was to send to the English Parliament. On that, and on its refusal by Parliament, depended the Scottish declaration for the king ; but not on that, I conceive, hung his security from them for person, honour, and conscience. No conditional clause was attached to the promise of this security, as far as Hudson's scanty evidence shows. Again, if Montereul's argument "always turns on the engagement made through Sir Robert Murray," why should Mr Gardiner take that to be the earlier engagement, which insisted that Charles shall take the Covenant? Why not the assurance of March 16/26, in which the
THE KING "BARBAROUSLY USED" (1646). 175
Covenant is not mentioned ? * Mr Gardiner decides that' (if his own suggestion as to the Scottish promise turning on their expecta- tion that the king would accept Presbyterianism, for England, be correct), Charles, "intending to deceive, became deceived." Deceived he was, but I do not see reason to suppose that he intended to deceive.
The king came to Montereul, at Southwell, " and there," says Sir James Turner, who was on the spot, "did the Earl of Lothian, as President of the Committee, to his eternal reproach, imperiously require his Majesty (before he had either drunk, refreshed, or reposed himself) to command my Lord Bellasis to deliver up Newark to the Parliament's forces, to sign the Covenant," establish Presbytery in England and Ireland, "and to command James Graham (for so he called great Montrose), to lay down arms : all which the king stoutly refused, telling him that he who made him an earl had made James Graham a marquis. Barbarously used he was, — strong guards put upon him, and sentinels at all his windows." So says Sir James, who was present, pitied his king (Turner was ever hopelessly trying to save the lives of prisoners from Covenant- ing zeal), and even offered to try to arrange an escape, f
Assez ! We see how these Scots kept their word. They need not have given it. They gave it, or half gave it, with circumstances of manifest and pettifogging treachery ; they gained their end ; they broke their word with brutality ; and they took the king to Newcastle, to make their best bargain with the Parliament, to whom they falsely pretended that they had not expected the visit of his Majesty. Parliament, May 19, unanimously decided that "they had no further use of" the Scottish army. At Newcastle the Scots denied their assurance to Charles; "resorted to unblushing false- hood," says Mr Gardiner.42 Charles had to pass his time in being enlightened by Hendersons who conducted himself like a gentleman of honour, now as always. He died before either party
* Compare Gardiner, iii. pp. 101-102, and notes, with iii. pp. 73-75, notes.
t Lothian has apologists. Mr Hamilton, Cal. State Papers, 1645-47, p. xlvii., avers that he meant to intimate, in calling Montrose "James Graham," that no titles given since the war began were to be recognised. Then Montrose was an earl. He also meant that the Commissioners upheld the forfeiture of Montrose by the Estates. So much for the king's "authority," guaranteed by the Covenant. So much for Lothian's "honour," promised to Montereul in such terms as he deemed sincere. These promises were but a day or two old. Dr Mitchell {Gen. Ass. Com. Records, i., xxv. note) backs Mr Hamilton.
176 "BARBAROUSLY BAITED" (1646).
had converted the other. Of course, Charles did his best to embroil all parties of his rebels ; he met perfidy with its own weapons. To Montrose he wrote (May 19), "I am in such a condition as is much fitter for relation than writing " ; the bearer would tell the tale. "You must disband your forces and go to France. . . . Your most assured, constant, real, faithful friend, Charles R." 43
The great Montrose replied that he was the king's servant "as well by passion as by action" — prophetic words. He wished to know what conditions were to be granted to himself and his men, and, from Wishart's and Guthry's evidence, it seems that, by another messenger, he wrote that if the order to disband had been extorted from the king, he would fight on.44 The king kept insisting in affectionate letters, but bade him delay as long as he might without breaking his word. Montrose met Middleton (who had fought under him at the Bridge of Dee) on July 22, and accepted '•'•safe transport beyond sea."* The transport, when it reached the harbour of Montrose Bay on the last appointed day, August 31, was manifestly not "safe." The Covenanting skipper refused to start on September i, after which the Marquis would be at the uncovenanted mercies of Argyll and Waristoun. Montrose saw through the clumsy knavery, found a barque from Bergen at Stonehaven, put on board Sir John Hurry (who had changed sides long before), Wishart and other friends, and himself escaped disguised as Wishart's servant ; so Wishart informs us.45
We need not linger over the sufferings of Charles : " I never knew what it was to be barbarously baited before." t He was not even to use his Prayer Book privately ! Meanwhile the double-
* This meeting with Middleton was arranged by the Duke of Hamilton, who, released from prison by the Parliamentarians, had made his peace with the Covenanters, and visited Charles at Newcastle in July. Both blushed on meeting ; the king admitted that the duke had cause for resentment, and entreated him to aid Montrose, the cause of his disgrace. The duke behaved nobly, according to Burnet, his biographer ; Montrose, if taken, would certainly have been hanged, but the duke, through Colonel Lockhart, arranged the meeting between Montrose and Middleton, and the offer of safe transport abroad (Burnet, ' Mem. Ham.,' pp. 279, 280). But Mr Napier (Memoirs, 1856, ii. p. 639) proves, we fear, that Middleton's terms for Montrose are alluded to by Charles (July 16) before Hamilton met the king (July 17).
t Mr Gardiner writes "treated," but "baited," in the text, is the word for the Presbyterian pressure, and the preachers' threats that the king should learn what Kirk censure meant. (' Charles I. in 1646,' p. 45 ; Gardiner, iii. p. 114.)
CONDUCT OF ARGYLL (1646). 177
dyed shame of the Scots, their perfidy to their king, their treachery to their English brethren, was detected, and known of all men. They had promised, or half promised, to the king, and broken trust; they had dealt with him underhand, and denied it to Parliament. As concerns the king, they had broken the Covenant (doubtless they salved their consciences with their usual gloss). The Solemn League and Covenant they had broken to the Parliament.48
Now, in this mortifying crisis, Argyll came to the front. A group of preachers, Cant, Blair, James Guthrie (later hanged), were sent by the General Assembly to " bait " the king, but Argyll, Lindsay, Loudoun, and Balmerino also arrived at Newcastle and stiffened David Leslie against offers by Charles.47 He, Argyll, left for London on June 15, "with great professions of doing me service there," says Charles to the queen; "his errand (as is pretended) is only to ... moderate the demands which are coming to me thence" (June 16). "Argyll is very civil and cunning" (Baillie calls Argyll "cunning"), "but his journey to London will show whether he be altered or not ; if he be, it must be for the better . . .'>48 Argyll did not alter, he merely developed, to the end. Charles may refer, in his letter to the queen, to a secret mission, entrusted by himself to Argyll, Loudoun, and Dunfermline (the secret they did not keep). They were to try to get leave for some of his servants to come to him, and to aver that the king would grant a temporary trial of Presbytery. He also wished, when the terms of Parliament came, to defer answering till September 16. * So Burnet avers, informed by Lauderdale, who was with Argyll. Argyll himself, when tried in 1 66 1, avers that he carried, as a Commissioner, "instructions for hastening the propositions," but adds that, by the king's desire he consulted Richmond (Lennox), and the Marquis of Hertford, as to the propriety of the Scottish army's declaring for the royal cause.49 Argyll was a strange person to entrust with such an errand.
All that Argyll is known to have done in town was to make a speech to the Parliamentary Committees. He advocated at once uniformity and a kind of toleration ; but he would not tolerate any- thing " contrary and destructive to our Covenant." This indicates no wide region in which freedom could expatiate; that region,
* Burnet, ' Mem. Ham.,' p. 283. VOL. III. M
178 WHAT WAS HIS STATESMANSHIP WORTH? (1646).
however, would be occupied by "peaceable men, who cannot, through scruple of conscience, come up in all things to the common rule."50
Before examining the rest of Argyll's speech to the English, ws may note that it is regarded as the high-water mark of his political career, and we may ask, What was his statesmanship worth? Mr Gardiner observes that " his timidity in the field was equalled by his timidity in the Council," which, if true, makes Argyll worthless as a statesman. " He was the type of the adroit party leader who is moved by his party, but never succeeds in guiding it." " The tail wagged the dog ! " we know that sort of statesmanship. Yet, the historian goes on, " Argyll's statesmanship, so far as it can be distinguished from attempts at statesmanship forced upon him by others, proceeded in the right lines." But if he never guided his party, where is his statesmanship ? Its merit appears to have lain in supporting the Scottish people, under the Kirk, in resistance to the feudal nobles. " If Argyll had done nothing else, he would have deserved credit for the Parliamentary reforms of 1640, when, after wresting power from the king and the nobility, he placed it in the hands of the lesser gentry and the burghers." But did he ? In the Parliament of 1648, the power was in the hands of the nobles, backed by many of the burghs and lairds. Yet that power was nullified by the spiritual power of the Kirk. What Argyll really did was to increase and render dominant the force of a set of preachers, incapable, as even Baillie said, of statesmanship. What they and their flocks did unto Scotland, we have still to see. It resulted, says Mr Gardiner himself, in "an insane undertaking," though "it does not follow that those who supported it were themselves insane." Yet Argyll, himself, speaks of his policy (" whatever hath been said by me or others in this matter") as that of "a distracted man."51
The policy of the Solemn League and Covenant inevitably became that of men who, if not " insane," were blinded by the crazy belief that they, like Israel of old, were in direct national relations with Jehovah, relations denied to less favoured people. Argyll, as far as in him lay, handed Scotland over to this " strong delusion."
As for his speech to the English Parliament, he saw, and said, — what had been plain to all men of sense since Lethington, — that it were well for England and Scotland to be "altogether one." But with what manner of England was Scotland now to be one ? With the army which made the Commonwealth ? He also now proposed
"THE UNWILLING SLAVE OF THE KIRK." 179
(to conciliate the Independents) that a via media should be found "to avoid on the one hand lawless liberty in religion, and on the other persecution of peaceable men " (like Cromwell's army !) " who, through scruple of conscience, could not adapt themselves in all things to the common rule." An admirable ideal ; but neither practical politics nor compatible with the Solemn League and Covenant, which Argyll and his party later thrust on the perjured Charles II., they well and duly knowing that he was perjuring himself. Argyll's words to the English, and his action later, are irreconcilably contradictory.
After 1648, says Mr Gardiner, Argyll "becomes the slave and, unless every indication we possess is to be distrusted, the unwilling slave of the Kirk, which formed the basis of his authority in Scot- land." Yet Mr Gardiner had just exclaimed, " Who shall say after this" (after the mere words of the speech), "that Argyll was not as much Montrose's superior in statesmanship as he was his inferior in character ? " Montrose's statesmanship was not that of " a slave and an unwilling slave." Yet Argyll's statesmanship had to be that of a slave and an unwilling slave, unless he either joined Montrose or joined Cromwell. Union with Cromwell, or union with Montrose, — either was an honest course. Argyll was incapable of either, and his fortunes went down, with those of Scotland, in his " unwilling " following of the Kirk to discomfiture and disgrace. If reluctant, " an unwilling slave," Argyll loses even the character of an honest fanatic ; if unreluctant, he was a crazy fanatic ; while to statesmanship he has no pretensions whatever.*
Argyll, to return to his speech, would not deny that Scotland had " a natural affection to his Majesty." They " would rather see him reformed than ruined." To be " reformed " in Argyll's sense, that is, to be covenanted, and to force Presbyterianism on England, was, in Charles's view, to be dishonoured in this world, and damned in the next. Then the marquis accepted all the " Propositions " of Parliament, and to this extent he kept "his great professions of doing me service," as the king had written.
On June 24, Charles, who, except in the last stand of his conscience, was as slippery as the Scots, told the queen that he must merely drive time till his affectionate Scots and loyal English
* I cite, for Mr Gardiner's opinion, " The Last Campaign of Montrose," 'Edinburgh Review,' January 1894, clearly by Mr Gardiner, as the chapter on the same events in his history demonstrates.
\
1 8O PREACHERS BAR CHARLES OUT OF SCOTLAND (1646).
quarrelled among themselves. To go to London, if he safely could, "will be the best put off."52 He must find "a handsome denying answer." If he stayed in Newcastle when the Scots departed home, he would be a prisoner ; " as for going to Scotland, I can only do it, as I am ready to die, for the queen, but not otherwise" (July i).
In place of saying " No! " heartily to the impossible propositions of Parliament, or of accepting till changed times enabled him to break his promise (the plan of the queen and Montereul), Charles merely drove time by "handsome denying answers" (August i). We have seen that he had asked Montrose to delay his departure as long as he honourably could, and apparently Montrose had sent a reassuring message about Seaforth and Irish auxiliaries.*
If it was Charles's policy to waste time, and let dissensions arise, it was the policy of the Scots to hasten matters. No sooner had the Commissioners returned with the king's reply, than the Scots announced their willingness to disband their army, and give up the garrisons (Berwick, Carlisle, and Newcastle) "upon reasonable satisfaction." Their question to the English now was merely "How much will you give us to go away ? " 53 They could not bring back an uncovenanted king to holy Scotland. The preachers would not stand it ; they would probably have excommunicated the king and all who backed him. The Commission of the General Assembly issued "A Solemn and Seasonable Warning."
These ravens (Leighton, alas, sat among them on this occasion) were not yet gorged with gore : there had been " too much indul- gence to many who have been active in the late execrable rebellion." Therefore the Lord kept up, on just grounds, his "great contro- versy " with his new Israel. The preachers knew, of course, that many who had been goaded into taking the Covenants hated the Covenants : they foresaw the rising Royalist party of " the Engage- ment." Let there be no " false glosses," they said, on the Covenant, pressing "the defence of the king's person and religion" (to which they were all sworn), " to engage in those ways that would tend to the ruin of both." The ambiguous clause in the Covenant, about the king's person, has already been commented upon. Only " atheists " would violate the Covenant, " in whole or in part." Charles, while uncovenanted, must not cross Tweed.
With this amiable document before them, approved among others
* Gardiner, iii. p. 132, referring to an undated letter in the French Foreign Office Archives, Iii. 517.
THE KING IS SOLD (1647). l8l
by the monster Nevoy who urged David Leslie to the massacre of Dunavertie, and by the saintly Leighton, who became an archbishop,64 the Scots Commissioners, thralls of the pulpit, had no alternative. They must go home, and they must leave their king behind, a captive. So they asked " How much ? " The reply was £200,000 down, and ,£200,000 more by instalments. A quarrel seemed apt to arise on the claim of the English Parliament to dispose of the royal person. There were many other causes of delay. Charles sailed so near the wind as to offer a three years' probationary trial of Presbyterianism. What an offer to make to Presbyterians, — a temporary trial of a Divine ordinance ! The Scottish Estates were met, Hamilton pressed them to give their king honour and shelter north of Tweed. Argyll opposed, and the preachers backed him. They must " be heard in all things which concern the meaning of the Covenant." 55 Loyalty to the authority and person of the king is either part of that band, or it is not. If not, what meaning had the hundreds of canting protestations of loyalty ; and where is the boasted legality of the band? If yes, how could the Covenanters refuse shelter to their king? They refused their king honour and safety, unless Charles did violence to his conscience by adoring their fetish. Mr Gardiner says, with truth, " it is hard to find serious fault with the resolution thus taken " (to desert their native king), " except by condemning the whole ecclesiastical and political system which the Scottish nation had deliberately adopted." K Well, we do condemn the " ecclesi- astical system," and that monstrous and cruel idol, the Covenant. As developed and interpreted by the prophets, it had become an engine of stupid superstition. Men suffer for their stupidity as sorely as for their sins, and men could do no more preposterously stupid thing than bind themselves, and posterity, and England, to supposed Covenants with Deity, drawn up by a lawyer and a preacher.
" My opinion upon the whole business is," wrote Charles to the queen, "that these divisions will either serve to make them all join with me, or else God hath prepared this way to punish them for their many rebellions and perfidies."57 In brief, ,£200,000 were paid down by the English, and the Scots marched home, leaving their king behind, and fondly hoping for another £200,000 in instalments (February 3-11, 1647). Some promise of the king's safety they had, but they had broken their own assurance to the same effect, and knew what words were worth. They had brought them-
182 THE SCOTS "WORSE THAN JEWS" (1647).
selves into the same labyrinth as Elizabeth wandered in, through her treatment of Mary. The Scots would have incurred less odium, in England and in Europe, if they had taken Charles home and immured him (as Argyll is said to have suggested) or beheaded him. Even that they could not do ; the English Parliament, which claimed his person, would have avenged him. Only one thing they could do, — they could shake the dust of England off their feet, and cross Tweed without the thirty-six cart-loads of money, the ^200,000. "The surrender of the king has added horror to the English hatred of the Scots. They cry to them that they are worse than Jews, creatures who have sold their king and their honour," writes Montereul. " The women of Newcastle can scarcely be prevented by blows and threats from stoning the Scottish soldiers when they pass by " (Feb. 12, i647).58 It mav nave been Macleod of Assynt's duty, later, to surrender Montrose to his death. But what stamps Assynt is his acceptance of the blood reward, the 400 bolls of meal. It is the ^200,000 of blood money that mark the Scots with eternal infamy. The money was due, and had been voted previously, but was not paid till they filled up the measure of their shame.
Traitor Scot,
Sold his king for a groat !
L'Ecosse, par jure a safoi, Pour un denier vendit son Roi !
These are not pleasant rhymes.
It is not to be supposed that the desire to desert the king was universal in Scotland ; even the Solemn Warning of the preachers proves that fact. Not to speak of the Clans and the Gordons, the nobles were not all present at the meeting of the Estates which clinched the bargain ; though Guthry seems to exaggerate when he says that not a third attended.69 The gentry, burghs, and commonalty " a hundred for one abhorred it, and would never have instructed their Commissioners that way," but the constituencies " were overawed." Several ministers, among them Guthry himself, did their best in the Assembly for the king, but the other Guthrie, he who came to be hanged, with the more precise brethren, held sway. Guthry represents Hamilton and Lanark, though they voted against the desertion, as lukewarm, and negligent of opportunities, " some of their friends were accidentally absent, others on design, and
THE MASSACRE OF DUNAVERTIE (1647). 183
some downright deserted them," says Burnet60 "All apprehended that some strange curse would overtake those who were active in this infamous business." A curse did overtake them; for when they saw the king in danger, and repented, and would have rescued him, they were thwarted and ruined by " the prophets " to whom they had enslaved themselves.
While a sentiment, national and remorseful, began to move some of the Covenanting nobles in favour of the king, first a prisoner at Holmby, then in the hands of the Independents of the army at Newmarket (June 1647), the Scots partially disbanded their own forces, keeping 6000 foot and 1200 horse. They retained the men and officers most under the influence of Argyll. They divided the king's price. On January 20, 1648, Argyll gave a power of attorney to Archibald Campbell to receive the ^10,000 sterling awarded to him by the Estates of Scotland, "as part of the first ^50,000 of the last ^200,000 due to Scotland" for arrears of army pay. On June 8, 1648, an ordinance sent from the Lords was passed in the Commons, appointing ^35,000 to be paid to Argyll ; but the statements do not encourage us to be certain that the marquis ever got the money. Hamilton obtained ^30,000, while the leading fanatics among the preachers — Blair, Dickson, Cant, and others — " began to live very sumptuously," says Guthry, whose evidence is always that of a partisan.61 *
As to the embers of the Royalist rising, David Leslie drove Huntly into the wilds of Lochaber, where he was unwelcome to the Camerons ; and then, meeting Argyll and Sir James Turner at Dunblane, Leslie moved against the Macdonalds in Kintyre. Turner reflected that, though Royalists, the Macdonalds had deserted Montrose, but forgot that he himself, though a Royalist, had fought for the Covenant. Trysting at Inveraray, Leslie marched into Kintyre, where Colkitto, " no sbjour he was, though stout enough," left the passes undefended. The levels of Kintyre suited regular forces, and Colkitto fled to Islay. He stationed 300 men at Dunavertie, a castle without any water supply, and left his father's garrison, also waterless, at Duniveg — "a mad prank." He himself retired to Ireland, where he perished in a brawl, — clearly
* As to Argyll, while Guthry gives him .£30,000, and " for his friends ,£15,000," the Acts of Parliament (Scots) mention smaller sums in a different proportion (Act. Parl. Scot., vi. p. 643; cf. Willcock, 'The Great Marquess,' p. 188 ; and Cal. State Papers, 1648-49; vi. 149, 150).
I 84 MORE MASSACRES (1647).
enough Montrose's victories owed much to the valour, nothing to the tactics and strategy, of the brave Colkitto. The Dunavertie garrison yielded, by Leslie's command, "to the kingdom's mercy, and not to his " — " a nice distinction," says Sir James. They were then all put to the sword, Turner only succeeding in saving one young man. He never heard Argyll advise Leslie to take the usual Covenanting course ; but David Leslie confessed to him that Argyll egged on Nevoy to pray and preach for massacre. Turner vainly pleaded with Leslie, for " Mr. John Nave " (Nevoy), a preacher, kept praying and preaching for cold-blooded butchery. Apparently Leslie thought that Nevoy represented " the mercy of the kingdom," and Turner believed that " he hath repented it many times since." 62 *
Leslie next took Duniveg, that famous old Macdonald castle in Islay; the governor, however, old Coll, coming out to speak to a friend, was promptly hanged. In Mull, Maclean delivered fourteen "very pretty Irishes," who "had all along been faithful to him." Hanged ! Sir Duncan Campbell was not, however, allowed to massacre the whole clan of Maclean ; Argyll refused him that satisfaction.63 The state of affairs after this quieting of the clans is tersely described by Sir James Turner, a man of the world, and a writer anxious for historic truth. Charles had reckoned the Scots as Montrosites, Neutrals, Campbellites, and Hamiltonians. Turner regards the Campbellites, backed by the Kirk, Leven, and David Leslie, as one party; the Hamiltons, with the brave Middleton's influence over the army, as the other. Hamilton's object was to disband the army ; Argyll's faction argued that this could not be done. " Never so great danger as now, the king's person, which they were bound to defend by the oath of their Covenant (observe there was no former tie on them), being in the hands of the Independents, who were sworn enemies to his sacred person and to Presbytery." They added the danger from Huntly, who was
* Turner had read Guthry's book in MS., and in an appendix to his own work criticises it severely. As to the massacre of Dunavertie, he writes : " It is true that David Leslie hath confessed it afterwards to several, and to myself in particular oftener than once, that he had spared" (would have spared) "them all, if that Nevoy, put on by Argyll, had not, by preachings and imprecations instead of prayers, led him to commit that butchery." Turner denies, however, Guthry's tale that Nevoy, Leslie, and Argyll walked over ankles in blood. Three hundred men could not make so great a puddle of blood on so hot a day, and " David Leslie never saw these men either dead or alive" (Turner, p. 240).
"THE ENGAGEMENT" (1647). 185
presently caught and put in prison. Argyll's party and the Kirk carried their point, and kept up part of the army,64 but did not use it to secure the safety of the king.
The Scots Commissioners, through the autumn, had been dealing tediously with Charles, who, on November 14, escaped to Caris- brooke Castle in the Isle of Wight — a mere trap, as Hammond, the governor, would not permit him again to escape. In December he dealt with the newly -covenanted Traquair, representing the Commissioners; but the religious difficulty remained insuperable. On December 1 5 the king made new proposals ; they were inadequate, but the Scottish Commissioners insisted that England should adhere to the Covenant, establish Presbytery, disband all forces, and give the king some authority over the militia and parliamentary veto. Near the end of the month, Loudoun, Lanark, and Lauderdale visited Charles at Carisbrooke. Lauderdale, the enthusiastic Maitland of earlier years, was now turning Hamiltonian, though still corresponding with Baillie as a bibliophile. It is curious to read his letters as a book collector in this crisis, and to note how the strong literary element in the House of Lethington mixes with the tortuous politics hereditary in the Maitland blood.65 Unlike Lauderdale, Loudoun later reverted to the head of his clan, Argyll, in the coming tumults.
With the Scottish Commissioners Charles now came to a hapless compromise, which could never conciliate the Kirk. He would allow the Covenant to be forced upon no man, though he would guarantee the safety of those who had taken it already. He would give Divine Presbytery a three years' trial (as before), while an assembly of clergy, with twenty of his own nominees, were discussing its merits. He would suppress Unitarians, Independents, and sectaries in general. This was the blindness of folly. He alienated the friends of toleration and the army, while he insulted the deep- rooted superstition of the Covenanters. Discuss Presbytery, indeed — nothing could be more offensive ! There were many other conditions and privileges to be granted to the Scots. The three Commissioners signed; and the foolish document, "The Engagement," was "lapped in lead," like the friends of King Pandion, and buried at Carisbrooke — " that sad place," say Loudoun, Lanark, and Lauderdale.66
Mr Gardiner calls "The Engagement" "dishonest from the beginning." The Engagers "wished to humble the Presbyterian
I 86 A STROKE FOR THE KING (1648).
clergy in Scotland " (small blame to them if they did), " though they deceptively posed as the advocates of Presbyterianism in England." It was a thoroughly Hamiltonian policy of feebly facing both ways, repentantly ready to be loyal, but still hoping to avoid a quarrel with the preachers. There were two possible ways — that of Montrose, and that of the Kirk and Argyll. Hamilton and his party tried to walk in both paths at once. Before this (December 17) Charles had heard of Huntly's capture, and vainly implored Lanark to save his life. He himself was presently a captive in strict confinement ; the Houses would address their king no more (December 30). On January 24, 1648, the Scottish lords left London ; they had been trying to arrange a Royalist rising in aid of a Scottish invasion.67
Now the Commissioners must try to get the Scots Estates, the Kirk, and the people to accept "The Engagement," and make a stroke for the king. " But in the Commission of the Kirk, Argyll carried all before him." Now the scene is changed ; says Turner, "The king is in no danger; the Parliament of England, though Independent, and Scotland are good friends . . . the king hath not taken away Prelacy . . . neither were the Scots bound to defend his person by virtue of the Covenant, but in the defence of the true religion, which, according to their gloss, is Presbyterial government." ^
So writes Sir James Turner, pointing out the casuistry which we noticed when first describing the Covenant. The argument, as Sir James remarks, contradicts the argument used by the same party, a few months earlier, against disbanding the Scottish army. " Here you see an army necessary and not necessary, for one and the same cause." But now Hamilton, or Callendar, not Leven or David Leslie, was to command the army. The Commissioners had let it be understood that the king would sign the Covenant : Baillie had his doubts, and Montereul, now in Edinburgh, found the public overjoyed by the news of the king's imprisonment (January i8/28).69 Having the greatest contempt for the good faith of the Scots, Montereul declared that for another ^100,000 ces gens d'honneur, Lanark, Lauderdale, and Loudoun, would have acquiesced in the imprisonment of their king. But Lindsay talked of fighting : the split among the noblesse of the Covenant was apparent.70 Hamilton was bestirring himself, too late, but the preachers were crying that God was strong enough to punish the Independents, without Scottish assistance. Anything, any injury to the king, was
THE PREACHERS THUNDER (1648). 187
more tolerable than to fight side by side with Amalekites. This idea of the ministers was presently to split Scotland into hostile camps.
Six Commissioners from the English Parliament had arrived in Edinburgh in February 1648, and a partial account of their pro- ceedings has been left by Thomas Reade, their secretary for some weeks. Reade was a crypto -Royalist, and intrigued with the Engagers. He says that the Commissioners " left no way un- attempted whereby to divide the Scots into parties, and to this end they bribed the Clergie, which, allthough I did not pay them the monie (that Captain Fox, their Stewart, did), yet I writt the letter to London, which certified that the Ministers had had their in- couragement. . . ." * To bribe the ministers to a task so congenial • seems a sinful English extravagance, but all the wealth of Indies would not have bought them to preach for the Engagers.
Montereul very naturally expected Hamilton to use this opposition of the pulpiteers — " the bellows-blowers " — as an argument for doing nothing, as usual, and saving himself.
Hamilton had not even this amount of common sense. For a disunited Scotland to make war was to increase beyond estimate the great peril of the king, and to woo defeat. The pulpit was much more powerful with burgesses, commonalty, and even lairds, than the modern press, because there is always an opposition press, but there was hardly a germ of an opposition pulpit. With the black coats against them, the Estates could not raise adequate forces, and the end was certain. Despite this temporary ruin, a great step was taken in the direction of civil and religious liberty when the Estates dared to oppose the despotism of the prophets. They were defeated, some died, more were ruined ; still they suffered, however unworthy, in the good cause of political and personal freedom from prophets sitting in the seats of the Apostles.
Meanwhile, Argyll was holding council with Balmerino, Balcarres, and other precisians, and Montereul foresaw that, despite the difference of their tenets, the true blue Scottish Presbyterians would come to a friendship with the Independents of England, through their common hatred of royalty.71
A Committee of the Estates met on February 10, 1648, to hear the Commissioners. Little was done at first, and Lanark told Montereul that he looked forward to the inevitable ruin of the king and of
* Reade's Relation, edited by Mr C. H. Firth ; Clarendon State Papers, 298 note; Miscellany of the Scot. Hist. Soc., vol. ii. p. 295.
1 88 ARGYLL'S DUEL (1648).
the House of Hamilton. In fact, his own widow, from Worcester fight to the Restoration, is said to have been supported by one of her female servants.72 On the i5th February, Loudoun explained " The Engagement," and Lauderdale proved that the Independents had broken the Cpvenant and all their treaties. Four things, he said, the English hated, — the Covenant, Presbyterianism, the Monarchy, and the Scots. Charles must have agreed with his English subjects on three points out of the four. The preachers complained that they ought to have been consulted, and some Hamiltonians remarked that the preachers would make them regret the bishops. Already some of the ministers had " vomited insults " against their king, and against those who would unite under his standard the sanctified victors of Philiphaugh and Dunavertie with Malignants that had drawn the sword for Charles.73 One preacher, after denouncing the king, turned round and insulted as perjured traitors the English Commissioners who were present ! He had not been bought ! Sunday, with its political sermons and prayers, was the liveliest day in the week in Presbyterian Scotland ; and every one must have regretted that he could not go to all the churches at once. Montereul was certain that the Prince of Wales should not leave France for Scotland — the Scots would either sell him or use him as a mere tool.
When, on March 3, an Assembly of the Estates met, nearly fifty earls and lords appeared. Only a few " were for our way " — the anti- Engagement way, saysBaillie; the most notable of them were Argyll, occasionally Loudoun (already trimming), Eglintoun, Balcarres, and Balmerino. In fact, the king's friends had a majority ; even from the large towns the burgesses were for the king. The preachers then put out a printed declaration, of course on the other side, to be read in all churches.* The brethren were angry, for the hot- blooded Argyll had challenged Lindsay to mortal combat — they were to fight on the links at Musselburgh, a spot open to the observation of all mankind. The natural result was that these desperadoes were interrupted "before they began their play," says Baillie. The malicious Guthry declares that they had an uninter- rupted hour for their play. " Why took they not their pastime ? " 74
Balfour writes that the seconds could not make Argyll fight till he saw Colonel Haddon coming up as policeman. " Then was he
* A minute account of the weary dealings between the Commission of the Assembly and the Estates is in Mitchell, i. , xxxiii. note i.
KIRK VERSUS STATE (1648). 189
something stout, and refused to subscribe that paper," — a written apology perhaps. The marquis was equally averse to signing the paper, and to taking off his coat and boots and fighting, " in respect of the coldness of the weather." 75 *
The events at this great crisis are full of curious matter, but space forbids more than the bare statement of results. Argyll, with eleven lords, and some thirty lairds and burgesses, proved recalcitrant to the proposals of the king's party ; while Hamilton declared that though he had the majority in Parliament, the preachers had more influence with the country.76 As Malignants came in, including the loyal Edward Wogan, the clergy grew more angry. From March to July the wrangle of the representatives of the State and of the Kirk continued, the preachers rejecting every attempt at compromise. Hamilton was not the man to take either of two feasible courses — to desist from his enterprise, which was merely fostering futile Royalist risings in England, or to seize the loudest preachers and lock them up in Blackness or Dunnottar. The attempt to win the preachers by proclaiming for Presbytery in England made the English Royalists "apprehend that the bondage would be the same, only the masters changed; and this made the king's party resolve rather to perish than receive any help from the Scots on these terms." ^ There was open war between Kirk and State. As early as March 27 Baillie had written, " I am more and more in the mind that it were for the good of the world, that churchmen did meddle with ecclesiastical matters only ; that were they never so able other- wise, they are unhappy statesmen ; that as Erastian Caesaro-Papism is hurtful to the Church, so an Episcopal Papa-Caesarism is un- fortunate for the State.78
After May n the Estates began to levy forces, though very short of money, and vainly asking for aid from the queen in France. The preachers thundered against the levies; and, though Baillie
* ' General Assembly Commission Records,' i. pp. 393 - 412 ; Baillie, iii. p. 36 ; Guthry, p. 261. In 1649 a young student of Montrose's University, St Andrews, came into the hands of the General Assembly. The candid lad was accused of saying that "Argyll was infamous" for oppressions. He explained that he had, in fact, merely observed that Argyll "had not been famous," in a military way, " and in his not fighting with the Earl of Crawford whom Argyll himself had challenged ... In this act he thought that Argyll's honour suffered much, which posterity could not but take especial note of. " The youth also called Strachan, Argyll's led captain, "a notorious villain," so he was ordered to be flogged, but he took his name off and went down.
1 9O PREACHERS CURSE THE ARMY (1648).
feared that they would expose "the mystery of their own weak- ness," according to Turner he was himself as noisy as any of them. Montereul wrote (May 9/19), "the solemn curses which the ministers are uttering in the churches, against the army, and the orders they have sent to other preachers in the country to do the same, on penalty of losing their livings, will not prevent the forces from being levied." 79 " The whole west of Scotland cried up King Christ, and the Kingdom of Christ, thereby meaning the uncontrollable and unlimited dominion of the then Kirk of Scot- land," says Turner, who was sent to reduce Glasgow to order.80 He quelled a mutiny, and quartered troopers on the godly, doing more scathe than "James Graham" (Montrose), says Baillie. Turner imposed " Turner's Covenant " — a declaration of submission to Parliament. But the preachers held a field communion service, making " that peace so often inculcated, and left as a legacy by our blessed Lord to his whole Church . . . the symbol of war and bloody broils." Armed multitudes flocked to Mauchline to communicate, and numbered some 2000 horse and foot. Middleton charged the conventicle with insufficient forces : he and Hurry were wounded, but " the slashing communicants " retired when Callendar and Turner came up.
When the army invaded England at last, in August, they did so to face Lambert and Cromwell, while behind them were mustering all the no less hostile Westland fanatics and allies of the preachers and Argyll Premature risings in England were crushed ; Lanark in vain urged that the Scottish army should clear its rear by beating the western Scottish fanatics before crossing the Border. Lambert, in fact, had driven the loyal Langdale into Carlisle, and Langdale was asking for aid, while refusing to sign the Covenant* Now it
* Reade, already cited, avers that Sir Marmaduke Langdale had orders from Hamilton not to fight till the Scots came up. This was ' ' a mere plot upon the English to hinder them from fighting, that they might not beate the enimie, and so destroy the intended designe of the Scots, for Sir Marmaduke was two for Lambert's one." Reade adds that he heard Lanark say, " I hope not," when a rumour came that Langdale had beaten Lambert. This was a common Royalist opinion, and Mr Firth cites to the same effect a tract of 1649, ' Digitus dei, or God's Justice upon Treachery and Treason, exemplified in the Life and Death of the late" James, Duke of Hamilton,' Miscel. Scot. Hist., ii. 297, note I. Musgrave's Relation (ibid. pp. 302-311) shows the distrust between the northern English cavaliers (who were asked to sign the Covenant) and the Scots. This was the cause of the Engagers' disasters and of the failure of Charles II. in his march to Worcester in 1651.
SCOTS INVADE. CROMWELL MEETS THEM (1648). I pi
had been determined by the " Engagers," in a foolish hope of con- ciliating the preachers, not to unite with Amalekites ; otherwise Montrose might have been brought over to help an army led by Hamilton and Callendar. But this was wholly out of the question. On July 8, with a General Assembly raging on their rear, and suspending loyal ministers (July i2-August 12), Hamilton crossed the western Border. "The half of our forces in Scotland were unlevied, and an enemy behind our hand, ourselves in a very bad condition, without money, meal, artillery, or ammunition," says Turner. Lanark was left with a force to watch the fanatics. The weather, as the Scots advanced, was wet ; " Dear Sandy," that great artillery man, " was grown old and doted " ; there was not one field piece with the wretched army.81 Lauderdale, who had reverted to the ancestral Lethingtonian view of the tyranny of preachers, was hopeful, and Lambert fell back to hold the Stanemoor pass.82 England was in a distracted state : the Prince of Wales was in the Channel with ships of war ; Commons, Lords, and City were all at odds ; but, as the Scots moved south, Cromwell was marching north. Near Kendal the Scots held a Council as to their route on London. Turner was for a march through Yorkshire, an open country, as against the much enclosed fields of Lancashire, " full of ditches and hedges, which was a great advantage the English would have over our raw and undisciplined musketeers." The wolds of Yorkshire would suit the Scottish horse, and the old northern weapon, Dalgetty's "darling," the pike.83 Hamilton preferred the route later taken by Prince Charles in 1745, and by the Jacobites in 1715. But Cromwell, with excellent artillery, was joining hands with Lambert near Knaresborough (August 13). Anxious to stop Hamilton, he left his guns behind, made a swift march in Montrose's manner across the fells westward, and reached the Ribble before the Scots, and before Monroe, with the Scottish army from Ireland, could join the Duke. " It was thought that to engage the enemy was our business," wrote Cromwell, like the soldier that he was. Callendar and Middleton, with the Scots cavalry, had reached Wigan, when, hearing of Cromwell's advance, Callendar left his command " in the air," and went back to consult Hamilton, who, on the i7th, reached Preston. Now Hamilton sent to Middleton, at Wigan, for the cavalry, and, as news came that Langdale was engaged with Cromwell on the north-west of Preston, a dispute as to tactics arose between Callendar and the Duke. Callendar prevailed, the Scots
IQ2 UTTER RUIN OF THE SCOTS (1648).
foot crossed the Ribble, to be on the same side of the river as their distant horse ; and Langdale was left unsupported, except by a handful of horse under the Duke. Consequently, after a gallant and prolonged resistance to Cromwell's larger force, Langdale's infantry broke up ; his horse fled north to join Monroe ; Langdale himself, with the Duke, managed to cross the Ribble and join Baillie, who commanded the Scottish infantry.
Cromwell, advancing, drove the luckless Baillie south and still south. In his retreat to the south of the Ribble, the Duke had again and again charged, and did honour to his name. Turner highly praises his valour : " One more charge for King Charles," cried the Duke, who seems to have known his own incapacity for command, but who did not waver now when his person was in peril. It was Callendar, the false friend of Montrose, who persuaded Hamilton to send his foot across the Ribble. It was Callendar who opposed the military skill of poor Baillie and Turner, and urged a drumless march, the ammunition left behind, southwards, through the night. Now the victorious Cromwell, in Preston, was between Monroe on the north, and Hamilton on the south, but was trammelled with two or three thousand prisoners taken from Langdale. But, just as Hamilton had retreated, so Monroe would not advance. Middleton, with the Scots horse, missed the foot who were wander- ing to meet him, and Hurry was wounded and taken by Cromwell's cavalry in a skirmish. In the dark of the following night, Turner was wounded by one of his own pikemen, " being demented, as I think we all were." The Scots, in a nocturnal panic, attacked each other horse and foot. At Wigan, and Winwick, and Warrington the Scots, though superior in numbers, were so utterly unled (the real soldiers being hampered and confused by amateur superiors all at odds among themselves) — while Callendar was bidding Baillie surrender, Baillie was calling to any man to shoot him sooner — that Cromwell had an easy and complete victory. The Scottish infantry was captured : Hamilton accepted quarter at Uxbridge, where he and Callendar wrangled, — the Duke, thought Turner, had rather the better in the dispute. Callendar deserted, with half of the remain- ing forces, and had the unique good fortune to escape to Holland. The rest were dead, or prisoners, Hamilton being now near the block ; he had ruined the king's affairs, and had not maintained his "activity for his own safety." The preachers, though Baillie thought that " the mystery of their weakness " was to be divulged.
TRIUMPH OF THE KIRK (1648). 193
had won the day, aided by Cromwell and the imbecility of the Scottish commanders. Wicked sectaries who despised the Covenant were now to be embraced by the adorers of that idol, in their common hatred of the Amalekites.* For a day, and a night, and a morrow, the feet of the prophets were firmly planted on the neck of the country.
NOTES TO CHAPTER VI.
1 Napier, ii. p. 589. 2 Hume Brown, ii. p. 337.
* Baillie, ii. p. 322. 4 Balfour, iii. p. 311.
5 Act. Parl. Scot., vi., i. p. 514. 6 Wishart, pp. 170-173.
7 Wishart, pp. 168, 169. 8 Balfour, iii. p. 341.
9 'Montereul's Correspondence,' Scottish History Society, i. pp. i, 2.
10 Gardiner, iii. p. 2, note 2. Montereul to Brienne, October 2/12. Carte MSS., Ixxxiii. fol. 101. n Gardiner, iii. p. 4.
12 Montereul, November 28-30, 1645, i. 61.
u Montereul, December 4/14, i. 83. 14 Montereul, i. p. 109.
13 Gardiner, ii. p. 125 ; Evelyn's Diary, iv. p. 149, 1879.
18 Montereul, i. p. 115.
17 Mr Horace Round. u Gardiner, iii. p. 45.
19 Montereul, i. p. 134, Feb. ig/March I.
20 Montereul, i. p. 139.
21 ' Charles I. in 1646,' p. 12 ; Bruce, Camden Society, 1856.
22 ' Charles I. in 1646,' p. 16.
28 Montereul, i. p. 163 (March, no date of day).
24 Gardiner, iii. p. 71. * Montereul, i. p. 171.
26 Montereul, i. p. 176. ** Montereul, i. p. 175.
28 Montereul, i. p. 177. M Baillie, ii. p. 360.
80 Gardiner, iii. p. 77. 81 ' Charles I. in 1646,' p. 25.
82 'Charles I. in 1646,' pp. 27, 28. 3S 'Charles I. in 1646,' pp. 31, 32.
84 Montereul, i. pp. 183, 184.
85 Montereul, i. pp. 179, 180 ; Clarendon State Papers, pp. 222, 223. 88 ' Charles I. in 1646,' pp. 36, 37.
87 ' Charles I. in 1646,' pp. 100, 101.
88 Clarendon State Papers, ii. pp. 224, 225.
89 Peck's 'Desiderata Curiosa,' Lib. ix. No. 25 (p. 19) et seq.* London, 1732.
40 Montereul, i. pp. 188, 189, May 15/25; Peck, ut supra.
41 Gardiner, iii. p. 45 ; iii. pp. 99-101.
42 Montereul, i. p. 191 ; Gardiner, iii. p. 106.
43 Napier, ' Memorials of Montrose,' ii. p. 277. Maitland Club, 1850.
44 Napier, ii. p. 280, note. w Wishart, pp. 186-188. 46 Gardiner, iii. pp. 113, 114. v Guthry, pp. 220, 221.
48 ' Charles I. in 1646,' pp. 47-49. * State Trials, v. p. 1397.
80 Lords' Journals, viii. p. 392. n Willcock, 223.
* For the Preston campaign I have followed Mr Gardiner and Sir James Turner.
VOL. III. N
194 NOTES.
52 • Charles I. in 1646,' p. 50. M Baillie, ii. p. 391.
54 Mitchell, Review Gen. Assemb. Com., i. 147-152.
55 Act. Parl. Scot., vi. p. 634. M Gardiner, iii. p. 182. 87 ' Charles I. in 1646,' p. 49. M Montereul, i. p. 439.
69 Guthry, p. 238; Act. Parl. Scot., vi., i. p. 612.
60 Burnet, 'Mem. Ham.,' p. 311. 61 Guthry, pp. 241, 242.
82 Turner, pp. 45-240. ** Turner, pp. 48, 49.
64 Turner, pp. 50, 51. M Baillie, iii. pp. 22, 23.
*>6 Burnet, 'Mem. Ham.,' p. 327. 87 Gardiner, iv. p. 56, note I.
68 Turner, pp. 50, 51. 69 Montereul, ii. pp. 376, 377.
70 Montereul, ii. pp. 379, 380. 71 Montereul, ii. pp. 383-386. 72 Montereul, ii. p. 401, note. 73 Montereul, ii. p. 404.
74 Baillie, iii. p. 36 ; Guthry, p. 261. 76 Balfour, iii. p. 395.
76 Montereul, ii. pp. 430-432. 77 Burnet, ' Mem. Ham.,' p. 345.
78 Baillie, iii. p. 38. 79 Montereul, ii. p. 479.
80 Turner, p. 53. 81 Turner, p. 59.
82 Gardiner, iv. p. 166. M Turner, p. 62.
195
CHAPTER VII.
KIRK'S TRIUMPH. NATIONAL RUIN. 1648-1650.
IT was the weakness of the Government, not of the Kirk (as Baillie had feared), that was demonstrated after the rout of Hamilton's forces. The country, or the people who swayed the country, the preachers, in short, were against the Government with its Parlia- mentary majority. From the pulpits alone did the populace hear a more or less educated statement of the points at issue, enforced by threats of excommunication in this world, and damnation in the next. Of the former penalty, even the leaders of the Parliamentary majority were afraid ; they were also reluctant to shed kindred blood at home, and were overawed by English forces left by Cromwell to support Argyll. The result was that, in a few months after Preston, the Kirk and Argyll, with his backers Eglintoun, Elcho, the turncoat Loudoun, and the rest of the Opposition, were in power and in momentary alliance with Cromwell, Lauderdale being at the time of Preston on the seas with the Prince of Wales. The precisians gaily observed that the defeat of their loyal countrymen in England (August 17), fell on "St Covenant's day."
Loudoun, Eglintoun, and the preachers, no longer having the fear of Turner before them, gathered the country folk of the west, many of them armed with pitchforks and scythes, in the fashion of James Mor's men at Prestonpans a century later. Ayrshire had not felt the hand of Montrose like Fife; and Argyleshire, and the western Whiggamores (from Whiggam, an exhortation to plough- horses), were ardent. Argyll raised what the claymore had spared of his clan ; Cassilis with Ayrshire joined the forces at Linlithgow. The Committee of Estates, the patrons of the Engagement, thought that to attack the Whiggamores was merely to bring Cromwell on them,
WHIGGAMORE RAID (1648).
and, knowing that all Engagers were likely to be excommunicated and ruined, they simply looked to their own safety.1 The fierce Earl of Arran (James Stewart), had he been alive and an Engager, would have laid the leading ministers by the heels, before crossing the Border to raise England and rescue Charles. Lanark was now for calling in Monroe's forces, seizing Stirling and Perth, and bring- ing down the clans against the fanatics in the following spring. The rest of the half-hearted Committee opposed him, and spoke of the peril of his brother, Hamilton, — whose doom, in fact, nothing could avert. The Committee sent men to "pack up the business" with the Kirk and her Scythemen ; they negotiated ; their surrender was certain. They deserted the gallant English Royalists under Musgrave, who had joined Monroe, and bade that leader turn them adrift at Berwick.2 The Committee, in short, having now forsworn the Engagement, threw over the English who had risen on the strength of it ; such was the behaviour of Covenanters in collision with the clerical interpreters of the Covenant.
At Haddington, Lanark, Lindsay, and Glencairn met the return- ing Monroe ; Edinburgh was occupied by the Whigs, under Leven and Leslie ; negotiations were going on, the ex-Engagers hurried to anticipate Argyll, who was seizing Stirling; Leven followed slowly after them. As Monroe was sending cavalry to pick up Argyll, that nobleman fled with his troopers, and made for the nearest boat on the firth ; his Highlanders were cut down, drowned, or taken, to the number of about 700, "confounded with the suddenness of his withdrawing," which they ought to have foreseen by experience. The Castle of Stirling was, in fact, held by Norman Livingstone for the king ; and Argyll was not the man to try to defend the town of Stirling, which probably was not defensible.
The craven Committee of Estates, despite this success, capitulated to the Kirk ; Lanark standing out, and retiring north. Monroe's forces were ordered to return to Ireland, which was impossible, the Scottish commanders of the garrisons of Belfast and other towns having yielded to Monk. The men of Monroe, marching to Glasgow, were dispersed and maltreated by Whiggamores, whose sons, probably, had to deal with Claverhouse. The anti-Engagers, now Argyll's party, before the formality of a general election, con- stituted themselves the Committee of Estates ; as some legally had been members of that Committee, subject to a declaration of approval of the Engagement, which declaration they had never signed.4 They
ARGYLL EMBRACES CROMWELL (1648). 197
sent a grateful and friendly message to Cromwell, and (September 13) promised to surrender Carlisle and Berwick. To the English Houses they despatched Commissioners to show how trusty they were, and begged that Hamilton and other prisoners should be looked to closely. Thus the left wing of the Kirk was allied with "the bloody and blasphemous sectaries," who would have no Presbyterial government, and no Covenant. This was a sore cross to many good men.
Hamilton had been allowed a moment's interview with the king as his Majesty was being brought through Windsor to his trial. " My dear master ! " was all that Hamilton could say. " I have been so indeed to you," answered the king, embracing him.6 It is hard to believe that Hamilton was ever deliberately disloyal; but, like Charles, he had always " gone too near the wind." As a statesman he had no courage, no resolution ; and he had kept fatally asunder the king and the one man, Montrose, who, if he could not have turned the tide, had at least made the cause glorious in the field.
On September 2 2 Argyll met Cromwell on the Tweed. Cromwell accepted the surrenders of English towns, and sent Lambert to Edinburgh with seven regiments of horse, securing " the peaths " by an infantry command at Cockburnspath. The new Whig Committee of Estates, " Christians and men of honour," said Cromwell, was now under foreign protection.6 The Estates were to meet in January.
On October 4 Cromwell arrived in Edinburgh, where he dined with Argyll and Waristoun. It was later asserted, with gross improbability, that they discussed with Cromwell the execution of the king. It was publicly demanded by Cromwell that all Engagers should be removed from offices of trust ; and he arranged that one of Eglintoun's sons should be given 2000 of the Preston prisoners, to be sold as recruits to idolatrous Spain or idolatrous France. This evinced little regard for the souls of 2000 Protestants ; but it may have been reckoned that these were already lost for disloyalty to the Covenant, — not that this view can have occurred to Cromwell, who was no Covenanter. But there were no purchasers.7
It was during this visit to Edinburgh that Mr Blair (if we may believe Row, his biographer) spoke of Cromwell as a great liar and " a greeting " (weeping) " deevil."
The Parliament that met in Edinburgh on January 4, 1649, was, of course, Whiggish. How far it was representative of the Estates may be learned from the number of nobles present. There were
198 PARLIAMENT OF 1649.
but sixteen as against fifty-six, who had sat in the Parliament of March 1648. Great changes were made in the members for shires and burghs. The new members, of course, were elected, but the absence of hereditary peers proved that, as of old, the Opposition dared not attend a Scottish Parliament. Their Whig opponents were protected by English regiments, and the forces of the Engagers were scattered.
Loudoun the turncoat, Argyll, Eglintoun, Cassilis, Leven, and Balmerino (who had wavered about the Engagement) were in their places. Waristoun made "a long, tedious speech" against the Engagers. On January 5 Argyll " broke the Malignants' teeth," as he pleasantly said, by "a very long speech," arraying Amalekites into five " classes ": i. Statesmen; 2. Committee men ; 3. Relapsed Malignants ; 4. Promoters of the Engagement ; 5. Petitioners in favour of the levies of the Engagers. Waristoun talked for two hours in the same style. The Scottish Commissioners now in London were Lothian, Chiesly, and Glendinning. This day (Janu- ary 5) arrived their letter about Pride's Purge, "how above 160 members of the House of Commons were extruded by the blasphemous army," whose leader had so lately sat at meat with Waristoun and Argyll. The Commissioners in London asked the Estates how they were to act in the matter of the king's trial? Next day fourteen articles of instruction were drawn up. The Commissioners were to insist on the Covenant, and on intolerance, and to "give no occasion of offence." Difficult orders were these to execute ! The Commissioners were not to justify the king's proceedings and actions, or do or say " what may import a breach, or be a ground of a new war." They were to ask the party in power to remember the promises made by quite another party at Newcastle ; for, if the king be sentenced, misery and bloodshed will follow, " and how grievous it will be to this kingdom, considering his delivery up at Newcastle." But, all the same, " show that the king's last concessions are not satisfactory to us in point of religion."8 Were these wavering instructions to go at once, or to wait three or four days till after a fast ; the Whig party doted on fasts ? Argyll and Waristoun were for delay, but were out-voted even in that assembly.
On January 25 a curious event occurred, showing the unfortunate position in which Argyll now found himself. He had fraternised with the leader of the sectarian army which was now about to slay
HOPELESS DILEMMA OF ARGYLL (1649). 1 99
its king ; but his preaching allies, the sole base of his power, while rejoicing in the king's fall, had a religious hatred of Cromwell's army of Sectaries. It was plain enough that Cromwell would put his hands in the blood of a Scottish king, and equally plain that the Kirk party would still clamour for the intrusion of Presbyterianism on England. War was at hand, a war of religious intolerance and of national revenge against England, which would give an opportunity to the Royalists and Engagers in Scotland. The Covenanters would be where the Engagers had been — would find Cromwell armed in their front, and their armed, domestic foes, the Royalists and Engagers, in the rear. Argyll, whose statesmanship had enslaved himself and the country to the Kirk (he was " the slave," and, apparently, " the unwilling slave of the Kirk," writes Mr Gardiner), must have seen that he ought, in prudence, to reconcile to the Kirk the Engagers, semi-Covenanters ; that he must gain the Prince of Wales, soon to be king, to the Covenant; and must induce him to withhold or withdraw the commissions of the Royalists. As yet all this was impossible The Kirk would fight against England as unpresbyterian, and yet would not join hands with the Engagers. A poor army would the Kirk have in its holy war for the Solemn League and Covenant, without the aid of Engagers or Royalists. Nor could the prince lend prestige, for certainly Montrose would prevent him from taking the Solemn League. At this time Montrose, having received from the Kaiser the title of field- marshal, had leave to raise, for the royal cause, independent companies in Flanders.9 How was Montrose to be kept from influencing the prince against the Covenant and Solemn League? At this moment he had nearly abandoned hope of being serviceable: on December 3, 1648, he wrote to Rupert to that effect. As to raising levies, " there is nothing of honour amongst the stuff here." He had therefore intended to return to the Kaiser, but he is ready to " forego all, abandon all fortunes and advantages in the world," and sink with Rupert and the cause, "rather than save himself." The resolve was as fatal to, as it was worthy of, the great marquis.10 How, Argyll may have asked himself, was Montrose's influence with the prince to be countered ?
Lanark had not submitted to the abandonment of the Engage- ment, and he sent a Mr Mowbray to the Prince of Wales, as Hyde writes on December 5, to say that he would serve under Montrose, were it but as a sergeant. He would raise 10,000 or
200 ARGYLL AND LAUDERDALE AGAINST MONTROSE (1649).
12,000 men, and "make sure of the heads of the contrary faction," probably in the old Scottish way.11 Montrose always distrusted the Covenanting Lanark, still more did he distrust Lauderdale, who had visited the Hague, had found Presbyterian fault with Charles's Anglican chaplains, and boasted of what the Engaging or Hamilton party would do. The problem was, is the prince to swallow the Covenant, and the Solemn League and Covenant, and Presbytery for England and Ireland, with Lauderdale and (Montrose suspects) with Lanark, or is he to stand by his honour with Montrose ?
Rebuffed by Montrose, who would have no such sergeant, Lanark came to Edinburgh in December, and renounced the Engagement He was confined more or less strictly, while Lauder- dale came quietly over from Holland, obviously in no danger. The Estates privately determined to arrest both Lauderdale and Lanark, while through Balmerino these lords were allowed to receive due warning. They therefore went abroad in the vessel which brought Lauderdale home, and returned to Holland, where they could act in unison with Argyll, and against Montrose.* If Mr Gardiner's theory be correct, Argyll had now secured in Lanark and Lauderdale secret semi-official representatives of his cryptic alliance with the Hamiltons to keep Montrose and Charles II. apart, and to win Prince Charles to be a perjured " Covenanted king." Whether Argyll wished him also to take the Solemn League vow, for forcing Presbyterianism on England, may well be doubted. The intrigue was clever, and succeeded in ruining Montrose, but it also entailed the disgraceful Covenanting defeat of Dunbar, the rending of the party of the Covenant, the conquest of Scotland, and the fall of Argyll To such measures Argyll was reduced, because the slaying of Charles L, conspicuously certain before Lanark "escaped " (January 25), must inevitably break his alliance with Cromwell and the Sectaries, for, as Sectaries, the Kirk would war with them, and Argyll was thrall to the Kirk. Such was his statesman- ship. The day was to come when Argyll should speak of his
* Burnet, ' Mem. Ham. ,' p. 377. Burnet, of course, does not hint at collusion between Lanark and Argyll. Balfour, iii. p. 386. Balfour is equally innocent. Gardiner, ' Commonwealth and Protectorate,' i. pp. 18, 19, and notes, quoting Graymond to Brienne, Jan. 3O/Feb. 9, Hare MSS., iv. 551, fol. 296, and Feb. 6/16, fol. 310, where " Graymond says that the Countess of Lanark had confirmed his suspicions." Montrose himself (Jan. 8, 1649) had heard of "new impostures." Napier, ii. p. 683.
RUINOUS "ACT OF CLASSES" (1649). 2OI
friends, the extreme precisians, as "madmen" (so it is reported), and he appears, as we have already noted, to admit that he himself at this time was little better. In his Instructions to his Son, he writes, " by that confusion my thoughts become distracted . . . whatever, therefore, hath been said by me or others in this matter, you must repute and accept them as from a distracted man . . . in a distracted time wherein I lived." 12
Armed with the instructions of the Estates, Lothian and the other Scottish Commissioners thrice protested against the pro- ceedings towards the king. " That comely head " fell beneath the headsman's axe on January 30. Argyll's Parliament had been quietly passing the Act of Classes, depriving of all manner of offices all "classes" of Engagers, also confirming acts against all such as deal with devils, or transgress the law of Dian. Never was a Parliament in Scotland so entirely under the sway of the preachers. Every man, from the ministers of state to deacons of crafts, who could be placed in the classes of Unlawful Engagers (three classes were now reckoned) was expelled from office, as well as every man found guilty of swearing, " uncleanness," drinking — or neglecting family prayers ! If we believe what a Cromwellian soldier wrote, scarcely any person eligible for office can have been found. Moreover, nobody in the less guilty classes could be readmitted till he had "given satisfaction to the Kirk and the two kingdoms" (soon there was only to be one kingdom, the other became a Commonwealth). As Mr Mathieson observes, "The clergy were thus invested with an absolute veto on all public appointments, unlimited in duration, and as arbitrary as it was unlimited in scope." "They call any one a Malignant whom they please," said the Prince of Orange to Spang.13 * The late learned and amiable Dr Mitchell, though apt enough to approve of the doings of the ministers, remarks that the Act of Classes became "the main source of the divisions and troubles in which the Church was torn asunder by various factions till its constitution was utterly overthrown."14
On January 30 Charles I. was murdered in public. On February 5 Charles II. was proclaimed king at Edinburgh, provided that, in accordance with the laws of God and of the realm, he took the Covenant and the Solemn League and Covenant.16 This acceptance of Charles as king must mean war with England ; * Baillie, iii. p. 76.
202 THE ROYAL MARTYR (1649).
and Scotland must fight with one arm tied up, and with her head absent ; for " Amalekites " could not be employed, and Montrose, the only military genius of the country, had a price set on his life, and had been given over by the Kirk to the Devil. Such was the position into which the Kirk and Argyll had led the country. They, "or some of them," as Waristoun confessed in Parliament (Feb. 27, 1649), nacl invited Cromwell to enter the country in September : soon he was to come without invitation.16
To moralise on the death of Charles I. is superfluous. Nothing in life became him like the leaving it. He was the victim of the competing religious intolerances of his age, of the Tudor tradition of despotism, and of his own incapacity, as a man whose ply was taken under these influences, to see things as they were. What had been his father's security, the English throne, proved his death-trap. Had he been king of Scotland only, he could never have risked either the Revocation or the religious innovations. Now, not only had Tudor monarchs altered creeds at their will, but the fanatics of the Covenant broke with Charles because (among other reasons) he would not consent to alter the creed of England. To do that, they held, was right and necessary ; to change the Presbyterian forms of Scotland was the greatest of crimes. This was a crucial example of what, instructed by time, we hold to be the stupidest of superstitions. Charles was intolerant of Catholics, of Presbyterians, of Sects ; the Covenanters were intolerant of Catholics, and Episcopacy, and of Sects, till their most vehement party allied itself with the Sectarian Cromwell. In an age when all imposed their will, as far as they might, on the consciences of others (which had no right to exist), Charles acted like the rest of mankind. His great misdeed, the desertion of Strafford, he expiated by his blood and tears, and his sin has this palliation that he consented to Strafford's death because he dreaded danger to the queen. "The white king" died true to his conscience, and true to Montrose. A friend and a foe did not long survive him. Balmerino expired at the end of February 1649, and was buried in the chapel of Restalrig, in the land which his father won by the shameful forfeiture of the Logans (1609). Hamilton was executed shamefully on March 9, by the sanguinary tyrants who held sway in England.
Before studying the tangle of intrigue which followed the death of Charles I., we may ask, What had Scotland gained by the
SCOTLAND'S GAINS FROM THE COVENANT. 203
Covenant and the Solemn League and Covenant ? She had dealt a blow to hated Episcopacy and loathed liturgy, north of Tweed. On the other hand she had obtained presbyters, for her ruin, far more dictatorial in civil matters, more intolerant in ecclesiastical matters, than the bishops had been. As to their interference in politics, we have seen much and are to see more, from their clamouring for the blood of prisoners of war to their purging of the army before Dunbar, and their denunciation of the measures adopted by the Estates in the Engagement. The General Assembly had not only " censured " ministers who would not go all lengths with them, but excommunicated, or threatened to excommunicate, such of the deposed as still did their work or received their stipends.17 We have seen that James VI. prohibited ministers from preaching on certain subjects. The Assembly of 1648 dictated to them the topics on which they must preach. These were, among others, the errors of Sectaries, the errors of Erastians, " the unlawful Engagement," — as " lawful " as the Estates and the king could make it — the sins of Malignants, and so on. The presbyteries were to detect ministers who avoided these topics, or were too "sparing" and " general " in their denunciations. Under such orders to be fanatical the saintly Leighton winced, and he went from his parish to see his father in England, when he could.18 It is no great marvel that the Engaging army occasionally thumped the preachers who were thus denouncing them, though we appear to lack evidence in detail of these natural proceedings.19 The Assembly, in brief, set the example of deposing, and even excommunicating, clergymen who did not share the views of the majority. It was obvious that new presbyter was old priest "writ large," and that preachers were not exceeded in intolerant intermeddling by bishops. Says Milton : —
new foes arise
Threatening to bind our souls with secular chains, Help us to save free conscience from the paw Of hireling wolves whose gospel is their maw.
In addition to other boons of the Kirk, the country had obtained the Westminster Confession of Faith, an amazing document which, writes Mr Hume Brown, has " produced that astonishing precision of thought regarding the mysteries of human destiny which has ever since been one of the national characteristics." If it is desirable to
204 GENERAL DEMORALISATION (1650).
think with precision concerning matters about which nothing is known, then the Westminster Confession and the Shorter Catechism may be worth what they cost in blood and tears. The results, again, of the new Directory of Public Worship were, in practice, the increase of "conceived prayers," till even the Lord's Prayer fell out of use, and little was to be heard in church except the observations of the minister.20 These, if the Assembly of 1648 was obeyed, must have been mainly political harangues, " stuffed with all the false reports of the kingdom," though the preacher might take an occasional " wipe " at witches, sectaries, and other sinners.
The practical fruits of all these improvements may be observed in a letter from an English soldier in Scotland (September 1650): " It is usual with the Scots to talk religiously . . . and the very next moment to lie, curse, or swear, without any manner of bounds or limits." This warrior had only found the virtue of hospitality in " the Lady Winton, a Papist." The beds in Scotland were filthy, " full of fleas and covenanters " — the English word for lice ! To this had come the brotherly understanding, and thus did the blasphemous English deride the Covenant. The women are "dirty, and do all look like witches (if there be any such creatures), wherewith, by their frequent burning of them, it seems this country abounds (fourteen and sixteen being burned in a little village near Wadington (Mordington ?) about a year since . . . ). No table, window, or cupboard but slut may be written in large characters upon it. For the sins of adultery and fornication, they are as common among them as if there were no commandment against either. . . . Instead of having no other God but one, the generality of people ... do idolise and set up their ministers, believing what they say, though never so contrary to religion and reason."
The preachers, from their pulpits, spread the usual tales of "atrocities," accusing the devout Cromwellians of "killing men, women, and children." Having examined the kirk sessions' books, this observer had documentary evidence to the frequency of "whoredom and fornication, the common darling sin of this nation." The poor live — men, women, children, and cattle — in filthy cottages, and can be evicted whenever their lairds are so minded. All this relates to Berwickshire and the Lothians. A soldier in a hostile country is no unprejudiced witness. But for the dirt we have Richard Franck's account in his angling tour,
INFAMOUS CRUELTIES TO WOMEN (1652). 2O5
'Northern Memoirs'; for the "darling sin" we have the kirk sessions' records ; for the witch-burning, legal records ; and for the preachers the annals of their General Assembly. Few forms of Christianity in the seventeenth century could afford to charge each other with cruelty. Puritans, Prelatists, Presbyterians, all tortured and burned witches ; but the English sectaries in Scotland were horrified by Presbyterian ferocities.
The Edinburgh correspondent of the ' Mercurius Politicus ' writes from Leith on October 23, 1652, that the English Com- missioners for the administration of justice met on Wednesday last. Two confessed witches were brought before them, and were asked why they had confessed? They had been hung up by the thumbs and whipped by two Highlanders; lighted candles had been set to the soles of their feet and between their toes ; finally, lighted candles were thrust into their mouths. Out of six accused, before being turned over to the English magistrates, four died of their torments. The English judges "ordered the ministers, sheriff, and tormentors to be found out, and to have an account of the ground of their cruelty." Other horrors, perhaps more ghastly, are recorded (' The Spottiswoode Miscellany,' ii. 90, 9 1 ; citing ' Mercurius Politicus '). When the ministers thus made torture, and torture of women, a thing as frequent as flagitious, we need not be surprised that rough soldiers under the Restoration applied, to the detriment of the preachers, the methods of which the preachers had set the example.
As to ordinary moral offences, sixty people accused of these were brought before the English Commissioners on one day, " most of them for facts done divers years since, and the chief proof against them was their own confession before the Kirk, who are in this worse than the Roman religion, who do not make so ill an use of their auricular confession. Some of the facts were committed five, six, ten, nay, twenty years ago."
Such were, according to English observers, "the inconveniences of Presbyterial government " ; and the Iroquois modes of torture and the punishments for vice neither diminished the numbers of light o' loves nor of sorceresses. " Murthers are very frequent, but robbing and stealing more." Among other unfortunate victims we note George Sprot, a weaver in Eyemouth, probably a son or grand- son of that George Sprot of Eyemouth, writer, who was hanged for his share in the Gowrie Conspiracy in August 1608.
206 CHARLES II., COVENANTERS, AND MONTROSE (1649).
Such was Scotland under Presbyterian theocracy.* To return to the politics of the unhappy country : Sir Joseph Douglas was sent to Charles II., at his brother-in-law's court at the Hague, with news of his conditional proclamation. He should be king if he would be Covenanter.21 Baillie (February 7) communi- cated with his cousin, Mr Spang, a Scottish minister in Holland. Spang obtained an interview with the Prince of Orange, and describes the state of opinion among Charles's friends. Montrose, though he had not offered his presence on account of the hatred borne to him alike by the Precisians and by Lanark, Callendar, and Lauderdale, now practically of their party, was ordered by Charles to meet Hyde (January 28, i649).22 Hyde himself was intriguing to escape from trouble by an embassy to Spain, whither he presently went, leaving Charles in bad hands. From Hyde, or otherwise, Montrose heard of the king's death. He fainted, and, on recovering, shut himself up for two days ; his well-known verses, "Great, Good, and Just," written at this time, rather reflect his anguish of mind than his art as a poet.23 Charles II. not only welcomed now, in his grief and wrath, his loyal supporter, but appointed him lieutenant-governor and captain-general in Scotland.! This (February 22) was two days after the arrival of Sir Joseph Douglas from the Scottish Estates, with promise of Commissioners to follow if Charles was likely to take the pledges of the Covenanters. Lanark and Lauderdale, with Callendar, Seaforth, Lord Sinclair, young Lord Napier, and the inscrutable Will Murray, were all at the Hague.
These Scots were in four factions ! Montrose, Sinclair, and Napier, absolutely distrusting the Hamilton half-hearted party,
* ' A Perfect Diurnal,' September 16-23, p. 505. In Gardiner, ' Charles II. and Scotland in 1650,' p. 134 et seq. Scottish History Society, 1894.
As to witchcraft, see the case of Lady Pittadro, sister of Sir John Henderson of Fordel, one of the leaders of the Fifeshire levies who were cut to pieces in their flight from Kilsyth. This lady was accused in 1649, and lay in the filthy Tolbooth of Edinburgh from July to December 1649, when she apparently found means to poison herself. There was a local witch mania in Inverkeithing, which was abated, according to tradition, when the wives of the magistrates were accused. Ross, 'Aberdour and Inchcolme,' pp. 339-341, citing an Act of Parliament of July 1649. One Walter Bruce, a preacher, was very active in this stupid cruelty. While the Sectarians were averse to witch - burning, the process was not unusual in England at this time. Presbyterians may have been the persecutors. Several books on the side of mercy appeared in England at this time, but, for fifty years, mercy was deferred.
f ' Hist. MSS. Com. Report,' ii. p. 173 ; Wishart, pp. 229, 230.
THE PREACHERS BEGGAR THEIR BRETHREN (1649). 2O/
wished the king to join Ormonde in Ireland ; Callendar and Seaforth thought only of their own security ; Seaforth had been the most fickle of double - dealers ; Will Murray was the emissary of Argyll; and Lauderdale "haunts the Duke of Hamilton " (Lanark) " like a fury " : these two, says Hyde, " abate not an ace of their damned Covenant in all their discourses." The English loyalists, Hyde adds, desired Montrose to be employed as "the man of the clearest honour, courage, and affection to his service." M But many of the Scots at the Hague " cut " Montrose when they met, though Lanark, two or three months ago, had offered, honestly or with a different motive, to serve under him even as a sergeant, and to get rid of "the heads" of the opposite faction.
Such was the condition of affairs when Spang wrote to Baillie (March 7, March 9, 1649). "Remit of your rigour," is the refrain of the sensible Spang. He cries for the abolition of the "Act of Classes," disqualifying all Engagers from all authority, for different periods, and under various humiliating conditions of restatement, after " satisfying the Kirk." But Spang will hear of no dealings with Malignants, Royalists who would shake off the League and Covenant, or with the English, such as Culpepper, and Hyde, with their scheme for Charles's descent on Ireland. Spang saw the Prince of Orange, who thought that Charles might more readily take the Covenant than the Solemn League and Covenant, which attacked the con- sciences of his Anglican adherents, and " required a delivering up of all Malignants." A Malignant, said the prince, was anybody whom the precise chose to call by that name, even if he were a Covenanter ; and now the prince spoke his mind about the Act of Classes, lately passed. " Here, I profess, I was at a strait," says the honest Spang. The prince proposed an Act of Amnesty. Spang protests to Baillie against the tyranny of the constantly sitting Commission of the General Assembly. " Is not the liberty of the Kirk come to a fair market thereby ? " The preachers were " casting out their brethren and bringing so many to beggary " : the Govern- ment of the Restoration, later, merely followed their bad example.
Clearly a relatively moderate party was growing amongst the ministers, to develop into the Kirk as it should be after 1689. "I wish we used prudence, lest we open a door to tyranny, whilst we think to shut tyrants out of the Kirk." It was rather late in the day to arrive at such opinions. Spang makes one notable remark.
208 MR BLAIR AS ATHOS (1649).
We have more than once noticed the clause in the Covenant binding to respect for the king's person " in the defence and preservation of the aforesaid true religion." The " bloody Independents " note that " hedge," says Spang, and declare that " their putting the king to a violent death is not against the Covenant, for they have put him to death not for his defending religion and the Parliament's liberties, but for going about the overthrow of both." Mr Spang adds, "Think of this."25 Either the fighting Covenanters broke the Covenant, or it was so framed that they had no right to inveigh, as they did, against regicide. Such was the dilemma.
Meanwhile (Feb. 24) the Scottish Commissioners to the English Parliament who were intended to go to the king, charged the English House of Commons with breach of the Solemn League and Covenant, with the suppression of king and constitution, and, worst of all, with countenancing "ungodly toleration." Down with toleration, up with compulsory Presbyterianism and a covenanted king, such was the burden of their speech. Never were there such impossible diplomatists as they who followed the star of the Covenant. The Scottish Commissioners in England were setting out for Holland, when they were arrested and taken north to Berwick. The Rev. Mr Blair, of St Andrews, was one of these captives. He had been in London when the king was done to death. He was anxious, not only to attend Charles on the scaffold, but also to deliver his testimony thence in such terms that "he laid his account to die with the king, and would as willingly have laid down his head to the hatchet as ever he laid his head to a pillow." So says Row, minister of Ceres in Fife, Mr Blair's son-in-law.26 Mr Blair, on the scaffold at Whitehall, were as romantic a figure as Athos, below it.
But, in practice, a different set of ideas prevailed. Cassilis, the Laird of Brodie, Alexander Jaffray, provost of Aberdeen (later a Quaker), with Wood, Winram of Liberton, and Livingstone, minister of Ancrum, were sent to the king at the Hague, while Huntly was decapitated at Edinburgh, as what is called an " object lesson " to Charles. This was the fate for Royalists who were not Covenanters (March 22, 1649).
The Commissioners began by asking Charles to put away Montrose, a bloody miscreant, who " continues in the highest contempt against God" (that is against the Scottish preachers), "under that fearful sentence of excommunication, without the smallest sign of re- pentance." Montrose valued their " fearful sentence " at less than
CHARLES LISTENS TO MONTROSE (1649).
a pin's fee.27 How could anything but mischief come, when the negotiators thus denounced the leader who acted under the commission of the king's father, and had just received his own? Strange is the desire for a crown, that leads a man, and a young man as Charles was, to admit to his presence envoys who address him thus, and whose brethren, at home, are killing another of his father's servants, for no other crime than that service. Huntly, at his slaying, had been man enough to refuse to be relaxed from the excommunica- tion of the Kirk, which could not affect him where he was going.28 These fanatics, these parochial pulpiteers, pretended that what they bound on earth was bound in Heaven.*
The Commissioners at the Hague continued to insult Montrose, who "dishonours and pollutes all companies" (March 30). Charles said that he must see all their proposals before he answered the charges against Montrose. The Commissioners gave him, in a book, all the scriptures of the Covenant, Solemn League, and Westminster Assembly. He was to accept all these, and discontinue the English liturgy at family prayers. The Kirk Commissioners did this part of the work. Charles would accept the Covenant and the rest for Scotland ; for England and Ireland he would not, without the advice of the Parliaments of these kingdoms. Baillie and his friends, in deep grief, recognised, and justly, the hand of Montrose in this refusal to put a yoke on the necks of the realms of England and Ireland. The refusal would involve the Scottish swearer to the Solemn League in perjury.29 Montrose had told Charles (May 21) that for him to take the Solemn League meant " shame and ruin." It meant his desertion of Montrose, shame enough, Dunbar and Worcester were sufficient scathe. The Covenanters interfered with the king's domestic devotions : they had rebelled against his father because " they but imagined that he intended to meddle with them in the like kind." " They murder those of your best subjects, while they pretend to treat with your Majesty's self. . . . Trust the justice of your cause to God and better fortunes."30 For the moment Charles listened to honour and Montrose. The Commissioners returned to Scotland empty-handed, happier than they who, a year
* Huntly's estates, by the way, " were forfeited and, like the Bishopric of Argyll, conveyed to Argyll." Argyll, at his trial in 1661, protested that he had done his best to save Huntly, and had protected the interests of the family. The Huntly estates were deeply in debt to Argyll. Willcock, pp. 226, 227. ' State Trials,' v. 1426-27.
VOL. III. O
210 MONTROSE AND THE QUEEN OF HEARTS (1649).
later, brought a perjured prince to see the mangled remains of the noblest of his servants.
Scotland had now a short space in which it ought to have passed an act of amnesty, and united all its children in the common cause of resistance to her " auld enemy of England," and " the bloody and blasphemous sectaries." From the middle of August 1649 to the end of May 1650, Cromwell was subjugating Ireland, and reaping the laurels of massacre at Drogheda and Wexford. If Scotland was not to taste of the same mercies, as she did, Scotland should have put her house in order, thrown over the Covenant, and united her sons. But the preachers and the spirits which they had raised made any such course impossible. They desired a Covenanted king, which meant, in this case, a wilfully perjured king, as a kind of royal figurehead to a Covenanted government. Their proceedings must be stated with brevity. The king sent Montrose to the European courts, as Monsieur Thiers went the same circuit in the Franco -German war of 1870. Cottington and Hyde begged in southern, as Montrose did in northern Europe, to no purpose. On June 1 2 Charles wrote to Montrose, from Breda, " I will not determine anything touching the affairs of that country " (Scotland) "without having your advice thereupon. As also, I will not do anything that shall be prejudicial to your commission."81 These promises the king broke, taking the Covenants which he never meant to keep, and permitting Montrose to fall into the hands of those who executed, generally, all prisoners who bore the commission of their king.
From this period till December, while the Covenanters were trying, through Winram of Liberton, to bring Charles into their net, Montrose was amused by the loyal and lively letters of Elizabeth, sister of Charles I., the Winter Queen of Bohemia. This undefeated lady, once so dear to Protestants, was a true Pantagruelian, and through a lifetime of heartbreaking misfortunes, laughed at destiny. A portrait of Montrose, probably that noble one in sable armour, by Honthorst, she received, welcoming it as sovran " to scare the brethren." She sent the marquis, by way of entertainment, a proclamation against "that detestable bloody murderer and ex- communicated traitor, James Graeme," and against Lords Morton and Kinnoul. Them Montrose had sent to occupy a strong position in Orkney, where he could join them later and march south. They both died ere his unhappy arrival, and Montrose's smile at Elizabeth's
CHARLES SENDS MONTROSE TO DEATH (1649). 2 I I
badinage must have been bitter, for he knew, no less than Jeanne d'Arc had known, that he was going to his doom.82 Living with " crowned heads," weak as " the unavailing heads of the Dead " in the Odyssey, Montrose had applications from Scotland, full of sanguine promises, "entreating and pressing him earnestly" to come, " all men being weary and impatient to live any longer under that bondage, pressing down their estates, their persons, and their consciences." The Covenant rode them like the Old Man of the Sea ; but they had not the heart, it proved, to rise in arms.38 They served the Earl of Argyll in the same fashion in 1685.
Winram's mission from the Covenanters occupied time from November 1649 till February 1650. The Hague was the haunt of the half-hearted worthless leaders of the Engagement, Hamilton (late Lanark), Lauderdale, Callendar, the chief cause of the d'ebade of Preston, Sinclair, and the rest. They were entreating Charles to abandon " one man, a bloody excommunicated rebel," — Montrose — the one man who stood between him and perjury, and also between Hamilton with his party, and their homes and lands. So wrote Wishart to Lord Napier, then at Hamburgh (January i, i65o).34 Seaforth was one of those who pressed Montrose to come to Scotland, where he dared not be himself, for the treble turncoat was a thing of words.
Winram had paved the way for the arrival of new Com- missioners from the ruling party of Argyll and the preachers. Of all Charles's advisers only Nicholas, his father's old secretary, declared that "honourable terms were inconsistent with the abandonment of Montrose." K Relatively honourable it would have been to abandon Montrose, giving him fair notice, for the field -marshal of the Kaiser had employment enough, and friends enough, in Europe. But Charles preferred to send Montrose to wage war in Scotland, while he dealt with the dominant party for Commissioners to come to Breda and treat for peace. The king (January 12/22, 1650) wrote from Jersey to tell Montrose what he was about. Nothing, not " the treaty we expect," is "to give the least impediment to your proceedings." These "pro- ceedings " " will be a good means to bring them to such moderation in the treaty" as Charles desires. He promises that he will not, "before or during the treaty" (that is, the negotiations), do any- thing contrary to Montrose's authority. "Proceed vigorously and effectually."86 In a private letter, Charles promised, on the same
212 MONTROSE WILL "SEARCH HIS DEATH" (1649).
date, that his friendship would never fail.37 He also sent Montrose the Garter, — the George and Ribbon are still in the possession of his posterity.
Montrose set forth : he soon knew what must befall him. Royalists in Scotland, such as they were, would not join an " ex- communicated traitor," with a price on his head ; while the king, at Breda, was palavering with Commissioners from Kirk and State who would insist on his swallowing the Covenants and abandoning Montrose. It may be an excuse for Charles that he believed in golden reports about the men and arms whom Montrose had gathered and recruited in Scandinavia and Northern Germany, and in 20,000 men in buckram, promised by the Scottish dreamers, before they knew that the king was treating with the Covenanters.* At last, after long delays from stormy seas, Montrose reached Kirk- wall in March 1650; having by this time received the Garter, and the king's commands and assurances of January 12/22. On March 26 he wrote from Kirkwall to Seaforth (in safety across the sea), "I am going to the mainland, . . . and shall live or die, your cousin," etc. "Montrose," says Mr Gardiner, "was far too ex- perienced a soldier not to be aware that few, if any, of the professing Royalists of Scotland would rally round the king's standard in the hands of a man whom the king might at any moment disavow." He answered Charles's letter of January 12 on the same day as he wrote to Seaforth (March 26) — he had received it on March 23. But even if Charles and the marquis had been in telegraphic communication, matters were so managed that Montrose was doomed. He knew this and wrote, acknowledging the Garter, " with the more alacrity and bensell " (vigour) " shall I abandon still my life to search my death for the interests of your Majesty's honour and service." For the last time he bade Charles " be just to yourself," for he knew that the Scottish Commissioners, and the whole Hamiltonian crew, would be urging and cajoling his king to perjure himself. He ended —
"Your Sacred Majesty's most humble, faithful, and most passionate subject, MOUTROSE."
The letter reached the king : it is endorsed by Nicholas.38
* Letter of Jan. 20/30. The 20,000 had been promised long before. Carte, 'Original Papers,' i. pp. 345-351. Other even more shadowy "hopes," are named by Nicholas to Ormonde, ibid. i. pp. 358, 359.
CHARLES II. DESERTS MONTROSE (1649). 213
Charles, at Breda (where the Covenanting Commissioners were), on April 15, bade Napier continue to assist Montrose.39 On May i Charles signed the Treaty of Breda, submitted to all dishonour, and presently (May 12/22) was about sending Sir William Fleming to bid Montrose lay down his arms. " We hope . . . that we shall be able, in a little time, to make his peace in Scotland." " I do not despair of doing it in a little time." 40 And he " did it," Charles did it, by a message of May 3/13 to his Parliament, in which he says that he "has now given satisfaction to your Commissioners," and "re- commends very particularly " that such conditions shall be made for his forces in the north " as shall be reasonable and necessary to free the kingdom from these troops, according to our positive and express order in that behalf." (For details, see Note at the end of this chapter.)
" Our positive and express order," as if " we " could order any- thing ! Not a word is said of Montrose, a knight lost in a bungled game of political chess : lost and unregretted. For Montrose, on May 21, after Charles had not even dared to name him in "our positive order," had gone where Jeanne d'Arc went, carrying, like her, " fidelity and honour to the grave." Like her, loyal ; like her, for a year victorious ; like her, deserted ; like her, insulted by brutal soldiers, and vexed by professional Church or Kirk men ; the great marquis had passed into his rest.
Of the Action of Montrose I have written in detail, on his Passion ("Action and Passion" he had promised to Charles I.) I have no heart to dwell. On April 9 he sent Hurry (the man of the Incident — his beaten opponent at Alford) to occupy the Ord of Caithness, a hill above the sea, just north of the village of Helms- dale, at the mouth of the pleasant Helmsdale river. Montrose joined Hurry there ; his banners, with the bleeding head of Charles L, and his own device — a lion about to leap a chasm — floated over 40 horse, 500 foreign mercenaries, and 700 raw Orcadian levies. The Orcadians had long ceased to be a warlike people. Montrose now advanced by the route of the railway of to-day, his purpose being to join hands with Seaforth's clan. The Earl of Sutherland was hostile, his castle of Dunrobin, with other forts, was strongly held, and Montrose turned up the valley of the Fleet, where the river, as it approaches the sea, lies in deep black pools, under lofty banks.* Turning to his left from Strath Fleet, Montrose cut across * " The Mound " did not yet exist.
214 STRACHAN ROUTS MONTROSE (1649).
the peninsula, and struck the Oykel where it is fordable, above the Kyle, a long narrow estuary receiving the waters of Oykel, Shin, and Carron.
Here he should have met Seaforth's men, from the south, in rugged country, unsuitable for cavalry. But not one Mackenzie rose. Seaforth, who was with Charles, knew too much to bid his clan rise for the paltering king; or his brother, Mackenzie of Pluscardine (near Elgin), had lost heart. Montrose was deserted.
Against him Leslie was sending Colonel Strachan, with such forces as he could muster. Strachan, whom Balfour describes as the son of a brewer at Musselburgh, was said to have been remarked on, in 1649, by a St Andrews student, as a "notorious villain to his country and Presbyterian government."41 Blair says that, according to the Engagers, Strachan joined the English army with Cromwell, when the Duke of Hamilton invaded England.42 Guthry declares that, as soon as the Engagement Parliament rose, Argyll sent Strachan to Cromwell, to ask for an English force that might join the Argyll and Kirk party. "This was represented to the grand committee . . . but the duke slighted it."43 Strachan, as a suspected Independent, had been under the notice of the Kirk, but had signed the Solemn League. In a letter to the Rev. James Guthrie, an extreme fanatic, he says, " If James Graham lands near these quarters he will suddenly be de — ed" ("defeated" or "dis- appointed" ?).* Strachan prophesied truly, and though later he was "delivered to the Devil" by the Kirk, he now overthrew the ex- communicated Montrose.
On April 24 Montrose was at Carbisdale on the south side of the Kyle ; the place is visible from the railway bridge which spans the estuary near Invershin. Behind him was the hill of Craigcaoinichean, which local people, and the ordnance map, render the "Hill of Lamentation" (a name that might be older than the defeat of Montrose), but which is usually translated " The Mossy Hill." It was sparsely overgrown with wood. Except 400 Rosses and Monroes, not resolute fighters, Strachan had with him but 240 horse of Leslie's armyr and 40 musketeers. They were enough. The rise and fall of the ground, Gordon of Sallagh says, and the luxurious broom in a corrie, lent Strachan cover.44 He cleverly left one troop in view ; Montrose's patrol of horse took them for
* Wishart, p. 303. The date of this letter is dubious ; Mr Gardiner thinks it is June 3, 1649.
2l6 ASSYNT SURRENDERS MONTROSE (1649).
the whole array of the enemy. Montrose began to align his troops ; Strachan then drew his cavalry from cover, and broke the half-formed untrained ranks of Montrose. The Orcadians ran ; the foreign mercenaries were cut down on the hill, where the wood was too thin for their protection.*
Young Frendraght, who was wounded and taken to his uncle's house, Dunrobin, is said to have given Montrose his own horse. He had no line of flight except up the very difficult Strath Oykel. He might have headed for Ullapool, but, wherever he went, the price on his head was apt to allure some scoundrel. He threw off, or concealed, his cloak, and the Star of the Garter ; he appears to have adopted a rustic disguise, and of the miseries of his flight, little is known and we prefer to know little. Kinnoul, who was with him, vanishes from our ken, the foxes and eagles alone could tell the tale of the end of Kinnoul. Sallagh says that the marquis was welcomed to milk and bread, " in a cottage in that wilderness," still so desolate. It may have been here that Montrose, escaping a party in pursuit by hiding under a trough, exclaimed, on their departure, that he had endangered his hosts, and " determined never to do the like again to avoid death of which, he thanked God, he was not afraid." t
After crossing the watershed on the westward way, Montrose reached Loch Assynt, a long lake stretching from the Inn of Inchnadamff, .westwards, towards the sea at Loch Inver. Macleod of Assynt had been, in Montrose's knowledge, Seaforth's man, and, now and then, a Royalist. He was at present, however, one of Sutherland's "tail"; and Sutherland, Sallagh tells us, had made him sheriff depute. He seized Montrose, and gave him up to the pursuers. Assynt's position is that of Sir John Menteith, who gave up Wallace to the English. Assynt and Menteith had both changed sides ; both held office under their new masters ; one surrendered Montrose, and the other Wallace, taking rewards for the blood of
* " Scroggy wood," Balfour's phrase, means low scattered underwood. Balfour, iv. p. 9. See Mr Gardiner, 'Ed. Rev.,' Jan. 1894, for Balfour's authority. See Sallagh, in Gordon of Gordonstoun, pp. 554, 555, and Wishart, pp. 304-309, note by the editors. Gardiner, ' Com. and Prot.,' i. pp. 237-243.
t Miscellany, Scottish History Society, vol. i. p. 223. The tradition was written down, in 1792, by George Marsh, who had it from his mother, nle Milbourne. The Milbourne of 1650 is described as wealthy. No trace of him or his exists, hence, if the story is true, the host of Montrose may have been an honest cotter, whose descendants attributed to him wealth and "gentrice."
2l8 THE PASSION OF MONTROSE (1649).
these heroes. Assynt and Menteith, conscientious men, discharged a painful duty, let us say. It was, in the same way, the duty of Kingsborough and Lady Macdonald, ninety- four years later, to arrest another valuable fugitive, Prince Charles. But blind to duty, indifferent to a reward of ^3 0,000, content with honour and humanity, they helped the Wanderer to escape. Not so Assynt. " The hare kindles on his hearthstane " in his ruined castle beside Loch Assynt ; and there will ne'er be a Macleod of Assynt again. The lands of Neil Macleod were handsomely raided, in revenge, by the Mackenzies (who had no right to feel virtuous indignation), the Mackays, and Glengarry. After the Restoration, Neil being tried for his behaviour to Montrose, pleaded an alibi; then why, in 1650, did he claim the reward for what he had not done ? It was partly paid in sour oatmeal, proverbially remembered.*
We do not love to study too closely the Passion of Montrose. By his Presbyterian countrymen he was insulted as was Wallace by the English.45 He was mounted on a rugged sheltie, under which his feet were tied. He was preached at, the usual text about the slaughter of the Amalekites being selected. " Rail on ! " said the marquis. In Dundee the burgesses honoured themselves and their sense of Christian charity by supplying him with clothes " suitable to his birth, place, and person." On May 18 Montrose was driven by the hangman through Edinburgh, in a cart. At the door of the Tolbooth he gave the man drink money. He had received and read his sentence, that of hanging, the most shameful death. Being a proclaimed " traitor " he had no trial, any more than the Earl of Argyll had in 1685. The people were expected to stone him, and his hands were bound that he might not shield his face : the people threw no stones. The cart was halted before Moray House in the Canongate, where Argyll had dined with Cromwell. Now Argyll, Waristoun, and Lord Lome with his young bride, looked down on Montrose in the hangman's cart. Argyll had the decency to cause the blinds to be partially closed46 (Graymond to Mazarin, May 23* 1650).
Montrose turned his face towards them ; an Englishman cried out that for these seven years bygone they durst not look him in the face.f
* See Wishart, Appendix xiii., an interesting essay by Messrs. Murdoch and Morland Simpson, t Wigton MS. in Napier, ii. p. 779.
"LET ME DIE IN PEACE!" (1649). 2 19
The author of this account makes the Argyll party " creep in at windows." But, if Graymond, in his report to Mazarin, is right, they were only peeping out from behind a half- veiled window. If that was so, they probably retired before the eyes of Montrose. Lome, in 1685, went the via dolorosa on which the marquis had preceded him.
In prison the captive was baited by preachers. He cast their charge of breaking the Covenant back upon them, says Graymond ; " he had maintained the principles of the Covenant, in terms of his oath." It was so — he " took the oath without the gloss." He was to be hanged on Monday, May 20. By eight of that day the preachers flocked about him, James Guthrie among them, like ravens round a fallen stag. Montrose listened courteously to Guthrie ; his reply was that of a Cavalier, "airy and volagc" — dealing with erudite divines, he made some quotations from the Latin. As to his employment of the Irish, they were, he said, the king's subjects. Then, with a flash of humour, " we see what a company David took, to defend him in the time of his strait." " He did all that in him lay to keep" his men "back from bloodshed; if it could thereby have been prevented, he had rather it had all come out of his own veins." The Covenant he had taken and had kept. " Bishops, I care not for them. I never intended to advance their interest." He had merely opposed the Covenanters when, under the Solemn League, they attacked the king in England.
Threatened by Guthrie with the posthumous results of dying excom- municate and unrepentant, he said that he would never declare " his duty " to have been " his sin." Their crazy superstition that what they " bound on earth, God will bind in heaven " (so Guthrie put the case), was nothing to Montrose.* He told his keeper that there was no need to deprive him of a knife, lest he should commit suicide. He had foreseen the end, "and if my conscience would have allowed me, could have dispatched myself." They would not permit him to be shaved ; he said, " I would not think but they would have allowed that to a dog." Informed of his sentence, he said, " It becomes them rather to be hangmen than me to be hanged." Trail, in his Diary, writes that to the ministers he said, " I pray you, gentlemen, let me die in peace." He was rated by Loudoun, that turncoat, in presence of the Estates. He defended his movement
* From an eyewitness, the Rev. Patrick Simson, to Wodrow. Mr Simson lived till 1715. Napier, ii. pp. 785-788.
22O DEATH OF MONTROSE (1649).
from Orkney : it was " by his Majesty's special direction and command, in accelerating of the treaty." How true that was we know. "At the reading of the sentence, by Waristoun, he lifted up his face," silently. He was clad in "a scarlet coat to his knee, trimmed with silver galoons, lined with crimson taffeta," the rest of his apparel black, with carnation hose, garters, and roses in his shoon. " With a great deal of courage and modesty, unmoved and undaunted," says Balfour, he listened to the insults of the traitor Loudoun.*
Everything was ready. " A great trinket prick had been made for James Graham's head." By a happy economy it also served later for that of Archibald Campbell, Marquis of Argyll.
To the gallows Montrose, says an eyewitness, writing as he looked on, went like a bridegroom. " I never saw a more sweeter carriage in a man in all my life ... he is just now a turning off from the ladder." He had addressed the people. " It is spoken of me that I would blame the king. God forbid. For the late king, he lived a saint and died a martyr. . . . For his Majesty now living, never any people, I believe, might be more happy in a king. His commands to me were most just, and I obeyed them." Were most just ! It is the " noble lie " of Plato : the commands were most un- just as regarded the hero. Montrose knew it well, but, like Jeanne d'Arc, to the last he defended the honour of his king. "The ministers, even on the scaffold, were very bitter against him."
He would not deign them word or sign,
But alone he bent the knee, And veiled his face for Christ's dear grace
Beneath the gallow tree.
He had made his peace. To the weeping hangman he gave some gold, the last gift of a lavish hand. Wishart's book, the record of his deeds, was tied about his neck — he loved it more, he said, than his Order of the Garter. " And so, with an undaunted courage and gravity," he met his doom. Mr Gardiner, not an effusive writer, truly says, " Great in life, Montrose was even greater in his death."
The dead can still be insulted. His comely head with its love- locks was placed on the appointed spike. His trunk was buried
* For Montrose's speech, from the Wigton MS., see Napier, ii. pp. 794-796. It corroborates Balfour's statement that he declared he came "by his Majesty's just commands." " Be not too rash," he said, and appealed them before the Court of Heaven.
MONTROSE AND JEANNE D'ARC. 221
where felons were laid, in the Borough Moor. His limbs were ex- hibited, one here one there, and Charles II. must have beheld some fragments of the hero whom he had sent to die. His heart, rescued by the Napiers, and kept in a silver case, had a history as romantic as his own, in perils of war by land and sea.
Not for Montrose, felix opportunitate mortis, was to be the spectacle of chicanery, hypocrisy, and perjury ; of defeat and ruin ; of return to a loveless life with harlots and jesters, that awaited the king for whom he died. What place was there for Montrose in the satyr rout, or among the dull misgovernors of the Restoration? He was not born, like Lauderdale, to be the butt of the filthy practical jokes of Charles II., or to hunt brave ignorant peasants, like the later "glory of the Grahams." He had carried fidelity and honour to the grave. He had as deliberately chosen the path of honour, with certain death before his eyes, as did Jeanne d'Arc when her Voices foretold her fate in the fosse at Melun.
NOTE TO CHAPTER VII. Charles II. and the Death of Montrose.
DID Charles II., while treating with the Scots at Breda, allow Montrose to persevere in his hopeless and fatal expedition, merely that a movement in the north might induce the Covenanters to offer milder terms ? Next, when Charles decided to dishonour himself by signing the Covenants, did he exact any assurances from any one for the safety and liberty of Montrose ? Lastly, did Charles, when he heard of Montrose's defeat at Carbiesdale, basely disown him, in a letter to the Scottish Estates, and deny that he acted by royal orders and under royal commission ?
The extreme candour of Mr Gardiner's mind induced him to take the most favourable view of the conduct of the young king. Mr Gardiner's statements we must examine. At the end of 1649, he says, Montrose, then at Gothenburg, "had the prospect of reaching Scotland with a force" (of foreign mercenaries) " not altogether contemptible, at least as a nucleus for the native troops which he expected to rally round him."1 Montrose did not reach Kirkwall till "some time before March 23," 1650. At Kirkwall he received a letter written by Charles, in Jersey, on January 12/22, 1650. In this letter Charles informed Montrose that (contrary to his advice) he was about to negotiate with the Covenanters, but that Montrose must not apprehend from the treaty "anything to give the least impediment to your proceedings" ; on the other hand, "vigorous proceeding will be a good means to bring them to moderation." Neither before nor during the " treaty" (that is, the negotiations at Breda) will Charles do any-
1 ' Commonwealth and Protectorate,' pp. 190, 191 (1903).
222 CHARLES II. AND MONTROSE.
thing contrary to the powers conferred by his commission on Montrose. This letter the marquis had leave to publish. In a private letter (January 12/22) Charles added, " nothing shall make me consent to anything to your prejudice." 1 The king also sent to Montrose the Garter. Such were Montrose's last commands from Charles, and, receiving them, he knew that his doom was dight. There could be no powerful rising to aid Montrose while the king was in treaty with the deadly enemies of the marquis. The letter of Charles " cut Montrose to the heart," says Mr Gardiner.2 He replied (March 26) that " I would abandon still my life to search my death for the interests of your Majesty's honour and service," and warned Charles to be "just to himself," — to remember his honour. Montrose then rode to his doom.
Meanwhile Charles's letters of January to Montrose had been published in France, and in the English newspaper, ' A Brief Relation,' of February 19, 1650. The Covenanted Estates in Scotland thus knew exactly the relations between Montrose and Charles, knew that the marquess was acting by the king's commands and under his commission.3 Charles, it is important to note, could not possibly hope later to deceive the Estates by denying that Montrose acted on his com- mission. The thing was public, and was much discussed.
Before Montrose himself received the royal letters, the king was negotiating at Breda with the relentless Commissioners of the Covenant. On May I he signed a draft Treaty, abandoning honour and promising to accept the Covenants. How Montrose sped, Charles then knew not.
At this point Mr Gardiner writes, " There can be no doubt that before the king signed the draft agreement" (May i) "he had received assurances that if Montrose would lay down his arms, not only he and his troops but the Scottish Royalists in Holland should receive complete indemnity." But Montrose had been defeated on April 27, before Charles signed the draft Treaty of May I. If the alleged " assurances" were really given, they applied "in case Montrose would lay down his arms," they would not apply to a captive with no arms to lay down.4
Again, who had power to give Charles assurances of an indemnity for an excommunicated Malignant and proclaimed "traitor" like Montrose? What power in Scotland could thus beard the Kirk ? Certainly, we might think, not Argyll, " enslaved " to the Kirk, as Mr Gardiner says that he was.
However, Mr Gardiner, defending Charles II., avers that he did not desert Montrose : " there can be no doubt that ... he had received assurances of ... complete indemnity." He goes on, "though the evidence is far from complete, there are reasons for thinking that these assurances were given, not by the official Commissioners " (at Breda), " but by Will Murray acting as Argyll's agent." Now Mr Gardiner publishes a document proving that the indemnity was ' ' by the king's agreement with the Scots Commissioners." Will Murray, "Argyll's agent," we know was accused of pocket-picking, and was a man odious to Montrose. Even if he conveyed, as Mr Gardiner thinks, assurances from Argyll for Montrose's safety, the king ought to have known that such assurances were not valuable. Argyll had no power to give them ; none to enforce them if given, for the Kirk would cry aloud for Montrose's blood, and the Estates had ever fed these ravens with the flesh of Cavaliers. This much, however, might be said for Charles ; when his father was in the hands of the Scots at Newcastle he had arranged for
1 Napier, ii. pp. 752, 753.
2 ' Commonwealth and Protectorate,' i. p. 208.
3 ' Commonwealth and Protectorate,' i. p. 192.
4 ' Commonwealth and Protectorate,' i. p. 206.
CHARLES II. AND MONTROSE. 223
the safe departure of Montrose when he disbanded. The safety was, after all, only secured by a stratagem on Montrose's part, but, if Argyll now gave assurances through Will Murray (which is Mr Gardiner's theory), Charles II. may have supposed that what had happened before might happen again, and that Montrose, after disbanding, might get safely away.
Mr Gardiner, at all events, from a letter of Charles to his envoy, Sir William Fleming, in mid May 1650, infers that Charles "had got a promise from a person like Argyll, whose real influence he was certain to overrate." In the circumstances which Mr Gardiner supposes to have existed — private dealing between Argyll and Charles through Will Murray, while Argyll, for political reasons, was hoping to circumvent the Kirk secretly — an assurance of indemnity from Argyll for Montrose is really not inconceivable. For, granting that Montrose was in arms, in the extreme north, Argyll could arrange for his escape behind the back of the Kirk after Montrose disbanded. What, then, is Mr Gardiner's ground for saying that "there can be no doubt" that Charles had assurances for Montrose's safety? The ground is a note of Secretary Long's at Breda, dated May 5/15, when Montrose (unknown to Charles) had already been given up to Holborne by Macleod of Assynt. The note runs, "Order to Montrose to lay down arms . . . 10,000 dollars paid to his use in Sir Patrick Drummond's hands. Indemnity for him, Earls Seaforth " (in Holland), " Kinnoul" (dead!), " Lords Napier and Reay" etc.1
"Now will it be believed" (as Macaulay might have asked) that, in Mr Gardiner's text of this note of Long's, in ' Charles II. and Scotland,' p. 126, published for the Scottish History Society in 1894, the words " for him " (Montrose) do not occur after " indemnity." Long's phrase in ' Charles II. and Scotland,' p. 126, runs — " indemnity for Hon. E. Seaforth," and so on, nothing about indemnity for Montrose. Mr Gardiner, in the ' Edinburgh Review ' of January 1894, p. 155, gives one text of Long's note, in modern spelling, with "indemnity for him" (Montrose), while, in 'Charles II. and Scotland,' also of 1894, he gives another text, in Long's own very odd spelling (" Lords Napper and Rey"), without any mention of "indemnity for him" (Montrose). However, supposing that Montrose really is included in the indemnity, what was the assurance for it? Long writes : " This upon king's agreement with Scots Commissioners." Then the assurance seems to be theirs, not Argyll's, though we know not how they could have a right to give it unless they risked it on Charles's private assurance of Argyll's sanction.
Long's note goes on, "Sir W. Fleming sent with the orders " (to disband) " all his " (Montrose's) ' ' officers and soldiers indemnified. Montrose to stay in safety for a competent time in Scotland, and ship to lie provided for transporting [him] where he pleased." I would rather believe that Charles, when he was forced into dishonour, and signed the promise to take the Covenant, still had heart enough to care for the safety of Montrose. From Long's note, he seems to have had that amount of human nature, and to have supposed that, " by agreement with the Scots Commissioners " at Breda, he had assurances. But how he was led into this belief, who can say ! Did the Commissioners deceive him on this point to obtain his signature to the draft treaty? Did Will Murray, Argyll's agent, deceive both the Commissioners and the king? Or had Argyll really given assurances ?
In any case, as Mr Gardiner says, Charles knew that there was no grant of indemnity by the authority of the Scottish Parliament, for he now sent Sir William 1 Carte MSS., vol. cxxx. fol. 119.
224 NEW EVIDENCE.
Fleming with a letter of May 8/18 to Parliament, asking for the safe departure of Montrose's men, "without any allusion to a preceding promise." This letter of May 8/1 8 to the Scottish Parliament sufficiently proved that the king was accessory to Montrose's proceedings, but we shall show that, by a later command of Charles to Fleming, the letter was never delivered to the Estates. Charles might have — as a motive for this later command not to deliver the letter to Parliament of May 8/18 — the desire to conceal, as far as that letter went, his accession to Montrose's expedition. But no such concealment was possible, as Charles knew, and there was no reason, if Montrose were defeated, for presenting the letter. But a copy of a " Public Letter" by the king to his "right entirely beloved cousin" Montrose (May 5/15) was delivered and read to the Estates, and entirely demonstrated that Montrose acted under royal commission.
We now come to the mission from Breda of Sir William Fleming. On May 3/13 he got orders to bid Montrose disband, with all assurances of the king's hopes for his good, and with " duty and affection." A private royal letter to the marquis also mentioned the 10,000 rix dollars lying at his call. Certainly Charles had somehow persuaded himself that he had secured Montrose's safety ; on what precise grounds of conviction we do not know.1 Two days later (May 5/15) Fleming received further instructions. He was to take counsel, in Scotland, with Will Murray (who travelled with him), "concerning any further treaty with Montrose in order to our service, than what your public instructions do bear." He was to give most affectionate messages to Montrose.2 Fleming also carried the letter of May 8/18 to the Scots Parliament, announcing that Charles was bidding Montrose to disband, and asking for security to such of his men as wished to leave the country, " according to our positive and express order" — as if he had any right to give orders ! 3 That letter, acting on a later command, Fleming " carefully concealed."
On May 9/19 Fleming received further instructions. If the Covenanters are not satisfied with Charles's concessions, or are merely driving time, " Montrose is not to lay down arms." If he has a considerable force, he is not to disband ; Fleming is to consult on this point with Will Murray — Argyll's man ! Murray must clearly have deceived Charles into belief in his loyalty.4
Here the instructions to Fleming cease, as far as they were known to Mr Gardiner. But, by a curious accident, Mr A. G. Reid found an unpublished later set of instructions to Fleming in an odd volume of ' The Wigton Papers ' which he bought at a book sale. The new orders, we repeat, are later than May 9/19, are of May 12/22, 1650. Fleming is here bidden to find out the truth of a report which has reached the king concerning Montrose's defeat. If the tale is true, or if Montrose is not in Scotland, Fleming is not to deliver to Parliament the king's letter of May 8/18 already cited. He is to conceal it carefully and show it to nobody ; and he obeyed his orders. But if there has been no fight, or if Montrose is still at the head of a considerable force, then Fleming is to deliver to Parliament the letter of May 8/18, that Montrose "may be induced to lay down arms immediately, according to our express order. . . . " 5
Now we come to the final puzzle : did Charles disgrace himself by writing a letter to the Scots Parliament, declaring that he " was not accessory in the least
1 'Wigton Papers,' ii., ii. pp. 472-476. Miscellany of the Maitland Club.
2 ' Wigton Papers," ii., ii. pp. 476-478.
3 ' Wigton Papers,' ii., ii. pp. 478, 479.
4 ' Wigton Papers, ii., ii. pp. 478-480.
8 ' Proceedings of Society of Antiquaries of Scotland,' pp. 199-202 (1899-1900).
ANOTHER LETTER REPORTED. 22$
degree " to Montrose's "invasion"? Sir James Balfour says that, on Saturday May 25/June 4 a letter from the king, dated May 12/22 (the date of Fleming's last instructions), to that infamous effect (Charles not accessory to Montrose's invasion) was read aloud to the Estates.1
Also, a copy of the king's letter to Montrose, of May 5/15, was read. In this, Charles, we know, calls Montrose " right entirely beloved cousin," and bids him disband because of the full agreement arrived at by the Treaty of Breda. This was " a public letter," a letter for publication. Now how could Charles write to the Estates disclaiming accession to Montrose's invasion, and yet, by the same post, show his complete accession, by his public letter to Montrose of May 5/15? Again, how could he send the disgraceful letter read aloud in the House, when, in his instructions to Fleming of the same date (May 12/22), he was still uncertain as to whether Montrose had been defeated or not ? And how could Fleming deliver to Parliament the letter of May 5/15, when, by his newly-discovered orders of May 12/22, he was strictly forbidden, in the case of the truth of the report of Montrose's defeat, to deliver the compromising royal letter to the Estates of May 8/18? Nothing is said, in Fleming's instructions of May 12/22, about an alterna- tive letter — which he is to deliver to Parliament if Montrose has been defeated — in place of that of May 8/18. Had such an alternative letter, the disgraceful one, been given to Fleming, it would be mentioned in his instructions of May 12/22. But was the abject letter described by Balfour given to Will Murray, not to Fleming? Again, how could Charles write the infamous letter reported by Balfour when his own commission to Montrose had long been in print, in the newspapers? For all these reasons it seems almost impossible that Charles should have written the letter which was read to the Scots Parliament on May 25/June 4, as described by Balfour.
Further, an absolutely different and quite harmless account exists of the king's alleged letter to Parliament of May 12/22. In this other version Charles merely asks for information ; it is a letter " sent by Mr Murray" (Will Murray), and it appeared in the English newspaper, ' Several Proceedings,' for June 6.2 It may be suggested that, on May 12/22, Charles bade Fleming conceal, in case of Montrose's defeat, his compromising letter to Parliament of May 8/18, and at the same time he may have given to Will Murray the disgraceful letter of May 12/22. But Fleming did deliver the letter to Montrose, the compromising letter of May 5/1 5. And Murray, on this hypothesis, also delivered the contradictory letter of May 12/22 described by Balfour, while again an entirely different letter of May 12/22 was given to the press. Into Balfour's report (iv. p. 25) of what Argyll told the House that Lothian told him, namely, that Charles said in conversation, " His Majesty was nowise sorry for Montrose's defeat, as he acted contrary to his command," we need not go. It is not evidence against Charles ; it does not prove that, by the letter which Balfour reports, he practically signed Montrose's death warrant, if Montrose chanced to be alive when the letter reached the Estates.
The brain may be said to reel in face of this embroglio. If we think Charles as stupid as heartless and mean, we might explain matters thus. Hearing on May 12/22 an uncertain report of Montrose's defeat, he then forbade Fleming to deliver to Parliament that letter of May 8/18, which proved his accession to Montrose's adventure, if Fleming found that the story of the defeat was true. Then, forgetting that his commission to Montrose was matter of public knowledge through the
1 Balfour, iv. p. 34.
2 ' Charles II. and Scotland,' p. 103.
VOL. III. P
226 CONJECTURES.
press, Charles entrusted to Will Murray the lying and despicable letter to Parliament described by Balfour. But he forgot to forbid Fleming to publish the public letter of May 5/15 to Montrose ; it was delivered by Fleming and read to the House — or it was copied by Will Murray and read to the House — and the king appeared before his Estates as the most false and foolish of men. Montrose's words to the Estates, and on the scaffold, " His Majesty's commands to me were most just, and I obeyed them," proved once more the falsity of the king's letter as described by Balfour.
It may be conceivable that Charles was at once so incredibly stupid and so desperately depraved, but then there is the harmless summary in the newspaper, ' Several Proceedings,' of the .king's letter of May 12/22, in which he merely asks for information. Now it was the interest of the Edinburgh correspondent of ' Several Proceedings ' to send to his journal the letter described by Balfour, for it would have sickened the heart and paralysed the arm of every Cavalier in England. Was his summary a false version given to him by some secret Cavalier in the House who heard read the letter described by Balfour, and tried to prevent its fatal consequences? Or was there a forgery, or other jugglery, by Will Murray, in the hope of making the Covenanters think Charles fit for any baseness? And was the contradictory royal letter of May 5/1 5 to put in to the same end? Meanwhile the letter of May 12/22, described by Balfour, though handed to the Committee of Despatches to be answered (so such a letter, genuine or forged, really existed, apparently), cannot be found in the Register House at Edinburgh, where the Rev. John Anderson kindly made research for it.
NOTES TO CHAPTER VII.
1 Burnet, ' Mem. Ham.,' p. 367.
2 Burnet, 'Mem. Ham.,' p. 369; Musgrave in Clarendon MSS. 2, p. 867. Cf. Gardiner, iv. p. 227, note 3.
3 Guthry, pp. 290, 291 ; Burnet, 'Mem. Ham.,' p. 371.
4 Burnet, 'Mem. Ham.,' p. 375.
5 Burnet, 'Mem. Ham.,' p. 379.
6 Carlyle, Cromwell Letters, pp. Ixxii-lxxv.
7 Gardiner, iv. p. 231 ; Cromwell Letters, Ixxvii. Ixxviii.
8 Act. Parl. Scot., vi., ii. p. 129 ; Balfour, iii. pp. 383-385.
9 Napier, ii. pp. 670, 671. 10 Napier, ii. pp. 679, 680.
11 Napier, ii. pp. 68 1, 682 ; Clarendon State Papers, ii. p. 460.
12 Willcock, p. 223.
13 Act. Parl. Scot, vi., ii. pp. 131, 143-147; Mathieson, ' Rel. and Pol. in Scotland,' ii. pp. 106, 107.
14 Mitchell, 'Rec. Com. Gen. Ass.,' i., xli. 18 Act. Parl. Scot., vi., ii. p. 157.
16 Balfour, iii. p. 388. 17 Peterkin, p. 510.
18 Peterkin, p. 509. 19 Peterkin, p. 499.
20 Grub, iii. p. 106. 21 Baillie, iii. p. 66.
22 Napier, ii. pp. 684, 685. ^ Wishart, pp. 228, 229^
24 Napier, ii. p. 695. ™ Baillie, iii. pp. 67-84.
NOTES. 227
96 ' Life of Robert Blair,' p. 215. Wodrow Society, 1848.
27 Clarendon State Papers, ii. pp. 474, 475.
28 Balfour, iii. p. 393.
29 Baillie, iii. pp. 512-521. *• Napier, ii. pp. 700-705. 81 Napier, ii. p. 706. K Napier, ii. pp. 708-722. 33 Napier, ii. p. 729. M Napier, ii. p. 730.
35 Nicholas Papers, i. p. 160; Gardiner, 'Com. and Prot.,' i. p. 208. 38 Carte, 'Original Letters,' i. p. 358.
37 Napier, ii. p. 752.
38 Gardiner, ' Charles II. and Scotland,' pp. 42, 43. Scottish History Society. ra Napier, ii. pp. 755-757-
40 Napier, ii. pp. 757-759. note i. to 759.
41 Balfour, iii. pp. 411, 412.
42 'Life of Robert Blair,' p. 206. *> Guthry, pp. 270, 271.
44 ' A Genealogical History of the Earldom of Sutherland,' by Gordon of Gordonstoun, pp. 554, 555. Edinburgh, 1813.
45 Wishart, pp. 316-321. « Napier, ii. p. 781.
228
CHAPTER VIII.
CROMWELL AND SCOTLAND. 1650-1651.
CONTEMPORARY with the expedition and the tragedy of Montrose was the scurvy comedy of the negotiations at Breda. The last words of Montrose to his king warned him against dealing with the Scottish Commissioners who met him at Breda in the middle of March 1650. They were Cassilis and Lothian; Brodie of Brodie, and Winram of Libberton ; John Smith and Alexander Jaffray (who escaped from the battle of Aberdeen), with the Reverend Messrs Wood, Hutchinson, and Livingstone, minister of Ancrum. Mr Livingstone "had some scruple that ministers meddled but too much in public matters," and he was reluctant to go.1 Jaffray, who later saw the errors of Presbyterianism, and became a Quaker, writes : " He " (the king), " that poor young prince to whom we were sent, sinfully complied with what we most sinfully pressed upon him, where I must confess, to my apprehension, our sin was more than his" Indeed, even at the time this good man, like Montrose, "spoke of it to the king himself , desiring him not to subscribe the Covenant if in his conscience he was not satisfied ; and yet went on to close the treaty with him, who, I knew so well, had for his own ends done it against his heart." But Jaffray yielded to the example " of others, gracious and holy men that were there." 2 Livingstone also seems to have had no liking for the transaction, for the king, during the negotiations, was guilty of promiscuous dancing, of using the English Liturgy, and of kneeling at the cele- bration of the Communion. This was clearly no king for a Covenanted people.3
The terms offered to Charles were such as could not leave him, if he accepted them, a shred of honour or a hope of the consolations
SCOTS COMMISSIONERS AND CHARLES (1650). 229
of religion. He was to take both Covenants, force Presbyterianism on England, and Presbyterianise his own household. He was to persecute Catholics, and abrogate all such commissions as that which he had given to Montrose. He was also to sanction the legality of the Estates, and accept the recent constitutional reforms.4 The Prince of Orange was expected to try to " soften " the preachers by aid of Dr Andr£ Rivet, but the preachers were not to be softened (April 4).6 The Anglicans at Breda thought that Montrose, though an excommunicated rebel and traitor, was not too bad to be used against "the wicked sectaries in Ireland." But "the Montrosians laugh at this, as if he were to be caught with this chaff." They were "sure of the king's unalterable affection to Montrose." At this juncture, in mid April, Mr Gardiner avers that Argyll sent over Will Murray to offer to the king the hand of Lady Ann, the daughter of the marquis. Livingstone says " it was thought " that Argyll took this remarkable step, or rather (his grammar is a little involved) says that Will Murray and Sir Robert Murray, "it is thought, put him (Argyll) in hopes that the king might marry his daughter." This hardly justifies Mr Gardiner's assertion ; his other authorities are quite as vague.* That the Murrays should put Argyll in hopes is one thing; that Argyll should "offer the hand " of his daughter is another. A spy at Breda says that the preachers there " stick not to call the king an idolater " (he kneeled at the Holy Communion), "an enemy to God's Church, and that God will curse and plague their land for admitting him." This was on May 6, and Charles was said to be insisting on an amnesty for Montrose. It was also said that the Queen of Sweden and the Prince of Orange urged Charles to accept any terms, "and afterwards keep only what he pleased." But this is mere rumour.6 After much reluctance Charles signed, as we saw, a draft treaty on May i, four days after Montrose's defeat (still unknown to the king), at Carbiesdale. Even the queen mother, to whom shades of heresy were rather unimportant, was obliged to speak her mind to her son.7 As for the three Scottish preachers at Breda, they warned the king that he would have no luck; for his kneeling, as before mentioned, was "provocation against God to procure the blasting of all his designs." t A rather blacker crime, in the eyes of other
* Gardiner, i. pp. 224, 225, and note I, p. 225 ; ' Select Biographies,' i. p. 170 ; 4 Charles II. and Scotland,' p. 114 ; Nicholas Papers, i. p. 172. t ' Select Biographies,' i. p. 177.
230 THE CORRUPTION OF CHARLES (1650).
men, was the king's treatment of Montrose. It becomes us not to judge a lad in Charles's position, perhaps, but a young man should have appreciated the boyish loyalty of the great marquis. Mr Gardiner is able to write : " There can be no doubt that before Charles signed the draft agreement" (May i) "he had received assurances that if Montrose would lay down his arms, not only he, but the Scottish Royalists in Holland, would receive complete indemnity." * This point is so embroiled in obscure detail that it is treated separately in a note at the end of Chapter VII. supra.
It was the gracious habit of Argyll's party to take the lives of the king's servants while they themselves were negotiating with the king. As they had done to Huntly and Montrose, so they did to Hurry, Spottiswoode (said to have been one of the assassins of Dorislaus), Hay of Dalgetty (excommunicated for Popery), Alexander Charteris of Amisfield, and several other gentlemen taken at Carbies- dale, or otherwise fallen into their hands. Most of them, we rejoice to say, "died without repentance." Many of Montrose's secret papers were found and communicated to the Estates. His George and Garter were not laid before the House till May 30. On June 30 the Estates forbade Hamilton, Seaforth, Traquair, Callendar, Napier, Dalziel of Binns, Monro, and many other Engagers or Royalists — all, in fact, of the first or second "classes," to attend Charles or stay in Scotland without warrant. Of these was Lauder- dale, whether that he was not in collusion with Argyll, or that Argyll could not aid him, or by way of a blind. On June 26 news came that Charles had arrived in Speymouth, and on the 2jth that he had swallowed all the increased demands of the Kirk and Estates.8
The wails of loyal Cavaliers over their disgraces may be read in the Papers of Secretary Nicholas. He, alone, from the first, had main- tained in Council that no treaty with the Scots could be honourable which implied "prejudice to his Majesty's affairs," in Ireland and Scotland, under Ormond and Montrose. He was, therefore, with the brave Hopton, put out of the royal deliberating board. The object of the Scots, said Nicholas, was to make the king despicable. They succeeded, and reaped their reward at the Restoration. The lad whom they were corrupting fought, as he might, for his honour ; when that went, it went wholly; and thanks to Will Murray, says Nicholas, Wilmot and Percy deserted Hamilton for Argyll.9 * Gardiner, ' Cromwell and Protectorate,' i. 206 (1903).
WAR WITH ENGLAND (1650). 231
By May 2 g/ June 8 (?) Charles was at Honslaerdyck, about to cross to Scotland ; at least, on that day he wrote a cold note of five lines to Montrose's son.10 By May 23/June 2 the news of Montrose's defeat was only "given out," and "believed" at Antwerp.11 The spy at the Hague (May 30) writes that Charles was " very much amazed at the hearing " of the death of Montrose, and might have "taken other resolutions," had he heard of it earlier.12 " Many wonder he will trust himself with them " ; it needed courage as well as shamelessness. The king had both qualities. The new demands and restrictions on his followers were now revealed to him, and, when the voyage was over, and the ship at anchor in Speymouth, the disgusted Mr Livingstone took the king's oath to the Covenants, — to Presbytery in England, to desertion of Ormond and the Irish, and everything. Both State and Kirk were guilty, says Livingstone, for, in fact, Charles did not deceive them, they were "without any evidence of a real change in his heart."13
The Kirk, henceforth, was to be split between the party which averred that Heaven could not be cajoled by accepting Charles's vows, and the party which tried to invent yet more oaths, for the purpose of cajoling Heaven. The king had taken with him his proscribed adherents, men who counselled deceit; they also were to cause trouble. A few Argyllians, of whom, absurd as it may appear, Buckingham now was one, were. allowed to remain with Charles in Scotland (Buckingham had made friends with Will Murray), and Hamilton and Lauderdale, though " discourted," were not banished. Buccleuch, Cassilis, and others were sent (July 4) to congratulate Charles on the circumstance that "it had pleased God " to move his heart, and they also bade him send away " his corrupt chaplains" and other wicked ones.14 The mixture of hypocrisy and superstition is admirable. On his way south Charles saw, or might have seen, a quarter of the body of Montrose suspended over a gate of Aberdeen. But he continued on his road to Falkland, whence his grandfather had been wont to hunt the buck. Charles, too, "was at his huntis and pastyme," says Nicoll, in his amusing Diary.16
Meanwhile war with England was at hand. The Estates broke up to levy forces ; the ministers raised a regiment of horse under Strachan, whose later conduct induced them to deliver him over to the devil. In England the godly appealed to Heaven and the
232 THE PREACHERS PURGE THE ARMY (1650).
press ; they made adultery punishable by death, simple unchastity by sixty days ; an Act against rouge and patches was proposed ; and a Cavalier journalist was induced to turn his coat and write for the Commonwealth.16 Fairfax would not lead an army against Scotland ; he asserted scruples about the Solemn League ; he may have had other scruples, being no Regicide. Cromwell took command and advanced ; under him were Fleetwood, Lambert, and Monk. By July 19 Cromwell was near Berwick, with about 11,000 foot and 5000 horse. The Scots forces mustering at Leith were somewhat over 20,000, old Leven acting as figurehead, and David Leslie as commander, much trammelled by preachers and com- mittees. The clergy " promised, in God's name, a victory over these erroneous and blasphemous parties," the English, says Nicoll, a diarist. He adds that, by the process of "purging" Malignants out of the army, half the forces were disbanded.17 "The Scottish army being thus in purging daily," must have lost many officers of courage and experience. With more of common sense than the purgers, Leslie fortified Leith and the eastern approaches to Edin- burgh. He had left few but women in the towns and villages on the road from Berwick, and had, as far as possible, cleared the country of supplies, but for these Cromwell relied on his ships. Cromwell had issued politico-religious proclamations; he was the real friend, he averred, to the substance of the Covenant.
He was at Musselburgh by July 30, and there was a skirmish, at Restalrig, variously reported by Balfour and Cromwell himself. That the English gouged out the eyes of a Scottish prisoner and sent him back naked " was reported " ; also that Lambert was mortally wounded. The king had been allowed to visit the army of Scot- land, but, by August 2, he was compelled to withdraw to Dunferm- line, for to see the king among the soldiers was to be shaken in devotion to the Kirk. Charles was also pestered to sign a new declaration, to sink into deeper depths of shame. On August 2 he retired north of Forth, and, for three days, " purging the army " went merrily on, — " they purged out above eighty commanders. The ministers in all places preached incessantly for this purging," which was expected to avert " God's judgments upon the land and army." To the end the preachers believed not in efficient leaders, but in miracles to be wrought by a pacified Jehovah. In military affairs the cashiering of officers, in face of the enemy, for politico- religious reasons (as it entails the appointment of men pious but
CROMWELL'S LETTER TO THE PREACHERS (1650). 233
inexperienced), is not apt to avert "judgments." 18 Balfour adds that Cromwell, before falling back on Dunbar, sent (August 3) " a letter, most ridiculous and blasphemous, to the Commission of the General Assembly.
He said to the preachers, " by your hard and subtle words you have begotten prejudice in those who do too much, in matters of conscience ; — wherein every soul is to answer for itself to God, — depend upon you . . . your own guilt is too much for you to bear. ... Is it therefore infallibly agreeable to the Word of God, all that you say ? I beseech you in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that you may be mistaken. . . . There may be a Covenant made with Death and Hell. I will not say that yours was so." 19 At last we hear the right word spoken : " Your own guilt is too much for you to bear. . . . There may be a Covenant made with Death and Hell. . . . You may be mis- taken ! " The sulphurous fumes of the preachers' fatuous super- stition are blown away. Such was Cromwell's " ridiculous and blasphemous letter." He argued that, in supporting the king, the Scots were "confederated with wicked and carnal men," despite all their purgatives. It was, therefore, necessary to clear themselves by purging the king ; the king whom they had so completely demoralised.
Charles was asked, for purgative purposes, to sign a declaration averring that he desired to be "deeply humbled and afflicted in spirit before God, because of his father's opposition to the work of God, and to the Solemn League and Covenant, and for the idolatry of his mother," with many other perjured protestations.20 Waristoun and James Guthrie brought this infamous paper to Charles; he refused to sign, and was " thundered at " in sermons as " the very Root of Malignancy." The Kirk published the declaration, the Committee of Estates backed them ; unless Charles signed they would not defend his cause. It was Argyll, says Balfour, who first presented this odious declaration for signature to Charles. On August 9 "The Committee of the Army and the Kirk sent Lothian, Waristoun, James Guthrie, and others " to make him sign. He went out to hunt, and, on returning, "denied absolutely to declare anything that might rub upon his father." He had thrown to these wolves his living and loyal servants : now they demanded that he should desecrate the grave of the dead. On the 1 3th, after consulting Argyll, Lothian, Lome, and others, he was ready to
234 CHARLES COMPELLED TO DISHONOUR HIS FATHER.
submit, "only he entreated them to be as sparing of his father's name and memory as necessarily could be." 21 Apparently Charles was to conciliate Jehovah by breaking the Fifth Commandment. For all these purgings were meant to remove "causes of wrath." Even before he signed, Leslie sent a declaration to Cromwell, that they would not support Charles unless he signed the documents (August 14) as a reply to his "ridiculous and blasphemous letter." By endorsing cruel charges against his own mother and his dead father, the king would cease to be offensive to the Deity, and a Jonah in the ship of the Covenanters.
Cromwell, who had victualled at Dunbar and had returned to "the Pentland Hills," to attack Edinburgh from the west, and to secure the Queen's Ferry over Forth, made answer. The thing, to his mind, was hypocrisy. Purging out Malignants, the Scots kept "the head of them," a man who actually had a Popish army in Ireland ! The " new formal and feigned submissions" of Charles in no way improved the case. Scots like Strachan and " Gibby Ker" saw this, and sent in a remon- strance. Charles must sign; if he did not, he knew what befell his father at Newark and Newcastle. "Your enemies . . . will win their ends," said Loudoun in a letter to Charles.22 So the king, being warned by both Kirk and State that if he did not sign they would desert him — signed.
While Leslie was outmanoeuvring Cromwell round Edinburgh, which he did with much skill, Charles rode to Perth (lodging at Gowrie House, the scene of the Gowrie Conspiracy), (August 1 6), to meet Highland reinforcements who had no scruples about Covenants. He was recalled by Loudoun, and it is reported that Argyll, in conversation with the king, said that it was necessary, for the present, to "please these madmen," the precisians. But the evidence for this impious expression is at third hand.23 Soon after (August 20), Charles had to convey to Dr. King his excuses for deserting Ormond and the Irish. "I am a true Cavalier," he said. " What concerns Ireland " (his promise to desert his servants in Ireland) " is no ways binding," — he could not really act without his Irish Council. Charles had outwatched all his Court, except Seymour and Chiffinch (later notorious), to see Dr. King alone. Long told King that Charles had wished to land in Denmark when the new proposals of infamy were brought to him on his voyage, but he was overborne by "the entreaties of his servants." He had
CROMWELL FORCED TO RETREAT (1650). 235
signed the last declaration because "his life was at stake," as probably it was.24 * Cromwell may have expected that his own appeal to the consciences of the Commission of the General Assembly would end in their abandonment of the royal cause. Their curious consciences were quieted, on August 16, by Charles's signature to the document that disgraced his father and mother.
Cromwell (August 18) returned to his position on the Braid Hills, threatening Queensferry and Leslie's sources of supply. But Leslie, though Edinburgh was almost famished, maintained his defensive tactics, countering every move of Cromwell with much astuteness. At Corstorphine and Coltbridge (noted for the flight of Gardiner's dragoons in 1745), Leslie had a position strength- ened not only by the hills and the steep banks of the Water of Leith, but by lochans and marshes now drained and under culture. Moreover, the tower of Hamilton of Redhall barred the way to Queensferry, standing high on the precipitous eastern bank of the stream. Hamilton had sixty men in Redhall, and he held his house tenaciously, enduring a day's cannonade and declining to surrender even when his ammunition was exhausted. But Leslie, looking on, clung to his system and did not relieve the place.25 The doors of Redhall were blown in by the English with petards, and the survivors were stripped naked; or so it was "reported." On this, and other occasions, Leslie incurred reproach for not attacking.! Cromwell retired again to the Braid Hills, then to Musselburgh, whence he shipped his numerous invalids, and making for England in despair of success, and in very dilapidated condition, reached Dunbar on September i, followed by Leslie, who kept, when possible, on the hills above the road. The general situation is thus summed up by Mr Carlyle. " Cockburnspath " (the
* There is a pamphlet " by a Private Hand," averring that Leslie more than once offered to sell the king to Cromwell, and that Cromwell disdained the trans- action. Mr W. S. Douglas, ' Cromwell's Scotch Campaigns ' (96, note 2), citing Maidment's ' Historical Fragments.' Mr Douglas discredits the story, no doubt justly, though he attributes venality to Leslie, through misunderstanding a phrase of Cromwell's. But as the Kirk was in a very effervescent state, being pricked in its conscience, and having no real reply to Cromwell's taunt, one may conceive that, if Charles had not signed the declaration, he would have been in real personal danger. On the field he was brave enough, but he could not face being abandoned to the slayers of his father. Balfour, iv. pp. 89-96, seems to give a correct account of these disgraceful transactions.
t The details, worked out from local knowledge, may be studied in Mr Douglas's ' Cromwell's Scotch Campaigns.'
LESLIE'S COUNSELS CONFUSED (1650). 237
Peaths) " has been seized on Oliver's left " (in front), " and made impassable ; behind Oliver is the sea ; in front of him " (on his flank) " is Leslie, Doon Hill, and the heather continent of Lammer- moor. . . . What is to become of Oliver?" Oliver thought the case bad. "Our spirits are comfortable, praised be the Lord, — though our present position be what it is," he wrote (September 2) to Haselrig at Newcastle. Despite his ships, he saw not how supplies could reach him.26 After the battle, on September 4, Crpmwell wrote that, at Musselburgh, it had been determined to fortify Dunbar, " which, we thought, if anything, would tempt them to engage." Perhaps fear of this was what really did tempt Leslie to desert his Fabian tactics and engage — this idea that Cromwell would fortify Dunbar. If so, we must applaud Cromwell, while we cannot much blame Leslie. Oliver had false news from a prisoner that the king had been allowed to join the army. They had three new regiments, the prisoner said, and they certainly had the king's " Malignant " guard. But Leslie was trammelled by the amateur Committee : the preachers put in their word, and purging had been active.27
" Some of our staff officers were most desirous to fall upon their rear .... but the Council of War that gave orders to the General was against it, and that same day" (Sept 2) "the Committee for purging the army was busy purging out those that should have been fighting." 28 This was lunacy. The idea of the ministers was that Engagers and Royalists were a kind of Achans, communicating a contagion of unholiness certain to prove " a cause of wrath." On the very eve of battle, officers, to whom their regiments were accustomed, left the field, and strange officers, ministers' sons, says Walker, were put over men who knew them not. These holy and acceptable leaders left their regiments, says Leslie himself, in the rainy night of September 2-3. " We might as easily have beaten them as we did James Graham at Philiphaugh, if the officers had stayed by their own troops and regiments."* A wild night had the Scots on Doon Hill; 22,000 ill-officered or unofficered men, of divers religious and political parties ; hungry and wet in the rain (Sept. 1-2). Of the ruling Committee some thought that Leslie ought to have attacked on more occasions than one ; and with that Committee was Waristoun, he that "took instruments" with the
* September 5, Leslie to Argyll, ' Ancrum and Lothian Correspondence,' ii. p. 297.
238 "THE CLERGY'S COUNSEL PREVAILED" (1650).
Lord of Hosts. Burnet reports that his uncle, Waristoun, and the Committee, " thought that Leslie made not haste enough to destroy these sectaries .... they still called on him to fall on." This hardly agrees with a statement in the ' Life of Blair,' in which the Committee is represented as averse to attacking Cromwell's real guard. Nor does Leslie himself blame the Committee, in his letter to Argyll ; he blames his regimental officers. Baillie, as late as January 1651, declares that Leslie descended from Doon Hill, "in consequence of the Committee's orders, contrary to his mind." ^ In the same way Major White, on September 10, told the English Parliament that Leven and Leslie wished to attack the retreating foes in Cockburnspath ravine, already occupied by a Scots force, " but the ministers did so importune them that they could not rest quiet until they had engaged." Cromwell, too, heard that "the clergy's counsel prevailed, — to their no great comfort" (September 4, to the Lord President).30*
Thus the evidence as to the mischievous tactics and fatal advice of the ministers is of uncertain value. Leslie may have been pressed by the preachers, but when he saw the English not on the march, but awaiting him, on September 2, he may also have reckoned that they did not mean to retreat, that they would fortify Dunbar, or withdraw by ship. He himself probably suffered from lack of supplies, and could ill afford to wait. In the afternoon he asked an English prisoner " how will you fight when you have shipped half your men, and all your great guns?" Leslie may have had this news, or he may have put a fishing question. The prisoner replied that the Scots would find men and guns at the foot of the hill, so reports Cadwall, "an army messenger."31 Leslie, in fact, about four or five o'clock in the afternoon of September 2, had moved many of his men to the lower declivities of the hill, and in this operation the outspoken prisoner was taken. He was a one-armed man, yet loaded and fired thrice during the Scottish attack on his post. Cromwell and the staff dined in Dunbar town at four o'clock ; by five, they were watching Leslie's movements. He drew down, says Cromwell, _ about two-
* In a newspaper article, quoted both by Balfour (iv. p. 347) and Nicoll (72), Guthrie is spoken of as "most instrumental in drawing on an engagement at Dunbar." Yet he violently attacked Leslie for his bad generalship, which, perhaps, does not look as if Leslie had acted, on this occasion, by his advice. See Mathieson, ' Religion and Politics,' ii. p. 124, note 2.
CROMWELL'S WATCHFUL NIGHT (1650). 239
thirds of the horse on his left " shogging also their foot and train much to the right, causing their right wing of horse to edge down towards the sea." Cromwell was at Broxmouth House, some two miles to the south of Dunbar, when he noted these movements. This is an important point to remember. Broxmouth House, with its grounds, occupied the relatively level land close to the sea, where the Broxburn flowed quietly, though swollen with the rains, and where its banks, not being steep, caused little difficulty to the movements of forces. But, higher up, the burn descends through a deep and narrow gully, or corry, with precipitous grassy banks, and but two places where an army might cross. Watching Leslie's descent from the commanding heights, Cromwell saw his advantage, as did Lambert. Leslie was being tempted to engage ; for many weeks Cromwell had hoped for nothing better.
Leslie had, probably, as tradition avers, defeated Montrose at Philiphaugh by a surprise in a morn, ig mist. His own words to Argyll, written after his defeat at Durfoar, show that he thought that battle very easily won. He meant, and he tried, to catch Oliver in the same way. All of Cromwell's forces were on the Dunbar side of the Broxburn on the afternoon of September 2. Leslie's were arrayed on the slopes above, the Broxburn flowed between the two armies. To get at Cromwell, whom he outnumbered, Leslie would have to cross the corry, and Cromwell might have defended that line. He garrisoned Broxmouth House; in a print of the battle we see soldiers and waggons within the garden walls. His army had been drawn up at right angles to the burn, his left leaning on Broxmouth House. In the night he marched his forces up to the edge of the corry, which now ran along his front; with each regiment he placed two field-pieces. Now here comes in the difference between Cromwell at Dunbar, and Montrose on the night before Philiphaugh, and Leslie on this very night of destiny. It rained in torrents, but Cromwell " rode all the night through the several regiments on horseback, upon a little Scots nag, biting his lip till the blood ran down his chin without his perceiving it, his thoughts being busily employed on the crucial action now at hand." Blood- specks on his linen bands — it is with these marks that we first saw Cromwell ! On the other side of the burn, on Leslie's side, the " ministers' sons " and the other new officers had slunk under cover, the men had been allowed to crawl away and sleep under corn stocks, the horses were unsaddled, the matches of all but a few men
BATTLE OF
DUNB A R
3* Sept. 1650. JZnql£sh AKLes,
G. Philip &. Sari.
SURPRISE AND COUNTER SURPRISE. 241
in each Scots regiment had been extinguished by Holbourne's orders. Thus " our own laziness," says Leslie to Argyll, was the cause of the Presbyterian defeat. Leslie had " shogged " his horse to his right ; the burn was there most easily crossed. By that ford Cromwell determined to attack ; he would throw most of his forces on the Scots right wing ; if he drove off their horse he would take the infantry of their centre in the flank : and they, between the steep hill behind them and the cony or cleugh beside them, would have no room to deploy into a front at right angles to their old array. The cavalry of the Scots left wing never came into action at all, so hampered was their position or so feeble their hearts.
Cromwell, whom Leslie appears to have expected to surprise by a great cavalry charge from his own right across the levels of the burn, was really moving his own troops across the burn, before dawn, to surprise Leslie. Had that General and his officers not been " lazy " they might have caught T'^mwell in the midst of this audacious and perilous manoeuvre. He executed it safely, at three points, on the low levels, — at the present road above them, and at Brant's Mill, two or three hundred yards further up the burn. In a picture chart of the battle we see three parties crossing at these intervals. It seems, though not from Cromwell's account, that three English regiments of horse went over the corry by the upper crossing as early as four o'clock in the morning, drove in the outposts of Scots horse, and attacked the Scots left among their tents — if any tents they had ; we hear of shelter under corn-stooks. The English foot and cavalry followed, and fell on the Scots foot, whose matches were not lighted — wet fumbling fingers had little chance then to renew the seed of fire. One or two Scots regiments with wheel-lock muskets had a less desperate chance.
But now the Scots horse met Lambert's less numerous cavalry ; already their trumpets had sounded for action, though it seems odd to prelude with trumpets to an intended surprise. Charging down hill with levelled lances, the Scots at first drove back the enemy, but Cromwell, with his own regiment of horse and three of infantry, came up, and steadied Lambert and Monk's foot, who had been repulsed by the gallant stand of the infantry of the Scottish centre, as Cromwell's letter indicates. The whole English line now drove back the Scots, while they struck at the English infantry with the butt, and thrust with pikes. This gallant resistance was probably made by Argyllshire Highlanders
VOL. III. Q
242 THE ROUT OF DUNBAR (1650).
under Campbell of Lawers. But the Scots infantry was presently charged on the flank by English cavalry ; they broke at last and ran. The Scots horse also fled, being pursued, but not, it seems, very closely; of the infantry 10,000 were taken, and some 3000 killed and wounded. The cavalry of the Scots left easily escaped ; the regimental colours, to the making of which the king had paid great attention, were captured. Balfour says that the horse of his side " received little or no hurt at all." The Scottish Covenanting cavalry seldom waited to do so. He names eighteen colonels and other men of note who fell, among them the negotiator, Winram of Libberton, with some others of good houses — Home, Wedderburn, Douglas, Maxwell, Scott, and Ker, but no lords. " General Leslie, and the noblemen that were with the army, first came to Edinburgh," says the ' Life of Blair.' " Malignant " lords were not so apt to be foremost in the flight. As for Leslie, his parallel to Philiphaugh was closer than he had expected, — if Montrose did not see his own orders executed on the night of September 12, 1645, neither did Leslie on the night of September 2, 1650.*
The Covenanters, the Kirk, the Committee of Estates, and David Leslie had got the kind of beating which Wellington ascribed to the gallant and loyal Blucher at Ligny. The Cavaliers of Scotland were not defeated, because neither they nor " Royalist Civil Dignitaries," to whom Mr Carlyle wildly attributes the movement down hill, were allowed to be present "Surely," wrote Cromwell, "it's probable the Kirk has done their doo " (September 4). The Kirk had justified that opinion of parsons as statesmen which the Rev. Messrs Spang, Baillie, and Livingstone privately entertained. Their arguments had not confuted "these erroneous and blasphemous parties," the soldiers of Cromwell. About this time it came to be said that Malignants and Sectaries had much more in common than either had with the Covenanters. They were men of this world, and fought for king or commonwealth, not for a paper fetish and a preacher's dream. Of Cromwell's prisoners many died of hunger or
* This account closely follows Mr Firth, in ' Transactions of the Royal Historical Society,' New Series, vol. xiv. pp. 18-52. The original authorities, Scots and English, have also been studied, but the picture chart, discovered by Mr Firth, explains the battle. It was designed by Fitzpayne Fisher, and seems to be the only known result of his attempt to write an official history of Cromwell's campaign. In Mr Firth's view, each army, in the battle, was on the Berwick side of the Broxburn, and at right angles to that brook. This appears to be indubitably certain.
PREACHERS PROVE THEY ARE NEVER WRONG (1650). 243
of dysentery caused by eating raw cabbages ; the rest were sent to New England, where they were well treated.
The undefeated Commission of the General Assembly instantly set to work to prove, by "A Short Declaration and Warning" (September 12), that it was impossible they should be mistaken. They observed that though the Lord's " judgments are unsearchable, and His ways past finding out," yet " we must not forbear to declare the mind of God." They knew all about it. Their remarks are as coherent as Swift's prophecy taken down from the Mouth of a Man Killed by the Mohocks, "Concerning these things neither do I know, nor do ye know, but I only." The king, they said, must examine himself about his own repentance for "the grievous pro- vocations of his father's house, and his own guiltiness," as if these were responsible for Leslie's neglect, and "our own laziness." Malignants must still be purged, and, of all things, nobody must " blame the Covenant." 82
James Guthrie and Patrick Gillespie were leading fanatics at this time, and Guthrie clamoured for the dismissal of Leslie, and preached at him from the pulpit. The preachers give us a hint of their ideas of strategy in their " Causes of a solemn public Humiliation." The fact that the king's horse guards "most malignant and profane," were left unpurged, was one cause of wrath and defeat. Another was the "diffidence" of some of the leaders, who omitted "fair opportunities and advantages," of which preachers, not soldiers, appear to be the best judges. Neglect of family prayers "in great ones and many others," also contributed to the disaster of Dunbar. But why did Jehovah give victory to "bloody and blasphemous sectaries " ? Even the preachers of Fife, however, blanched at the idea of reading " these reasons " from the pulpit, — even the Synod of Fife would have removed the ban from penitent Engagers. " But this was altogether denied both by the Commission of the General Assembly and Committee of Estates convened at Stirling, the 25 of September 1650," says Balfour.83 Henceforth the history of Scotland is the history of the processes by which the fetish of the Covenant was broken to powder. Slower was the work than the rapid destruction of the old "idol of St. Giles" in 1559-1560.
After Dunbar, Cromwell occupied Edinburgh and Leith, whence the populace had fled. The preachers took refuge in the castle, being of opinion that "the persecution is personal" to them. Cromwell is reported to have burned the minister's house at Mussel-
244 CROMWELL EXPOSES THEIR PRETENSIONS (1650).
burgh : other examples are given, but who can criticise the alleged "atrocities" of any war? Like Prince Charles in 1745, Cromwell assured the clergy of their liberty to preach — in neither case was the freedom accepted. Cromwell replied to Dundas, the commander of the castle, who had conveyed the preachers' refusal. "The" (Presbyterian) " ministers in England are supported, and have liberty to preach the Gospel ; though not to rail, nor under pretence thereof" (of the Gospel) "to overtop the Civil Power, or debase it as they please." Cromwell took that view of Scottish Presbyterian preten- sions which we follow in this history. His was, in short, the view that the Stuart kings had taken. The " glorious Reformation " to which the preachers " pretend " is based, says Cromwell, on " getting to themselves worldly power." So Elizabeth had foretold ; so James VI. had found the case ; so Cromwell regarded it ; and the Restora- tion wrestled with the same intolerable claims. The ministers in the castle answered that Cromwell's talk of their "railing" was " the old practice of the Malignants." It was : Royalists and Sectarians were, happily, at one as regarded the theocratic claims of the heated pulpiteers who " had the whole wyte of the troubles of Scotland." The preachers also complained that amateur English laymen were preaching — as they did, quite as well as professionals. " Is it against the Covenant ? " asked Oliver. " Away with the Covenant, if it be so ! " In fact, " having reasonable and good leisure," and enjoying a theological bout as much as gentle King Jamie did, Cromwell bombarded the ministers with arguments and queries.34
On September 14 Cromwell marched to attempt Stirling, where the Estates Commission was, with the king. Stirling he found too hard for him. He learned (September 25) that the wild extremists, Strachan and Ker, were gone to the west, to raise forces there. They did collect a Whigamore army and assumed an independent position. They denounced Charles as not really under conviction, and would not be associated with an unawakened prince. At the same time they would not frankly go over to Cromwell. Cromwell now tried to reduce Edinburgh Castle by employing colliers to undermine it : probably a golden key opened the gates, for Dundas presently surrendered, though he had ample supplies. For the moment, perhaps, Dundas's loyalty was not suspected ; not till December did he yield the acropolis. But the king's position, with a large party of the pious under Strachan moving independently,
CHARLES WILL PAY HIS FATHER'S BLOOD PRICE (1650). 245
and full of moral indignation, in the west, was ticklish. Argyll had for some time found his strength in the extreme left of the godly — " these madmen," — the men to whom their Covenant was everything, their country little, though religious difficulties still severed them from the blasphemous Sectaries. Would Argyll return to these good men, or would he, standing by the king, risk losing place and power to Hamilton, to the Engagers ? The pass was awkward, for if Argyll and the preachers were right when they ruined the national effort to succour Charles I. at the time of the Engagement, could Argyll, without the wildest preachers, be right in supporting a conspicuously and trebly perjured prince, at the present juncture ? Was the effort even safe? The extremists, like Guthrie, Gillespie, Strachan, and Ker, usually win the day, in Revolutions ; moreover, Argyll was sincerely Presbyterian — his letters are rich in pious ejaculations. "My way shall be found straight, doing no other than what I profess, and that in His strength alone Who is only able to sustain His own, and guide them in a way they know not." *
As "the way" of Argyll was certainly dark, and as the king's position was perilous, he tried to light up the road by golden promises to the marquis. At Perth, a week before the attempt which he made to fly from the arms of the marquis into those of Airlie and Ogilvy, the loyal friends of the loyal Montrose, Charles, in writing, promised to make the Campbell a Duke, a Knight of the Garter, and even a Gentleman of the Bedchamber (perhaps Groom of the Posset ?). " Whensoever it shall please God to restore me to my just rights in England," Charles had to promise, " I shall see him paid the ^40,000 sterling, which is due to him." f What ^40,000? due to Argyll from whom ? Now ^40,000 was the sum, or nearly the sum, still owing to Argyll, as his unpaid part of the arrears of the Scottish army when they surrendered Charles I. to the English at Newcastle. This, I conceive, is the ^40,000 which the son of Charles I. promises to pay Argyll. The son pays what the son reckons the blood price of the father ! This is the most odious transaction in all history : Mr Gardiner adopts the view here taken of the debt of ^£40,000. It is known that Charles, on his Restoration, took Argyll's head in place of paying him the balance of what was owing to him on the too notorious transaction at Newcastle. Charles had made his promises on
* Argyll to Lilburne, Rosneath, August 30, 1653 ; Willcock, pp. 383, 384. t ' Historical MSS. Commission,' vi. p. 606.
246 "THE START" (1650).
September 24 ; on October 4 he fled to men of whom a few had ever been loyal.
While the west was mutinous, at the centre Leslie was threatening to resign, and the royal household was being purged — among others, Long, the Secretary, and Sir Edward Walker, the historian of these "brabbles," were ordered off. In the north, Atholl, Ogilvy, Airlie, Middleton, and others had concerted a true Royalist rising, while Charles heard that Strachan was about to make a dash and seize his person. Therefore, on October 4, 1650, The Start occurred. The king, with seven of his household, left the future Duke and Knight of the Garter, Argyll, and rode off from Perth, with no baggage of any kind. Atholl was to send lads from the braes to occupy Perth; Airlie and the loyal Ogilvy were to raise the gentlemen of Angus ; Dudhope was to seize Dundee ; Middleton was to command under the royal standard. But Charles had blabbed to Wilmot and Buckingham, who were Argyllians. They seem to have persuaded him to countermand the manoeuvre on October 2 ; but, irritated by persistent purging of his household, he reverted to the plan, now all confused, riding off on October 4. But the Committee of Estates had warning from Lothian, while Buckingham had returned to Perth with the news, and a party of Covenanted horse was sent after the king. He, galloping swiftly, reached Airlie's house of Cortachy, and, with a guard of 60 clansmen, made his way to a small cottage in Glenclova, where he was apprehended before dawn, by officers sent from Colonel Montgomery (he who failed to sell to Spain Cromwell's present of 2000 prisoners from Preston). In vain Dudhope and the clansmen assured the king that 2000 horse and 5000 foot were waiting for him up the glen. Montgomery's 600 horse arrived, Charles could not now escape, and, on Sunday, October 6, the unhappy prince was sitting under a powerful preacher at Perth. He abounded in apologies to his gaolers which he couched in the patois of Canaan.
But Atholl's, and Airlie's, and Middleton's men were not apologising. Sir David Ogilvy, a son of Airlie, cut up, on October 21, a regiment sent against the Royalists by the Estates. Leslie went against the victors with 3000 horse (October 24), while Ogilvy came to Perth and had secret interviews with Charles, in the garden by the Tay where Lennox and Gowrie had eaten cherries on the day of the Gowrie Conspiracy, fifty years agone. From Forfar, October 24, Middleton wrote to Leslie: "We are Scotishmen, we
THE KIRK IS RENT IN TWAIN (1650). 247
desire to fight for our own country ; religion, king, and country are at hazard. ... I beseech you to endeavour unity." On October 26 a new Northern Engagement was sent in, signed by Montrose's old true friend, — to whom he went when, alone and in disguise, he began his war against the Covenanters, — Patrick Graham of Inch- brakie. Atholl, too, signed, and at that date the Atholl men were formidable. Middleton and Mackenzie of Pluscardine, and Sir George Monroe, who had commanded the Scots in Ireland, were banded with the less honourable names, St Clair, Huntly, and Seaforth : all were under the preachers' ban for " the lawless Engagement " and other malignancies. " What shall be done to the least of us all ... shall be taken as done to us all," said the gentlemen of the north. They pretended to maintain the Covenants, but they clearly meant to fight.
On the 26th the king and Committee of Estates published an indemnity for these gentlemen, even for their "accession to the late unlawful Engagement," — unlawful because the preachers chose to call it so. On November 4 the Royalists of the north met Leslie at Strathbogie and accepted the indemnity. They had still to "satisfy" the now disrupted "Kirk," by various mummeries of penance. The unity now achieved was to be vain ; Cromwell was to be master in the field. But, at last, there was a national spirit of resistance to spiritual tyranny. While the majority of the ministers tardily and reluctantly acquiesced in the decisions of Parliament, in favour of the new combination ; a large and noisy minority resisted, under leaders like Guthrie. They were Remonstrants ; the less violent majority of the brethren, accepting the resolutions of Parliament, were Resolutioners.
Which of these twain was the True Kirk ? *
The gentlemen of the north, and the politicians and generals of Stirling, being in the way of reconciling their differences, the western Whigs under Strachan, with whom Gillespie and the bloodthirsty Nevoy were prophets, held aloof. Their commander, Strachan, having lived through a stormy youth, had, on his conversion, leaned to Sectarianism. He had swallowed the Covenant, at a pinch, but now qualms assailed his military conscience. In place of attacking
* Balfour is the authority chiefly followed, with Nash to Edgeman, Dec. 12, 1650. 'Charles II. and Scotland in 1650,' pp. 148-153. See also Walker, and Row's ' Blair,' pp. 242-244, for the Start, and the excommunication of Middleton ; and Baillie, iii. pp. 117, 118.
248 "THE REMONSTRANCE" (1650).
the English, Strachan was perplexing the preachers about points of theology. Was it right to make war against Cromwell ? Guthrie and Waristoun rather thought not. They were of the extreme left of the Covenant ; and between them and their old ally, Argyll, there was now a great gulf. Argyll had only been strong when he had almost the whole of the Kirk to back him. Baillie held that Charles had yielded, as he did after the Start, " by the extraordinary favour of God."35 The "favour," naturally, was not conspicuous to really heavenly-minded men like Strachan, Guthrie, and the rest, who, while Cromwell made a trip to Glasgow (October 11-14), moved to Dumfries, and stole horses.36 At Dumfries they produced a vast Remonstrance, celebrated in the history of the Kirk (October 17). The strong point of the Remonstrance was that, if politics were to be godly it was a mere " deceiving of the Lord " to put Charles in the foremost place. This was absolutely true : there was " no sign of a real change " in Charles, but then politics are politics. The king's heart was not a heart convinced of sin ; he had decidedly not passed through the necessary processes of Effectual Calling, Justifica- tion, Sanctification, and Adoption. Strachan doubted much whether David Leslie was a chosen vessel ; about Charles he had no doubts at all. This argument against " owning the king's interest " was open to the reply of Baillie. The precisians of the west were anxious to suspend the king's government "till he should give satisfactory evidence of his real change, whereof they were to be judges, who were never like to be satisfied." Indeed, only persons very easily satisfied would have regarded Charles as "under conviction." No Government is possible if the administrators are to be set aside when preachers and colonels doubt as to the reality of their conversion. But not to take the stringent measures of Guthrie and Strachan is to abandon the whole idea of "Dominion founded on Grace," is to give up godly politics. It is to be said for the Remonstrants that they, like Montrose, were idealists.*
On November 2 5 the Committee of Estates hardened their hearts to condemn the Remonstrance as " scandalous and injurious," and, in Elizabeth's words about the Puritans, "of dangerous conse- quence." Argyll and James Sword, a burgess of St Andrews, carried this reply to the Commissioners of the General Assembly, with charges against Guthrie and Gillespie.37 The Commissioners found " many sad truths " in the Remonstrance, but, on the other hand, * Their Remonstrance may be found in Balfour, iv. pp. 141-160.
"THE RESOLUTIONERS " (1650). 249
it " trenched upon some conclusions of the General Assembly," a perilous thing to venture. The Remonstrance itself had not been high pitched enough for Strachan, who dissented, and abandoned the western army. On November 26 the Estates met at Perth, and sent Montgomery to the west with a strong force. But Cromwell also had sent Lambert with 3000 horse to attack Strachan's western precisians, who had become equally detested by Malignants and by Sectarians. On December i, Ker, who now filled Strachan's place, made an attempt to surprise Lambert, in Hamilton, at four in the morning. He was defeated ; the righteous were scattered to all the winds, and he himself was taken.38 On December 24 Dundas made dishonourable surrender of Edinburgh Castle : he was a poltroon, or his heart was with the Remonstrants. At Perth, Charles was talking the language of the Covenant — he had some histrionic talent. Engagers were now admitted, and as the western brethren were in no case to come to Perth, the Commissioners of the General Assembly were sharply spoken to, and decided that " we cannot be against the raising of all fencible persons " except the excommuni- cated, and all very obstinate evil-doers and Malignants.39 Strachan, whose scruples had now carried him over to Cromwell, was to be " delivered to the devil." Some officers joined the English invaders ; the Presbytery of Stirling, moved by James Guthrie, lifted up its voice for the Remonstrance ; the Kirk was split in twain, some holding for the Covenant, and others for king and country ; and, on January i, 1651, Charles II. was crowned at Scone. Argyll placed on Charles's head an earthly crown, but at such a price of humiliations and crimes that Malignants reckoned Charles only to have paid his debt when he helped the marquis to a heavenly one. On January 12 there was an exchange of prisoners with the devil. At Perth, Colonel Strachan " was excommunicate and delivered over to the devil," by Mr Alexander Rollock; while Middleton, in sackcloth, was released from Satan, at Dundee. Mr James Guthrie had promoted the excommunication from which the persistent Middleton was now absolved ; and Middleton, an unregenerate fighting man, did not forget. There was " no real change " in Middleton.
The first six months of 1651 were occupied by the Scots partly in throwing open employment to all subjects who would fight for king and country, partly in paper disputes between the preciser sort, the Remonstrants, and the Resolutioners — the clergy who preferred Scotland to Cromwell and even to the letter of the Acts against
250 LADY ANNE CAMPBELL (1650).
unlawful Engagers. The Remonstrants, among other arguments, actually based their case on Deuteronomy xxiii. 9-14, a set of sanitary rules applying to the host of Israel in the desert. Where the sacred writer speaks of ordinary sanitary precautions, the Remonstrants understood his words to apply to the presence of Royalists in the royal army. As Guthrie and another minister were demoralising the all-important garrison of Stirling by discourses to such effect as this, they were obliged to reside in Perth. This beginning of persecution is notable.
As regards the inner politics of the Court, Hamilton had been received on January 1 7, and Argyll retired to his estates, but not for long. Little has been said by us about the project of a marriage between the king and Argyll's daughter, Lady Anne Campbell. We do not know whether the idea originated with Argyll, or was suggested to him, with or without authority from Charles, by Will Murray. Nothing is said on the subject in the extant portion of the promises written by Charles on September 26, 1650, when the king was in so strait a place. In a note to Burnet's ' History of My Own Times,' Lord Dartmouth says that, by Charles's account, given to Colonel Legge at the time, Argyll made the proposal to him. Legge answered that it was wisest to drive time by consulting the queen mother, and so Argyll put Legge into Edinburgh Castle, where he remained till after the Start (October 4, 1650). But Charles did not give instructions on the subject to be conveyed to the queen mother, to Captain Titus, till January 23, 1651. When he did give them, they were in much the same terms as Argyll, according to Lord Dartmouth, had suggested to the king before Colonel Legge's imprisonment, which, again, must have been before the battle of Dunbar (September 3, 1650). The marriage, said Argyll (according to Dartmouth) and said Charles, on January 23, 1651, was to conciliate the Kirk and the Presbyterian party. It may be suggested that the project had been long in contemplation, and that Charles sent off Titus with the proposal to be laid before the queen mother for the purpose of winning back Argyll, who, six days before January 23, had retired to the west.* Titus returned
* Gardiner, i. pp. 387, 388, citing a letter of January 21, from Edinburgh as to Argyll's retiral (' Mercurius Politicus,' E. 622, 12), and Titus's instructions from Hillier's ' Attempted Escapes of Charles I.,' p. 328. Burnet's ' History of My Own Times.' The suggestion that the dispatch of Titus (who was also to bring Jermyn and Holies as sectaries) implies Charles's wish to win back Argyll, is my
THE ESTATES MEET (1651). 251
to Scotland in May, by which time Tom Coke, an intriguer for the exiled English Royalists, had been caught in England, and had revealed all the plots and plotters for Royalist risings in England, a mortal blow to the cause. As for the royal marriage with Lady Anne Campbell, the queen mother left it in the condition of an entanglement, not an engagement: it might not be popular in England, and might irritate some factions in Scotland. Lady Anne, of whom we know very little, died about the time of the Restoration, unmarried. It is not probable that she broke her heart for Charles.
While the king rode about inspecting fortifications ; while a man of the border, Watt, made successful raids on parties of Cromwellians, and Augustine, a German, was equally successful ; while some English provision ships were seized, and Cromwell " sat under " the grotesque Zacchary Boyd in Glasgow, the war of Remonstrants and Resolutioners was waged on paper. When the Estates met on March 1 3, Loudoun (who had become obstructive and Remonstrant) ceased to be President, yielding place to Burleigh, the vanquished of Aberdeen. Hamilton won a victory over Argyll on March 26. The question was, were lawless Engagers to be on the Army Committee ? Loudoun, Argyll, Burleigh, Lothian, and others voted no, taxing Charles, who spoke, with deserting his best friends, — who had hanged his best friend. They were out- voted, and " at the earnest solicitation of the barons and burghs" (the "middle classes " who owed so much to Argyll) the king " takes upon him the conduct of the army."40 The Commissioners of the General Assembly were also asked to hasten on the removal of the Act of Classes, and the Estates were to meet on April 17. The Com- missioners (March 18) had already intimated that Guthrie maligned them, when he accused them of "going contrary to the Word of God, and to the Solemn League and Covenant."41 They would now "join cordially against the public enemy." But the Argyll faction delayed the re-assembly of the Estates till May 21, when the Act of Classes was rescinded, the Engagers being obliged to take a band, which they swallowed without wincing (June 2).42
This proceeding naturally enraged the Remonstrants. The law- less Engagers professed penitence, the most utter hypocrisy, as Sir
own. Nicholas wished both Hamilton and Argyll "in heaven." Argyll "will either betray the king or himself; rather trust Cromwell with his Majesty." Nicholas Papers, i. pp. 219-224 ; Feb. 8, March 6, 1651.
252 THE ST ANDREWS ASSEMBLY (1651).
James Turner frankly declares, and the Kirk accepted the farce. Turner, we know, " had fallen to sin the unknown sin," by his shutting up of the Reverend Mr Dick of Glasgow, at the beginning of the Engagement. But he, even he, was absolved — " Behold a fearful sinne ! " So the Remonstrants thought, but the bare fact was that the whole proceedings against Engagers had been absurd, and it was time to come back to practical politics.43 These ended in the disaster of Worcester; still the great step had been taken, and Scotland was breaking away from " that Dagon, the Covenant." To secure a royal figurehead in Charles II. was rather in the nature of a loss, to baffle the Remonstrants was an inestimable gain. Mr Carlyle does not seem, from his comments, to have understood this point. The process of breaking away from the more extreme fanatics was long and painful as the division of body and soul. The Resolutioners could not without agony abandon their faith in the Covenants, yet Baillie seems, for one, to have honestly persuaded himself that Charles was "so good a king"; moreover, national sentiment was outraged by the dominance of English Regicides, the Presbyterian conscience could not endure the existence of blasphemous Sectaries in the land.44 The Remonstrants, on the other hand, suffered the sorrow of being obliged to comply with Sectaries, breakers of the Covenant ; but they were as certain as Sir James Turner that the repentances of Malignants, of Engagers, and of .the king were a blasphemous farce. We regret to have to remark that, on the godly side, Loudoun, the Chancellor, "was procest for adulterie," in June, says Nicoll.
An honest man, under the Covenanting superstition, might have taken either side, but he could have been at ease in neither faction. Since toleration must to him, as to Guthrie, have seemed a " vomit," he could not readily, like Strachan, go over frankly to the Sectarian Cromwell. Perhaps the politics of no country, since time began, were ever in such an inextricable tangle, and all this came from the " legal band " so dexterously woven by Waristoun, Henderson, and others in 1639.
On July 1 6 the General Assembly met at St Andrews. Guthrie protested against Ruling Elders who had been in the Engagement. Professor Menzies of Aberdeen objected that the members of the Commission of the General Assembly — they having assented to the repeal of the Acts of Classes — were "scandalous persons," who could not sit in ecclesiastical judicatories. " Instantly there arose a
A ROYALIST DEFEAT (1651). 253
great number on both sides, with great heat and fury " ; it is to be hoped that the clergy had not carried their whingers into the Assembly, which probably met in the upper hall of the University Library. The object of the Remonstrants, and of Mr Samuel Rutherford, was really to prevent the holding of any General Assembly at all, as they were in the minority. At present they were not an Assembly, but " a confused multitude." * Mr Douglas, of the patriotic party, was chosen Moderator. In the midst of the wrangles over the legality of elections to the Assembly came (July 20) the news of a great defeat of the Royalists at Inverkeithing in Fife.45
The Scottish army, at this time, was concentrated about the Torwood, famous in the history of Bruce and Wallace, to prevent Cromwell from crossing the Forth. Lambert had reconnoitred the upper fords, and thought them practicable. Cromwell, with his main body, was at Linlithgow ; he bombarded and took Callendar House (where Mary and Darnley had rested on the way to Kirk o' Field), and awaited the arrival of Harrison with reinforcements. These appeared at Leith, 3000 strong, and, in place of attacking the strong central position of the Scots, Cromwell sent a command of some 2500 men across the Queen's Ferry. They were led by Colonel Overton, he who, at Hull, after Preston rout, allowed Sir James Turner to subscribe to a circulating library. Cromwell hoped that this movement would cause Leslie to retreat on Stirling, but he found the Scottish lines still strongly held. In fact, they had dispatched an insufficient force to guard Fife, under Holbourn, with Brown of Fordel — Lord Balcarres was not with his regiment ; Sir Walter Scott, an illegitimate son of Buccleuch, was there, and there was a command of the Macleans, the Spartans of the north. On July 19 Lambert was ferrying men and horse over the Queen's Ferry, Overton having secured the tite du pont on the Fifeshire side. The Scots Fife brigade were at Dunfermline, and both armies (though Balfour numbers the English at 10,000, the Scots at 2500) were probably of equal strength, say 4000 men. The English occupied the Ferry Hills on the north of the Firth, and had a breastwork across the little isthmus; the Scots faced them, in a strong position on kopjes, with a pass between. Lambert's left held the pass ; he concentrated most of his force on his right wing, which
* The patient reader may consult ' The Nullity of the Pretended Assembly at St Andrews and Dundee,' printed in the year 1652.
254 "ANOTHER FOR HECTOR" (1651).
charged up hill at the Scots left. Holbourn fled, — he was acquitted of cowardice by a court-martial, but found it wiser to leave the army. He was the officer who gave orders to extinguish the matches of the Scots matchlockmen at Dunbar. He had been dismissed, as of " doubtsome trust," from the command of Stirling Castle ; probably he lent too fond an ear to Mr Guthrie's unpatriotic sermons. The Scots reserve followed where Holbourn led — to the rear ; the English right conquered the hill where the Scottish left was arrayed, while a fierce battle raged in the pass defended by Lambert's left. The battle was won by the English, Lambert's victorious right reinforcing his left, but Clan Gilzean was undefeated. Five hundred of the Macleans, under Sir Hector of Dowart, stood as they stood at Glenrinnes, fought as they fought at Culloden. Now is said to have occurred the incident of " Another for Hector," a proverb in the clan — Scott cites the incident in the duel of the clans on Perth Inch, in ' The Fair Maid of Perth.' But Sir Hector was slain, Balfour says, "with 100 of his followers" (Nicoll makes the number 500), and Brown, mortally wounded, was taken. The Scots " sold their lives at a dear rate," says Balfour. He gives 800 slain on either side; Lambert gives, Scots, 2000 killed, prisoners 1400; English, "not above eight killed, but divers wounded." // ment comme un bulletin. *
The victory at Inverkeithing and the later capture of Burntisland threw Fife open to Cromwell, who could now seize Perth, cut off Leslie's supplies, and stop the Gordons, whom Middleton was bringing down from Aberdeenshire. The General Assembly, in alarm, had deserted St Andrews for Dundee. Here they received a protest against the legality of their Assembly from the recalcitrant ministers, who, as Nicoll puts it, "pronouncit judgementis aganes this Scottis army, and wald not pray nather for the king nor the airmy." The like of this protest, says Nicoll, " hes not been hard,
* See Douglas, ' Cromwell's Scottish Campaigns,' pp. 274-287. Mr Douglas cites 'An Historical Account of the Clan Maclean' (1838), by a Seannachie, who writes from clan legend. But the author of the MS. edited by myself as 'The Highlands in 1750' (Blackwood), gives, at that date, a similar account of the Spartan valour of the Macleans at Inverkeithing and on other fields. This writer was, I believe, a Mr Bruce, a trusted agent of the Hanoverian Govern- ment and of the Pelhams. Cf. Cromwell, Letter clxxv., on the day after the battle, and Mr Douglas's authorities, and Balfour, iv. p. 313. Nicoll, pp. 53, 54. Sir James Turner succeeded to the command of Holbourn's regiment. Even with Mr Douglas's local knowledge, the exact place and conditions of the ground are only dubiously ascertainable.
THE UNPATRIOTIC "PROTESTERS" (1651). 255
to ryp up the bowellis of thair mother church." Twenty-two pro- testers signed, but none appeared in person. They took the objections that the Assembly was " prelimited " by a letter of the Commissioners to the Presbyteries, " desiring them to cite all unsatisfied men to the Assembly, if, after conference, they were not satisfied." Exactly the same thing had been done, as regarded ministers who had not declared against the Engagement, in I648.46 The godly party, the Protesters of 1651, attempted to make out their case by "the most flagrant distortion and suppression of facts." It is needless to examine the hairsplitting by which the Protesters tried to prove the illegality of an Assembly in which they had not a majority. A few of their lay brethren, playing the spy for the English, were taken and hanged at this time, as Nicoll records with relish. The end of the affair was that Monk captured the Moderator of the Assembly and a few other brethren, and that a schism arose, the anti-patriotic party being now known as Protesters. They and their opposites wrangled and split legal hairs during the Cromwellian occupation of Scotland.47
As Leslie was outflanked by Cromwell's command of Fife and the Firth, he and the king took a daring step — the only step open to them perhaps, and, while Cromwell was engaged at Perth, they invaded England. If the Royalists and Presbyterians of England joined them, all might yet be well. But Tom Coke's revelations in spring had broken the Royalists, who, moreover, felt no desire to endure Presbyterianism, certain to be thrust on them if the Scots were victorious. The Engagers, too, had treated the English Royalists infamously in 1648. The English populace at large had no love of the Scots, who, in their simple opinion, had already sold their king, and had also plundered freely, as they received no pay when engaged for England in the late war.
Cromwell was not taken aback by Leslie's movement. He had sent Harrison with 3000 horse and other forces to the Border, and he now bade Monk take Stirling — a feat easily achieved. On August 4, Cromwell, writing to Lenthall, the Speaker, mildly observed that the Scottish invasion "may occasion some incon- veniences." But he remembered how he had destroyed the Engagers at Preston, not by cutting between them and London, but between them and Scotland. Lambert was following Leslie ; Cromwell was following Lambert ; a both were between the Scots and their way of retreat homewards.
256 CHARLES INVADES ENGLAND (1651).
Cromwell is so cool at an agitating moment that even a Scottish chronicler must admire this efficient leader. The Scottish force was reckoned by the not less sympathetic Sir James Turner at 4000 horse and 9000 foot, with a few field pieces and "leather cannons, dear Sandy's stoups." * On the march to Carlisle the Scots plundered cruelly, but in England discipline was enforced.
In Scotland, while the Royalists marched south, " to win or lose all," and were "laughing at the ridiculousness of our own con- dition," Argyll stayed at home. He had fallen utterly from power, and was held in some contempt. A Royalist success could not improve his position ; a Royalist defeat he did not wish to share. Politics conducted on theocratic principles, with the temporary aid of the lairds and burgesses, had broken down beneath his feet. Meanwhile, in Scotland all went wrong. The Committee of Estates, under Loudoun, was split into parties. Loudoun induced Argyll to meet him in Strathfillan, and asked him why he had deserted the Committee and lent no aid? The unlucky Committee met, and was captured at Alyth by an English party on August 28. Leven, Lindsay, the Earl Marischal, Keith, and Ogilvy, and eight preachers were caught, including Mr JAMES SHARP.49 On September i Monk stormed Dundee. He twice, while preparing for the attack with artillery, offered quarter, says Nicoll, and adds that, after the storming, he " put all that were found out of doors to the sword, both man and woman."
On the part of Montrose at Aberdeen, such alleged conduct is severely reprobated by historians. But Monk was not a Royalist, nor were his men Papists. " Our word was God with Us" says an English writer who was present, and he adds that the English gave quarter " when they got to the market place." Obviously they did not give quarter before they reached the centre of the town. Balfour puts the number of women and children killed at 200. Mr Gardiner writes : " It is probable enough that before resistance ceased, some women and children and some inhabitants not in arms shared the fate of the combatants on the wall." Monk now gave up the place to sack for twenty-four hours, and a very great plunder was taken. Mr Hill Burton, who holds that (if we only knew) Montrose's men committed fearful atrocities at Dundee,
* Mr Gardiner prefers Lord Wentworth's reckoning, 12,000, in Gary's ' Mem. of the Civil War,' ii. p. 303. But Turner, by constant practice, was an adept at counting men.
CHARLES'S MARCH (1651). 257
disbelieves in a Dundee massacre by Monk's men. But such things did occur when towns were taken ; and though we must accept what Spalding says of the misdeeds of Montrose, it seems proper to doubt or minimise the slayings attributed to Monk. What happened in his case was " the natural result of a storm " (Gardiner). Such is the impartiality of history. Covenanters and Sectaries may steal a horse ; Royalists must not look over the fence. * As the biographer of Blair observes, Scotland had now no earthly hope except from the success of her army in England.
We left the Scottish army, under David Leslie and Charles, on the point of crossing the English border by the Carlisle route. Argyll was not with them ; his military successes had been incon- spicuous. Mr Gardiner says : " The retreat of Argyll, necessary as it was, marks a descent which he would never be able to retrieve. He had disgusted all parties, because, though he was in some respects wiser than any, he had not dared to uphold in the day of peril the standard he had himself raised in more prosperous times " ('C. and P.,' ii. 34, 1903). "All the rogues have left us," wrote Hamilton. As the Marchioness of Argyll was in bad health, her lord received the royal permission to attend her sick bed. But Lord Lome marched with the army, and probably led a contingent of Clan Diarmaid. On his courage no reproach was ever thrown.
The army, like that of Prince Charles in 1745, received few English recruits ; for the last, the Engagers' army, had basely deserted its English allies. The militia of England, however, rallied gaily to their country's cause. Lambert and Harrison abandoned the design of a cavalry attack on the Scots at Warrington Bridge ; but, on August 25, Lilbourne defeated the contingent of the loyal Earl of Derby at Wigan, and Royalist Manchester could not aid Charles by such self-sacrificing efforts as she made later for the White Rose. Rebuffed at Shrewsbury, Charles reached Worcester on August 22 ; but again he was there left uncomforted by recruits. Cromwell was advancing with 28,000 men to meet the 16,000 Royalists. On August 28, Lambert seized a broken bridge over the Severn at Upton, repaired it, and crossed the river with 11,000 men; and
* 'Scotland and the Commonwealth,' pp. 11-14; Nicoll, p. 58; Balfour, iv. PP- 3IS» S1^. Balfour is much more angry with "cruel Monk" for sending three preachers to England than on any other score (Gardiner, i. pp. 468-470). Row, in ' Life of Blair,' talks of the English " not sparing women and children." The Rev. Dr M'Crie, the editor of Row, speaks as tartly of Monk as if Monk had been a Montrose, which is fair. (Blair, pp. 281, 282.)
VOL. III. R
258 WORCESTER FIGHT (1651).
Cromwell threw wooden bridges over the Teme, some two miles from Worcester. Militia of the Puritan eastern counties raised the English force to 31,000 men, and in various places large bodies were assembling to repel the advance of the Presbyterian Scots, dear neither to Malignants nor to Sectaries, and hated as foreigners. Having completed his bridges, Cromwell advanced and drove the Scots forces outside of the town into Worcester, which had been hastily fortified to some extent. At best it was but another Sedan, a death-trap, which the young king perceived.
Leaving the cathedral tower, whence he had watched the operations, he headed a cavalry charge against the English forces still on the east side of the river, where it was crossed by the bridge of boats. Cromwell recrossed in force, and the Scots were driven pell-mell into Worcester, mown down by their own captured guns. Their infantry surrendered ; their horse failed to cut a way through ; but the king was rescued by a squadron under Edward Wogan, "a very beautiful person," says Clarendon. Though historians overlook the circumstance, it is reported to Dean Swift in a letter from Sir Charles Wogan, the gallant and accomplished knight who carried off Clementina Sobieska from her prison at Innspruck to be the bride of James VIII. (the Chevalier de St. George). Wogan was to be renowned later for an exploit not less daring than the rescue of the king at Worcester. Hamilton died of his wounds ; David Leslie was taken ; Middleton was a prisoner, and might have been executed but for Sir James Turner, who refused parole, went merrily to London in disguise, and helped Middleton to make his escape. Both men joined Charles when, after his Odyssey of perilous adventures, he sailed to the Continent.
Such was "the crowning mercy" of Worcester on Cromwell's lucky day, and, later, his death day — September 3. Cromwell had more than double the number of his adversaries, who could only have won by virtue of extraordinary incapacity and cowardice on the English side. No such opportunities were given to the Scots. Many a man in England wished for the king's advent; Turner found the jolly bargees of Oxford most loyally tipsy. But nobody wanted Scottish Presbyterianism, or, in any case, Scots who had " sold their king for a groat." The Covenant, with its fruits, had not made Scotland more popular in England — rather emphatically the reverse. As for the king, who was a gay, undaunted exile,
NOTES. 259
Catholics saved his life. " Puritan governments," says Mr Gardiner, " had taken good care that Charles should be absolutely secure of the devotion of every Catholic in England."
NOTES TO CHAPTER VIII.
1 'Select Biographies,' i. p. 170. Wodrow Society.
2 'Diary of Alexander Jaffray,' 32-33. The book, in fact, is not a con- temporary diary, but memoirs, written later.
3 ' Select Biographies,' i. p. 174.
4 Clarendon State Papers, ii., Appendix Hi.
5 'Charles II. and Scotland in 1650,' p. 52.
6 ' Charles II. and Scotland,' pp. 77-80.
7 Gardiner, i. p. 228 (Nicholas Papers, i. p. 186). * Balfour, iv. pp. 61-63.
9 Nicholas Papers, Camden Society, i. pp. 161-172.
10 Napier, ii. p. 766.
u 'Charles II. and Scotland in 1650,' pp. 115, 116.
13 'Charles II. and Scotland in 1650,' p. in.
13 'Select Biographies,' i. p. 183. 14 Act. Parl., vi., ii. p. 603.
15 Nicoll, p. 18. is Gardiner, i. pp. 282-286.
17 Nicoll, pp. 19, 20; Act. Parl., vi., ii. p. 586.
18 Balfour, iv. p. 89.
19 Carlyle's Cromwell Letter, 136. *> Peterkin, p. 599.
21 Balfour, iv. pp. 89-91 ; ' Charles II. and Scotland,' 131-132 ; Edward Walker, ' Historical Discourses,' pp. 170-176 (1705).
22 ' Charles II. and Scotland in 1650,' pp. 131, 132.
23 Gardiner, i. p. 311 (1894) ; S.P. ix. p. 152.
24 'Charles II. and Scotland in 1650,' pp. 142-148.
25 Nicoll, pp. 24, 25. w Carlyle, Letter cxxxix.
27 Walker, ' Historical Discourses,' p. 179.
28 ' Life of Blair,' p. 237. » Baillie, Hi. ill.
30 Gardiner, i. p. 319 ; ' Commons Journals,' vi. p. 464.
31 Carte, ' Original Letters,' i. p. 382.
12 Balfour, iv. pp. 98-102. ** Balfour, iv. pp. 102-108.
34 Carlyle, September 9-12, 1650. ** Baillie, iii. p. 114.
36 Baillie, iii. p. Ii8. ^ Balfour, iv. pp. 173-178.
38 Carlyle, Letter cliii. M Row's 'Blair,' p. 251.
40 Balfour, iv. pp. 274-281 ; Act. Parl., vi., ii. pp. 662, 663.
41 Balfour, iv. p. 292.
42 Act. Parl., vi., ii. pp. 676, 677 ; Row's 'Blair,' pp. 271, 272.
43 Turner, pp. 93, 94.
44 Baillie, iii. p. 145. * Peterkin, pp. 626-628.
46 Mathieson, ii. pp. 93, 94, 137, and note 2.
47 Peterkin, pp. 628, 629. a Cromwell, Letter clxxx., Carlyle. 49 Nicoll, pp. 56, 57 ; ' Scotland and the Commonwealth,' p. 23 ; Scot. Hist.
Soc., Firth.
260
CHAPTER IX.
FROM WORCESTER TO THE RESTORATION. 1651-1660.
THE history of Scotland, from Worcester fight to the Restoration, is the tale of an interesting but incomplete experiment. The country was conquered, as it had been conquered by Edward I., and the vanquished were to enjoy the privilege of sending members to an English Parliament. Oaths were imposed, as by Edward in Ragman's Roll, and Scotland was placed under a people more advanced in civilisation than herself. She, far more than England, was entangled in the rusty chains of a feudalism which had lost its ideal. The bonds of kinship were still stronger in some ways than duty to the State. Justice was tardy and corrupt, partly through the old heritable jurisdictions held by nobles and barons, partly because " The Fifteen," the judges, were not " kinless loons," but partisans of the causes of their " names " and of their retainers. The towns, if Edinburgh is a fair specimen, were unlit at night, and at all times were abominably dirty. The ministers were still struggling to maintain their spiritual judicatories, and to drag men and women before their tribunals, for their religious opinions, or moral conduct in private life. The English came; they insisted that justice should be relatively rapid and honest, that the town should be lighted and comparatively clean. To them the victims of Presbyteries could appeal ; while a man, if he chose not to observe the Presbyterian Sabbath with due strictness, or if his reading and reflection inclined him to object to the baptism of babies, might act, with some safety, as his conscience dictated.
At church he might " sit under " preaching corporals or colonels, who, as Nicoll admits, if "not orderly called," according to Presbyterian ideas, were none the less " weil giftit." These divines
THE REGALIA SAVED (1652). 26 1
found most acceptance in Sutherland, where the devout listeners attested by deep groanings that they were mightily moved. In some respects the new regime suited the Malignants. If the king was expelled, the preachers were considerably reduced. But the partition of the estates of nobles and gentlemen among Cromwellian generals was unendurable. The commons, though attempts were made to gain their goodwill, felt the burden of the heavy " cess " for the maintenance of the English army of occupation. The preachers of both factions, Protesters or Resolutioners, bewailed the English tolerance, the spread of novel doctrines, the broken Covenant, and their own loss of power. The English leaned towards the Remonstrants ; they preferred young Protester preachers, and violently " intrused " them on patriotic parishes, against the resistance of the congregations. They thrust Protesters into the high places of the universities ; Gillespie, for example, was made by them Principal of Glasgow. They broke up the General Assembly, to the joy of some Protesters, who held it to be illegal. The two parties fought in sermons and pamphlets, and the Pro- testers, as a body, could not be won over by English blandishments. The nobles and gentry resented the loss of their lands, the commons had the old national instinct, the clans were unsubdued, and ten years passed amidst discontent, conspiracies, heresies, and risings, while the Covenant was sensibly depreciated.
A few examples of these various sufferings and sorrows may serve to illustrate the turmoil of the times. The national resistance in arms was cowed when Monk's army of occupation was reinforced after Worcester. It was said that all the nobles of Scotland now at liberty might sit together on a joint stool ; France had not been brought lower after Poictiers than her old ally was now. Huntly capitulated with Monk, who lay in bad health at Dundee, and presently went to Bath, to take the waters. The Atholl men came to terms ; Balcarres yielded in December ; at the end of November the English had occupied Inverness ; Dumbarton Castle, the Bass, and finally, on May 26, 1652, Dunnottar Castle opened their gates, but Dunnottar was vainly searched for the Regalia, the crown, the sceptre, the sword given by the Pope to James IV., and the other honours of Scotland. They had been carried away by a woman, in a bundle of flax, and entrusted to Mrs Grainger, wife of the minister of Kinneff, who concealed them under the floor of the kirk. The brave commander, Ogilvy, and' his wife, who managed the
262 ATTEMPTED UNION (1652).
business, were long imprisoned, but kept their secret.* Argyll still stood aloof. But for the capture of many of the Committee of Estates at Alyth, he might perhaps have made an effort to save Dundee from Monk's besieging army ; but Wemyss affirmed that the marquis had raised no levies since Charles entered England.1 Argyll (October 15) had attempted to arrange a conference for terms of peace with Monk, who refused, unless he had orders from his Government.2 Only Loudoun, Home, Callendar, and Cardross attended an attempted Parliament at the head of Loch Tay ; Argyll was too ill to appear. Moreover, his terms with England included his prevention of this meeting.
In January, Commissioners from England came to arrange a union of Scotland and England ; and among the deputies from shires who accepted the terms was one from Argyllshire (April 26, 1 65 2). Deane and Lilburne, in August 1652, entered the marquis's domains in force, and he signed a document regulating his position. He was to keep quiet, and inform the officers of the nearest garrison con- cerning any Royalist movement in his region : "It being always intended that this shall not hinder his Lordship's good endeavours for the establishing religion according to his conscience." Probably this clause was intended to save his oath to the Covenants ; his efforts were not to be " by force." He, or Lome, was to be ready to remove to any place in England; for the rest, he was to be secure in lands and property, except for the "cess" (August 19, i652).3 The English had to be content with this arrangement, enforced by five garrisons, but they heard that Glengarry, with 4000 men, intended to punish those who complied with the con- querors. Glengarry, or the Campbells themselves, more probably, took three of the garrisons as soon as Deane withdrew, two remained — at Dunstaffnage and Dunolly.4
The Union with Scotland, involving the overthrow of the Scottish Crown, was negotiated by a few Commissioners sent to London, men whom Lilburne denounced to Cromwell as " notoriously corrupt," and not satisfactory to " the most godly," that is the Protesters (Dalkeith, May 3, 1653). In September of 1653, Loudoun, writing to Charles, exposed the illegality of the proceedings. For example, "toleration to all sorts of religions"
* The story is told by Ogilvy, in ' Papers relative to the Regalia,' Bannatyne Club, and by Mr Brook in ' Scottish History Society Miscellany ' ; Row's ' Blair,' p. 332 ; ' Scotland and the Commonwealth,' xviii., xix. pp. 339-342.
"BLOODY PRESBYTERIAL GOVERNMENT" (1652). 263
was established, " in any Gospel way every man pleaseth to choose," * Catholicism, of course, not being reckoned as a " Gospel way." All the king's property of every kind was confiscated, with the property of those engaged in the invasions which collapsed at Worcester and Preston. " The whole estates, personal and real, of all true Scottish men are most unjustly forfeited." As for the Commissioners sent to London to treat for the Union, they were selected only by seven or eight gentlemen of each county that sent any Commissioners at all ; and even the men sent only complied for fear that the Protesters would take open part with the English. Moreover, as regards religion, the Scottish Church had not been consulted in any single circum- stance ; nor were the nobles (mostly prisoners) consulted.6
The Union was received by Scotland with a manifest lack of enthusiasm. England was swallowing and assimilating Scotland, and, by cess and forfeiture, devouring her. real and personal property, while her distracted Kirk was set on one side. The Commission of Justice established in May 1652 might deserve all the praises given to it by Nicoll, as " proceeding more equitablie and conscientiouslie nor our own Scottis magistrates ";...." whereby some of the suitors declared that they found more love and kindness towards them by their supposed enemies, than of their own countrymen and friends .... Their justice exceeded the Scottish in many things, as was reported." 6 But it was not every Scot who wanted strict justice. The privilege of sending a poor thirty members to the English Parliament was derisory, above all when, in April 1653, Cromwell turned the Long Parliament out of doors.
The Kirk being down, the northern Cavaliers beheld a gleam of light in a dark sky. They put forth, in March 1652, a declaration against " the bloody and barbarous inconveniences which hath always accompanied the Presbyterial Government, by their mixed authority with the civil power, and tyrannous persecuting of men's consciences." These Cavaliers and Cromwell were of one mind about the Kirk. Her preaching and praying are factious; her railing against authority sets the populace against the Union. The authors of the document abandon Presbytery, and esteem the excommunications of Presbyters no more than their fathers did those of the Pope.7 Sir Alexander Irving of Drum, being bullied by Mr John Row and
* See ' The Cromwellian Union,' Prof. Sanford Terry. Scottish History Society, xxvi. In this work the chaotic negotiations as to the Union will be found ; as they came to nothing, they need not be dwelt upon.
264 "THE NIGHT IS NEAR GONE" (1652).
the Presbytery of Aberdeen in the old way, for saying "if the Monarchy be gone, let the Devil take Presbytery," appealed to Colonel Overton, Commander-in-Chief within the said Presbytery of Aberdeen. Monk, in October 1651, had forbidden the preachers to impose oaths and covenants on the lieges, and had prohibited the civil magistrates from molesting excommunicated persons, or seizing their goods, or boycotting them. Thus the great and galling curse of Scotland, Presbyterian excommunication, was removed by English soldiers ; and what no Stuart had the courage and force wholly to uproot — the tyranny of the preachers — was cast to the winds. Drum also appealed to Monk against the proceedings in which he was charged with Popery. He would yield if Lambert, Monk, Overton, or their substitutes, so commanded Meanwhile "let me not be troubled with more such papers, that are but undigested rhapsodies of confused nonsense." Blessings on the name of Sir Alexander Irving of Drum ! What had long needed saying this gentleman said. An English journalist wrote that " the buttoned cassock and bucky ruff" of the Rev. Andrew Cant ought to be " sent to Rome for relics of the Kirk of Scotland's conformity to the Canons and Constitutions of that Scarlet " person " who sits upon the Seven Hills," "as if ane wasna braid aneuch for her auld hurdies," says Andrew Fairservice.
The night is near gone I
said the song of the Reformers, in 1550-1560. The night was going, slowly, for "their stools of hypocritical repentance to chastise the incontinent" returned, and endured for more than a century.* The cry of gardy loo, and the throwing of filth out of windows, and the blackness of the unlit stinking streets, also returned when the English conquerors departed. These institutions had been reformed, for Edinburgh, as early as December i65i.8 Smollett discovered the restored abominations yet prevalent, as may be read in ' Humphrey Clinker.'
In Kirk affairs the Protesters kept on protesting. As they " disallowed " the last Assembly, so they " disallowed " its once dreaded Commission, and appointed such of themselves as, like Guthrie, had belonged to the previous Commission, to remain as the only genuine sources of authority till things were reconstructed in accordance with their ideas (October i65i).9 They protested * ' Scotland and the Commonwealth,' pp. 348-356.
THE ASSEMBLY TURNED OUT (1653). 265
against the Assembly of 1652, Waristoun heading the recalcitrants.10 They refused to pray for the king, a practice frequently forbidden by the English, so that prayers had to be edged in " for a distressed prince." They published a book, 'The Nullity of the Pretended Assembly at St. Andrews and Aberdeen' (1651), written, apparently, by Guthrie and Waristoun. Baillie found it " full of niggie-naggies, for no edification."11 Finally, on July 20, 1653, Lilburne, taking up the part of purger, sent Lieutenant-Colonel Cotterell and Captain Hope to break up the General Assembly. By what warrant, the officers asked, did they sit ? The Moderator, Mr. Dickson, replied, in the old strain, "that they had power from Jesus Christ to convene in his own High Court." Cotterell was backed, says Baillie, by " some rats of musketeers and a troop of horse " ; he led the clergy out to Bruntsfield Links, and, next day, made them leave Edinburgh.12
The Protesters, who tried to meet, were also packed off. Baillie says that they " insulted," Lilburne says that " they seemed very joyful," when the Resolutioners were broken up, but they managed, says Row, to protest both against the legality of the Assembly and against the dismissal of that illegal body. The Presbytery of Cupar was also sent about its business. Lilburne (July 12, 1653) had written to ask Cromwell how he should deal with the Assembly, for there were stirrings in the Highlands, and he suspected an alliance between Bible and bands and dirk and dour- lach. Not hearing from Cromwell, Lilburne took the matter into his own hands.18 Before the Kirk was thus reduced to subjection, the English occupants of Scotland had felt the pulse of a Highland rising, and Lilburne, as early as April 1653, had expressed his suspicion that the ministers " of the Assembly party " were vaguely encouraging it. The Remonstrants, or Protesters, including Waristoun, Guthrie, and Rutherford, had presented him with their book, 'The Causes of Wrath,' and with a pious letter. Lilburne hoped that some use might be made of the Remonstrants ; but they were " kittle to shoe behind." 14
The Highlands had never been absolutely quiet ; Glengarry had his men out, and, in June 1652, Deane had sent forces through the north.15 In the same month (June 25) Charles, from the Louvre, had announced to the loyalists of the north that Middleton would communicate with them. Charles also (August 5) wrote to the Moderator of the General Assembly, thanking that body for its
266 RISING IN THE HIGHLANDS (1652).
loyalty.16 On August 9/19 he gave Middleton his instructions. He was to go to Holland and take counsel with Hyde, he was to keep in touch with the Highland loyalists, and try to collect money during the winter among the mercantile Scots abroad.17 Sir James Turner was with Middleton, and, before going to the Hague, he despatched Harry Knox with autograph letters from the king to Lauderdale and other Worcester prisoners then in the Tower (Sir James had made his own escape, after Worcester, in his usual diverting way). Other letters were for the Highland leaders, but all were misdirected, misdelivered, and interlined, with the most mischievous results, by Balcarres, as Hyde told Turner.18 Sir James then went on the search for dollars, and Nicholas saw Middleton, who "seems a very modest discreet person, such as I have not yet met with of his nation" (Nov. 18/28, i652).19 Nicholas had already told Hyde about the intended Highland rising, which was like all Highland risings.
Charles and his advisers knew very well that chiefs would quarrel about pride of place till Middleton came, and various diplomatic devices were vainly attempted to control their tempers. They needed a Montrose, a Dundee, or a Prince Charles to lead. " Glengarry will not take it well that any man be put to have a superior command to him in the High- lands," says Nicholas.20 Sir James Macdonald of Sleat was expected to appear in arms, but we presently find him making his peace with Colonel Fitch, just as Sir Alexander Macdonald of Sleat did in 1745 (Feb. 15, i652).21 But Charles went on in- cluding Sleat among the loyal. By way of securing a figurehead for the Highland barque, Charles, in March 1652, selected the Earl of Glencairn.22 Glencairn was to conduct himself by various devices "which are most natural for any temper they can be sup- posed to be in " : his Majesty recognising the vastness of the range of tempers open to the fiery Celt. Glengarry's men, in fact, were in the temper of stealing the Earl of Atholl's cows, on the plausible pretext that Atholl paid cess to the king's enemies, as the chief ex- plained. " Soe my opinion is your people looke the better to themselves, qhich is the further advice of your lordship's humble servant, Donald Glengarie." 23
Lilburne spoke of the loyal clans as " thieves " and " rabble," such is the ignorance of the Saxon.
What was Argyll doing at this time ? He had engaged to keep
RUIN OF ARGYLL (1653). 267
his country and family as peaceable as might be. "The course he takes " (compliance with the English) " is merely for self-preserva- tion," wrote Sir Robert Murray to Charles at this time. " He thinks men and things are not yet ripe enough to appear in arms," but, if the thing were safe, " he would certainly appear for the business that is now carrying on for your Majesty's servica" Not a doubt about that, if the thing could be done securely and " effectu- ally in his judgment." 24 Meanwhile Lome, according to the good Scottish custom, "will most fully, heartily, and actively join with those that appear here for your Majesty."
This condition of the Argyll family proved fatal to the marquis. The English thought of him as Sir Robert Murray did, — he would be loyal to Charles, if he thought it safe. Consequently, at his trial under the Restoration, Monk put in Argyll's letters to himself and Lilburne, written at and after this period. In these the marquis was so unfortunate as to give information and assistance to the king's rebels, and on the strength of his letters, though manifestly written "for self-preservation," he was condemned. From Inveraray, on April 14, 1653, Lome wrote a letter to the king, professing ardent loyalty.25 By July, Lome had ridden off to join "that crew," as Argyll calls the loyalists in a letter to Lilburne, and the marquis had written to Lome, bidding him to " forbear such courses," under the threat of a father's curse. He then adds the curse, "as per copy " enclosed to Lilburne.26 Either Argyll was sincere in " those great curses which he spoke," or he was not. If sincere, he laid himself open to the fatal charge of high treason. If insincere, he laid himself open to the anger of the English, especially of Monk, who, in fact, exposed these unlucky letters at Argyll's trial. In the following year Baillie described Argyll as "in friendship with the English, but in hatred with the country ; he courts the Remonstra- tors, who were and are averse from him." OT
In this desolation ended the "statesmanship" which placed political power in the hands of the Kirk. The pretensions of the Kirk were utterly incompatible with earthly politics. When Argyll came to perceive this fact, in 1650, he necessarily incurred the odium of the clerical extremists, while his attitude, after Worcester, lost him the support both of the " Assembly party " among the preachers, and of the middle classes. Most of the nobles were either hostile, or exiled, or lay in English prisons ; he was alone.
268 ARGYLL GIVES INFORMATION (1653).
In July the Highland leaders held meetings, Glencairn being proclaimed "Governor," — the military leadership was left in the vague till Middleton should arrive ; he was expected to come from Norway. The Lowland lords were said to distrust the Celts, and "rag more as Montrose did," — theword "brag" is perhaps a plausible emendation. The Celts were driving the cows of the pious Brodie of Brodie, and committing other outrages, says a news-letter.28 By August 6 Lilburne reported to Cromwell that the rising had begun in earnest. Kenmure was "on and awa," as in Burns's song about his descendant. The Gordons of Kenmure (on Loch Ken in Galloway) had an amazing knack of being on the losing hand. Seaforth (son of the man so faithless to Montrose), Balcarres, Sir George Monroe, and many others were out, and nightly did parties from the Lowlands slip through the English lines, while parties from the Highlands made raids into " the braes." Lilburne at this time believed in the sincerity of Argyll's attempt to coerce Lord Lome ; and he broke up a gathering of Remonstrant preachers at Biggar, where Mr Douglas, released from the Tower, was present.29
Waiting for Middleton, the Royalists merely made incursions, Kenmure pushing as far as the south coast of Fife, while Lilburne, in a hostile country, without reinforcements, lay on the defensive. Lome quarrelled both with Glencairn and Glen- garry ; * Argyll, protesting to Lilburne that " my way shall be found straight," by sending valuable intelligence enabled Colonel Cobbett to take Dowart Castle, the fortress of the Macleans in Mull.30 Balcarres and Glencairn were now at open feud, and the whole Highland party was distracted by jealousies.31 Charles was aware that the English " brag much " of Argyll's communications with them, and of "the great assistance and benefit" which they thence derived; this he imparted to Lome (November 2, 1653). He hoped that "no example would corrupt" the Campbells. If Lome imparted, as is probable, the king's views to his father, Argyll had his warning.82 At this time he was consulting with Lilburne at Dalkeith.33
* The Governor of Ruthven Castle for the English reports that, after a dispute between Lome and Glencairn, Lome fled, and sent a letter to the English com- mander, " to advise me where to fall on Glencairn's men to the best advantage ; but his bearer, proving false, carried the letter to Kenmure," which caused Lome to take to flight (' Diurnal of Occurrences in Scotland.' Spottiswoode Miscellany, ii. 158). Glencairn certainly suspected Lome, but there is no reason to believe that he was treacherous.
WOGAN'S RAID (1653). 269
From Loch Lomond to Strathspey the Highlanders were up, and Lilburne found the whole country and the preachers ready to rise if a chance appeared. Even a Remonstrant Presbytery decided that they preferred Kenmure to the English.34 Onfalls were made everywhere ; the house of the pious Waristoun was plundered. Atholl had joined the Royalists ; the English Governor of Ruthven in Badenoch in vain pointed out to them that England " is about to incorporate you, and make you one free Commonwealth with them- selves." That was not what they wanted; even though the wavering Remonstrants now changed their minds again.85 Cobbett, returning from the Isles, which he had mastered, would probably have been cut off in marching through Argyll's country, but for the protection of the marquis. As far south as Berwick, Dumfries, and Galloway, the moss-troopers were riding, and the country was so distressed that Lilburne advised a reduction of taxation (Dec. 6).36 There were "35>°°° captions out against men." The king thought of coming to Scotland, and Hyde (December 19) bade Middleton, in that case, " be sure the Kirk be modest, which will be the greatest argument to the king to venture with them, and that he be sure they will not use him as they did." 37
At this juncture came the chivalrous Wogan, who rescued the king at Worcester. Long afterwards (Feb. 29, 1732), Sir Charles Wogan wrote to Swift about his gallant kinsman. " Clarendon looks upon him as a little out of his senses, because he was extremely loyal and brave. He omits, however, giving him the honour of having saved the king's life, at the battle, or rather flight, of Worcester, by the desperate stand he made at the head of 300 horse, against Cromwell's whole army, in the suburbs of that town, till the king and Colonel Careless were out of sight." ** Wogan, of an ancient family of Wales, with branches in Ireland and in Essex, was originally on the Parliamentary side. He joined the Engagers in 1648 ; had no better fortune at Preston than his kinsfolk, Nick and Charles Wogan, in 1715; distinguished himself at the defence of Duncannon, against Cromwell's Irish invasion in 1649; and now brought over a little troop of horse from France. Landing at Dover, he and his men, in small groups, rode through hostile England, gathered recruits on their road, and, early in December 1653, made their way to Peebles. "They are gallantly mounted, richly clothed, and well armed, all men of good quality, had abundance of gold about them," said an observer at Peebles.
270 MIDDLETON FOR SCOTLAND (1654).
Between Paris and Peebles they were but twenty-seven nights on the way,
When Wogan rode first of the tender and true.
Must we add that "Wogan carried off the minister's horse"?* " Their march was almost miraculous," wrote Captain Peter Mews, after the glorious Wogan had died of a wound, and want of medical attendance.39 Scott has celebrated Wogan in verse, and perhaps few remember that this later avatar, as it were, of Montrose, had a Regicide kinsman, Thomas Wogan.
The letters of Lilburne in the end of 1653, prove that he was very sensible of the dangers which the English dominion was incurring. He hoped to be superseded by Monk, but the war with the Dutch detained Monk in England. We may conceive the emotions of Argyll at this time, if he learned, as he probably must have done, that the king was well aware of his dealings with the English ; and had been asked to issue a warrant for declaring him a traitor, on the ground of his general hostility to the Royal Cause, and especially " for joining the English in his own person in the taking of the Castle of Dowart," — so writes Glencairn to Major Strachan.40 " Argyll only has hindered all this summer's service," Glencairn adds in his instructions to Strachan, who is to visit Charles, and complain of " Balcarres's calumnies against Middleton and me." Balcarres, it was thought, destroyed the chances of this rising, but the king continued to trust him ; he died abroad just before the Restoration. Nicholas writes (March 5, N.S., 1654) that Middleton has just sailed, at last, for Scotland, and that "there is a great combination forming against Lt.-Gen. Middleton and the king's service, by means of the malice of the Lord Balcarres and the treacherous practices of the Marquis of Argyll's faction in Scotland." 41
On February 6, 1654, Charles had given Middleton his instruc- tions : he himself, if his General found the circumstances encouraging, would set out for Scotland. All men were to shun a Colonel Bam- field, who, treacherously or not, had been taking a great deal upon himself, flattering Glengarry with a draft of a patent of the Earldom of Ross. The Huntly of the day, that Lord Lewis Gordon who
* Letter to Lilburne, Peebles, December 12, 1653. 'Scotland and the Commonwealth,' pp. 296-297. Compare Gardiner, ii. pp. 403, 404, and notes. Clarendon (xiv. 61) is so vague that one may doubt whether, as he says, Wogan's party were disguised as Cromwellian cavalry.
ROYALIST QUARRELS (1654). 2/1
played such a sorry part in the time of Montrose, did not show signs of stirring ; but, as usual, his younger brother, Lord Charles, was ready to join the king's party.* Middleton arrived in Suther- land in the end of February 1654. Captain Peter Mews, who was with him, describes the forced march across the frosty rivers, and how, with Lord Reay and the Mackays, they watched the garrison of Wick. They were joined by Glengarry, Glencairn, Atholl, Kenmure, and others, 2500 men and 500 horse : Wogan had already died. But Middleton found that the flourishing reports sent to him in Holland were gross exaggerations. Magazines of food there were none. Mews traced " the footsteps of that anti-monarchical beast," Presbyterianism, even in the far north. Charles had an idea that the nobles would be content with regimental commands, and entrust the chief direction " to soldiers of fortune." It was not so : Glencairn quarrelled with Sir George Monroe (a very unfortunate soldier of fortune), challenged him with pleasing circumstances of good taste, and wounded him in the face and hand. Glencairn then retired to the south, f Mews wrote from Thurso, on June 4. Already Monk was marching north ; 42 he had written to " His Highness" (Cromwell is now Protector," and His Highness) from Dalkeith on April 22. For the English, Morgan lay at Dingwall with a force, and the Provost of Dumfries had shot two of Kenmure's men with a fowling-piece. On May 4 Cromwell was proclaimed Protector at Edinburgh Cross ; Argyll was unfortunate enough to be present at this proclamation.43 Cromwell sent for some Remonstrants — Livingstone, Gillespie, Menzies, Guthrie, — and for Blair and Douglas ; the first three went to town. For a number of years no Communion had been celebrated in Edinburgh, Glasgow, Dundee, St. Andrews, and other towns ; the consolations of religion being denied to the people because the magistrates " complied with the English."44 The magistrates, and therefore the people, "were excluded from the Table by the Act of our Church," says Baillie. Here we have a proof of " the bloody and barbarous inconveniences of Presbyterial government."46
* ' Scotland and the Protectorate,' pp. 26-31. The last page contains a warrant to Loudoun the Chancellor, then skulking in Atholl, for an Earldom of— Blank !
t Gwynne's ' Military Memoirs,' edited by Sir Walter Scott, p. 175. Gwynne makes the pair quarrel because Monroe called the Highlanders tnieves. Lilburne heard that the dispute was about the Laird of Fairlie or Foulis, Monroe's brother, a devotee. ' Scotland and the Protectorate,' p. 89.
272 MONK'S ADMINISTRATION (1654).
Cromwell's purpose was to conciliate the Remonstrators, purge the Resolutioners, and use the Remonstrators as the genuine Kirk. But Livingstone, in London, prayed for the king, "and for these poor men that now fill their rooms, Lord be merciful unto them." Cromwell, being asked to punish Livingstone, merely replied, " Let him alone, he is a good man, and what are we but poor men, in comparison of the kings of England." 46 Menzies and Gillespie gave Cromwell more satisfaction. To anticipate dates, they accepted, in August, an ordinance affecting, first the universities, " that none but able and godly men be authorised" (by the University Com- missioners) "to enjoy the livings appointed for the ministry in Scotland ; and to that end, that respect be had to the choice of the more sober and godly part of the people, although the same should not prove to be the greater part." The Saints used " godly " as the Jacobites used "honest." A "godly man," an "honest man," meant "a man on our side," in either case. The ordinance signified that only Protesters were to be presented to livings ; they were to be intrused, despite the wishes of the majority of the parishioners — a cruel oppression. Waristoun, Nevoy, and Cant were on the Commission, as were Blair and Rutherford, who spoke against it.47 " The Commission evanisched in the birth," says Nicoll. Yet a few " intrusions," backed by military force, were made.48 At last the English scheme had to be dropped, but ministers were obliged to take an oath of compliance, later.
We can understand the difficulties of Cromwell with the ministers during Glencairn's rising. The Resolutioners were clear for the king, because he was Covenanted. The Remonstrators, in addition to their habit of never agreeing with any one, were not all clear as to accepting the decrees of any State whatever, and the Protectorate was not even Covenanted. However, the Dutch naval war ended early in 1654, and Monk was now free to deal with Middleton and Glencairn. He began in May, by proclaiming Oliver, the Union, the admission of thirty Scottish members for an English Parliament (and such a Parliament !), free trade with England, abolition of servile tenures and hereditable jurisdictions — in brief, the modernising and defeudalising of Scotland. The great houses were forfeited, in the cases of the Duchess of Hamilton, Lome, Lauderdale (a prisoner in England), Loudoun, Glencairn, Napier, Sinclair, Atholl, Seaforth, Kenmure ; while the heirs of Buccleuch were fined ^15,000, and eighty others of the best names in Scotland, in proportion. A fine
BATTLE OF LOCHGARRY (1654). 273
of ^3000 was heavy on Scott of Harden.49 These were not the measures to win Scottish hearts ; but free trade was a real blessing, lost at the Restoration.
The details of Monk's campaign must not detain us. Argyll, with English garrisons at Glasgow and Dumbarton, secured the south-west of Scotland. Making the Tay safe, and having Irish forces — Irish forces, that nefarious instrument — in Lochaber, Monk used them to destroy the Cameron and Glengarry country.50 Con- stantly pursuing Middleton, Monk reduced his levies, burning all the lands through which he marched. By "drives," cordons, and farm burnings, he dealt with the irregular army of the king. " The Marquis of Argyll is resolved to engage in blood with us," his men taking English pay, writes Monk to Cromwell on July i y.51 Though Argyll's men, according to Monk, did very little work for their money, still Argyll was as deep in treason as a man could be, waging war against an army under the standard of King Charles. He held a council of war with Monk at the foot of Loch Lochy, six miles from Inverlochy, a scene with unpleasant associations for the marquis (Monk to Lambert, from Glenmoriston, June 25, i654).52 It is obvious that Argyll, after all these transactions, had no reason to expect mercy at the Restoration. On his meeting with Monk they learned that the Camerons had cut up the Irish garrison at Inverlochy, "most of them in cold blood," — the Camerons, we regret to learn, took example by the Covenanters.
Monk himself burned "Glengarry's house," Invergarry; they burned all the way, and Morgan was sent to make Caithness "unserviceable." At Inverness, Monk heard that Middleton was marching on Dunkeld ; Monk followed. Middleton attacked the house of Glenorchy (Breadalbane), where he knew that Argyll was, but failed to catch him. On July 20 Monk learned that Morgan had met, fought, and routed Middleton at Lochgarry ; the little loch that lies east of the long Loch Ericht, and just south of Dalnaspidal. Middleton's force was a weary troop of horse — Lowland, probably ; while the remnant of the dead Wogan's English fought a gallant rearguard action, to protect the retreat. Monk estimates the force at 800. The splendid Highland infantry of Montrose were not present — it was a large cavalry skirmish.53
Turner met the fugitives disbanding — their horses nearly dead, their equipment ruinous, but their hearts full of fight. He
VOL. III. S
274 THE HIGHLANDS PACIFIED (1655-1658).
sent to Glencairn, imploring him to recall them ; but Glencairn wrote that he " was laid aside as useless to the king's service." " Hereupon I put on a resolution to get out of Scotland as soon as I could," says Turner. The game was up.54 The Royalists in arms surrendered, party after party ; though Middleton did not leave the country till April 1655. Graham of Duchray held out longest, as became a kinsman of Montrose. " The English gave tolerable terms to them all," says Baillie. They were even empowered to levy regiments to serve friendly foreign states ; but Charles forbade this method of drafting fighting men out of the country. The Border moss-troopers, Armstrongs mainly, were reduced to order ; as were the Highlands, now bridled by new forts at Inverlochy, Inverness, and elsewhere. The system of Justices of the Peace was revived.55 Heavy fines were imposed on the unchaste, but probably the stool of penance was discarded. " Fornicators are startled at the punish- ment some have received, and drunkards begin to look towards sobriety." Four hundred pounds (Scots), for the first fault, in a noble ; a hundred in a burgess, were sums which the amorous found worth considering. A system of passes hampered the land-loupers and Royalist agents.
After Oliver's death, when his son Richard was proclaimed Protector at Inverlochy, Lochiel and Glengarry came in, "very hearty in their expressions of joy" (October 5, 1658). Probably they really were not sorry to be rid of Oliver.56 A treaty with Lochiel, in May 1655, had conciliated him, and settled, more or less, his running feud with the Mackintoshes.57 By forts and garrisons, great and small, the subdued province was kept in great order, and Richard Franck could fish peaceably for salmon, from the Eden to the Naver and Brora. Unluckily, his ' Northern Memoirs ' are excessively prolix, and he gives few details of interest either about sport or society. Cromwell's short way with Parliaments prevented Scottish members of the Union from airing their ideas at Westminster. As late as March 1659, Monk is "glad to hear it is come so far that the Scotch members shall sit in the House to vote for themselves." At the same time he observes, as to Argyll, "truly I think in his heart there is no man in the three nations does more disaffect the English interest than he." * Argyll
* Mr Firth, to whose publication of the Clarke Papers this chapter is so greatly indebted, says "Argyll's attempt to get paid to him a debt of ^12,000 owing to him by the Government he " (Monk) " answered by showing that in reality Argyll
SORROWS OF ARGYLL (1652-1659). 275
was fallen on evil days, — deep in debt, hooted at as a traitor in the streets, on very bad domestic terms with Lord Lome, "the hate of the country heavy upon him," as Baillie, Nicoll, and Brodie of Brodie attest. Monk had found Argyll out, on the evidence of a certificate of Adjutant-General Smyth, of March 24, 1659, the very day on which Monk writes to express his hope that the marquis will be excluded from the Parliament of Richard Cromwell. When the Argyllshire men took the English garrisons in August 1652, Smyth, whose duty it was to provision the forts, went to Inveraray to consult the marquis, but did not like his reception. A dirk was thrown at him or his coxswain, and Smyth's own head was broken when he entered the Castle. He was in as perilous a posture, in short, as Dugald Dalgetty, and the marquis " shut the door and went away from me," in a manner somewhat unusual among gentle- men, while Smyth's boatmen were set on and wounded.58
On the whole, after knowing him so long, Monk, like too many people, did not trust or love the marquis. When Monk brought about the Restoration, he secured, by documentary evidence, the condemnation of Argyll, just as, before he began his movement in favour of the king, he tried to keep that nobleman out of the Union Parliament.* He seems to have thought the Campbell chief an untrustworthy character. The wide diffusion of this prejudice is very remarkable. Despite the assignation to Argyll of the lands of Huntly (a matter of family convenience), of the lands of the Bishopric of Argyll, of an estate of Montrose's, and probably " caduacs and casualties," he was deeply in debt, having guaranteed sums for the public service when he was as much in power as the Kirk would permit. His country had been wrecked by the Mac- donalds, and, though he received compensation, compensation is rarely adequate. That English ^40,000, due over the sale of Charles I., he never did receive ; and when he went up to London in 1655, he was arrested for debt. He obtained some relief from Cromwell's Government, but was still in London in 1656, where he was of service to the Protesters.
The struggles of the factions in the Kirk were now excessively bitter, and so ramified and entangled that it is in vain to expect
was its debtor for about ^35,000" ('Scotland and the Protectorate,' IxL). Re- ferring to p. 414 (April 30, 1659), we find that Argyll really owes his Highness £3544 : 17 = I i-
* ' The Cromwellian Union,' Scot. Hist. Soc. Ixxviii. note 4.
276 RISE OF QUAKERS.
them to be interesting, or even intelligible. The preachers fought about " niggie-naggies," as Baillie says ; the Protesters splitting legal hairs to prove that they contained the only genuine Commission of the General Assembly ; that the St Andrews Assembly, unfavourable to them, was illegal ; that they were the truly godly, and so forth. Attempts at compromise and conciliation were vain. Baillie describes the pulpit eloquence of one Protester as "a strange kind of sighing ... as the pythonising out of the belly of a second person." Probably this may have been a case of " automatic speaking," an "inspirational address." In the west this was found very attractive, a supernormal novelty : the same country produced the wilder Covenanters, and the early Irvingites, who were levitated, and "spoke with tongues." It was time to be doing something in this way, for the Quakers were abroad, interrupting the preachers in the Greyfriars Kirk in Edinburgh; asking them to prove their calling by signs and miracles, and running about clothed only in their shirts, — even that amount of decency being a concession to popular prejudice. The curious thing is that the same sort of miracles as those of modern spiritualism are attributed, by Nicoll, to the Quakers, aided by the Devil. He " careyit them from ane place to another," — this is manifestly levitation, as in the cases of St Joseph of Cupertino, a contemporary, and Lord Orrery's butler. " They made swallows to come down from their chimneyis, and made them to cry out, 'My angellis, my angellis.'" They heard hallucinatory voices, and, altogether, their proceedings were in strong competition with those of duly " called " Presbyterian prophets of both factions.5* In Clydesdale many emotional yeomen followed after the Quakers, while Guthrie and Waristoun tried to introduce a new Covenant, omitting all the very awkward old clauses about " King, Parliament, or the liberties of the land." 60
At this time, a man of sense, Lord Broghill (Robert Boyle, son of the Earl of Cork), was president of the Council for a year : he was a Presbyterian, and more popular than the rest of the English rulers. " He is very intime with Mr James Sharp," the minister of Crail, says Baillie in 1656. We first met Sharp when he was captured at Alyth and taken to England, with some other ministers, and most of the Committee of the Estates, at the time of Worcester fight. He had now been released by the English at the price, his enemies declared, of unworthy submission to Cromwell. Broghill induced the preachers not to pray for the king, " far forgot here,"
DEATH OF CROMWELL (1658). 277
says Baillie; adding "if men of my Lord Broghill's parts and temper be long among us, they will make the present Government more beloved than some men wish." Waristoun, out of work, and out of wages, was inclined to go the English way, which he presently did, thereby making himself, next to Argyll, the most unpopular man in Scotland.61
By September 1656 Sharp had gone to London with Broghill to see Cromwell, who, in the intervals of packing, purging, and dis- missing Parliaments, wished to try his hand on the Scottish clergy. But now Argyll, " who was judged to be the Protesters' agent in London," induced Cromwell to wait till some Protesters arrived to tell their story.62 In 1656, Simpson, a deposed Protester, and, in 1657, Guthrie, Gillespie, Waristoun, and others arrived in London. Cromwell, with two Independent and two English Presbyterian divines, and three of the Council, heard the men dispute about their " niggie-naggies." Waristoun broke out on the Protesters for bringing the king over in 1650. "You drew up the terms of the treaty," replied Sharp. Waristoun could only reply that he had repented, as if his changes of mind were to be a rule for the Kirk.63 Baillie backed Sharp by a letter to the English ministers, Ashe and Calamy. What the Protesters really wanted was to purge the Kirk of the Remonstrants.64 Baillie was afraid that Cromwell would subject the Kirk to an Erastian model, itself "far more tolerable than the tyrannic Turkish yoke of the Protesters," so he wrote to Sharp. The Protesters did procure permission to renew the idiotic Act of Classes, but Sharp was privately assured " that it should do no harm. " 65
The factions continued to fight, and issue clouds of books and pamphlets, till, on September 3, 1658, "the Protector, that old fox, died," as Mr Row states the case. The Protesters had gained nothing by their labours, except that Waristoun was restored to his old office of Clerk of Registership (July I657).66 He raised the fees for all sorts of legal documents, and became more unpopular than ever. He repented again, later, of taking service again under Cromwell, at least so he said, when he came to be hanged. In other respects " that very worthy, wise, pious, and diligent young man, Mr James Sharp," as Baillie called him, had foiled the Protesters. Cromwell is said to have styled him " Sharp of that ilk." In Scotland all was now quiet, but money was scarce and taxes were very heavy, which Monk regretted, and tried to
278 MONK'S MARCH SOUTH (1660).
relieve. When Cromwell died, the chance of the king's restoration did not seem good to Baillie. "What he minds, no man here knows, and few care" (November n, 1658).
The times of this ignorance did not long endure. When Monk, to end the strife of Army and Rump, marched his command to Berwick and thence into England (January i, 1660), he left Scotland tranquil behind him. On February 16, 1660, Sharp joined him in London to look after the interests of the Resolutioners, or Assembly party in the Kirk. The Covenants were revived by the Rumpish Parliament restored by Monk. Next, they who had restored the Covenant restored the king. The English domination had made Scotland a cleaner place than of yore; it had granted free trade, it had accelerated justice, except in anarchic intervals, it had bridled the Highlanders, but it had been extremely expensive to the country, which was heavily taxed for the English Army of Occupation. Merchants may have regretted the departure of the English ; but national feeling, and feudal sentiment, preferred the prospect of a native Parliament, and the return of the old noble families. The Kirk desired the impossible, the restoration of the Covenants. The form of Assemblies, Presbyteries, and discipline in private morals, was finally regained under William III., but political interference by the Kirk fell into abeyance. Many things might be restored ; great licence of intolerance the Kirk, some thirty years after 1660, was to recover; but the Covenant could never be brought back in all its tyranny. When we follow the ruinous course of misgovernment under the Restoration, we must remember that the administration, in many ways lawless and cruel, was trying to beat down the old intolerable Presbyterian pretensions, the immortality of the Covenant as eternally binding on the whole posterity of the generation which entered into that most mischievous of bands.
We have seen that the moral fruits of the period of fanaticism were not excellent. Despite that Presbyterian rigour, Balfour mentions a bachelor laird who had sixty-five bastards ; it seems to follow that the Kirk, with all her power, could not restrain this country gentleman. Brodie of Brodie, a great laird and one much trusted by the extreme party, mentions that " my wretched sisters, one after the other," played the wanton, though he uses a harsher phrase. They "soudered sin wi' matrimony," later. Nicoll the diarist, a typical bourgeois, avers that unmentionable sins, for which
STUDY OF A COVENANTING LAIRD. 279
the sinners were burned, greatly increased during the English domination, but probably detection may have been more strict. Witches continued to be burned in great numbers, but they were also burned in England during the Civil War, under the Common- wealth, and even under the Restoration. Nicoll's remarks on the general hardness and rapacity of men at this period, merely prove that revolutionary periods are demoralising, as Thucydides shows in the case of Corey ra.
On the other hand, a singular access of private piety had its good as well as its bad side. The practice of making private Covenants with the Deity and of keeping religious diaries arose, and long continued. Though much superstition is evinced in these diaries, it can hardly be doubted that their authors were often saintly people, doing their very best to live with eyes turned to perfection.* An example in print is the diary of Alexander Brodie of Brodie (born 1617). In 1640, moved by devotional enthusiasm, he helped to destroy two paintings of the Crucifixion and of the Day of Judgment, and the carved woodwork of Elgin Cathedral. His wife died in the same year ; and though of an amorous complexion, he never married again. The indiscreet heroine of the old ballad says to the beggarman who has made prize of her virtue :
I thocht ye'd been some gentleman, At least the laird o' Brodie ;
but as the ballad is not dated, we cannot affirm that Alexander was the man aux bonnes fortunes to whom she alludes. Brodie kept notes of hundreds of sermons by Cant, Henderson, Blair, Douglas, Row, and other glories of the contemporary pulpit. He was a ruling elder, and sat for Moray in the Estates; and in 1649 he was one of the Commissioners to Charles II., and one of the Kirk's Commissioners sent to him for the Treaty of Breda in 1650. He was already a judge or Lord of Session.
He retired to the north, under the English dominance, and tried to keep out of the war of Resolutioners and Protesters. He was " sinfully inclined " to accept employment under Cromwell, and did accept a judgeship in 1658. In 1661 he visited London, "and bought some history books, but nothing
* This impression is left on the author by a MS. religious diary of his own fifth or sixth great-grandmother in Teviotdale, kept as late as 1715-1750.
280 BRODIE OF BRODIE.
of divinity. This feared me that I was withering." He read the Koran, "but found nothing to seduce or stagger me." He found Leighton of opinion that " men in Popery, holding all their tenets, might be saved. ... I was feared that his charity misguided might be a snare to him." The true doctrine seems to have been that the majority of Christians must be damned for a shade of opinion. Brodie saw and moralised on the Lord Mayor's Show. "Oh, learn me to die, to be crucified to all this ..." At the celebration of the Communion in Westminster Abbey, he thought that, despite the ritual, "they might partake savingly." But in Scotland for six years they might not, in many towns ; the preachers refusing to celebrate, as we have already seen. The truth is that Brodie was attracted by the Liturgy; moreover, "I have seen, and daily, much disorder in conceived prayers and extravagancy, which does afflict me," One need not go back to 1661 to see extravagancy and disorder in "conceived prayers." Everything, down to the Lord Mayor's Show, was a subject of " exercise " with Brodie.
In January 1654, "hearing of the approach of Glencairn, his heart grew like a stone." However, there was wet weather, Findhorn was in spate, Glencairn could not cross the water, and Brodie "considered and observed the Lord's providence." Glencairn crossed next day and ravaged the lands of the Laird of Leathin, and then Brodie " observed the ignorant, hasty, wrong applying and confirming His providences of the i8th January, in thinking that the danger was past." So he appointed a private day of fasting and humiliation at Leathin. The poor laird and Francis "confessed their youthful sins of uncleanness, and their particular guilt of covetousness," and so forth. Two sermons and a new private Covenant followed. John and Joseph and old Leathin and young Leathin, and old Francis and young Francis, and James and Janet, and seven other Janets and Johns made their personal confessions : old Francis appears to have been a free liver enough, but doubtless he did not enter into details. Thus Glencairn's rising had a moral effect on the Brodies, and the laird gave a stack of oats to Leathin's unlucky tenants. This example of an educated lay Covenanter has been chosen to illustrate the psychology of such men. Brodie was seriously disheartened when some witches were acquitted at Inver- ness ; and, in brief, was a fair specimen of a devout, canny laird of his age. Though he owns to a sinful distaste for conceived prayers, he did not like bishops, partly because they were styled "my lord"
NOTES. 28l
— a title of human institution. But he lived too far north for the later persecutions to make him uncomfortable.
NOTES TO CHAPTER IX.
1 Clark to Lenthall, Dundee, Nov. 9; 'Scotland and the Commonwealth,' p. 20.
2 ' Scotland and the Commonwealth,' pp. 333-335-
3 ' Scotland and the Commonwealth,' pp. 48, 49.
4 ' Scotland and the Commonwealth,' pp. 365, 366.
5 ' Scotland and the Commonwealth,' pp. 136, 208, 215.
6 Nicoll, pp. 65, 66, 69, 104. 7 Nicoll, p. 91.
8 Nicoll, p. 70. 8 Row's ' Blair,' p. 286.
10 Baillie, iii. pp. 190-194. u Baillie, iii. p. 214.
12 Baillie, iii. p. 225 ; Row's ' Blair,' p. 307.
13 'Scotland and the Commonwealth,' pp. 161-164.
14 ' Scotland and the Commonwealth,' pp. 108, 109.
15 ' Scotland and the Commonwealth,' pp. 45, 46.
16 ' Scotland and the Commonwealth,' pp. 46-48.
17 ' Scotland and the Commonwealth,' pp. 50-53.
18 Turner, pp. 105, 106. 19 Nicholas Papers, i. p. 320.
20 Nicholas Papers, i. p. 319.
21 Nicholas Papers, i. p. 314 ; ' Scotland and the Commonwealth,' pp. 82, 83.
22 ' Scotland and the Commonwealth,' pp. 91-101.
23 ' Scotland and the Commonwealth,' p. 141.
24 ' Scotland and the Commonwealth,' p. 134.
25 ' Scotland and the Commonwealth,' pp. 120, 121.
26 ' Scotland and the Commonwealth,' pp. 165-167.
27 Baillie, iii. p. 249.
28 ' Scotland and the Commonwealth,' pp. 184-186.
29 ' Scotland and the Commonwealth,' pp. 190-193.
30 ' Scotland and the Commonwealth,' pp. 221. Hist. MSS. Commission, vL p. 617.
31 ' Scotland and the Commonwealth,' p. 248.
32 ' Scotland and the Commonwealth,' p. 254.
33 ' Scotland and the Commonwealth,' p. 257.
34 ' Scotland and the Commonwealth,' pp. 265, 266.
35 ' Scotland and the Commonwealth,' pp. 269-271.
36 ' Scotland and the Commonwealth,' p. 287. 87 ' Scotland and the Commonwealth,' p. 294.
38 Scott's ' Swift,' xvii. 450 (1884).
39 ' Scotland and the Protectorate,' Firth, Scottish History Society, pp. 120, 121 (1899).
40 ' Scotland and the Commonwealth,' pp. 308, 309.
41 Nicholas Papers, ii. p. 62.
42 ' Scotland and the Protectorate,' p. 129.
43 ' State Trials,' v. 1403. «* Baillie, iii. p. 280.
282 NOTES.
45 Cf. ' Scotland and the Protectorate,' p. 102.
46 Row's 'Blair,' pp. 313, 314.
47 'Act. Parl.' vi., ii. 832; Row's 'Blair,' p. 318; Nicoll, pp. 135, 136, 137.
48 Baillie, iii. pp. 258, 283, 284. 49 Nicoll, pp. 125, 126.
50 ' Scotland and the Protectorate,' p. 144.
51 Historical MSS. Commission, vi. p. 616 ; ' Scotland and the Protectorate,' pp. 145, 146.
52 'Scotland and the Protectorate,' pp. 138, 139-149.
53 ' Scotland and the Protectorate,' pp. 149-153. 04 Turner, pp. 109, no.
55 ' Scotland and the Protectorate,' pp. 403-405.
56 ' Scotland and the Protectorate,' pp. 384, 385.
57 ' Scotland and the Protectorate,' p. 279.
88 ' Scotland and the Protectorate,' pp. 412-414. 69 Nicoll, pp. 147, 148. 6° Baillie, iii. p. 297.
61 Baillie, iii. p. 321, 322. K Row's 'Blair,' p. 329.
63 Row's ' Blair,' p. 331. w Baillie, iii. p. 330.
85 Baillie, iii. p. 354. m Nicoll, p. 201.
283
CHAPTER X.
THE RESTORATION. 1660-1666.
THE Scottish rejoicings over the Restoration were picturesque, noisy, and convivial. Noll and the devil were burned in effigy, the Castle guns were fired, and not a little was drunk on the occasion. But the shouts died away, and where did Scotland stand ? The constitutional novelties of Argyll and Waristoun expired by a natural death ; Charles named his great officers of State as his ancestors had done, without calling or consulting Parliament, and the Lords of the Articles recovered power. Glen- cairn, who had fought for the Cause in its darkest days, was Chancellor; Rothes, who had more than the sensuality and none of the Liberalism of his father, was President of the Council ; Lauderdale, now a Duke, remained with the king in London as his chief adviser on Scottish affairs, though things were done by his rivals in Scotland at which he found it safest merely to connive : his position was difficult*
Meanwhile we must go back, and trace the doings of a minister which were to lead to ecclesiastical changes and to all the Scottish unrest under the Restoration. On January 16, 1660, Monk, on his march to London, wrote to Douglas and Dickson, sending them, "according to their desire, a pass for Mr Sharp." He, as we know (at this time he was minister of Crail, and a "regent" in St Leonard's College, St Andrews), had lain in the Tower, after 1650, and was released, perhaps after signing a "tender" of com- pliance with Cromwell. He had already been the envoy of the Resolutioners to the Protector, and was again in London in 1659. Soon after Sharp's arrival in town (February 1660) Lauderdale and
* Sir George Mackenzie, ' Memoirs of the Affairs of Scotland,' p. 78 (1821).
284 CAREER OF JAMES SHARP.
Lindsay were set free from the Tower, and, with Sharp, informally represented the views of the less extreme Scottish party, Sharp corresponding with Baillie and Douglas. From the first, Sharp kept expressing a desire to be recalled : he found himself in deep waters and strong currents ; he had seen too much of England and the world to be a perfect Presbyterian, and to suppose that he could give his party entire satisfaction. As early as February 21 he desires to return to Scotland; again on March 27, and so on frequently.1 Mr Osmond Airy, editor of the Lauderdale Papers, avers that, "in the most comprehensive sense of the word, Sharp was a knave, pur sang." That is not a certain opinion ; Sharp rather yielded gradually and not without resistance to strong corrupting influences. He seems to have made the state of affairs clear enough, in his letters to Douglas. He does, on occasion, adopt the style of "the good old cause," but his genuine views are transparent in his correspondence with the men who sent him as their envoy.
"Rigid Presbyterianism," he says from the first, will not be accepted, and, though Douglas strongly objects to the phrase "rigid Presbyterianism," which apparently means, not the mere absence of bishops, but the intolerable claims of Andrew Melville's school, Sharp purposely continues to use it in writing to Douglas. This was fair warning as to the state of his own opinions. Even more clearly than the leaders of his party, he sees that the Protesters are so grave a danger to a satisfactory settlement, that matters are sure to tend to "moderate Episcopacy." He is not afraid of the words which Douglas thinks a contradiction in terms. While the Covenant endured, there could assuredly be no moderate Presby- terianism ; and Baillie, for example, was more attached to the Covenant, at this time, than even to the hope of ousting Gillespie from the Principalship of Glasgow University. Sharp obviously would, even at this time, have been content with the shadow of Episcopacy implied, later, in Leighton's attempted "accommodation."
Sharp's letters of this date and onwards appear to indicate clearly enough that he saw how the world would go, and that he, unless recalled, would go with the world.* Douglas kept informing Sharp that the new generation in Scotland "bear a heart-hatred to the Covenant," "have no love to Presbyterial government, but are
* See ' The Correspondence of Sharp and Douglas,' Wodrow, i, 7, 8, 9, 12, 17, 1 8.
SHARP IN 1660. 285
wearied of that yoke, feeding themselves with the fancy of Episco- pacy." 2 But Sharp tells Douglas that, in England, " I smell that moderate Episcopacy is the fairest accommodation, which moderate men, who wish well to religion, expect. . . . We " (the Scots) " shall be left to the king, which is best for us " (April 1660, no date of day). On April 26 Douglas wrote, saying that he wished Sharp to go and see the king ; but already Monk had asked Sharp to go as his own envoy.3 Mr Airy writes, " it is clear from extracts given by Wodrow that Sharp was playing the double game. He was supposed by the Resolutioners to be going to the Hague as their agent. In reality he went as Monk's." As Mr Airy frankly observes, speaking for himself, "it is with difficulty that we constrain ourselves to keep our hands off James Sharp," but we must try to display the serene calm of history, and to look carefully into Sharp's conduct.* Sharp did not conceal from Douglas and his friends that Monk had engaged him to go to Charles while Douglas was making the request by letter that he would do so (April 26). From Wodrow's extracts it is certain that Sharp (April 28) told Douglas that Monk was sending him to Breda, and he "is sorry he cannot stay till he have Mr Douglas's mind." On May 8 Douglas writes " that his motion and the General's came together." Sharp there- fore did not deceive Douglas as to his going to Breda for Monk. Both the Resolutioners and Monk were sending Sharp to see the king. With Sharp, Douglas and four of his allies sent a letter to Charles, saying that "the principles of the Church of Scotland are . . . fixed for the preservation and maintenance of lawful authority."
Charles knew better than any man how much truth there was likely to be found in that assertion, however sincere on Douglas's part ; moreover, which was " the Church of Scotland " ? Were Resolutioners or Protesters the genuine Kirk ? In Sharp's instruc- tions the five preachers in Edinburgh (whatever authority from the Kirk they may have had) remark that " we, for our part, shall not stumble if the king exercise his moderation towards them " (the Protesters), "yef we apprehend their principles to be such, especially their leaders, as their having any hand in affairs cannot but breed continual distemper and disorders." 4 Baillie, later, suggests that as the protesting ministers can only live by preaching, and can only
* The observation is quoted from Mr Airy's article in 'The Quarterly Review,' April 1884, p. 415.
286 BREDA AND LONDON (1660).
preach in English, they should be sent — to the Orkneys. Even so, James VI. sent the recalcitrant Bruce to Inverness, to be out of the way.5 Such was the temper of the Resolutioners : could it have been used so as to establish a harmless Presby- terianism ?
Sharp did go to Breda; and at once (May 10) Douglas and his group began to move him, and Lindsay and Lauderdale in London, against Charles's use of the English Liturgy "in his family," and against toleration of Dissenters in Scotland. The case is plain : these leaders of the less frenzied party in the Kirk were already feeling their way back to their old position of intolerance. Moreover, Argyll and Gillespie, "with a world at their back," were holding a Communion — a Protesters' Communion — at Paisley (May 2 7). Meetings of such " slashing communicants " had already been preludes to civil war. " Neither fair nor other means are likely to do with them," groans Baillie, and, in fact, these words of his exactly express the situation, and means in no way fair were employed to little purpose. Would it have been fair to exile all Protesters to the Orkneys ? Was it even possible ? 6
Douglas believed, and said that, at Breda, Sharp was " corrupted." He later heard that Sharp carried a letter from a noble to the king, saying that he was in favour of Episcopacy. Burnet names Glencairn as the author of the letter : we have no other evidence.7 The personal question, so much debated, is merely as to the moment when Sharp decided to go with the prelatical current. If from the first — he was " a knave, pur sang" If at the last, he had been debased into a politician who made the best of the situation for himself. But, on the public question, what could the Govern- ment do to prevent " the inconvenients of Presbyterial despotism " ?
On meeting the king, Sharp found that he had a royal memory of his preaching friends. He returned to London with the triumphant cortige, and (May 26) wrote that Charles "is resolved not to wrong the settled government of our Church." The editor of Baillie, David Laing, thinks it " evident that Charles entertained no such design " (of restoring Episcopacy in Scotland) " for several months after the Restoration," and if Charles did not, if Lauderdale did not (as Laing holds), it is improbable that Sharp did.8 At this time he repeatedly assured the brethren that no change was intended.* 9
* Mr Hill Burton rather wildly says that, in the summer of 1660, "Sharp was Archbishop of St Andrews " 1
ARGYLL ARRESTED (1660). 287
The Scots kept their Restoration festival on June 19, first with sermons, then with a banquet at Edinburgh Cross, the fountains running with claret. Three hundred dozen of glasses were broken after the toast to the king. Scotland was delirious with drink and joy ; the nobles hastened to London — among them Lome, who was well received. Argyll, we saw, had just been at a Protesters' Communion, tantamount, in the eyes of the Government, to a political meeting, and the protesting preachers' " study is to fill the people with fears of Bishops, Books " (the Liturgy), " destroying of the Covenant . . . and hereupon presses private meetings . . ." says Baillie.10 The Protesters discerned the signs of the times, but Argyll did not. There are about seven distinct stories of second- sighted men that warned him. Dumb men had premonitions; dogs " yowled " under his window ; he was seen, by a gentleman who " had the sight," " with his head off and all his shoulder full of blood," on the bowling green at Inveraray. Wodrow, Law in his ' Memorials,' and Baillie are responsible for these anecdotes. But Argyll himself, though thus warned, and conscious of his own treasonable action against Glencairn in 1654; aware, probably, that Glencairn had then asked Charles to proclaim him a traitor, and that Glencairn was now in favour; aware that, though Lome was well received, his own curse on Lome for taking the king's side had been handed by himself in writing to the English, went up to London, in place of staying, perfectly safe, among his fastnesses, with galleys ready for flight.
Had he been invited by the king, he must later have pro- duced his safe-conduct. Wodrow, in his 'Analecta,' gives two stories, one, that Lome was deceived into bringing his father to London; the other, that this was not the case. Argyll certainly showed no cowardice ; he rather gave proof of audacity. Hyde refused to see him, and rebuffed him in the antechamber, prob- ably expecting him to take the hint and escape. Undeterred by such conspicuous warnings, Argyll went straight to his undoing, was refused the king's presence, and was arrested. He was hated by the king. If any one gave Charles assurances for Montrose's safety, it was Argyll. He had tormented him with preachings, he had ruined the Engagement, he had accepted huge promises of money when Charles was at his mercy ; and though much was covered by an Act of Indemnity, not thus covered was Argyll's action against the Royalists in 1652-1654. The marquis was conveyed to the
288 CONDUCT OF SHARP (1660).
Tower, where he lay till December, being then removed to the Castle of Edinburgh.
Meanwhile Sharp, in London, rather dissuaded Douglas from coming up himself: as for "the brethren," "I am apt to think they will not get content." He added that the new English Parliament "will make all void since 1639" (June 2). This was, one might think, fair warning that, in Scotland also, all might " be void since " 1638. Sharp discouraged addresses in favour of " settling religion according to the terms of the Covenant," as Douglas desired. His position was that the intended interference of the brethren in favour of English Presbytery was a blunder ; their position was that their silence might be construed into approbation. They sent Sharp a paper for the king, intimating that the use of the Liturgy, in England, caused them "grief of heart." Their tastes were to dominate the desires of the sister kingdom !
Sharp (June 5) said that, in the newspapers, a visit from Douglas and Dickson to London was announced \ he " wishes it may hold." " I am desirous to be taken off, and returned to my charge." They might have taken Sharp at his word, his desire to withdraw, so often repeated, so constantly ignored by his modern accusers. Douglas (June 12) replied that he and Dickson had never intended to come up. It was untrue that Scotland was in arms for the Covenant, but English reinforcements of the garrisons there arrived daily. Sharp writes (June 9), " I can do no good here for stemming the current of Prelacy, and long to be home." He has " sad apprehensions . . . and a languishing desire to retire home and look to God, from whom our help alone can come. . . . Take me off." "I hear they talk of bringing Episcopacy into Scotland" (June 10). He, Crawford, and Lauderdale do not know whether Douglas should come up or not. "You know I am against Episcopacy, root and branch," yet earlier letters had clearly shown no insuperable objection to "moderate Episcopacy" (June 12). On June 14 the king told Sharp that he "was resolved to preserve to us the discipline and Government of our Church as it is settled among us," and at that moment perhaps he was. Charles would grant a General Assembly, after a Parliament, but desired no visit from preachers. Sharp himself " saw no shadow of reason " for Scottish meddling with English ecclesiastical affairs. Dr Crofts, preaching before the king, said that Worcester rout was a divine punishment "for the guilt he had contracted in Scotland" (by taking the Covenant),
ARREST OF MR GUTHRIE (1660). 289
"and the injuries he was brought to do against the Church of England." Both sides could take that line. In any case, says Sharp, "The Protesters' doom is dight" (June 25).
In a notable letter of July 3, Douglas writes to Sharp, " After this, Assemblies are not to interweave civil matters with ecclesiastic ; and he wisheth that the king were informed of this." But what authority had Douglas for a promise which, if accepted and kept, would have saved Scotland from her miseries under the Restoration? He throws the blame of the "interweaving" on the Protesters. But the Assembly of July 1648 had bearded the Parliament before the Protesters existed as such. The Assembly had always meddled with civil affairs, when it was in its glory. If Assemblies could have been induced to act as Douglas says that they would, all might have been happily arranged. But when Douglas throws all the blame on the Protesters, he is so manifestly wrong that it is hard to believe him to have been candid. Wodrow, and Burnet, and Sharp's modern critics, believe that he was tricking Douglas, all through 1660. To myself he seems to have openly shown his hand at this time.11
In Scotland (July 14) efforts were being made to secure Waristoun, but he escaped to the Continent for the time. Charles entrusted the government to the Committee of Estates of 1651 (captured, of old, by Monk, at Alyth), and Glencairn entered Edin- burgh, as Chancellor on August 22. The Committee, of ten nobles, ten lairds, and ten burgesses, met on the following day, and, in a neighbouring house, met ten protesting preachers and two elders, under Guthrie. This was one of the "private meetings" which Baillie said "are, to my sense, exceeding dangerous," as showing "a resolution to keep up a schism and a party of the godly, as they will have them called, for themselves, that will obey no church judicatory further than they please." It seems then that Douglas's promise not to meddle with civil matters would have been of no effect. The Protesters might have called counter Assemblies, and being " the godly " would have had followers, in plenty. Peace was impossible. The private meeting proved fatal to Guthrie, who, it will be remembered, had procured the excommunication of Middleton, had troubled the last hours of Montrose, and had "preached the poor little army down," after Dunbar. His allies, like the Covenanters at the beginning of the troubles, drew up a "supplication." The Cromwellians, they said, had done many evil
VOL. III. T
290 PROMISES TO PRESBYTERIANS (1660).
things, including the "barbarous murder" of Charles I. But " beyond all " they had established " a vast toleration " in religion, the height of wickedness. After copious professions of loyalty to the king whom they had opposed in the Remonstrance, and in the protest against the Resolutions, they denounced Malignants who wished to bring back the Service Book. Never must " the vomit of toleration " be again " licked up." His Majesty was implored to enforce uniformity of religion (that is, Protesting Presbyterianism) in the three kingdoms, to fill all posts with Covenanters only, to "extirpate Prelacy," and abstain from the liturgy in the royal chapel ; and publicly to approve of the Covenants.12
This supplication for a renewal of civil war (for it was nothing less) the Committee of the Estates instantly seized, with the men who drew it up. They were " in unlawful conventicle," " tending to disturbance . . . and if possible, rekindling a civil war." Illegal the arrest may have been, as illegal as the execution of Ladywell for " leasing-making," but something needed to be done, and probably it would have been wise to deport Guthrie to the Orkneys, as Baillie had suggested. Guthrie was for bringing chaos back again. One of the sufferers, Stirling, wrote to his kirk session, that they had only "avowed the Lord's marriage contract, in a sworn covenant, between the three kingdoms," and that they " abhorred a new war." But the " marriage contract " could be enforced at no smaller price.13 Glencairn proclaimed " unlawful conventicles " and " seditious remonstrances." Guthrie's ' Causes of Wrath ' and Rutherford's ' Lex Rex ' were denounced, and preachers of seditious sermons were threatened with loss of their stipends. The Resolu- tioners themselves had reason for alarm, but Sharp brought down a reassuring letter of the king to the Presbytery of Edinburgh (August 10). "We resolve to protect and preserve the government of the Church of Scotland, as it is settled by law." By what law? Did Charles then mean — did Sharp know that he meant — to " make void all before 1639"? A General Assembly was promised; Douglas and other preachers were to be sent for; and "we are very well satisfied with your resolution not to meddle without your sphere," says the king.14
Burnet has a story, from Primrose the Clerk Register, that Mlddleton read this letter before it left London, that he was angry with the concessions, till Sharp explained that they were merely meant to quiet the Presbyterians ; a rescissory act would leave the
PSYCHOLOGY OF SHARP (1660-1665). 29 1
law where it was before the Revolution. Middleton was a soldier ; he acquiesced in but disdained the paltry equivocation. So Prim- rose told Burnet, but Burnet says that Primrose was " a man with whom words went for nothing." * Primrose was only to be believed when he abused Sharp ! We cannot be sure that the prevarication about preserving the government of the Church " as settled by law " was already determined upon, and was known to Sharp.
At "the end of 1660" Sharp writes to Lauderdale, in London, advocating a General Assembly " immediately after the Parliament of 1 66 1." Are we to believe that Lauderdale, the secretary for Scotland, was now being deceived by Sharp in a matter where Middleton, according to Primrose's story, was correctly informed ? 15
The certain facts as to the psychology of Sharp are, that from the time of his arrival in Scotland he was suspected and accused of forwarding the cause of a change to Episcopacy. He was, during the Scottish Parliament which opened on January i, 1661, in constant attendance on Middleton, the Royal Commissioner. He was at the same time in correspondence with Patrick Drummond in London, a Presbyterian minister in attendance on Lauderdale ; and Lauderdale, as he knew, would see his letters, f In these he protests that he remains "a Scot and a Presbyter," and has not touched on Church government in "sermons or conferences" at Holyrood or elsewhere. These letters go on till March 21, when he says that his inference is that they must come to " Erastianism in its worst form," or to " constant commissioners, moderators, or bishops," " a change in which I would be very loth to have a hand." Sharp then went up (April 29) to London, and thence, on May 21, wrote to Middleton. He had seen Clarendon, and learned that
* Burnet, 'History of his Own Time,' i. pp. 192-200; cf. 'North British Review,' vol. xlvi. pp. 402-404.
f Mr Airy points to a difference "in tone" between a letter to Lauderdale "and other letters of Sharp's sent" (later) through Drummond, a London Presbyterian " in communication with Lauderdale," in fact his chaplain. But this letter asserts to Lauderdale Sharp's belief in an Assembly and Presbyterian peace, after the date when he is reported to have told Middleton that Presby- terianism was to be abolished. I cannot believe that Sharp and the king, in August 1660, were conspiring behind Lauderdale's back, while Middleton knew what was going on. Lauderdale was still Presbyterian ; Sharp says that he him- self is " a Scot and a Presbyter," and tells Lauderdale at the end of December 1660 that all Estates think Episcopacy should not be forced by Parliament on Scotland. ' North British Review,' tit supra, 430-435, June 1867, not 1848, as Mr Airy cites it.
SHARP IS WON OVER (1661).
what Middleton "did often tell me was not without ground," namely, that Episcopacy would be introduced. Here it is Middleton who, in Scotland, tells Sharp; not Sharp who, in London, tells Middleton, according to Primrose's anecdote, that Episcopacy would be introduced. Sharp's letter of May 21 need not contradict what Sharp, on March 21, wrote to Drummond, that he himself had not touched on the question in "sermons or conferences." Private talk with Middleton is not, in the sense here used, a " conference," whether in the French or English meaning of the word. I incline to suppose that Sharp did what he could, in the early months of 1661, to hit on some scheme more moderate than actual Episcopacy, less immoderate than intolerant Presby- terianism ; that he found this impossible ; that, " though very loth," he could not resist the temptation to go with the tide, and finally, reckless of his honour, took his chance and an archbishopric. It is probable that he was not the only waverer. In his letter to Middleton of May 2 1 he ends by saying, " I am sorry if Mr Douglas, after such professions made to your Grace, shall disappoint your expectations." Douglas " got down " on the Presbyterian "side of the fence."
As for Sharp, he was now lost. His position involved him in statesmanship, for which he (as Baillie and Livingstone thought of clergymen at large) was unfit. Hated, as a clerical statesman, by his nobly born associates, just as Spottiswoode had been hated, he was also despised by them, was bullied, was a mere tool, as a prelate must needs be, when Episcopacy is only a measure of police, and bishops but screens or shields against the Presbyterian weapon of excommunication. Though he was not without some drops of gentle blood, his father had been a sheriff clerk, and now he was a pot of clay, swimming with pots of gold, silver, and iron. He had really, at heart, no superstitions about the divine right either of Prelacy or Presbytery. He was intent on destroying the anarchy resulting from the old Presbyterian pretensions, now mainly supported by the Protesters. On that essential point he was sincere if not fanatical; hence his later accession to many disgusting cruelties, though by nature, as Baillie's earlier letters show, and as his portraits indicate, he was a man of kindly nature.*
* The view of Sharp's development taken here is based on his letters, summarised by Wodrow, or printed in the Lauderdale Papers, i. ii., especially i. 60-90, and ii. Ixx.-lxxxii. Mr Airy, and Burnet, Baillie, Wodrow, and Douglas,
SCOTTISH PARLIAMENT (1661). 293
It is the gradual tragedy of a soul : the history of Lauderdale is another. Beginning as a sincere fanatic in youth, very unlike his kinsman Lethington, Lauderdale suffered long imprisonment, and many other tribulations, due to the insensate follies of Presbyterianism in 1648-50. Even this did not dispose him to welcome Episcopacy, but the bloom had been rubbed off his soul, and he, an ac- complished scholar and Orientalist, yielded to the claims of his powerful and sensuous temperament. There was no oath which he scrupled to take, his abundant intellect was prostituted to brigand- age under the guise of government, and long before the end his prolix talk and disgusting coarseness, as Lord Ailesbury tells us, made him detested by Charles II. ('Memoirs,' i. 14-16.)
On January i, 1661, — to return to secular affairs, — Parliament met at Edinburgh, " and never any Parliament was so obsequious to all that was propos'd to them," says Sir George Mackenzie, the " bluidy Mackenzie" of Covenanting legend. The Act of Indemnity had not yet been passed ; no man knew what he might suffer, or what he might gain, and Cromwell had tamed the Scottish temper of defiance.16 Middleton sat as Commissioner, and Lords of the Articles were chosen, though Tarbet opposed this practice, as "prelimiting the judgment of Parliament" How the Lords were chosen on this occasion we are not informed. On January 4 the House was told by Middleton that the king desired the honourable burial, at his own expense, of the mangled remains of the great Montrose. The act was graceful, whether Charles had all that he has been accused of to repent, or not. On January 7 the fragments of the marquis, and of Hay of Dalgetty, were unearthed from beneath the gibbet or recovered from the "airts" to which
bold that Sharp was a Judas from March 1660 onwards. The letters cited are marked, whether by Drummond, Lauderdale, or another, with lines and crosses at certain passages, and Mr Airy thinks that Lauderdale laid them before the king "to expose Sharp's weakness and insincerity" (Lauderdale Papers, i. x.). But if Charles was Sharp's fellow-conspirator, the exposure was superfluous. Before leaving for London, in April 1661, Sharp wrote to Baillie, " I am com- manded to take a new toil, but I tell you it is not in order to a change of the Church." If Sharp then knew what he learned in May from Clarendon, his words are an unblushing falsehood. Hitherto he had but Middleton's account, which Clarendon confirmed ; " I found that which your Grace often told me was not without ground " : probably Sharp thought it, or tried to think it, groundless enough to justify his statement to Baillie (Baillie, iii. p. 460). In any case, Sharp was gliding to utter dishonour, but, in my opinion, the decline was gradual, a view perhaps more consistent with human nature than the theory of Mr Airy.
294 FUNERAL OF MONTROSE (1661).
they had been dispersed. A coffin containing the trunk of Montrose, under a velvet pall, was borne by Atholl, Mar, Seaforth, and other peers, and by the young marquis, accompanied by 200 mounted gentlemen led by Kenmure, to the Tolbooth. Here Napier, with Inchbrakie, Gorthie, and other gallant Grahams, took down the head of the hero from its iron spike, Gorthie kissing it piously. He died that night, "a judgment," said the fanatics. The coffin was then conveyed to the Abbey Church at Holyrood, where it lay till May n. On that day, with all possible solemnity and heraldic splendour, the remains of Montrose were carried to St. Giles's Church, where a stately and beautiful tomb, adorned by the escutcheons of his kin and his companions in arms, now marks the most sacred spot in Scotland, the resting-place of the stainless Cavalier.17
For the rest, the Parliament was so reactionary as to provoke the censures of "bluidy Mackenzie," at that time no official, but a rising advocate. They framed an oath acknowledging the royal prerogative and supremacy "over all persons and in all causes," ecclesiastic as well as civil. Cassilis retired from Parliament on this score ; Balmerino, with others, also retired, when renewing the Covenant without royal consent was pronounced illegal. Here was a breach of an act of the Parliament of 1651, says Wodrow, which ordained that all members should sign the great band.18 The king regained his right of appointing officers of State. After leading gradually up to it, the Parliament rescinded "all done in Parliament since the year 1638," save some private bills. They did but follow the example of the Covenanters who had rescinded the acts of all General Assemblies that were not to their liking. But Mackenzie remarks that others, as well as the fanatics, were displeased by the sweeping measures of reaction. The Parliament of 1648, which approved of "the unlawful Engagement," as the wild party called it, went by the board with the rest. As for church government, it was to be secured "as the king finds most consistent with scripture, monarchy, and peace," which did not promise well, on the second and third heads, for Presbyterianism. May 29 was appointed as a public holiday ; " it was evidently framed to be a snare unto ministers," as all state holidays were. Patronage of livings was restored; it had been abolished in 1649, and remained, as we know, a stone of stumbling and an occasion of disruption. Moreover, presentees to livings had to take the oath of allegiance.
TRIAL OF ARGYLL (1661). 295
A yearly grant of ,£40,000 was made to the king, .£32,000 being taken from the excise of ale and beer. " It lowered extremely the price of victual, because it heighten'd the price of beer and ale, . . . and it forced poor people also to leave off brewing. ..." These seem rather salutary results, but already, in 1659, when the price of beer was raised, " God fra the hevinis declaired his anger by sending thunder, fyre, and unheard of tempests, and inundations," so Nicoll interprets the divine view of the case.19 The subsidy was collected by soldiers, who were quartered on sluggish payers, a very practical grievance. Against several of the proceedings of Parliament, the brethren, such as dared to meet, made remonstrances to Middleton, who declined "to be terrified by papers."20 The Synod of Fife set to work, but Rothes dismissed them, and the Earl of Galloway acted the same part in his shire. " The ministers did begin to thunder after their usual manner," says Mackenzie, but times had altered. The Synod even of Fife, the leader of old in many a struggle, was put to the door.21 The Synod of Lothian was forced to censure its protesting brethren, and suspend them, and was then dismissed. " All this is but a short swatch " (specimen) of the oppressions of the times, says Wodrow.
The next event of public importance was the trial of Argyll, who, during the session of Parliament, had lain in Edinburgh Castle. He was allowed counsel, — in England a man accused of treason would not have been so fortunate, — and Mackenzie was one of his advocates. The indictment, drawn up under Sir John Fletcher, the king's advocate, wandered over the whole career of the marquis since he first took the Covenant, and included many charges of barbarity to the Macdonalds, often alleged on mere hearsay ; indeed, the indictment was mainly a deluge of irrelevancies introduced to excite prejudice. Argyll was safe, by virtue of acts of indemnity, for all offences prior to 1651 ; where he was vulnerable was in his aiding and abetting of the English invaders during Glencairn's and Middleton's rising, when his own son, Lord Lome, was in arms for the king. Argyll's defence on this point was that his conduct was but "common compliance wherein all the kingdom did share equally." Charles was fair enough to decree that only offences committed after 1651 should be insisted upon, and this grace was believed to be due to Lauderdale acting out of enmity to Middleton, and favour to Lome, who had married his niece.22 The restriction of the charge was no more than just, but was
296 FATAL LETTERS OF ARGYLL (1661).
thought to be practically nullified when Middleton sent Glencairn and Rothes to court to work against the interest of Argyll. Mean- while, during the numerous sittings of the Court in Edinburgh, Middleton pressed the charge of accession to the death of Charles I. Of this there was no kind of proof, nothing beyond conjecture as to the nature of talk between Argyll and Cromwell after Preston fight ; and Parliament on this head acquitted the marquis honourably.
All now turned on his alleged abetting of the English in 1654- 1655. Then came a dramatic moment. Says Mackenzie, "after the debate and probation was all closed, and the Parliament ready to consider the whole matter, one who came post from London knockt most rudely at the Parliament door, and upon his entry with a packet, which he presented to the Commissioner, made him conclude that he had brought a remission, or some other warrant, in favour of the marquis, and the rather because the bearer was a Campbell." The packet really contained "a great many letters" of the accused to Monk while commanding in Scotland ; and these letters proved beyond cavil that Argyll had been giving intelligence to the English of the movements of the Royalists, and even of his own son.* Of the extant letters three are to Lilburne, three to Monk ; if Mackenzie rightly says that there were " a great many letters," no doubt the proof against Argyll was more copious — it could not be more cogent — than that which we possess.! "No sooner were these letters produced than the Parliament was fully satisfied as to the proof of the compliance.23
Next day Argyll was forfeited, and sentenced to be beheaded, not hanged like Montrose. His demeanour, says Mackenzie, "drew tears from his very enemies," who were of milder mood than the foes of his great opponent. A respite was refused, but Argyll was not insulted and harassed as Montrose had been. Monk has been much blamed for sending down Argyll's letters, as if they had been private communications to a friend. But Monk and Lilburne were addressed by Argyll in their public capacity, — they were in no
* In the 'Dictionary of National Biography,' it is said that these letters are lost.
t About the production of this incontrovertible evidence, Wodrow says not one word (Wodrow, i. pp. 130-150); nor does Kirkton. Even in 1903 the Rev. Alexander Smellie avers that the letters merely "contained some expressions of goodwill to the Commonwealth and the Lord Protector." ' Men of the Covenant,' 65.
MONK'S REVENGE ON ARGYLL (1661). 297
sense his friends. There was nothing to restrain Monk except the fact that, if Argyll had been a rebel against the king, he himself was in the same condemnation. Burnet says that Monk " betrayed the confidence in which they then lived."24 Monk lived in no con- fidence with Argyll : no one did, and Monk trusted Argyll no further than he could see him. Argyll was not staunch to the English for whom he acted as intelligencer. In October 1656, in a conference with Don John of Austria, Charles II. is reported to have said, "to tell truth I have more of him (Argyll) than of any other, and except for Cromwell himself, it is certain that he carries immortal hatred at Lambert, Monk, and all the rest of their officers, and of this evidence shall be given anon."25 Monk happened to be aware of the amiable sentiments entertained towards him by Argyll : the account of the conversation between Charles and Don John was sent to him by a spy named Drummond, who was present, or was informed by some person who was present.26 If the spy's report is correct, we have a very pretty picture of perfidy on all sides. Argyll (1654) betrays his son's movements to Monk, and is his "affectionate humble servant." In 1656 Argyll is apparently aiding the king with money, and " carries immortal hatred at Monk." In 1661 Monk, who knows this, sees his chance, and has his revenge on Argyll, while Charles takes the life of the rebel of 1654, of the friend who advanced money in 1656.
Argyll's reputation for courage, we know, was not good, and Burnet says that "his heart failed him," when the usual arrange- ments had been made for an escape. He had just put on his wife's clothes, and was going into her chair, but he feared that, if he were taken, his execution might be hastened.27 Wodrow puts it that, after getting into petticoats, he said that "he would not disown the good cause." w It does not appear how escape meant apostasy, any more than in the escape of Ogilvy from St Andrews, or of the Earl of Argyll in 1681. But Argyll may have thought so, remembering the refusal of Socrates to break prison. As he said of Montrose, he " got some resolution to die," and " had a sweet time as to his soul," adds Wodrow. " I could die like a Roman, but choose rather to die as a Christian," he remarked to Mackenzie, who records the phrase.29 Did he mean that he, like Montrose, could have died " in the old Roman way " (as was fabled of Lethington), but thought suicide wrong? He met his fate with perfect courage and com- posure, insisting that " those who were then unborn are engaged to
298 EXECUTIONS OF ARGYLL AND GUTHRIE (1661).
the Covenant."30 He may thus be regarded as a confessor, and extreme Presbyterians have proclaimed him a "martyr" of their creed.
The title was perhaps better deserved by James Guthrie, who was hanged on June i. He had been the heart and brain, with Waristoun, of the Remonstrants, maintaining the highest opinions of the duties and privileges of ministers. With Guthrie began that hanging of preachers which, nearly a century earlier, Morton is said to have thought requisite for the restoration of peace to Scotland. A long and brutal struggle was to follow. The essence of Guthrie's offending, in Mackenzie's opinion, was his refusal to accept king and council "as judges to what he preached, in the first instance."31 This was the old quarrel with Andrew Melville. A preacher is accused, for example, of using the pulpit as a vehicle of seditious or treasonable libels. He will only be tried, in the first instance, by other preachers. If they acquit him, as they are likely to do, there can be no court of second instance. Apostolic authority has given its verdict. The question is, are preachers or laymen to rule the State ? To ensure the supremacy of the State, a moderate Episcopacy without the Liturgy, or the Articles of Perth, was forced on Scotland. Nonconformist ministers were put out of their livings, as in Ireland by Jeremy Taylor ; and as Conformist ministers had been used by the Covenanters, and were again used in 1689. Their flocks clung to them, and were persecuted. So far they were sufferers for conscience' sake. But the worthy men whom they followed were mortal enemies of freedom of conscience in religion. They suffered what, in 1638 and in 1689, they inflicted.
We have already criticised the proceedings of Sharp in i66or 1 66 1. On May 21, 1661, as we saw, he wrote to Middleton from London. He had seen Clarendon, who would only consent to the removal of the English garrisons from Scotland if Scotland adopted Prelacy. Lauderdale and Sharp were to write a Proclamation on the matter, to be issued after Middleton had visited London.32 It was, practically, Clarendon who hurried on the intrusion of Episcopacy. On the Scottish side, Middleton is said to have declared that the majority in Scotland was for it ; and Sharp, says Burnet, assured the king that only the Protesters, and not twenty Resolutioners, were against it.83 Lauderdale and the king knew the Scots better, who had been bred in the faith, says Mackenzie, that Prelacy is " a limb of Antichrist." " The king went very coldly into the design," writes
RESTORATION OF EPISCOPACY (1661). 299
Burnet. The view of things that the Earl of Lauderdale had given him was the true root of the king's coldness in enforcing Episcopacy. But the Council in Scotland insisted on the change.
On the break up of Parliament (July 1 2), the Council became all-powerful, and the Earl of Tweeddale was despotically imprisoned for some observations on Guthrie's case.34 At the end of August, Sharp, Glencairn, and Rothes returned from Court, and (September 8) issued a royal letter on ecclesiastical matters. This contained the quibble about maintaining the Kirk " as settled by law," the promise made in the previous year. After the Rescissory Act, " law " was what it had been in the last year of James VI. Bishops were there- fore to be restored, and meetings of synods were forbidden. There is no possible defence of the prevarication of Government, which would have been odious in a pettifogging attorney. The king him- self, in all probability, was already a Catholic as far as he had any convictions. To the north of Scotland, and especially to the Synod of Aberdeenshire, the change was welcome, and many ministers even in the south were wearying of Presbyterian unrest. But many Resolutioners and all Protesters were alienated, with the pious of their flocks, especially the zealous women of all social ranks. Of the bishops of 1638 only Sydserf, Bishop of Galloway, survived. There were old clergymen who had been in the Episcopal Church of James VI., but Presbyterian ministers were preferred to the restored bishoprics and their scanty revenues. Sydserf was translated to Orkney ; Sharp got St Andrews with the primacy, which, as Grub, no unfriendly critic, remarks, "a person of strict rectitude, or even of high worldly honour, would never, under such circumstances, have accepted."85 Fairfoul, minister of Dunse, took Glasgow, and the insignificant diocese of Dunblane fell to the saintly Leighton. The deanery of the chapel royal enabled him to use the Anglican Book of Common Prayer. It is, perhaps, still the popular opinion that the liturgy was restored with the bishops, but Dr M'Crie, in a review of 'Old Mortality,' writes, "at the Restora- tion . . . public worship was left to be conducted as it had been practised in the Presbyterian Church." *
* According to Dr M'Crie, Episcopacy was established because Charles thought that Presbyterianism "was not the religion of a gentleman." This is absurd ; Episcopacy was established for the reasons which have been given, not for its " gentlemanliness," nor because "aspiring churchmen . . . were satisfied with seating themselves in their rich bishoprics." Wodrow remarks that the
$00 BISHOPS BACK AGAIN (1662).
To return to the bishops, Montrose's Wishart (a profane drunkard, says Wodrow, borrowing from Kirkton), got Edinburgh. The others, less notable, are impartially abused by Wodrow ; Leighton's besetting sin was "an over extensive charity."36 On December 15, 1661, the prelates were ordained at Westminster Abbey, being " rushed " through deacon's and priest's orders, to the discontent of Sharp.*
It was inconsistent that the bishops, on their return to Scotland, did not re-ordain such Presbyterian ministers as now adhered to Episcopacy. Leighton found, says Burnet, that Sharp had no scheme at all for getting rid of " conceived prayers " and introducing a liturgy. To Sharp, Burnet attributes quite another scheme — the prohibition by Council, on January 9, 1662, of all meetings of synods, presbyteries, or kirk sessions, until authorised by the bishops.37 For reasons obvious to the Presbyterian conscience,38 this precipitancy and the great increase of power allotted to bishops widened the breach between the preachers and the State. In Parliament (May 27, 1662), Episcopacy was restored, the Covenants declared unlawful, ministers who would not attend the new synods (synods under bishops) lost their livings ; and patronage, abolished in 1649, was restored. All ministers appointed after 1649 were ordered to be presented afresh by the patron, to the bishop for collation, on or before September 20, and this struck, as Kirkton remarks, at the younger preachers.39 The bishops sat in this Parliament, to the disgust of David Leslie, the victor of Philiphaugh, who attended as a peer.40 All acts giving jurisdiction to kirkmen independent of the royal supremacy were rescinded ; but the prelates were " restored to all the commissariats," the judgments, practically, of probate and divorce. All persons in places of public trust had to take an oath declaring it unlawful to enter into leagues and covenants, or to take up arms against the king. " Some compared this declaration to the receiving the mark of the beast in the right
revenues of all the Scottish bishoprics " came but to ^4000 or ^5000 sterling a year, much of their rent being in victual" (Wodrow, i. p. 235). Wodrow took this from Kirkton's MS., to which he makes a general acknowledgment of obligations (Kirkton, 135). The richness of the bishoprics and the gentlemanly tastes of the king were not the causes of the establishment of Episcopacy ; »it is amazing that a learned historian should express such a theory. But Dr M'Crie repeats that Presbyterian writers of the time " repeatedly admit that they had no such grievance" as the imposition of the detested book (M'Crie, 'Works,' iv.
17 ; 1857).
* Compare Burnet's very interesting and generous account of Leighton, ' History of his Own Times,' i. pp. 242-253.
PLOTS AGAINST LAUDERDALE (1662-1663). 3OI
hand," says Wodrow. Lauderdale, at whom, as having been of old a very precious Covenanter, this act was thought to be aimed, said that he would take "a cartful of such oaths."41 The working of the Act of Indemnity, which had been delayed to terrify possible recalcitrants, was also aimed at Lauderdale in a futile and perplexing fashion.
The affairs of Scotland, at this juncture, needed the most sagacious and delicate handling. But power was not concentrated, the members of the Government "fought for their own hands," and Middleton in Scotland aimed at money from fines and at the estates of Argyll. In London, Lauderdale counteracted him ; Lome was saved from the consequences of some hasty phrases in a private letter ; and Middleton's objects were to settle the religious difficulty with the high hand, to oust Lauderdale by a scheme for excluding twelve persons from office, — these twelve to be selected by an unheard-of system of ostracism (" billeting ") in Parliament, — and to extort fines to an enormous extent. His first plan culminated (October i) in a foolish and fatal order of Council at Glasgow, whereby all preachers who did not conform by November i were to be ousted, and deprived of their stipends. Nearly 300 ministers went out, and the Council, terrified by a kind of ecclesiastical strike, extended the period of submission to February i, 1663. The Presbyterians, when they ousted Conformist preachers in 1689, had plenty of old hands and of young enthusiasts to take their places, but the Council, at this juncture, had no such supplies of any value.
The affair of "billeting," after complex intrigues (Lauderdale being kept informed of what passed in Edinburgh by Sharp's brother, William), ended in Middleton's discomfiture. He had led Parliament to believe that the king desired the ostracism, and the king to suppose that it was the wish of Parliament. Charles, after receiving able and lawyer- like memoirs from Lauderdale and Middleton (published by Mackenzie), threw the billets of ostracism into his cabinet. Lennox's " billet " ostracised Crawford (Lindsay), Cassilis, Lauderdale, Lothian, Loudoun, Tweeddale, Sir Robert Murray, and Brodie of Brodie, among others. The leaven of the old Covenanting party among the lords and lairds was threatened. Lauderdale, however, secured the aid of Clarendon in frustrating a conspiracy of the clumsiest kind, but Middleton got leave to continue in Scotland, where his conduct in postponing a royal
302 COMING OF "THE CURATES" (1663).
proclamation as to the fines of some seven or eight hundred persons excepted from the Act of Indemnity was represented to the king as an infringement of royal prerogative. Middleton's counsellors had, it is said, often deliberated in drink, and had not revised their proceedings when sober.
On March 10, 1663, Middleton was recalled, and the Keeper- ship of the Castle of Edinburgh was bestowed on Lauderdale.42 Meanwhile preachers like Livingstone of Ancrum, Nevoy or Neave, of the Dunaverty Massacre, and Donald Cargill, later so notorious, had been exiled, or sent north of Tay. Apparently Baillie would have sent them to Orkney. The bloodthirsty Nevoy, author of "a very handsome paraphrase of the Song of Solomon," says Wodrow, died abroad.43 Such ministers as were determined to practise passive resistance left their manses and flocks in the winter months of 1663. "Parish churches, generally speaking, through the western and southern shires, were now waste and without sermon," says Wodrow. In the prime of the Covenant, many parishes had seen their " Conformist " and Engager ministers ousted, but no wail is made by history over the sorrows of Conformists. The vacant parishes, in 1638 and after the Engagement, were readily filled with fiery and godly young Covenanting preachers; but in 1663 there was a sudden demand for Episcopalian preachers on the part of Government. Jeremy Taylor, when he " ousted " Irish Presbyterians, had an easy source of supply of preachers from England. Nobody was likely to leave England for a Scottish parish, and, according to Kirkton, the north was ransacked for "a sort of young lads, unstudied and unbred." " We cannot get a lad to keep cows, they turn all ministers," said a local humourist, but Kirkton admits that "most of them were of two or three years' standing."44 In their new parishes " the curates " were received, here with tears, elsewhere with curses, "strange affronts and indignities," barred doors, empty belfries, and ants' nests emptied into their boots — a pious waggishness of a shepherd's boy. In other cases the godly stoned the new preachers, and resisted the soldiers who escorted them. Women, "bangster Amazons," took the lead, as in the historical riot about the Liturgy. Kirkton attributes the wilder outrages to "the profane and ignorant." "I have known some profane people, if they had committed an error at night, thought affronting a curate to-morrow a testimony of their repentance."
Ten years later Leighton wrote to Lauderdale, " the negligent and
THE OUSTED MINISTERS (1663). 303
indifferent throwing in upon them any that came to hand was the great cause of all the disquiet that hath arisen in these parts, filling all places with almost as much precipitancy as was used in making them empty." In a draft of a paper for Leighton, made by Burnet, the archbishop says that they had first made a desert and then peopled it with owls and satyrs.45 Burnet, then very young, was offered any church he pleased, but the wisdom of the serpent dictated his refusal. He says that the livings were well endowed, and the manses well built and in good repair.
The ousted preachers were "a grave, solemn sort of people," "their spirits eager, and their tempers sour," but they com- manded respect. They were of good families, "either by blood or marriage." Thus, in the Presbytery of Jedburgh we find Scotts, Elliots, and Kers, probably cadets of these families, but in all the Maxwell country only two Maxwells "wagged their pows in a pulpit " ; they were a godless clan. In Fife gentle names are more frequent : taking Wodrow's whole list, however, it does not seem that the preachers, as a rule, "came of a gentle kind." 46 Still, they were the men to whom the parishioners were accustomed to look up; and they had taught the serious convinced vessels to pray almost or altogether as well as themselves. " I have often overheard them at it," says Burnet, " and though there was a large mixture of odd stuff, I have been astonished to hear how copious and ready they were in it." Such graces in private out- pourings before small assemblies had not been welcome to the majority of the early Covenanting preachers, who, as we have seen, disliked and discouraged conventicles. But many of the now ousted ministers then inclined to favour such exercises. At meetings on Sunday nights the people discoursed on their " cases of conscience," a practice which partly satisfied that love of talking about ourselves that could no longer find an outlet in the con- fessional. Indeed, judging not only from Burnet but from Covenanting diaries, confession was informally practised, "the people very oft being under fits of melancholy, or vapours, or obstructions, which, though they flowed from natural causes, were looked on as the work of the spirit of God. . . ." Such phenomena will occur wherever religion is a matter of serious concern.47
From palatable political sermons, and pious assemblies to talk over sermons, and from informal confession to adored preachers, the faithful were now cut off, and their case is not less deplorable than
304 PERSECUTING PARLIAMENT (1663).
that of Catholics after the Reformation, or of Episcopalians under the Covenant or the Commonwealth or the Revolution. Not only the serious of all classes, but the profane and ruffianly, were banded against the " curates," and preferred " to share the family exercises of the younger ministers who were ousted but sojourned among them," or to leave their parish kirks for those of really sound divines of older standing than i649.48 The assemblages would often overflow the limits of the kirk or minister's house, and thus large conventicles were held in the open air. The kirk of the curate was deserted. "He, only he, were my parishioners," writes a poetical curate in praise of his laird. " Going to hear those profane hirelings would take you to hell as soon as idolatry, witchcraft, adulteries," said the Prophet Peden, in a sermon preached at Glenluce.49
This condition of affairs greeted the Parliament of June 18, 1663. It met under Rothes as Commissioner: Lauderdale accompanied him to Scotland. Rothes intimated the king's desire that the Lords of the Articles should be elected in the manner " used before these late troubles." Many manners had been used : but the method now was the election by the clergy of eight nobles, who chose eight bishops, the sixteen electing eight from the barons, eight from the burgesses. This " packed " the Lords of the Articles for the crown. Rothes's niece was the young heiress of Buccleuch, she was married to James, whom Charles supposed to be his son by Lucy Walters ; and on July 10, "James, Duke of Monmouth," was created Duke of Buccleuch.50 On August 2 1 was passed an act for constituting a National Synod or Assembly, under the Primate, but the Synod never met.51 On September 23 "an humble tender" of 20,000 foot and 2000 horse was made, to be ready to serve against invasion or rebellion in any part of the three kingdoms.52 The force was employed, in part, during the risings which soon followed. Already (July 10) an act had been passed "Against Separation and Disobedience to Ecclesiastical Authority." Persons not attending their parish kirks were to be severely fined, at the discretion, within limits, of the Privy Council ; and preaching by ousted ministers was to be held seditious. Thus many Presbyterians were placed in a position like that which Catholics had long occupied.53
During this Parliament, Waristoun, who had been captured in France, was tried, and received sentence of death. He was, or more probably feigned to be, idiotic. Lauderdale (July 2) describes to Sir Robert Murray his abject demeanour. "I have often
ENERGY OF SIR JAMES TURNER (1664). 305
heard of a man feared out of his wits, but never saw it before ; yet what he said was good sense enough, but he roared and cried and expressed more fear than ever I saw."54 If the caitiff was "dis- ordered in mind " (as Burnet says), it does not appear how he could compose his own speech, read by him on the scaffold.56 On July 9 Lauderdale announces that Waristoun had recovered composure and dignity.56 Waristoun had been "an idol," says Burnet, of the Presbyterians ; others, in their affections towards him, keep well " on this side idolatry." Mackenzie gives a deplorable account of the panic-stricken pietist who had disturbed the last hours of Montrose.67
Though, for the purpose of ousting Middleton, Lauderdale had pretended zeal for Episcopacy, his old training, and the inveterate jealousy and contempt of bishops which he and all Scottish nobles entertained, made him and Glencairn but lukewarm supporters of Sharp. The bolder apostate despised his low-born and timid comrade. In 1664 Sharp went to London, asking, practically, for a Court of High Commission. Burnet, who was about twenty-two at the time, says that he remonstrated with Lauderdale, who replied that he was only giving Sharp line. The eager Burnet then expostulated with Sharp, who became "jealous" of him.58 The Court of High Commission, or "Crail Court" (so called from Sharp's old parish), put more power into Episcopal hands, a quorum of five, including one bishop, being entrusted with the work of punishing nonconformity.59
Our old friend, the cheerful Turner, now Sir James Turner, was the " secular arm " to which recalcitrant Whigs were handed over. He knew no "other rule but to obey orders," says Burnet, who claims to have been of his acquaintance. Years later, in 1668, a committee of the Privy Council reported many outrageous deeds of Sir James, but it had been determined to make a scapegoat of the gallant and learned officer. The accusations, with such replies as the knight deemed it prudent to make, are to be found in Wodrow.60 In his memoirs he declares that he was all for leniency, "never came the full length of his orders," sometimes did not exact fines, and often exacted but a part of the legal amount. The character of Sir James was notably merciful ; he had saved many lives of prisoners, and pled hard with Leslie for the captives butchered at Dunaverty. But "drinking, I confess," he writes, with honourable candour, " hath brought me in many inconveniences." Burnet puts
VOL. III. U
306 CONVENTICLES (1665).
the case more strongly: "he was mad when he was drunk, and that was very often." 61 Admitting, as Burnet does, that Turner "was often chid " for leniency, " both by Lord Rothes and Sharp," even so the inconveniences of an intoxicated commander, still more the excesses of his soldiers when quartered on recusants at a distance from him, must have been intolerable. We have a report of Turner's brutalities in a minister's house, from one who, as a child, was present. If Turner was really there in command, he must have been drunk, and should have been broke.
The outbreak of the war with Holland (1664), the closing of Dutch ports to Scots trade, and the " inconveniences " of Turner were well calculated to provoke insurrection. The letters of Rothes to Lauderdale, in 1665, are a long lament over the poverty of the country, the difficulty of collecting fines, the dangers of holding a financial Convention, when " griffinses " (grievances) so abound, and the spread of conventicles.62 The idea of disarming the Whiggish west may have been adopted as much to procure arms as to pacify the recalcitrant, for there were neither men nor weapons to resist an invading force, and on many sides it was reported that invasion would be the signal for rebellion. Either "cess " (land-tax) or other taxation would prove as unprofitable as unpopular. On the news of a naval battle with the Dutch in June 1665, many suspected gentlemen were seized and imprisoned, among them a brother of Lord Eglintoun, Maxwell of Nether Pollock, Muir of Rowallan, a brother of Halket of Pitfirrane, and Sir George Monro.63 On December 7 a severe ordinance against conventicles was issued by the Council,64 and Turner was very busy in Ayrshire and Galloway. On November 24, Rothes, in spelling almost unintelligible, gave Lauderdale an account of the conventicles, secretly assembled, addressed by ousted ministers in lay costume, "at the side of a moss or a river," with scouts and sentinels to give warning of hostile approaches. The women are the chief cause of the trouble, being " influenced by these fanatic knaves." 65
Ever since the death of Glencairn, in 1664, the Chancellorship had been vacant, and Sharp, with Alexander Burnet, now Archbishop of Glasgow, had been intriguing. They well knew that the nobles in power hated and despised them, and had no more love of Episcopacy than Montrose. Even the recall of Middleton, as Chancellor, is said by Burnet to have been aimed at by Sharp, who was also made hateful to Cavaliers by the statement that he had
COVENANTERS INTRIGUE WITH THE DUTCH (1666). 307
diverted the fines, intended to compensate them, to the purpose of raising troops. In the summer of 1665, according to Burnet, Sharp, in London, tried to undermine Lauderdale in the king's graces, but was detected and reduced to tears, by the burly favourite.66 Charles, by a view of Sharp's correspondence in 1660-1661, already criticised, was led to regard him as " the worst of men," but, if Charles was Sharp's fellow -conspirator, he knew all about him already. Despite the distress and discontent, Rothes, in March 1666, reported that conventicles would scatter before a sheriff and a couple of his officers.67 Rothes was quite mistaken in his view of the temper of the godly. They were intriguing with Holland, and had a scheme for capturing the castles of Edinburgh, Stirling, and Dumbarton, in July 1666.* On July 15 the States-General of Holland deliberated on the overtures of " the friends of religion," in Scotland, and it was determined to send assistance, arms, and ammunition as soon as the friends of religion had made themselves masters of the fortresses. A subsidy of 150,000 gulden was promised to the professors. The intrigue lasted till October, at least, and the rising in Galloway, commonly called the Pentland Rising, occurred in November.68 From the ' Life of Gabriel Sempill,' by himself, it appears that the west country lairds, whether engaged in the intrigue with the Dutch or not, were discussing the chances of success in a rebellion.69 Yet the rising, probably, arose on an accidental occasion.
On October 4, 1666, Rothes was demanding forces to overawe "the stubborn people in the west," where Turner tells us that he had not seventy men in his command, and of these all but thirteen were scattered here and there, quartered on recusants. Then the flame broke out. The lonely clachan of Dairy, in the valley of the Ken, was the scene of resistance to a few soldiers, accused of ill- treating an old peasant. One of four "honest men," who chanced to be drinking in the clachan, shot a soldier (November 1 3 or 1 4), and safety now seemed to lie in rebellion rather than in flight. A few lairds, such as Corsack, and young Maxwell of Monreith, joined the original four honest men, of whom M'Lennan of Barscobe, a local landed gentleman, seems to have been one. A tumultuary body marched down Loch Ken and so to Dumfries, where Sir James Turner, who was in bad health, was surprised and captured in
* This appears from a MS. in the Advocates' Library, cited by Dr M'Crie, ' Memoirs of Veitch and Brysson,' p. 35, note.
308 THE RISING AT DALRY (1666).
his bedroom ; the fines which he had collected, and his commission, were taken by the insurgents.
Accounts of the affair differ: Turner says that M'Lennan of Barscobe, at Dairy, shot a corporal of his, for refusing to break the law by taking the Covenant — so the corporal reported. The captain of the rebels was one Andrew Gray, who soon left them, — Turner could get no information about him; a report, printed by Symson, a conformist minister, accuses him of running away with the money.* According to Blackader, the knight's captors numbered 50 horse and about 200 footf Poor Sir James was dragged up and down the country on a sorry nag, and knew that the wilder fanatics advised his death. " This notion of pistoling him was slighted, alas, it is to be feared too much," says Wallace, who led the rebels. Nelson of Corsack resisted this proposal, and Turner, later, did his best (as we learn on Covenanting evidence) to save the life of Nelson.70 Sir James did not lose heart or humour, and stood beer to the preachers who attended the mob, for the amusement of hearing them say grace before they swigged it. Of the infantry he speaks in high praise : " I never saw lustier fellows of better marchers," and the horsemen executed their manoeuvres handsomely.
Wallace, a trained soldier from Edinburgh, an old blade of the Covenant, now commanded a force of over a thousand men.71 Among the ousted preachers who rode with them was the famous prophet, Peden, who, foreseeing the hopelessness of their enterprise, deserted them when they approached the Clyde. Wallace, who thought himself no mean strategist, hovered between Edinburgh and Glasgow, ready to strike at either. In Edinburgh the Council (Rothes being on his way to London) had news of the rising by November 17, and summoned the loyal in all directions. On November 21 they issued a proclamation with no promise of indemnity, and they secured the passages over Forth against the malcontents of Fife.72 The rebels, wandering about, were strongest at Lanark, where they renewed the Covenants " to the end we may be free of the apostasy of our times." They also refer to the
* See Turner's ' Memoirs,' Kirkton, pp. 229-232. Wodrow, ii. pp. 17-20, and the Rev. Mr Blackader's account, 'Memoirs,' pp. 121-123. Edited by Andrew Crichton, Edinburgh, 1826. 'Veitchand Brysson,' pp. 380-384.
t If we are to -accept the odd theory that the Jesuits were the fomenters of the rising, perhaps we may regard the mysterious Andrew Gray as a Jesuit !
BATTLE OF RULLION GREEN (1666). 309
injustice of their sufferings by fines, imprisonments, and quarterings of soldiers.73 Of course, the renewal of the Covenants meant a revival of civil war, and Scotland was in a strait, persecution being inevitable whoever triumphed in the contest ; but victory was not long uncertain.
Tom Dalziel of Binns, a stout old Cavalier, who had been in Russian service, marched on Lanark, and pursued the rebels towards Edinburgh, whither vague news of a Dutch landing, and hopes of recruits and supplies, had lured them. Their only chance lay in an onfall of their Dutch allies, and the appearance of a fleet of Hollanders at Dunbar was reported, forty sail in all.74 From Edinburgh came neither recruits nor supplies; cold, and heavy rain, and fear had reduced the little army ; they wandered into the Pentland Hills, and there had a scuffle with part of the royal army, who retreated to a steep hillside. In this affair fell two Irish Presbyterian preachers, "main instruments of the attempt," says Wallace.
His account of the battle of Rullion Green is obscure. " The enemy runs " is a phrase that occurs frequently ; the Covenant seems to be victorious, yet somehow it is the Covenanters who retire, beaten and in great disorder, exposed to the attacks of the local peasantry. The facts may be explained if we prefer the account of Maitland of Halton, who fought on the Cavalier side.75 Sir James Turner joined his friends unhurt, after the victory, and Wallace made his escape to Holland. The soldiers and country people took many prisoners, both laymen and preachers. So ended (November 28) a rising which appears to have been unconcerted. Probably the devout persons who had designed to seize, or betray to the Dutch, Edinburgh, Stirling, and Dumbarton castles, kept out of the rebellion. Their names have never been ascertained. They had, of course, quite as good a right to appeal to Holland as the Jacobites later had in their acceptance of French, Spanish, or Swedish assistance.
NOTES TO CHAPTER X.
1 Wodrow, i. pp. 7, 17. * Wodrow, i, pp. 15, 16; 20, 21.
3 Lauderdale Papers, i. p. 25; Wodrow, i. p. 20, 21; Mr Airy's note, Lauder- dale Papers, i. pp. 25, 26. « Wodrow, i. p. 22, note.
3 I O NOTES.
6 Baillie, iii. p. 459. 6 Baillie, iii. p. 404.
7 Wodrow, i. p. 28. 8 Baillie, iii., Ixxv.
9 Burton, vii. p. 134. 10 Baillie, iii. p. 404.
11 Wodrow, i. pp. 26-35. 12 Wodrow, i. pp. 66-71.
13 Wodrow, i. p. 73. 14 Wodrow, i. p. 81.
15 Lauderdale Papers, i. pp. 56-60.
16 Mackenzie, 19. 17 Napier, ii. pp. 825-837
18 Wodrow, i. p. 91. As to the ambiguities in the oath about supremacy, cf. Wodrow, i. pp. 92, 93.
19 Mackenzie, pp. 31, 32; Nicoll, p. 247.
20 Wodrow, i. p. 112. 21 Wodrow, pp. 112-128. 22 Mackenzie, pp. 37, 38. ffl Mackenzie, pp. 39, 40.
24 Burnet, 'History of his Own Times,' i. p. 226, Oxford, 1833.
25 The Heads of a Discourse, etc. , Act. Parl. Scot. , vi. pt. 2, pp. 904, 905.
26 Thurloe, State Papers, v. pp. 602, 603. w Burnet, i. p. 224. % Wodrow, i. p. 152. w Mackenzie, p. 47. 30 Mackenzie, p. 44. 31 Mackenzie, p. 50.
32 ' Archseologia Scotica,' vol. ii. pp. 103-107.
33 Burnet, i. p. 236.
84 Wodrow, i. pp. 219-221 ; Burnet, i. pp. 231-234; Mackenzie, p. 60. 35 Grub, 'Ecclesiastical History of Scotland,' iii. p. 192.
38 Wodrow, i. p. 238.
37 Wodrow, i. p. 249, note ; Burnet, i. pp. 255, 256. 88 Burnet, i. pp. 258-260.
39 Kirkton, ' Secret and True History,' p. 144.
40 Wodrow, i. p. 259. °- Mackenzie, pp. 64, 65.
42 Mackenzie, pp. 64-113; Burnet, i. pp. 258-278, 364-370; Lauderdale Papers, i. pp. 106-134. 43 Wodrow, i. p. 317.
44 Kirkton, ' Secret and True History,' p. 160.
45 Lauderdale Papers, ii. p. 225.
46 Wodrow, i. pp. 324-329. 47 Burnet, i. pp. 279-284.
48 Kirkton, ' Secret and True History,' p. 163.
49 C. K. Sharpe, note to Kirkton, p. 164.
60 Act. Parl. Scot., vii. pp. 449, 454. 51 Act. Parl. Scot., vii. p. 465.
52 Act. Parl. Scot., vii. pp. 480, 481.
83 Act. Parl. Scot., vii. pp. 455, 456.
54 Lauderdale Papers, i. p. 145. 85 Burnet, i. pp. 370, 371.
66 Lauderdale Papers, i. p. 152. 57 Mackenzie, pp. 134, 135. 83 Burnet, i. pp. 375, 376. 59 Wodrow, i. pp. 384-395. 60 Wodrow, ii. pp. 101-104. 61 Burnet, i. pp. 384, 385.
62 Lauderdale Papers, i. pp. 218-240.
63 Wodrow, i. p. 425. M Wodrow, i. p. 430.
65 Lauderdale Papers, i. pp. 233, 234. w Burnet, i. pp. 386-390.
67 Lauderdale Papers, i. pp. 235, 236.
68 M'Crie, op. dt. pp. 377-380. ^ M'Crie, op. dt. p. 384.
70 Law's 'Memorials.' Wodrow MSS., p. 17.
71 Wallace left a narrative, in M'Crie's 'Veitch and Brysson,' pp. 355-432.
72 Wodrow, ii. p. 20. 73 Wodrow, ii. pp. 25, 26.
74 Wallace, in ' Veitch and Brysson,' p. 409.
75 Lauderdale Papers, i. pp. 248-252.
CHAPTER XL
THE STRIFE WITH THE COVENANTERS. 1667-1679.
FROM the skirmish of Rullion Green to the Revolution the melancholy and tedious chronicles of Scotland are the records of vacillating attempts, first, to reconcile irreconcilables, and secondly, to break down the spirit of the Kirk, or to do both at once.* The story might be told very briefly. Severity and attempts at com- promise alternated. While the country, left to itself, might have acquiesced in arrangements by which Episcopacy was reduced almost to the shadow of a name, the extremists, especially some exiled ministers in Holland, Browne and M'Ward, would not be satisfied while the name of "bishop" endured. They must have "parity of ministers," "Christ's kingdom," as in the prime of Andrew Melville's day, — that and nothing less. The various and veering Governments could not grant these demands. They cared little or nothing for bishops, except as ecclesiastical policemen ; nay, they cherished the old jealousy of the noble against the prelate, and they ruthlessly subdued the priestly pretensions of their clerical tools. All that Government wanted was to keep the Presbyterians in as good order as Cromwell had done. The Protector had allowed Presbyterianism to exist, minus the General Assembly, always the focus of seditious disturbance.
But Cromwell was backed by Monk and the garrisons ; perhaps the Restoration Government could not have existed while every pulpit rang with denunciations of men in office under the names of Haman, Judas, and Ahab. The bishops were therefore
* Our most useful authority is Wodrow, minister of Eastwood, writing about 1715-20. He is the Calderwood of the period, very industrious, but, of course, not unprejudiced.
312 PUNISHMENT OF REBELS (1667).
maintained as police ; and while bishops existed, peace was im- possible. Every attempt at leniency seemed weakness to the Presbyterians, and encouraged resistance. In every offer of com- promise the trap was detected, and the pious feared that "the dead carcase of the prayer-book" would be revived. The king's ministers were corrupt, and divided by private quarrels; the Presby- terians also were divided, but, on occasion, followed the lead of the extremists ; and a dismal series of futile indulgences and irritating ferocities lead us to Bothwell Bridge, the Revolution, and at last to compromise and peace, the majority persecuting a helpless minority. Nobody had a policy for Scotland, unless Dalziel's proposal to hang all rebels is a policy.1 The conduct of Rothes and Sharp, of the military and clerical party, had caused the Pentland Rising. If the landed leaders of the aggrieved Presbyterians had joined that rising openly, the spirit of their party might have been crushed by forfeitures and executions. But no leaders of much social import- ance could be discovered. The search for them was not helped by the use of torture, which had not been openly and judicially em- ployed in political cases — in trials for witchcraft it was usual — for thirty years. Among the sufferers was Mr Hugh Mackail, a young divine who, at the age of twenty-one, in 1662, had denounced the rulers, in a sermon, as Haman and Judas. He joined the rebels from Edinburgh ; and, though he did not remain with them till their defeat, he was supposed to be able to make disclosures. He was put in the boot, a frame into which wedges were driven, crushing the leg.* "The executioner favoured Mr Mackail," says Kirkton, " but Corsack " (whom Turner vainly tried to save) " was cruelly tormented." They told nothing — probably they had nothing to tell. In Edinburgh some fifteen men were hanged. Like the Cavalier prisoners after Philiphaugh, some of them maintained that they had surrendered to quarter on the field. It was briefly replied that they were rebels. As far as evidence goes, perhaps thirty-five men were capitally punished.2 Dalziel, in the west, is accused not only of extortion and torture, but of shooting one Finlaw without trial.3 The story sounds incredible, as the authors of ' Naphtali ' say (Stuart of Goodtrees, and Stirling, minister of Paisley), but Sir
* Kirkton, p. 250. Cf. Note by C. K. Sharpe. Dumas gives the same account of the boot, as used in France, in 'La Reine Margot.' The wedge might merely squeeze the calf, or might, more cruelly, crush the shin bone. For Mackail see the contemporary ' Naphtali,' p. 238.
SHARP DISGRACED (1667). 313
Robert Murray wrote to Lauderdale that the " damned book " "tells exactly the whole story, as I have heard it related."4
Many prisoners lay in " Haddock's Hole " (named after a Royalist prisoner, Gordon of Haddo) and Bishop Wishart, who himself had been in prisons often, sent food to the captives, as became the companion of Montrose.5 While these prisoners lay expecting death, forfeiture, or exile to Barbadoes (which had no terrors for them), Sir William Ballantyne is accused of rapes of women, roastings of men, and of actual murder, in the south-west. " Turner was a saint to Ballantyne." * The rebellious district was ruined, for the time ; and, while the preachers and leaders kept con- cealed, small bands rabbled the houses of conformist ministers, whom they hated as spies, even more than they detested their religious principles. Dalziel, no doubt, had a policy, that of " Thorough " ; but he also expected, and received, forfeited estates, while Rothes and other commanders enriched themselves on every hand.
Meanwhile the Royalist opponents of Burnet (Archbishop of Glasgow), Sharp, and Rothes, men like Bellenden, and Tweeddale, kept writing letters to Lauderdale, in town, deprecating the violence of the Church and Army party, and especially avowing hatred and contempt of Sharp. There was a dispute about the bestowal of forfeited lands, and Rothes perhaps exaggerated, while his opponents minimised the dangers and disorders of the time. Bellenden found " the burden of a priest too heavy for my shoulders," and the moment came when Sharp was "snibbed" (January i667).6 At a Convention of Estates, the Duke of Hamilton superseded him as president, and he was put under ecclesiastical arrest, condemned not to move out of his diocese. An old intrigue of his to reconcile Rothes and Middleton, through Dumfries, as against Lauderdale, was remembered against him; "he is strangely cast down, yea, lower than the dust," says Rothes to Lauderdale. Till he sub- mitted and adopted a policy of leniency, he was baited and derided, becoming the tool of the Lauderdale party, f
* The story of the murder in Wodrow, ii. p. 65, is not authenticated, as far as I am aware.
t Mr Hume Brown writes (op. cit. ii. p. 398) that, by Gilbert Burnet's story, Sharp kept back a royal letter, desiring that no blood should be shed on account of the Pentland Rising. But Sharp did not go to London at the time preceding Mackail's execution, and Gilbert Burnet tells the tale of the royal letter, not about Sharp, but about Burnet, Archbishop of Glasgow. ' History of his Own Time,' i. p. 435. Oxford, 1833.
314 PROPOSALS FOR PEACE (1667).
The financial convention of January 1667 voted the king ^6000 a month, for a year, with every appearance of loyalty. Throughout 1667 Lauderdale's allies in Scotland keep mocking at the bishops as a futile set of men, and at Sharp as a knave, but a useful knave. On July i, 1667, Sir Robert Murray, who had come down in Lauderdale's interest, wrote to him a long letter on the " fleecings " of the Church and Army party, on their desire to fix themselves in a military despotism, and on their exaggeration of the spirit of revolt.7 This was ever the burden of Murray, Tweeddale, and Kincardine. But when government came into their own hands, they discovered that the soldiers and prelates had not been wrong, and themselves pursued, but in a vacillating style, the policy of suppression.8
Early in September 1667 Lauderdale let Sharp know that bygones might now be bygones, and the king was induced to write to the repentant prelate, who (January 18, 1668) confesses to Lauderdale his joy at the sight of an impression of that "diamond seal," which Prince Charles Edward was to lose in the Highlands.9 *
Sharp being now tamed and made useful by Lauderdale, Rothes had to be removed from his posts as Royal Commissioner, Com- mander-in-Chief, and Treasurer. Sir Robert Murray's errand was to make Rothes accept the Chancellorship, resign his offices, including the Treasurership, and, if possible, forswear sack and live cleanly. Rothes in vain pleaded his ignorance of law and of Latin. He was obliged to accept a post for which he was totally unfit ; and the desirable thing was to make him demit his other appointments before he visited the king in London. Murray kept reporting the financial corruption of the party that had been in power : on the other hand came in accounts of cruelties to conformist ministers ; and the Archbishop of Glasgow was trying to move Sheldon, Archbishop of Canterbury, in favour of the Episcopal order in Scotland. But, on September 24, Rothes resigned, and meanwhile Murray had invented one of many futile forms of religious com- promise. Murray's proposals were an indemnity (with exceptions), the persons indemnified to give securities for keeping the peace. Gentlemen were to be sureties for their retainers ; the militia was to be settled as the king might appoint; it was to be decided whether
* Sharp seems to have suggested that Rothes and Dalziel purposely caused the Pentland Rising, at least this appears to be the sense of Sir Robert Murray's letter to Lauderdale, Dec. 10, 1667. Lauderdale Papers, ii. pp. 86, 87.
TURNER CASHIERED (1668). 315
or not the persons under vow to keep the peace must sign the declaration against the Covenant (September 13, i667).10
By this time peace had been made with Holland, the army was disbanded, and the Episcopal party felt defenceless. The Presby- terians, or some of them, averred that the attacks on the " curates " had been made by soldiers in disguise ; but that was by no means the opinion of the Archbishop of Glasgow.11 The prelates insisted that the declaration should be taken by persons coming into the king's peace; but, after a long debate, and a repeated miscalculation of votes in the Council, Murray's party carried their point — only a promise to be pacific was demanded.12 In an earlier list of persons excepted, some dead men's names were entered, and in the new list, "some still remain dead," says Wodrow, with unexpected frivolity. The bishops wrote to Lauderdale (September 1 6) hoping that " signs from heaven," such as ever attend good Episcopalians (they say), may be multiplied upon the burly person of the earl ! They hope, however, that the security of " the clergy may be provided for by the Minister." 13 This Episcopal epistle much amused Murray and his friends: "S.S" (Tweeddale) "and I laughed till we was weary"; it was managed by a trick of Sharp's, for Archbishop Burnet was far from complaisant.14 Murray's game now was to minimise all the disorders; even at Pentland fight, he heard, the Whigs had not above sixty muskets, and scarcely slew two men. The Covenanters described their doings as much more terrible, and the attempts of the moderate party to smooth matters over were always contradicted by new outbreaks.
In February 1668 our old friend, Turner, was deprived of his office, a scapegoat of greater men, Rothes and the Archbishop of Glasgow. Turner had lost his vouchers and other papers : Gilbert Burnet says that they were privily sent, sealed, to his rooms ; " but he was by this time broken ; so, since the Government had treated him hardly, he, who was a man of spirit, would not show his vouchers, nor expose his friends." 15 Ballantyne was exiled out of Scotland, and, after an alleged plan for killing Lauderdale, was slain by a cannon shot at a siege in the Low Countries. In spite of these sacrifices to public opinion, it is admitted by all parties that illegal conventicles increased more and more. " They grew very insolent," says Burnet. "The clergy was in many places ill-used by them. They despaired of any further protection from the Government." They even allowed themselves, in the wild west, to be bought out
316 LEIGHTON'S POLICY (1668).
by their parishioners. Burnet could not find out what to believe about the " curates " in the Glasgow diocese. Too much mud was thrown by their enemies ; yet the aggrieved parishioners had scruples about accusing them before the bishops, — this they called " homolo- gating Episcopal power." 16 Leighton went to London, and found the king tolerant, as he was both by nature and policy. At this time (1668, 1669) Charles was conducting, unknown to his ministers, the negotiations with Louis XIV. which ended in the secret treaty of Dover, and he was professing to the General of the Jesuits his belief in the old faith.*
The king, himself a Catholic by conviction, was anxious for toleration on all sides, and Leighton was the friend of religious peace at almost any price. He was ready to reduce the Episcopal power to a residuum which almost escaped analysis, "observing the extraordinary concessions made by the African Church to the Donatists, who were every whit as wild and extravagant as our people were."17 But, though meek as a dove, Leighton did not lack the wisdom of the serpent. " He thought it would be easy afterwards to recover what seemed necessary to be yielded at present." The fanatics, of course, easily saw through Leighton 's policy. " They said this was visibly an artifice to lay things asleep with the present generation ; and was one of the depths of Satan to give a present quiet, in order to the certain destruction of Presbytery," an institution odious to the fallen Archangel.18 It was too obvious that the Satanic designs of Leighton would prove futile. His plan was to mix bishops and preachers in the Church judicatories, a majority deciding in each case, and the preachers being allowed their favourite enjoyment of a protestation, to the effect that they only submitted for the sake of peace. They were also to be permitted the old joys of " heckling " or censuring bishops, as in the palmy days of Andrew Melville. Bishops were to lose their negative vote, but Leighton said that " bishops generally managed matters so that they did not need it." Really, if Burnet does justice to Leighton, he was little better than a serpent in our national Eden, though the good man merely desired the blessing promised to peace- makers. Kincardine, who knew his countrymen, opposed dealing with them as if they would submit to any compromise, any " selling of Christ's kingdom and his prerogative." Already the exiles in
* See the papers between Charles, his eldest son James de la Cloche, and Oliva, in the author's ' Valet's Tragedy,' Longmans, 1903.
MITCHELL SHOOTS AT SHARP (1668). 317
Holland, especially Browne and M'Ward, had sent over letters against signing a simple bond to keep the peace, " a burying of all Covenanted Reformation work," which, indeed, never was pacific.19 "Touch not, taste not, handle not," was the word, says Burnet. Kincardine wished, not to treat, but to pass a law with concessions ; but Lauderdale, afraid of the English cry of " the Church in danger," would not consent.
Leighton's plan of treating with the recusants was therefore adopted. Conventicles were increasing ; Bruce, an outed minister, was wounded and taken — no harm befell him later. Burnet visited the Duchess of Hamilton in the west, and found frenzy prevalent. The duchess advised putting moderate "outed" preachers into vacancies, to check the power of "the furiousest." Hutchison, a renowned "outed" minister, did not much encourage the scheme of indulgence, but Tweeddale clung to it, when (July n, 1668) one James Mitchell shot at Sharp, who was in his coach, giving alms to the poor. The scoundrel missed Sharp, and badly wounded Honeyman, Bishop of Orkney, as he was entering the vehicle. " Mr Mitchell was a preacher of the Gospel, and a youth of much zeal and piety," says Wodrow.20 Hickes says that he had been a familiar of the loathsome Major Weir, of whose sins witchcraft was the most venial. Turner met Mitchell in the Pentland Rising, and his zeal is at least as certain as his piety. Kirkton calls him "a weak scholar"; he was a cool hand at murder. He fired his pistol, walked away (or ran, according to Ramsay, writing on the day of the event), went into a house, changed his dress, and appeared in the street. "The cry arose, a man was killed. The people's answer was, // was but a bishop, and so there was no more noise." Thus Kirkton, a man of the day, whose manuscript Wodrow used as he chose, writing "some rogues answered it was but a bishop ', and all was calmed very soon." We observe that Wodrow, in the next generation, is rather less truculent than Kirkton.21
The natural result of this assault was that Tweeddale told Lauderdale that the "planting of churches" must be deferred. Witnesses were vainly sought for, and Rothes saved a woman, Mrs Duncan, from the torture, saying " it was not proper for gentlewomen to wear boots."- By July 1668 Tweeddale had to tell Lauderdale that order could with difficulty be preserved. The fanatics were irreconcilable ; a committee of them, it seemed, had planned the attack on Sharp.23 But one set of Presbyterian rumours averred
318 THE BLACK INDULGENCE (1669).
that the deed came from the Cavalier party ! 24 The Government, however, found out that Mitchell was the guilty man : for the present he skulked. Meanwhile the policy of " indulgence " was not laid aside. The " outing " of the ministers had been easy ; now every effort was made to restore them to pulpits. "The indulgences must not be reckoned part of our sufferings in this Church," writes Wodrow, to the grief of his editor, the Rev. Robert Burns (1836). But the indulgences did more to split the Kirk into hostile parties than the sword of Claverhouse did to break the spirit of Presby- terianism. Tweeddale worked on Robert Douglas and other outed preachers, went to London, and (June 7, 1669) obtained a letter from the king, which he presented to the Council on July 15. Peaceable outed ministers were to be restored, or appointed to vacancies, receiving stipends, if collated by bishops ; if not, having manse and glebe. If they will not "keep presbyteries" (which were now under Episcopal sway), they must be confined to their own parishes. To their parishioners only may they preach, and only among them baptize or marry, except with licence of the ministers to whose parishes the incoming aliens belong.25 * Ministers not replaced were to receive a dole. Conventicles were to be dealt with severely.26
In Scotland, a committee of the Council took the royal letter into consideration. Sharp made certain natural criticisms as to the precise meaning of " peaceable and orderly," and as to the kind of Presbyteries that were to be attended, urging that "as between 1592 and 1638" should be added. He was accused by Tweeddale of " debating the king's pleasure and frustrating the king's design " ; the Archbishop of Glasgow, too, was bullied. The warrants for replacing outed but peaceable preachers were then signed (July 29).27 Eighteen ministers " made their leg " before the Council, and Mr. Hutchison's speech seemed "discreet and pertinent" to Kincardine.28 All did not like it so well ; and the high-flying Presbyterians deemed it " not a sufficient testimony against the plain Erastianism " of the procedure. Reinstated preachers were in future allowed no oppor- tunities to deliver sufficient testimonies. Two and forty preachers are reckoned to have been indulged at this time, including Robert Douglas. A considerable proportion served parishes named "kil"
* A preacher had doubted the validity of baptism if administered by conformist ministers. " I fear all the bairns that are baptized by curates, God reckons them as children of whoredom."
THE INDULGENCE ILLEGAL (1669). 319
— this or that, — and more or less Celtic. Wodrow and Burnet agree in saying that the compromise was, at first, accepted joyfully by Presbyterians.29
But peace was not desired by the truly godly, and the exiles in Holland. The reinstated men "preached only the doctrines of Christianity," they did not "preach to the times." Their sermons were not topical leading articles, or personal attacks on local gentle- men. There was nothing in them of this kind of eloquence, drawn by C. K. Sharpe from a sermon by (or attributed to) the Rev. Michael Bruce. "The devil has the ministers and professors of Scotland now in a sieve, and O as he riddles, and O as he rattles, and O the chaff he gets ! " 30 The churchgoing of our ancestors was enthusiastic, because the prayers and sermons, " to the times," were often lively examples of party journalism. The reinstated preachers, at first, did not supply the article on demand; their flocks followed other orators to conventicles, and so the indulged reverted, says Burnet, to "servile popularity." The people would not receive angels if they kept presbyteries, a horrid crime, Leighton wrote later. Wodrow takes a more favourable view of the successes of the reinstated evangelists, whose consciences probably pricked them, for they had dallied with Erastianism — not a doubt of it. Burnet, in a letter based on Leighton's papers, says that "there are a store of people in the churches of those whom the Council indulged, but it is too notorious that most run thither either out of custom or vanity." The people objected to a bishop as a distinct and unscriptural officer, without whose sanction ex- communications could not pass. The Kirk was thus deprived of her terrible old weapon, still hankered after. Moreover, to endure a bishop was to break the Covenant. Leighton vainly replied that the new kind of bishops was not the kind barred by the Covenant, and that the English Presbyterians approved of his arrangement, as in Bishop Usher's 'Reduction' (i656).81
Whatever else the Indulgence might be, it was obviously illegal, in a sense odious to prelates, — admitting preachers who would not accept Episcopal collation. The conformist Synod of Glasgow, therefore, in September, made " a sputter," says Wodrow, — that is, drew up, but did not present, what the king called " a new Western Remonstrance" against the Indulgence. A copy came into Lauderdale's hands, and Archbishop Burnet was in danger, like Balmerino at the beginning of the troubles, from the elastic law
320 LAUDERDALE ROYAL COMMISSIONER (1669).
against leasing making.32 The Glasgow Synod, in case " no further use " was made of the papers in which they expressed " their humble resentments," recorded it in their Register, leaving Archbishop Burnet to lay their grievances before Parliament, or the Council.* The Council found the document " most illegal and unwarrantable," and the archbishop was forbidden to come to Parliament, at which Lauderdale was Commissioner. He had bided his time, hitherto, in London ; as a quondam Presbyterian of the most zealous, he could not easily take part in the early repressive measures ; he allowed Sharp and Rothes time to run their course, undermining them at Court. A man of violent temper, and of the loosest life, he was perverted, it was said, by his mistress whom he presently married, Lady Dysart, the daughter of the inscrutable Will Murray, who had been regarded as a traitor by all parties. She was a woman of strong intellect, and of many accomplishments, a famous beauty, who was even said to have beguiled the virtue of Cromwell. But she was jealous of Lauderdale's moderate allies, such as Murray; and is accused of avarice as insatiable as that of Arran's Countess in the youth of James VI. The temper of Lauderdale, who was pining for the pleasures of Whitehall, could not resist the provocations of the Covenanters, and he soon passed from indulgence to fury. He was, or may be guessed to have been, in the secret of the king's and the Duke of York's religion, and of their plans for tolerating Catholics. To this result tended a scheme for the union of the two countries, which we need not dwell on, as it was to the taste of neither nation. The new scheme for the Militia gave Charles 22,000 men, ready to march wherever they were ordered, as Lauderdale wrote to Charles ; and a new and stringent Act of Supremacy not only enabled the king to deal with religious re- calcitrants of either party, but was reckoned favourable to any royal design for introducing Catholicism.! "His Majesty hath the supreme authority and supremacy over all persons, and in all causes ecclesiastical within this his kingdom." This struck both the prelates and the "low and mean persons of the clergy, which consisted now of the sons of servants or farmers," says Mackenzie.33 On November 2, 1669, Lauderdale wrote to Murray from
* The paper, undated, is in Lauderdale Papers, ii. Appendix, bdv.-lxvii.
t Lauderdale Papers, ii. pp. 140, 141, 164. Hamilton got possession of these letters on the death of Murray, and Lauderdale was in danger of impeachment.
LEIGHTON ARCHBISHOP (1609). 321
Holyrood, on the matter of the supremacy in Parliament. Sharp, when he saw the Bill, " said wild things " to Tweeddale. " All king Harry VIIL's ten years' work was now to be done in three days." Later he submitted, but tried to introduce a salvo which would have ruined the Act. Next day he repented and "snapped up" the Bishop of Ross for making the same proposal. The Bill was passed by the Lords of the Articles, unanimously, Burnet of Glasgow being absent perforce.34 The idea of union, however, was universally detested, owing to the cruel restrictions already placed by England on Scottish trade.85
On December 2 Charles wrote to Lauderdale, demanding Arch- bishop Burnet's resignation, as he was mainly responsible for the western disorders and for the Synod's remonstrance. He might be an archbishop in the Universal Church, Lauderdale declared, but in Glasgow, not ! 86 Leighton was chosen to supply Burnet's place. He was anxious to decline, but was recommended by personal virtues which Presbyterians could not deny, except by citing the text about Satan's powers of appearing as an angel of light. But Leighton knew that an actual angel, if guilty of "keeping presbyteries," would be rejected by the westland Whigs, at a time when " ministers had their houses robbed, and were nightly pursued for their lives in all the western shires." 87 The Presbyterians asserted that the criminals were vulgar robbers merely, but this view did not prevail among the clergy. Thus Leighton was aware that he was being put on a task for which old Tom Dalziel was better fitted ; however, on his visit to London, his resistance was overcome.38 He would take his part in what he later called "a drunken scuffle, in the dark" (i674).39 By way, probably, of conciliating, the Kirk, Catholics, and Quakers (including Sir Walter Scott's ancestors, Swintoun and Scott of Raeburn), were persecuted (March 1670) and imprisoned. Wodrow often complains of leniency towards these offenders, but does not record this example of severity, one good deed in a naughty world of Prelacy.40
In London, Leighton had placed on paper his ideas of a scheme of "accommodation," and the king, to whom the pacification of Scotland was important, at this juncture of his secret alliance with Louis XIV., ordered Lauderdale to make an experiment in toleration. The offer of the declaration against the Covenant was to be restricted. Sharp was to be made to "allow and authorise the transportation " to vacant pulpits, " of such ministers as shall be VOL. in. x
322 ARMED CONVENTICLES (1670).
lawfully presented to any of the churches within the diocese of Glasgow, and approved by the Bishop of Dunblane" (Leighton). Bishops must understand that no minister was to be "molested for his private opinions," as long as he behaved peaceably and orderly, (July 7, i67o).41 At the same time conventiclers were to be punished by banishment, or imprisoned till they gave security, and the necessary militia were to be supported by the shires in which unlawful assemblies were held.
These conventicles were now used not merely in houses and barns, but in the open moors, and were attended by armed men. There was an important assembly of this kind at Beath Hill above Dunfermline, under the Rev. Mr Blackader (June 18, 1670). Barscobe, of the Pentland Rising, with wild Whigs from Galloway, was present, and many of the multitude slept on the hill the night before the preaching. Whether morality profited as much as pure religion may be doubted. A tent was set up, and the Rev. Mr Dickson preached and prayed : " Mr Blackader lay at the outside ... to see how watch was kept." After three hours of devout exercise, the appearance of the lieutenant of militia was the signal for a brawl ; Barscobe and another devotee rushed at the gentleman with pistols cocked. Mr Blackader interfered, and bade the people restore the lieutenant's horse, which they had taken. Blackader preached, and by his own account, which is followed here, the assemblage was quite orderly. " Public thanks were given in the Scots congregation at Rotterdam for this victory over usurped supremacy," and thus the affair might and did seem serious to the persons charged with the government of the country.42 Meetings of this kind went on, and culminated at Drumclog, and in the rising which followed, nine years later. Welsh, Cargill, Blackader, and others passed through the country, rousing the passions which Leighton was trying to allay. Men detected as having attended their meetings were fined and imprisoned, or banished.
Parliament sat in July- August 1670, and passed "a clanking act," by which holders of field conventicles were to be punished by death.43 Another Act ordered "subjects of the reformed religion" to attend the regular clergy's ministrations, and this, as Wodrow remarks with horror, amounted to "a real toleration of Papists." Burnet says that Lauderdale himself inserted this obnoxious clause, probably to please the Duke of York, and Murray told Burnet that the king " was not well pleased " by the death
REPRESSION AND NEGOTIATION (1670). 323
penalty on preachers who held conventicles. But the words of Morton's prophecy, made a century earlier, were to be fulfilled, namely, that there would never be peace in Scotland till some ministers were hanged. The king, however, "said that bloody laws did no good, and that he would never have passed it, if he had known it beforehand." Only Cassilis voted against the bloody law ; but Leighton, who was not present, expressed his shame and abhorrence to Tweeddale, who assured him that there was no idea of putting the Act into force.44 In Leighton " the cunning of the fox," says Wodrow, " went before the paw of the lion." Leighton was so singular as to think that a life of goodness and devotion, not a perpetual battle about unessentials, was the essence of Christianity.
As a matter of fact, religious persons too frequently rejoice in " hating each other for the love of God," and the westland Whigs were quite unmoved by the preachers of peace and goodwill, such as Gilbert Burnet, Charteris, Nairne, and Aird, whom Leighton sent about among the Whiggish congregations. Burnet was then for a short while Professor of Divinity at Glasgow. He tried to be all things to all men, but the Whigs loved the preacher no more than Dean Swift esteemed the historian. The " bishops' evangelists " found the peasantry learned in texts which prove Presbyterianism to exist by right divine, and " full of a most entangled scrupulosity." The itinerant missionaries were followed, as we saw, by men of the stamp of Welsh and Blackader, who confirmed the faithful in their opposition to compromise. It is not worth while to describe long negotiations with irreconcilables. " We were willing to make even unreasonable steps towards them on our side, and would they abate nothing on theirs ? " No, they would not ; it must be " parity of ministers " or nothing, except among the indulged.45 The attempt at a treaty ended in disaster "to the great joy of Sharp and the rest of the bishops," says Burnet. Who can blame the precisians for declining to be under the rule of such bishops? The real question was not whether Scotland should be Presbyterian or Episcopalian, but whether Presbyterianism was to maintain such of her pretensions as are inconsistent with the freedom of the individual and of the State. After some twenty more years of the "drunken scuffle in the dark," Presbyterianism was established, but her fangs were drawn.
Presently the second Indulgence was driven like a wedge into
324 CURATE RABBLING (1671-1672).
the Presbyterian body. In 1671 Burnet was in London, and suggested a scheme to Lauderdale for putting two outed ministers, coupled, into vacancies, and adding a colleague to each minister already indulged. They were to divide the stipends; on this parishioners would voluntarily make up the full support of both preachers — and would soon weary of well doing. The preachers were to be tethered to their parishes, and the natural result would be "to create quarrels" among precisians.46 Leighton approved of these worthy proposals, which took shape after Lauderdale's Parliament of June 1672; the last Parliament, except "a short maimed meeting," for nine years. As to religion, Acts were passed against "pretended ordinations," without Episcopal sanction, and against "disorderly baptisms." A renewal of the Act for keeping May 29 as a holiday was bitterly resented. "Presbyterians continued in their opinion that no human authority hath power to appoint constant returning anniversary holidays," — accompanied, that is, by religious services enforced under fines. The renewed anti-conventicle Act forbade outed ministers to conduct family worship except in their own families. The " prayers " thus for- bidden were obviously expected to be political harangues.47 Before this Parliament in May 1672, Lauderdale had expected petitions for such toleration as at this time was extended in England to dissenters. But the Presbyterians suspected that the thin edge of toleration for them was only meant to introduce toleration for Catholics, of which they stood in deadly terror.48
Meanwhile the houses of conformist ministers were broken into, they were wounded, and forced to swear that they would cease to officiate. Some of the bullies were hanged. Burnet visited them in prison, and saw in them "the blind madness of ill-grounded zeal." One fanatic justified all they had done, " from the Israelites robbing the Egyptians and destroying the Canaanites." 49
This intolerable state of things, commonly overlooked by Covenanting historians, is emphasised in a draft made by Gilbert Burnet " for Leighton's use." " The incumbents whom he sends " to vacant parishes "are beaten and stoned away, which cannot be got punished." Leighton therefore suggests two alternatives, that Episcopacy " should be given up," or that " offences against church- men should be punished," and that the existing laws, as "too severe," "should be revised and made practicable." It is added that the fatal first expulsion (in which the Restoration copied
THE NEW INDULGENCE (1672). 325
the bad example set by the Kirk in 1638, and at the time of the Engagement) was followed by "stocking again that desert we had made with a great many howles and satyres," the curates. But there had been " extreme neglect of exercising due authoritie, and so exposing it to be despised and trampled on." 60 Leighton had begun by enjoining on his robbed and insulted clergy the spiritual weapons of fasting, prayer, and joy in "crosses."51 Leighton had never been rabbled himself; he might have hugged the " cross " — his clergy did not. It is plain that the " severities " of Government had been to a great extent merely verbal ; so outrages continued and increased. It was a choice between executing the despised laws, or laws more "practicable" because less ferocious, or yielding Episcopacy in face of mob violence. That violence, we repeat, at this stage, is usually overlooked by historians. It does not appear in Wodrow and Kirkton, yet Burnet's report, and the draft cited, let in light upon the temper of the extremists, and partly account for the severities of Government.
The capture of the papers of the celebrated William Carstares, or Carstairs, who came over from Amsterdam, showed that the Dutch were intriguing for a Covenanting rising.52 Many fines were exacted, and Lauderdale told Burnet that he wished the discontents to come to a head in a revolt, to be crushed by an army from Ireland. This was the natural impatience of a violent man, irritated by the pin- pricks of conventiclers and curate-rabblers. He now thought of Burnet's plan for coupling outed ministers and confining them to parishes — a cynical scheme of which Leighton approved. But the coupling part of the plan, to Burnet's grief, was neglected ; the new Indulgence for single preachers was negotiated in August and Sep- tember 1672, and, after many searchings of hearts, doubts, disputa- tions, and disagreements, a number of preachers did come in.53 The details may be read by the curious in 'The History of the Indulgence ' on one side, and the ' Review ' of it, and ' Balm from Gilead,' on the other. The Presbyterians "did now divide, and the sear of this wound is yet continuing among us,'' writes Wodrow as late as 1719.
At first the non- Indulged did not sunder themselves from the weaker brethren as from unholy men, though the exiles in Holland excited discord. " They were persuaded every point of truth ought not to be brought to the pulpit at all times," says Wodrow; his editor, the Rev. Mr Burns (1836), remarks that this view is " agree-
326 PARLIAMENTARY OPPOSITION (1673).
able to corrupt nature." Later, the precisians in Congregations arrived at the pitch of prescribing to ministers " the matter, subjects, and the very text they would have preached upon." 54 Gentle King Jamie hardly went to this length, even when a preacher refused either "to speak sense or come down." In short, a kind of mob Erastianism arose, if we believe Wodrow, the wildest saints dictating to preachers ; " and then the flame broke out terribly." 55 The In- dulged, in brief, fared ill. " Some had no peace, some scattered the flock, and in some places none at all came." Wodrow, in his jottings called ' Analecta,' tends to believe that there was a pious plot for a Bartholomew massacre of the Indulged.
The Kirk was now a house divided against itself, a fact which weakened attachment to the Covenant and the old Presbyterian pretension. But Lauderdale's marriage to Lady Dysart (1672), and the increasing violence of his temper, alienated from him Tweeddale. Murray died in this year, and opposition to Lauderdale arose under Hamilton, who had always been discontented, and Tweeddale him- self, with many other nobles and gentlemen, among whom Sir George Hume of Polwarth was conspicuous. In the brief Parliamentary meeting of November 1673 Hamilton proposed that grievances should be expressed before money was voted ; Polwarth spoke boldly ; " I met with such a spirit as I never thought to see here," Lauderdale wrote to the king.56 Charles agreed to alter the system of monopolies on salt, tobacco, and brandy, but Polwarth's demands of constitutional reforms, a Committee of Grievances {Domini ad Querelas), and the practical abolition of the Lords of the Articles, by the admission of all members of the Estates, were refused.57 (This Laird of Polwarth is the Sir George Hume whom Macaulay so bitterly censured at a later part of his Whiggish career.)
Hamilton had a private interest to serve : the king was childless ; his brother, the Duke of York, was a Catholic ; setting him aside, the Hamilton claim to the Scottish crown would revive. Lauderdale, himself a duke, thought that Gilbert Burnet had worked mutiny in Hamilton's heart at London ; and that Shaftesbury, whom Charles, in England, had deprived of the Seals, was intriguing with the Scottish opposition, "The Party." Lauderdale therefore adjourned the Parliament, and ruled henceforth as he chose, with a new Privy Council. His opponents, however, were many, and numbered the noblest names in Scotland — Morton (Douglas), Roxburgh (Ker), Queensberry, Drummond,
"HUMBLE RESENTMENTS" (1674). 327
and Dumfries. They raised a storm against Lauderdale in the Eng- lish Parliament; he was to be forbidden the king's presence for ever. Kincardine represented Lauderdale at Court, the king and the Duke of York took his part, the English Commons " could pre- tend no jurisdiction over Scotland," as Kincardine plainly told them, and Lauderdale returned to London undefeated in April i674.58 His brother, Haltoun, Master of the Scottish Mint, was accused of debasing the coinage, in collusion with Lauderdale himself. The accumulation of several offices in one man's hands — Lauderdale holding seven, Haltoun three, Atholl four, and Kincardine being, like the rest, an extraordinary Lord of Session, as well as Vice- Admiral of Scotland — was another cause of complaint. A small family party dominated the administration. Once more, Lauderdale was accused of profanely saying to Sharp, " My Lord, sit down at my right hand till I make all your enemies your footstool," and of mimicking the sermons of Covenanting preachers. Again, his In- dulgence confined ministers to their parishes, and put three or four of the outed into one parish, an exaggeration of Burnet's scheme of coupling, which was not thoroughly put into practice.
These and others were the humble resentments set forth in a wonderfully ill-printed pamphlet by Stewart of Goodtrees.* Hamil- ton's next plan (May 1674) was to capture a majority in the Council, and vote that the suggestions of various synods for a national synod on Church questions should be laid before the king.59 Leighton seems to have backed this proposal, but Lauderdale (June 18, 1674) replied in a letter moderate in tone, and sensible in its arguments. The dissenters would not respect such a national synod as the existing laws permitted, for bishops would sit in it. Conformists, obedient to bishops, needed no synod. The motion was only meant to play into the hands of Hamilton's party in London. Lauderdale remembered the results of the Assembly of 1638 ; then, as now in 1674, women were the most turbulent agitators. Lauder- dale here refers to a petition by women, who mobbed Sharp, threatened him with death, and probably frightened him. "The late mad pranks " (the stoning and rabbling of conformist ministers already noted) prevented Lauderdale from yielding to his inclina- tion to mildness, as they "evidently threatened a rebellion." On June 20 Leighton expressed his dislike of the petty janglings of all
* ' An Accompt of Scotland's Grievances by reason of the D. of Lauderdale's Ministrie.' (s. /., et a.)
328 RESIGNATION OF LEIGHTON (1674).
Assemblies, but, on June 25, represented that the dissenters might be offered another chance of "a free and full hearing." The pro- posed Assembly, however, might tend " rather to disparage the Government." 60
On December 17, 1674, Leighton resigned, "from a great contempt of our unworthy and trifling contentions," little better than "a drunken scuffle in the dark." The Kirk is doing its best to destroy itself and religion " in furious zeal, and endless debates about the empty name and shadow of a difference in government, and in the meanwhile not having of solemn and orderly public worship as much as a shadow." Leighton was ill, weak, and desired a retirement in England, and the consolations of the Anglican religion. He had the soul of a devout Neoplatonist, he lived for charity, contemplation, and devotion, for peace and communion with his God. Christianity sufficed for him ; the differences of the Churches, from that of Rome to that of Knox, were to him futilities. He could not see that the tumults arose about all that to a Welsh or a Cargill made religion valuable. " Christ's Crown honours " were at stake, these men thought. The rights of equal ministers to excommunicate, to browbeat the civil magistrate, to set up an imperium in imperio, to pry into and censure private life, to persecute all who did not hold their beliefs, to conduct bald services of which, whether in lecture, sermon, or prayer, the voice of the preacher was everything, and common worship was next to nothing: these things were "the Crown honours of Christ." For this great cause brave men would fight and die.
To the representatives of the State it was equally momentous that such desires should not be granted to the Welshes and Cargills : the State saw no means of preventing a recurrence of the old seditions, except by the imposition of a bastard and odious Prelacy. Leighton, much as he contemned this earthly life, had none of the spirit of the martyr. He might have lost his life, but he would have won an immortal crown, if, when a Commissioner of the General Assembly (1646), he had stood up and denounced the cries for blood. Again, he might have publicly denounced, as archbishop, the Act making conventicling a capital crime. He took neither opportunity, and acquiesced in the violences of the Covenant ; and then, renouncing his covenanted oath, acquiesced in the violences of the Govern- ment. He was a saint, but neither martyr nor hero. When his
DISORDERS (1675). 329
adversary, Row, calls him " a pawky bishop," we can scarcely deny, remembering the revelations of Gilbert Burnet, that the epithet has its appropriateness. There was, in that fierce age, no help in Leighton, and he fled, physically broken and sick at heart, from the evils that were to come.
Both Wodrow and Burnet independently assure us that Lauder- dale about this time connived "at the insolence of the Presby- terians," in Burnet's phrase.61 There was ever a vacillation between connivance and severity, which encouraged disorder, and probably induced hot-headed young preachers, unepiscopally licensed by outed ministers, to think that audacity was the winning game. The presbyteries of the diocese of Glasgow drew up a set of charges against the extremists. Unlicensed men hold and preach at their assemblies. The Indulged ignore the rules under which they are permitted to hold benefices : they preach sedition, ajid introduce it into their prayers. Sheriffs and magistrates of burghs do not enforce the laws. Horrid crimes, of which adultery is the most venial, are committed at conventicles, "as our Registers more at length bear." Where are these Registers ? In brief, the west was a land of anarchy, armed men acting as bodyguard to the preacher Welsh, a firebrand. It is not beyond belief that the promiscuous excitement of great " Holy Fairs " in desolate places tended to the reverse of strict morality.62 Wodrow is reminded of the scandals brought against primitive Christians.
Scuffles occurred between soldiers and " slashing communicants," "so that the country resembled war as much as peace."63 So Wodrow avers, yet censures the raising of forces by the Government as both needless and illegal. Garrisons were placed in and about the country houses of the dubious gentry in disturbed districts, and the expense of supporting men insolent and unruly as Frank Both- well in ' Old Mortality ' added to the miseries of the time.64 The Bass Rock was crowded with captive ministers : gentlemen like Lord Cardross, Hume of Polwarth, Baillie of Jerviswoode, and Mr Kirkton the historian were involved in technical guilt by the perjuries and violences of a Captain Carstairs, said to have been a creature of Sharp's. The wives and sisters of gentlemen attended conventicles, which their husbands and fathers were charged to suppress. The Council made it penal to " intercommune " with or harbour a long list of suspected preachers and their attendants ; but the lairds resisted a proclamation making them liable for illegal acts
330 SHARP AND MITCHELL (1674-1678).
committed in their districts. Any three men of a commission on which Sharp and Alexander Burnet, restored to Glasgow, sat, could deal summarily with persons charged with offences.
In 1677 we find Richard Cameron and Robert Hamilton of Kinkel insisting on separation from the Indulged; another ill- omened name of " a Saint to prelates surly," John Balfour of Burley, now begins to appear.65 Meanwhile Gilbert Burnet, in London, revealed Lauderdale's friendly confidences to himself, for which Swift calls Burnet "Dog," "Scotch Dog," and "treacherous villain." But Lauderdale overcame opposition, and Burnet was glad enough to retire from Court, and the scenes in which he was a busy and blabbing dealer. " The best of his friends acknowledged him to have betrayed friendship." 66 More and more affairs were left to Lauderdale and his brother, Haltoun, and to Sharp : Kincardine even was out of favour. Sir George Mackenzie, known to tradition as " Bluidy Mackenzie," became Lord Advocate (August 1677) ; he had pleaded for Argyll, he had been no courtier, and he usually writes in a calm and judicial style about the events of the time. To strengthen himself, Lauderdale procured that officers of State should not hold their offices for life, but during the royal pleasure — that is, his own.67 In short, this violent and corrupt but intelligent minister held despotic power, which his cunning and ill temper prevented him from using in any consistent policy of "Thorough." He might persecute, he might connive at Presby- terian breaches of the law ; one thing he could not be — just.
An extraordinary and hardly credible, indeed scarcely intelligible example of misrule, was given in the case of James Mitchell, who shot at Sharp and hit Honeyman. In the beginning of February 1674 Mitchell was caught. Burnet avers that Sharp observed a man eyeing him very closely, thought he recognised his would-be assassin, and had him arrested. Two long pistols of Scottish make, carrying a bullet almost of musket calibre (as we learn from Mitchell's indictment), were found on him. Sharp is said to have induced a friend of Mitchell's, by adjuring God that he would secure his pardon, to persuade the assassin to confess — "no hurt should come to him." Here Burnet's evidence must be hearsay ; he personally hated Sharp, and cites no authority for his tale. Mitchell's friend saw him, and said that Mitchell would confess "if a promise were made under the king's name." ^
Here we leave Burnet's story for the moment. Haltoun's
SHARP AND MITCHELL (1674-1678). 331
account, in a letter of February 10, 1674, is that Sharp's brother, Sir William, and two of • the archbishop's servants arrested Mitchell ; that on February i o, before the Lord Advocate (Nisbet), the Chancellor, the Lord Register, and himself, Mitchell "stoutly denied the accusation"; that the Chancellor then took him aside, and gave assurance of his life, and that he then confessed, all present signing the confession.69 Mackenzie denies that Mitchell asked or was promised his life. Haltoun's letter of February 10 proves, however, that life was promised to Mitchell, in Haltoun's presence. Burnet, to return to his version, says that the Council ordered Rothes, the Chancellor, Haltoun, and Primrose (Register), to examine Mitchell, and that Lauderdale allowed them to promise him his life. He confessed. Some were for cutting off his right hand; others said that he might learn to shoot with his left, and voted for cutting off both hands. Rothes, who was not always cruel, prevented this, by a jest which was Rabelaisian but to the point, and the jape was later called to mind, " and made the whole matter to be remembered." Primrose moved for Mitchell's life-long imprisonment in the Bass. It is evident that Primrose was Burnet's source, and we may remember that Burnet has described Primrose's word as worthless. At all events, Haltoun wrote, on February 12, that Mitchell was to be remitted to the Justice Court for sentence, . . . loss of his right hand and for- feiture, not perpetual imprisonment.70
On March 2 Mitchell's indictment was drawn up. His move- ments during the Pentland Rising were traced. He was accused of saying to Barscobe and others, after his attempt on Sharp, that he would " make the fire hotter." He then wandered in England, Holland, and Ireland, returned, and was married to his wife by the famous preacher Mr John Welsh. He next took a shop close to the archbishop's house in Edinburgh, and carried pistols ; these he wore when arrested.71 Sharp thus really went in danger. Brought on his signed confession before the Lords of the Justiciary, Mitchell disowned his confession, moved thereto, says Burnet, "by the judge, who hated Sharp " — "a rare judge," writes Dean Swift. Lauderdale and the Council then protested that " they were free," and that their promise of life was annulled. But Mitchell was resolute on his denial of his signed confession (March 25), and was sent to the Bass. On February 16, 1674, he had written a long letter " vindicating his practice " — his pistol practice ? — but Wodrow does
332 EXECUTION OF MITCHELL (1678).
not print it. In January 1676 he was tortured — why was this not done at first ? James VI. was not so dilatory ! Tortured he was, and he denied any share in the Pentland Rising. On January 1678 he was tried ; Primrose had by this time lost his place as Lord Register, and now hated Lauderdale, says Wodrow.72 It was decided that Mitchell's signed confession could not be retracted, but that the promise of safety, if really given, " secured him of life and limb."
Witnesses to whom Mitchell had, later than February 10, 1674, repeated his confession, were brought in ; one of these was the Bishop of Galloway. Rothes gave evidence to the confession, but denied remembering the promise of safety. Haltoun also, despite his letter already cited, remembered nothing of it, nor did Lauderdale, nor did Sharp, who, however, on Mitchell's arrest, promised, he swore, that he would do his best for him, " or else leave him to justice." The accused then asked for the production of the books of Council, which contained the revocation of the promise of life, thus proving that the promise had been made. The Lords of the Justiciary said that the demand came too late, and would not allow the books to be produced.73 Primrose, says Burner, had previously examined the books, knew the facts, told Lauderdale that "many thought there had been a promise," but had the inconceivable wickedness not to let his enemy know that the fact was certain. " He said within himself, ' I have you now.' " 74 " 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 consign their damnation in his hands." It is a most extraordinary fact that the four witnesses, or at least Lauderdale and Rothes, had really forgotten their assurance to Mitchell. Kincardine could not find Haltoun's letters, already cited as positive proof of the promise; and, though he warned Lauderdale that the assurance had been given, as he had not Haltoun's letters, Lauderdale despised his warning. "Poor Mitchell," as Wodrow's editor calls him, was hanged on January 1 8, 1678.*
* On this affair see Fountainhall, in Kirkton, p. 384, note. Fountainhall says that Mitchell left a paper justifying himself by the example of Phineas, to which Knox also appealed, though, says Fountainhall, the doctrine of murder is asserted by no sober Presbyterian.
" Of all the hellish crew let Mitchell rest,
Of all the pack (bad as he was), the best," says a contemporary ballad. The account of Mitchell's business in letters from
THE HIGHLAND HOST (1678). 333
Conventicles, during 1678, had increased, and, at the end of 1677, the bishops had drawn up a paper of advice as to their suppression. A Committee of the Council, with an armed force, should patrol and disarm the west, the soldiers being quartered on the guilty. Meeting-houses of Presbyterians should be pulled down, and landlords obliged to take a bond that their tenants would live orderly. Garrisons should be established.75 The action of Lauderdale went beyond these suggestions of "bad men"; he arranged for a force to come over from Ireland, " if the phanaticks in the west should rise in arms " (Nov. 8, i677).76 He also warned the Highland lords and lairds to have their clans in readiness, Atholl and Perth were chiefly employed, Linlithgow was to command in chief. The Commission for raising the Highlanders was dated Dec. 26, 1677, and contained powers so ample that no spoilers were likely to be brought to justice for their excesses.77 Glen- orchy, then Earl of Caithness (now represented by the House of Breadalbane), with Mar, Murray, and Airlie, mustered his claymores. Nobles were forbidden to leave Scotland without licence — an order disregarded by Hamilton and several others of " The Party " opposed to the administration.78
By the end of January the plaids had occupied Glasgow, nearly 8000 in all, and "the bond" by which landlords were to bring to justice or evict conventicling tenants was offered. Cassilis refused it as illegal and impossible, but the arrangement was so far legal that it was of a kind frequently enforced in the Highlands. It was, however, averred that tenants at a rack rent, in the Low- lands, were not analogous to clansmen bound to services, and that lairds would not be responsible for farmers, as chiefs were for clansmen. The refusal of the bond by the nobles and gentry, beginning with Lord Cassilis, was almost universal. An attempt was then made to constrain them by " law burrows," the Scots equivalent for binding one man or family to keep the peace with another. The king was now to be placed under this form of protection, those who refused being put to the horn, or outlawed.79 But the age for such antiquated engines of the law was over, and western Scotland, gentle or simple, was in a state of " passive resistance." Doubtless
Dr Hickes, who was with Lauderdale, is contemporary, but untrustworthy : he says nothing of the promise of life. See Ellis, 'Original Letters,' series ii. vol. iv. pp. 48-56. Hill Burton argues that Mitchell was mad — an impossible theory. (Hill Burton, vii. p. 206.)
334 CLAVERHOUSE (1678).
Lauderdale hoped for a rising in arms, and was anxious to bring the discontents to a head; but the west, suffering intolerable things from Highland marauders, would neither sign the bond nor rise in arms.80
By the end of February the " Highland Host " was ordered home, laden with the loot of a thousand cottages, seizing horses, plate, wool, linen, and whatever was not too heavy to carry. Conventicles broke out again immediately.81 The hot-headed young men, encouraged by the exiles in Holland, separated from, and, at least in one case, misused Indulged ministers. Meanwhile not only were Hamilton and his party in London, intriguing with members of the English House of Commons, but Atholl and Perth had joined them, and conventicles were frequent in Perthshire. Charles, however, who knew Scotland, averred that the gentry there could guide the peasantry as they pleased. If they raised a rebellion, it would spread to England, a Commonwealth might follow, and Scotland would be a conquered province within the year. " He thought they would not like that well." 82 The party feud of Hamilton and Lauderdale raged in London, but Lauderdale cleverly called a financial convention in Edinburgh while his enemies were in town, and ;£i, 800,000 (Scots) was voted to the king.83 The money was raised by tax, or "cess," and the Presbyterians were once more rent in twain by a feud, fomented from Holland, as to the lawfulness of paying cess for an end which their consciences did not approve of — a newly modelled militia. However, by dint of quartering soldiers on passive resisters, cess came to be paid, and here Wodrow first mentions the exertions, in Galloway, of John Graham of Claverhouse.84
He calls the Cavalier by the name of James in place of John, a singular slip in an historian so minute. John Graham of Claverhouse came of the same blood as the great Montrose, and, on the spindle side, had an ancestor in Robert III. of Scotland. His paternal property, Claverhouse, is now in the spreading suburbs of Dundee. The year of his birth is uncertain, but, as he entered the University of St Andrews in 1665, he was probably rather under than over seventeen at that date, and was a man of about thirty when he first appears in Scottish history (1678). He apparently did not complete his academical course, but, despite his bad spelling, very common among the nobles and gentry of his time, he is credited with proficiency in mathematics and languages. He went young to
THE KIRK RENT ASUNDER (1679). 335
France, where he studied the art of war; and in 1674 entered the Horse Guards of William, Prince of Orange. At the battle of St Neff (August n, 1674), when William was defeated by Conde", Claverhouse distinguished himself. It may be mere tradition which avers that he dismounted, in the retreat, and gave William nis horse, but a rhymer of 1683 sings :
I saw the man who at St Neff did see His conduct, prowess, martial gallantry.
He was the more conspicuous as the only wearer of a white plumach. In 1677 he resigned his commission, perhaps in jealousy of Mackay, over whom he was to win his fatal final victory. William probably recommended Claverhouse to his father-in-law, the king's brother, James, Duke of York ; and the Marquis of Montrose, on the duke's request, offered Claverhouse a commission in the duke's regiment of horse (Feb. 19, 1678). In November, Montrose superseded Atholl as commander of the Royal Horse Guards in Scotland, and gave Claverhouse a troop.
Late in December 1678 he took his post at Dumfries, with some 300 horse. His duties were to disperse conventicles, and arrest outlawed preachers and others. His letters of December 1678, January 1679, attest his anxiety to preserve discipline (endangered by the negligence of the administration in forwarding supplies), and his respect for the law as it stood. "I am forced," he writes on February 8, 1679, "to let the dragoons quarter at large. ... I have visited their quarters, and find it impossible they can subsist there any longer without a locality. What prejudice the king's service may receive by this I know not, but I am sure it is extremely improper to be thus quartered." Government supplied neither money nor fodder, and, despite his military instincts and sense of legal obligations, Claverhouse had to permit quarterings which he could not prevent.85
Meanwhile Wodrow avers that, though sober Presbyterians merely attended conventicles in their desire of " ordinances purely dispensed," and Gospel truth, things were running "to sad heights" in the great armed assemblages of the extremists. The Presbyterian party was rent by the separation from the Indulged, the cess con- troversy, and the controversy about "indefinite" or "unlawful" ordination of preachers. A kind of armed force patrolled the country, protecting huge conventicles, from December 1678 to May 1679. Welsh is said to have preached elsewhere, to smaller
ACTIVE CONVENTICLERS (1679).
gatherings ; but the Government held him the chief fire-brand, and offered ^500 for his apprehension. Two soldiers were brutally murdered, on April 20, while in bed, at night, and the chief ruffian was said to be one Scarlet, a polygamous tinker, who declared that he had taken service, as an armed guard, with the Rev. Mr Welsh, but had been with him for a fortnight only. He was also said to have been one of the guards of the notorious Richard Cameron ; and Robert Hamilton, a bloody fanatic, was credited with a share in the murder of the soldiers. This Hamilton tried to purge a conventicle of Cameron's by dismissing all payers of cess and hearers of the Indulged. He held poor Mitchell's principles about daring to be a Phineas, and murder idolaters. The lawless, distracted, incompetent Government had brought wild men to the front, and, of course, in the anarchy, reivers like Scarlet would find congenial occupation as " soldiers of Christ."
Meanwhile the Government was putting to the horn the flower of the Galloway gentry, — Gordons, Maxwells, and Macdougals, with a brother of the Earl of Galloway. New forces were raised, 5500 horse and foot of the militia were mobilised, and Claverhouse, Johnstoun of Westerhall, Grierson of Lag, and others, were made Sheriffs Depute extraordinary, with powers to disperse armed conventicles, to shoot if necessary, to take prisoners, and to seize the plaids of devotees, as evidence of their identity. The testimony of the miscreant Titus Gates, during the " Popish Plot," was used as a reason for disarming Catholics, and a priest was sent to the Bass. The infamous sham " Popish Plot " had been raging since October 1678, and though the king well knew the crazy absurdity of Oates's and Bedloe's tales, he probably had not the power, certainly had not the courage, to check a people demented by groundless terror. Thus Jesuits and Presbyterians, idolaters and lovers of the pure Gospel, were simultaneously persecuted. The Catholics, however, were not marching about England in armed multitudes, like the Scottish devotees.
To check these the Council, on May i, ordered horse, foot, and dragoons to follow the parties headed by Welsh, Cameron, Kid, and others, "and, in case of resistance, to pursue them to the death." Carmichael of Thurston was also made a Sheriff Depute in Fifeshire, where he gave much offence. Thus the powder was ready, and the match was put to it in May and June 1679. Already (April 21) Claverhouse, in a letter to Lord Linlithgow, had said that Mr
NOTES. 337
Welsh was organising armed rebellion, that the peasants had taken possession of the arms of the militia, and Lord Ross added that they had provided halberts, with a sharp " cleek " for cutting the bridles of the dragoons, while Claverhouse's men had only obsolete and worthless weapons ; such was the fashion of the Scottish War Office.88
NOTES TO CHAPTER XI.
1 Lauderdale Papers, ii. p. n.
2 Mr Mathieson reckons thirty-three, but others put the number above forty Mathieson, ' Politics and Religion,' ii. p. 215.
8 Naphtali, p. 246.
4 Lauderdale Papers, ii. p. 88, Dec. 10, 1667.
8 Burnet, History of his Own Time, i. p. 433.
6 Lauderdale Papers, ii. pp. xiii.-xv.
7 Lauderdale Papers, ii. pp. 11-16.
8 Lauderdale Papers, ii. pp. 11-16.
9 Lauderdale Papers, ii. p. 93 ; also ii. pp. 17, 22, 31, 84.
10 Lauderdale Papers, ii. pp. 52, 53.
11 Wodrow, ii. pp. 88, 89.
12 Lauderdale Papers, ii. pp. 55, 58, 63 ; Wodrow, ii. p. 90.
18 Lauderdale Papers, ii. pp. 59-61.
14 See Scottish Review, July 1884, pp. 20, 21 ; Mr Airy's article on Sharp.
15 Burnet, i. p. 451. " Burnet, i. p. 452.
17 Burnet, i. p. 503. » Burnet, i. pp. 517, 533.
19 Wodrow, ii. p. 108.
20 Lauderdale Papers, ii. p. 109; Wodrow, ii. p. 115.
!1 Wodrow, ii. pp. 115, 116; Kirkton, pp. 277-279; and C. K. Sharpe's note.
22 Wodrow, ii. p. 118; Kirkton, p. 283.
23 Lauderdale Papers, ii. pp. 113, 114.
24 Wodrow, ii. p. 113, note.
25 Kirkton, p. 305 ; note by C. K. Sharpe from ' Prelacy an Idol,' a sermon by Mr Frazer of Brae. x Wodrow, ii. p. 131.
127 Lauderdale Papers, ii. pp. 189-191.
28 See the speech. Wodrow, ii. p. 133.
29 Burnet, i. p. 516 ; Wodrow, ii. p. 135. 80 Kirkton, p. 271, note i.
31 Butler's ' Life of Leighton,' pp. 422-432 (1903).
32 Burnet, i. pp. 518, 519; Wodrow, ii. p. 143.
83 .Wodrow, ii. p. 137, and notes; Act. Parl. Scot., vii. p. 554. 34 Lauderdale Papers, ii. pp. 151-154.
85 Lauderdale Papers, ii. p. 154; Mackenzie's 'History of Scotland,' p. 138.
86 Lauderdale Papers, ii. pp. 166, 167, 172, 175. 37 Mackenzie, p. 163.
33 For his resistance, cf. Lauderdale Papers, ii. pp. 181, 182.
VOL. III. y
338
NOTES.
39 Lauderdale Papers, iii. p. 76.
40 Lauderdale Papers, ii. pp. 179-181.
41 Lauderdale Papers, ii. p. 187.
42 Crichton's Life of Blackader, pp. 144-150.
43 Wodrow, ii. pp. 169, 170. 45 Burnet, i. pp. 536-542.
47 Wodrow, ii. pp. 197-201.
49 Burnet, i. p. 621.
50 Historical MSS. Commission, xi. ; Appendix, vi. ; Hamilton MSS., pp. 148, 149. I owe the knowledge of the passage to Mr Butler's ' Life of Leighton,'
44 Burnet, i. pp. 534, 535. 46 Burnet, i. pp. 547, 548. 48 Wodrow, ii. pp. 201, 202.
pp. 476 (1903).
52 Burnet, i. p. 621.
54 Wodrow, ii. p. 211.
55 Compare Kirkton, pp. 330-336.
56 Lauderdale Papers, ii. p. 241.
58 Lauderdale Papers, iii. pp. 1-35.
59 Lauderdale Papers, iii. pp. 42-44.
60 Lauderdale Papers, iii. pp. 52-59.
61 Wodrow, ii. p. 267 ; Burnet, ii. p. 45. 63 Wodrow, ii. p. 279.
65 Wodrow, ii. pp. 347, 371.
66 See his own account, shabby enough, and that of Sir George Mackenzie,
PP- 3I5-3I7-
67 Mackenzie, p. 325. 69 Wodrow, ii. p. 248.
71 Wodrow, ii. pp. 249-252. 73 Wodrow, ii. p. 470.
78 Lauderdale Papers, iii. 95-98. 77 Wodrow, ii. p. 379, note.
79 Wodrow, ii. pp. 406, 407.
81 Wodrow, ii. pp. 418-421.
82 Lauderdale Papers, iii. pp. 99-102.
83 Wodrow, ii. p. 490.
51 Burnet, i. p. 529.
53 Wodrow, ii. pp. 201-210.
57 Mackenzie, pp. 250-260.
62 Wodrow, ii. pp. 262-266. 64 Burnet, ii. p. 104.
68 Burnet, ii. pp. 127, 128. 70 Wodrow, ii. p. 248. 72 Wodrow, ii. p. 459.
74 Burnet, ii. p. 130.
76 Lauderdale Papers, iii. £
75 Wodrow, ii. p. 381. 80 Wodrow, ii. p. 412.
, . . . 84 Wodrow, ii. p. 492.
85 See Napier's wandering and rhetorical ' Memoirs of Dundee,' ' The Despot's Champion, by a Southern,' 1889, and Mr Barbe's ' Dundee,' dateless, but of 1903.
88 Barbe, pp. 42, 43.
339
CHAPTER XII.
BOTHWELL BRIDGE. 1679-1680.
THE events which are to be recorded in the following chapter are, perhaps, more widely known to the world than any others in Scottisli history. The tragedy of Mary Stuart, and the war and wanderings of Prince Charles, are also popular topics, but the end of Archbishop Sharp, and the sufferings of the Covenanters between 1679-1688, even yet thrill the hearts of the country people in the Lowlands. The memories of what both parties might well call "the killing time" are kept alive by conventicles held at the graves of the sufferers, and are the themes of preachers and of rhetorical popular historians. When one of these tells us that the Argyll executed for treason in 1661 "was baptised into the forgiving ruth (sic) of Calvary, and that the younger brother " (Argyll) " reminds us of the elder and His exceeding grace," we appreciate the firm and enduring hold which the fond legend of the "martyred" marquis exercises. Nor is he alone in this privilege. " Who will deny that they " (the men who passed three-quarters of an hour in shooting, slashing, and galloping a horse over the body of Archbishop Sharp), " knew the secret of our Lord ? " Thus writes the Rev. Mr Alexander Smellie, M.A., in the year of grace 1903.! Against such determined credulity, and such a conception of "the secret of our Lord," criticism is powerless.
The state of society and of parties in the last ten years of the scuffle on which we now enter has been rendered with almost Shakespearian genius in ' Old Mortality.' It is true that Scott made some unexpected slips, such as leaving it to be understood that the liturgy was commonly used in the churches of conformist ministers. But his errors were probably like that voluntary mistake which
340 THE COVENANTING TEMPER.
represents the kettle-drums of Claverhouse sounding on a night march. The kettle-drums did not clash in fact, but they do so with much effect in art. Sir Walter was writing fiction, not history ; he introduced picturesque though " unwarrantable " details ; but his novel gives the colour of the times so truly and so vividly that we need only point to his romance, and say Tolle, Lege I
Torn by intestine controversies and personal disputes, the wander- ing bands of Covenanters were also given to subjective experiences which they could only interpret as of spiritual origin. Even the learned and prayerful Cotton Mather in the next generation was visited by a strange phantasm which entertained him with literary criticism. Men like Peden had similar experiences, angelic or satanic, which culminated in the case of "Muckle John Gibb," a fanatic who ended his career as a tribal medicine-man among the Red Indians. Cold and hunger on the wet moors, mist and clouds, wind and rain, aided the assaults of the Enemy. The Covenanters were also well informed about the diabolical accomplishments of their adversaries, such as Sharp's early prophetic dream, and the appearance of his wraith to two of his servants at St Andrews while he was in Edinburgh, — a case of "bilocation" common in the biographies of the saints. The ' Analecta ' of Wodrow are rich in such anecdotes, though the narrator usually guards himself with "a very sincere Christian told" this or the other circumstance, or some equivalent remark. The wandering preachers of " the honest party," on the other hand, are credited by their admirers with powers of prevision, of healing, of shining in a light not of this world (N rays?), and were even occasionally attended by rappings and knockings. The Covenanters, in defiance of their distaste for good works, and distrust of a righteousness that is but filthy rags, styled many of the brethren "saints," and their records are now and then as rich in miracles as those collected by the Bollandists. Pious men had " great outpourings " ; and a text that haunted the memory was regarded as a supernal monition, borne in upon the spirit. The doctrine of the lawfulness of tyrannicide was cherished by many ; it could be justified by scriptural and classical parallels, by the cases of Phineas, Harmodius, and Aristogiton. Knox had been of this mind, though approval of murderers was certainly not a tenet of the "sober Presbyterians" of 1679. To them the death of an enemy was " a gracious providence," while the murderer need not be a good man. But among the more spiritually minded were many men not
LEGEND OF SHARP (1679). 34!
thoroughly sanctified, it is feared, who avenged personal sufferings with the carnal weapon, and justified themselves by the examples of Phineas or Jehu.
By the faction of Balfour of Kinloch (called Burley) and his kins- man Robert Hamilton (of the House of Preston), as, indeed, by Covenanters of both sexes in general, Sharp was above all men hated. A contemporary 'Life' of Sharp, which is not without hostile bias, tells us that his grandfather was a piper, and suggests that he should give the pipes to a church, " to save the expense of a pair of organs." His wife, a Miss Moncrief of Randerston, is spoken of by our author as " an ordinary swearer, tippler, scold, and prophaner of the Sabbath day." "The treachery of Judas, the apostasy of Julian, and the cruelty of Nero did all concenter in him." 2 " He was by all that knew him taken to be no better than a flat Atheist," says Kirkton, " a man of flagitious life, and not only a debauched palliard, but a cruel murtherer." As a student at St Andrews, Sharp became the father of an illegitimate child, and " strangled it with his own hands." " Many believed him to be a demoniack and a witch." Kirkton was one of the more temperate of his party, and, when he could make these assertions in cold blood, we may guess at the beliefs of the left wing of the Covenant. While Mr Osmund Airy does not press the charges of atheism, witchcraft, diabolical possession, debauchery, murder, and descent from a piper grandfather against this father in God, he shows that, by such precisians as Lauderdale and his gang, Sharp was reckoned "a poltroon of serviceable ability, and a liar whose lies could be reckoned upon. . . . When dirty work had to be done he did it really well." 3
Even on this gentler estimate by the modern historian, Sharp was no admirable character. He was in 1679 more than ever hated. Poor Mitchell accused him of keeping back a clement letter of the king which would have saved bloodshed after the Pentland Rising. It does not quite seem certain that Sharp had the chance to do this, as, according to Gilbert Burnet, his own namesake, Archbishop Burnet of Glasgow, brought down the letter from London, and himself kept it secret till after the executions. But Sharp's evidence at Mitchell's own trial in 1678 bears, Mr Hill Burton says, marks of "crooked prevarication." "There was no assurance of life given him, or any sought by him there" said Sharp, — namely, at the Council bar, — when Mitchell "acknowledged his
342 MURDEROUS PLOTTINGS (1679).
confession made before the Committee of the Council." Sharp spoke only as to that of which he was a personal eye-witness ; he had not been on the Committee of the Council which examined Mitchell.4
Concerning Sharp's own murder on May 2, 1679, there is a need- less controversy as to whether it was or was not the result of a premeditated plot, like the slaughters of Cardinal Beaton and Riccio. If these were pious deeds, as Knox held, why should they not be premeditated ? Are we only to do good by impulse ? The Presby- terian author of the popular ' Hind Let Loose ' vindicates such actions as "lawful, and, as one would think, laudable."5 "Several worthy gentlemen, with some other men of courage and zeal for the cause of God, and the good of the country, executed righteous judgment upon him." 6 Kirkton gives the case for non-premedita- tion away when he says that Sharp received " some warnings " at Kennoway, where he lodged on the morning of his death.7
Among the narratives of the deed, that of James Russell, "in Kettle," one of the doers, who later divided his party by the precise- ness of his opinions, and the niceties of his conscience, is notable. He regarded the use of heathen names of days of the week, Thursday or Wednesday, as sinful, and a ground of separation.* Russell begins with an account of a meeting of the brethren near Rathillet (April 8, 1679), when much was said about recent armed and successful resistance to the troops of the Government in Fife. On April ii Russell and his friends met again, and decided to "take some course " with Carmichael, the Sheriff Depute, who was accused by them of torturing people, and other ferocities. If they found Carmichael in Sharp's house " all present judged duty to hang both over the port." " Other worthy Christians had used means to get him " (Sharp) " upon the road before." The intended double murder was referred to a later meeting (April 1 8). Hackston of Rathillet was to be asked to command the party. He was known to be at enmity with Sharp about a civil lawsuit. On April 29 messengers were sent to collect the opinions "of other ministers and Christians." After more consultations. Rathillet fixed up a paper in the town of Cupar, threatening all who bought the distrained goods of passive resisters to cess, or to summonses before courts. Balfour of Kinloch
* ' Faithful Contendings Displayed,' p. 114 ; Glasgow, 1780. The subscribers to this book are ploughmen, farmers, weavers, shoemakers, and other artisans, who kept up the zeal for the good old cause.
SHARP HACKED TO PIECES (1679). 343
(called Burley), Rathillet's brother-in-law, noted for active resistance, was summoned. On Friday, May 2, twelve men met, Balfour on a bay horse, and Rathillet on a gray; their idea was to kill, or perhaps to terrorise Carmichael. Rathillet and Balfour were the only landed men present. They hunted for but missed Carmichael ; however, Balfour, "having inquired the Lord's mind" recently, thought of the text, " Go on and prosper." This was corroborated by another text, "Go, have I not sent you?" These answers to prayer left no doubt as to the divine purpose.
According to depositions taken after the murder, two days earlier, Mrs Black, wife of the farmer at Baldinny, had kissed one of the conspirators, and requested him to "lay long Leslie," minister of Ceres (St. Cyres), " on the green also," beside Sharp (or Carmichael?). This lady now, says Russell, sent a boy "to ask how they had sped?" The boy returned to Mrs Black, and was sent back by her with the happy news that Sharp's coach was on the road. " Truly, this is of God," they said, and Russell, who had recently enjoyed " more than ordinary outlettings of the spirit," was of the same mind. He had mentioned the spiritual voice which counselled him, to various godly men, who had twice already lain in wait to kill Sharp, so unpremeditated was the deed ! Rathillet, as being at private enmity with the prelate, would not "mar the glory of -the action," and so refused to lead, while Balfour took the command They came within sight of Sharp's coach near Magus, perhaps three miles from St Andrews. They pursued, firing into the coach, where Miss Sharp was sitting with her father, for the space of half a mile. Russell wounded the postilion, who behaved with courage; Russell stopped the horses, pistols were fired into the carriage. Russell and Balfour now made speeches to the unhappy archbishop in the style of the slayers of Cardinal Beaton. Balfour then shot a pistol at him, and Sharp said, " 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?" He and his daughter came out and knelt, Balfour slashed him across the face, Henderson cut off his hand, Balfour rode him down, and Russell, hearing the poor daughter say to her servant that the archbishop yet breathed, "hacked his head to pieces." The servant, Wallace, with extraordinary valour, resisted the plundering of the coach, and was cut across the face by Russell. Another saint then stabbed the dead archbishop, while Rathillet looked on
344 THE MURDERERS (1679).
"with his cloak about his mouth." About half an hour or more was occupied in this glorious action.
One Guillon appears actually to have interceded with the pious doers of the deed ; and he, with Rathillet, were the only members of the company who were taken and hanged. There are many other accounts of the action, but that of Russell is probably not the least valid and accurate. There is also a letter of Sharp's son, William, written on May 10. He asserts that twenty-seven men, in three parties of nine, watched for the archbishop. The archbishop received sixteen wounds ; his daughter was robbed of her money, and cut in the hand as she begged her father's life.8 Wodrow, who possessed Russell's plain and detailed narrative, publishes a different version, at second hand from Guillon. The archbishop is here represented as very cool, refusing to pray, offering money for his life, impervious to bullets, but terrified by cold iron, which cannot be warded off by magic, a belief as old as the scholiast on the Odyssey. A bumble bee, found in a box, not mentioned by Wodrow, was thought to be the prelate's familiar spirit. Yet another account, given by Wodrow, says that Miss Sharp was wounded in the thigh as well as the hand ; William Sharp would have mentioned this had it been true.
Sharp, of course, was no more a martyr than Argyll. He had given much provocation to pious and determined persons, and they took his life. The circumstances of the deed, however, speak either to deliberate prolonged cruelty, or to clumsiness. Russell's narrative, of course, proves "premeditation," — proves several designs to kill Sharp, though the actors did not, it seems, expect to meet, on May 2, the man whom they had purposed to hang over his own gate. A stately monument to Sharp, in the Dutch taste, with a relief repre- senting the pursuit and death, was erected in the Town Kirk of St Andrews, and a cairn stands on the supposed scene of his fall, now covered by a dank plantation.
Judging from the opening part of Russell's narrative, the party of resistance, in Fife, had the better in their skirmishes with the soldiers. In Galloway and Dumfriesshire, Claverhouse had much disturbed conventiclers ; few dared to sleep in their own beds, he wrote ; and he made some prisoners. On April 21 he wrote that he could not send them to Edinburgh at once, because one, an old and infirm minister named Irwin, was " much troubled with the gravel." It is melancholy to think of a soldier employed in catching ministers ; but
THEY RIDE WEST (1679). 345
Claverhouse here does not show the " cold-blooded cruelty " with which he is credited. Of Mr Welsh he speaks in another tone ; "he is accustoming both ends of the country to face the king's forces, and certainly intends to break out into open rebellion."9 On the day of Sharp's murder, Lord Ross, at Lanark, wrote that he had put in irons some soldiers who had been robbing and assailing the country people. One of them had confessed, " and is in effect the Dr Gates in the case." Ross heard vaguely of many charges against his men, but this was the first that had come to his knowledge. On May 5 Ross wrote about the arrest of an enlisted soldier of the preachers ; he had not yet heard of Sharp's death, and had doubts as to whether the enemy would ever appear in force. By May 6 Claverhouse was equally ignorant of what had occurred in Fife, and was riding distances of fifty miles on the hills, to seek men like Cameron, who vanished in the mists.10 No letter from Claverhouse on the murder of Sharp is extant. The Council (May 4) vainly offered 10,000 merks and an indemnity to any of the assassins who should " discover his complices " in a deed repudiated by all Protestant churches. This document was written in the tone of belief in Oates's Popish Plot.11 Wodrow gives examples of lawless imprisonment on suspicion of guilt in Sharp's murder, and of a man shot by a soldier who thought that he was attempting to escape. On May 29 Claverhouse wrote from Falkirk to Lord Linlithgow, that he had news of a huge conventicle of eighteen parishes, to be held on Sunday ; and in seeking for the conventicle he suffered the notable rout of Loudoun Hill, or Drumclog.
We now follow the slayers of Sharp. Their next act was to thank the Lord for " leading them by His Holy Spirit in every step that they stept in that matter," says Russell.12 The Lord replied to one of them, " well done, good and faithful servants." Making north towards Perth, they heard of the shooting of a Christian, young Inchdarnie, by a soldier, as described by Wodrow. In the inquest on the murder of the archbishop at Cupar, it was deponed that papers proving a long conspiracy against Sharp's life were found on young Inchdarnie, and in Russell's chest.*
Skulking through the country, the murderers pretended to be
militiamen, for at Dunblane they were among people who were
sorry for Sharp. They succeeded in reaching the western devotees,
who were up in arms, and on May 29, that impious royal holiday,
* C. K. Sharpe, note to Kirkton, p. 423.
34-6 DRUMCLOG FIGHT (1679).
they, under Robert Hamilton, entered the little ancient burgh of Rutherglen, near Glasgow, burned copies of a number of Acts of the Government at the Cross, and affixed their written testimony.
What followed is told by Claverhouse himself, writing from Glasgow, to which he retired after his defeat. His despatch is soldierlike; he makes no excuses for his disaster. He had left Glasgow on Saturday to inquire into the "insolency" done at Rutherglen; had taken a few prisoners, and a preacher named King ; and then " made a little tour, to see if we could fall upon a conventicle, which we did, little to our own advantage." He found the enemy drawn up in battle array, in a strong position, " to which there was no coming but through mosses and lakes " — probably small lochans. Claverhouse now sent to Ross, at Glasgow, for reinforcements, which looks as if he was outnumbered ; but he was beaten before they came.13 There were four battalions of foot, with fusils and pitchforks, and three squadrons of horse. He had the better of some preliminary skirmishes, when the enemy advanced and attacked the foot in the first line. The conventiclers stood a discharge at ten paces, and "came to the shock," killing "the Cornet Mr Crawford and Captain Bleir," and Claverhouse's sorrel was stabbed with a pitchfork. " His guts hung out half an ell, and yet he carried me off a mile, which so discouraged our men that they sustained not the shock, but fell into disorder." The Covenanting horse then pursued, and though "I saved the standards," Claverhouse lost a considerable number of men, and fled to Glasgow. "The country was flocking to them from all hands. This may be counted the beginning of the rebellion in my opinion. My lord, I am so wearied, and so sleepy, that I have written this very confusedly." l4 So confusedly, that he seems to represent himself as having discouraged his men by his own flight !
However candid, Claverhouse cannot perhaps have meant to convey this impression. He does credit the enemy with courage very remarkable, above all in undisciplined forces ; infantry charging dismounted dragoons, receiving a volley at ten paces, and coming resolutely "to the shock." As to the numbers on his own side, he says nothing, nor can we estimate certainly the four battalions and three squadrons of the enemy. An official account puts them at about 600, and Claverhouse's command at "a few and small number." 15 Russell makes the Covenanting forces but fifty horse, and a hundred and fifty foot, with pitchforks and halberts, with "a
PISTOLING PRISONERS (1679). 347
few" from Lesmahagow. Claverhouse, says Russell, had a troop of horse and two companies of dragoons, then mounted infantry. He declares that Claverhouse gave the word "No quarter"; it certainly was given on Russell's side. Rathillet, Hamilton, Balfour, and four others commanded the horse (thus fifty horsemen had seven or eight commanders), and the brave Cleland, who fell later in the arms of victory at Dunkeld, with others led the foot. It appears, from Russell, that after rather tame skirmishes — Claverhouse could not charge with his horse, on account of a wide ditch — the Covenanting foot crossed it and came to the shock, as in Claverhouse's own despatch, and the horse followed and pursued. The shooting on the royal side was very bad — only six or seven of the enemy were slain ; of the Royalists thirty-six died, and Hamilton, who had given the word " No quarter," pistoled one or two prisoners, "and I bless the Lord for it to this day," he adds.16 He reckons the giving of quarter " one of our first steppings aside," and quotes the usual texts about Samuel butchering Agag, after he had been received to quarter. Wodrow "cannot determine" whether Hamilton played the bloody part of which he boasts.* The Rev. Dr M'Crie says that Hamilton "appears to have been a pious man and of good intentions, but of narrow views, severe in his temper." l7 By nine o'clock at night Claverhouse's remnant of fugitives had joined Lord Ross at Glasgow. Ross barricaded the streets and kept half of his force under arms.18 On Tuesday the Covenanters attacked the town in two detachments, at two points ; they were repulsed.19 On Wednesday Linlithgow bade Ross retire to Stirling, as the Covenanters were coming together in great force, and he himself, with all his command in Edinburgh, joined Ross at Larbert on Thursday.20 Their united forces were about 1800, without guns. They moved on Glasgow, but got intelligence that the enemy had occupied the town with about 7000 men. Linlithgow could not venture on an attack involving street fighting at such odds, and retired to Stirling, and thence, by order of the Council, to Edinburgh.21 Wodrow says that he " finds some papers " averring that, after the repulse of the Covenanters at Glasgow, Claverhouse gave orders that dogs should eat their dead which lay unburied. Lord Ross, however, on the day of the affair, says that he can give no account of the losses of the enemy, " the town's people hurled
* Wodrow, iii. p. 70. Mr Barb£, on grounds which seem good, estimates Claverhouse's command at about 180 men (' Dundee,' p. 49).
QUARRELS OF THE COVENANTERS (1679).
their bodies so quickly off the street."22 Wodrow continues his tale of dishonoured dead ; his authority, " some papers," is perhaps not so good as that of Ross's letter.
Meanwhile, the Council was raising the militia, and on June 1 1 Lauderdale wrote from London that the king was sending several regiments of horse and foot under the Duke of Monmouth, then the Protestant hero of an England still terrified by the fables of Titus Gates, Prance, Dugdale, and Bedloe, these imaginative reporters of Catholic conspiracies.23 Dalziel was to act under Monmouth. The Covenanters, for their part, vainly appealed for aid to the Macdonalds and Macleans, who protest that they abhor the rebels, and are falsely maligned by Argyll.24 At Glasgow, Hamilton, and in their leaguers about that district, the gathered Covenanters were quarrelling about their points of schism, such as separation from the Indulged, paying cess, acknowledging the civil courts, and so forth. Their numbers, according to Russell, were about 6000, on June 6, when Barscobe came to them at Glasgow, and went off to raise Galloway. Robert Hamilton says that his own death was plotted by some of Welsh's " rotten-hearted " party, who met at the clachan of Dairy, in the Glen Kens ; and this appears to reflect on Barscobe, who, again, is said, erroneously, to have been murdered by Hamilton's faction.25 It is sad to have to record these dissensions of excellent men, but when a career of pious murder is once entered upon, doubtless it is difficult to know where to stop.
" One party preached," says Russell, " against all the defections and encroachments upon the prerogatives of Jesus Christ." This, naturally, was the party headed by the men who had mangled and ridden up and down over Sharp, and had shot prisoners in cold blood after Drumclog. Opposed to these defenders of the prerogatives of Jesus Christ, " Mr Welsh and his party preached up the subjects' allegiance to the magistrate." We may hope that Russell exaggerates this deplorable defection. Welsh's armed con- tingent from Carrick misbehaved "in the houses of the godly, so that troopers and soldiers did not exceed them." In short, councils of war were occupied solely with text-splitting and squabbling, and minister ousted minister from the preaching place. All these things the earnest Russell recounts with perfect solemnity, and we see that " the rotten-hearted party " of Welsh wanted a free Parliament and a General Assembly, while the godly party wanted — who knows
WELSHITES AND HAMILTONIANS (1679). 349
what ? " The prerogatives of Jesus Christ " are somewhat indefinite, but they appear to be inconsistent with Welsh's ideal — "allegiance to the magistrate," if Welsh really preached that subversive doctrine. "The Covenanters," a modern divine assures us, "witnessed even with their blood " (and with that of other people) " for the Crown Rights of Christ" 26
The remark may be true of some Covenanters, namely of the party of the murderers and of Hamilton, Cargill and Cameron, and their associates ; but Russell (who, as a murderer, ought to be a good authority) hardly seems to think that it is true of Welsh, and those who preached up "allegiance to the magistrate." However these points may be decided, the Welsh party declared that the Hamilton party were asserting "supremacy" as the Crown did, and were encroaching on the " ministerial authority," and dictating the topics of sermons. Meanwhile, the Hamilton party accused the Welsh party of bad faith in the proclamation of a document styled "the Hamilton testimony," not in full accord with the Rutherglen testi- mony. It is a mistake to suppose that the feud was between the Indulged and Russell's party ; it was between Russell's party, and that of Welsh, who did not reckon the Indulged mere idolaters.
If the Welshites were right, the Hamiltonians were as bad as James I. or Charles II., and were claiming for themselves the " Crown Rights of Christ " ; while, if the faction led by the Magus Moor murderers was correct in its contention, the Welshites were betraying the Crown Rights of Christ to the magistrate. The sym- pathy of modern Presbyterian divines who write history appears, on the whole, to be with the good men headed by Russell, Balfour, Hamilton, and Richard Cameron, who seems to have been in Holland at the moment of these faithful contendings.27 There can be little doubt that if the armed brethren of both parties had now been left unmolested by persecution, there would have been a Presbyterian Armageddon. Ure, of Welsh's party, writes that Hamilton's men said " they would sheathe their swords as soon in them that owned the Indulgence as they would do in many of the Malignants." 28 The Welshites declined to disown " the king's interest," saying that the reputation of Scotland had already suffered enough in the matter of the treatment of Charles I.29 The quarrels of the two factions, in which the Galloway men sided with Ure and Welsh, were very hot.
But the bloodhounds of Claverhouse and Montrose, the minions
350 MONMOUTH'S ARRIVAL (1679).
of a profligate tyrant, with the militia and royal forces, did not leave the devotees to exterminate each other undisturbed, or merely to break up camp, and retire each party to its own place. The unhappy divisions of these days ramified into many subsections, so that about ten species of Presbyterians were later reckoned in Scot- land. To Wodrow, Patrick Walker seemed "wild"; to Patrick Walker, John Gibb seemed "wild" ; while Dissenters, about 1720, freely told Patrick, adorer of Cameron and Renwick as he was, that they looked on him as " a vile old apostate." *
Despite their differences, the brethren are said to have delivered, in Glasgow, an emphatic testimony against the errors of Prelacy, destroying the goods of the archbishop, pulling down the ornaments of the Cathedral, and defacing monuments. They are also said to have dug up the corpses of some children of the Bishop of Argyll, in his chapel, run swords through them, and left them there.30 If this be true, the deeds were probably done to avenge alleged insults to the bodies of the Covenanters who fell in the attack on Glasgow.
Actions of this kind were apt to excite the fury of persecutors.
While the brethren were brawling among themselves and quarrelling about the selection of officers, Monmouth was moving slowly westwards with the royal forces. Partly he was delayed by the inefficient commissariat ; partly, perhaps, he wished to let the Covenanters, in Prince Bismarck's phrase, " stew in their own juice." On Saturday, June 2 1, the Welshites were in a majority, but Rathillet and Hamilton had the advantage of being more ferocious.31 The Welshites were for electing the most capable men as officers, the Hamiltonians were for a purging of the less orthodox, as before Dunbar. The leaders of Hamilton's faction left the gathering; the others drafted an address to Monmouth, which Hamilton says that he signed but did not read. They had been driven to arms in self-defence, they wrote, "by unavoidable necessity." They rejoice in the arrival of the princely and clement Monmouth (much relied on by Protestants while Jesuits and innocent men, like Hill, Berry, and Green were being hanged in England). They asked leave to send in a deputa-
* To those who have not time to read all the pamphlets of the Kirk's intestine feuds, ' Six Saints of the Covenant,' edited by Dr Hay Fleming, may be recommended (Hodder and Stoughton, London, 1901). This is an edition of the works of Patrick Walker, the original of Davie Deans, in ' The Heart of Midlothian.' Amusing as Davie is, the excellent Patrick is more copiously en- tertaining. The notes of Dr Hay Fleming are an inexhaustible treasure of Covenanting lore.
DEPUTATION TO MONMOUTH (1679). 351
tion. Next day, Sunday, Monmouth was at Bothwell, his patrols being close to the bridge over Clyde. Above the bridge the river flows between the flats, called " haughs " in Scotland, but the sides of the stream are steep and craggy, and the water is narrow, deep, and swift where the bridge crosses.82
Monmouth's choice to advance across this bridge is singular, for he was advised to pass by an unguarded ford, about a mile to the left of the Covenanters' position. He might have sent a force to contain them at the bridge, and out -flanked them by way of the ford, if his numbers were sufficient.33 Had they entrenched themselves and been united — for their courage is beyond cavil, — the Covenanters might at least have held their own. Their deputation was admitted to see Monmouth, who had gracious manners and was as beautiful as Claverhouse. They asked, " it seems," for a free Parliament and General Assembly — freedom consisting in no " clogs of oaths and declarations," — and for an in- demnity to all " who are or have been in arms." ** This modest demand included the pardon of the slayers of Sharp and the victors of Drumclog, which, perhaps, no Government could possibly have granted. Monmouth, however, " reckoned their desires reasonable " (which they were not) "and just," but could offer no terms but unconditional surrender. They must lay down their arms before he would treat with them. They had half an hour to consider in, and their brawls were renewed. The party led by the murderers certainly could not accept of the terms. For what followed, the discrepant accounts of Russell, the murderer, and Ure, of Welsh's faction, must be studied.
In the front of Monmouth's force were four companies of dragoons, the Royal Guards, in which Claverhouse was a captain, " and Duke William's troop " ; and there was a slight skirmish before the deputation crossed.35 Russell avers that before the deputation crossed to see Monmouth, Barscobe, with six troops of horse and some footmen (doubtless from Galloway), "was commanded to go over and fight, but refused absolutely." A feud between Barscobe, the beginner of the Pentland Rising, and Hamilton seems to have arisen out of the disputes of the day. Russell places a skirmish before the going of the deputation to Monmouth. Both he and Ure agree that, when the deputation returned, an artillery duel began, Rathillet, says Russell, and many officers being at the bridge. Ure says no word of Rathillet, but agrees with Russell that the
352 "ALL RAN AWAY" (1679).
Covenanting gun drove off the Royalist gunners, and thinks that if any one had given orders to charge, Monmouth's artillery might have been taken. No officer gave any orders ; the cannonade was renewed, and 500 of the royal infantry advanced to the bridge, which was narrow, with a central gate tower, and was commanded, on the Covenanting side, by houses and enclosures with walls. Ure says that Lord Linlithgow's son, with 300 foot, crossed the bridge, and that he himself rallied his own men and drove the enemy back beyond the gate tower. Ure lost three men, and retreated up the moor to the main body. " In all this hot dispute our commanders never owned us."
Russell makes Rathillet the last man to retreat from the bridge. Each faction, Ure for the Welshites, Hamilton for his own side, accuses the other of cowardice, treachery, or both. Russell, who puts the Royalists at 2300 ("being called 2300, foot and horse in all") and the Covenanters at 5000 to 6000 (Ure says 4000 foot, 2000 horse), thinks that the brethren had a good oppor- tunity at the opening of the fight, while the king's forces were on the march and the guns were ill supported. He says that the Galloway men, Hamilton's enemies, were beating a drum for a parley. Ure, of course, gives an opposite account ; and it is only certain that " all presently ran away," and, according to Ure, the flight of the murderer Balfour, with his horse, troubled the foot — but Hamilton denies this.36 " What a sorrow's crown of sorrow it all is ! " ejaculates Mr Alexander Smellie, who differs from Kirk ton and Ure in making the royal forces much the more numerous.37 " When we fled there was not ten men killed of us all," says Ure, after eight hours of " fighting " ! 38 It is only clear that the bridge, barricaded as it was, was very ill defended ; that the Covenanting horse (2000) " left the foot to the mercy of our army, who pursued them with all diligence and zeal, and have killed some hundreds of them, and made many hundred prisoners," says the Privy Council (June 22).39 They put the rebels at " near seven thousand."
The pursuit was a mere massacre of peasants, foot-soldiers ill- armed, of whom the more part knew not, perhaps, wherefore they had come together. If the sword of Claverhouse was busy in avenging a somewhat problematical kinsman slain at Drumclog, we have no evidence to that effect. The ferocity of the pursuit has been partly attributed to the fact, as stated by Mr Hill Burton, that Hamilton took no interest in the work, " except in the raising of a gigantic gibbet, with a few cart loads of rope piled round
"THE BLUIDIE BANNER" (1679). 353
it." *° The erection of this gibbet rests partly on the evidence of Captain Crichton, or Creighton, who was present with the king's forces, but mentions only one cartful of new ropes. A diary of the day calls it "an extraordinar great gallowes that would hang 30 or 36 persons."41 A poem of 1681 also avers that the Covenanters " prepared " a gallows for their captives, whereas Blackader's Memoirs speak of "a gallows which stood there," but both the cavalier Crichton and the persecuted Blackader agree that the captured rebels were guarded at that point. If Crichton himself saw the " cartful of new ropes," it is vain to contend, like Dr M'Crie, and the editor of Blackader, that the gallows was merely a casual gibbet, which chanced to be standing on the scene. It is not the gallows itself, but the new ropes that are important. The poet of 1 68 1 does not say that the rebels had erected, but that they had " prepared " the engine of the law.42
Another of the little points on which Cavalier and Covenanting historians do battle is "The Bluidie Banner." In 1859 Mr James Drummond examined and copied an old banner, which its old owners declared to have been carried at Drumclog and Bothwell Bridge. They gave its provenance, and its pedigree, which really seems fairly probable in itself. The banner was inscribed in Hebrew characters,
JEHOVAH NISSI
FOR CHRIST AND HIS TRUTHS
NO QUARTERS FOR YE ACTIVE ENIMIES OF YE COVENANT.
The last words were in red letters.*
The Covenanting foot fled towards Hamilton; the horse, with Robert Hamilton, Russell, and Barscobe, sped to Cumlock, and, next day, broke up, " their heats and debates being still the more." ** Yet Hamilton, Russell, and Balfour made for Earlstoun, in the Glen Kens, and Barscobe entertained some of the party at "Kenmure town," now probably New Galloway. They skulked
* Dr Hay Fleming proves that a tiny set of fanatics, in 1723, had such a banner, but we do not know whether this was the banner copied by Mr Drummond in 1859, or whether the fanatics of 1723 had borrowed a genuine flag of Bothwell Bridge from its owners, or had copied their banner from such an authentic piece, or whether there was no such standard in 1679, the banner seen by Mr Drummond being, in that case, the manufacture of the silly sect of 1723. Hay Fleming, 'Saints of the Covenant,' ii. pp. 215-217; Drummond in ' Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland,' iii. pp. 253-258. VOL. III. Z
354 AFTER THE BATTLE (1679).
about Minnigaff, and Castle Stewart, listening to preachers, till news arrived, a week after the fight, " that Clavers was come." Then it was "time for us to go." "All, being so affrighted, dismissed." The Galloway men deserted the murderers from Fife, and, the Rev. Mr Welsh pressing for giving battle again, they rode to meet him. But " Clavers was pursuing and within a mile," and the gentry of Carrick wrote to Welsh to say that they would abandon him if he kept company with the assassins.
Thenceforth they rambled vaguely, and had many narrow escapes. Balfour and Hamilton fled to Holland ; Rathillet stayed to dree his terrible weird. Cameron soon returned from Holland, where he seems to have been ordained by M'Ward and other clerical exiles, who, for many years, had spurred on the extremists at home. With Cargill, Cameron and Rathillet were to " lift up the standard " that fell when the Whigs ran away from Bothwell Bridge, and young Renwick was to follow in their steps. But there was no longer a semblance of an united Kirk. The majority of Presbyterians had not disowned monarchy ; they were coming round to the frame of mind in which they soon consented to let the Covenants be a dead letter; and, after that, peace was established in Scotland. The persecuted Episcopalians, after 1689, only fought for their faith when they fought for their king.
The action of Government, after the rout of Bothwell, was relatively lenient, and the cruelties were mainly due rather to the careless inefficiency than to the deliberate ferocity of the adminis- tration. Wodrow says, to be sure, that a Major White, Claverhouse, " and others of their cruel temper," wished Monmouth to kill many of the prisoners, plunder the west, and burn Hamilton, Glasgow, and Strathaven. Tom Dalziel, who was not present at Bothwell rout, may not have disapproved of "Thorough," but Wodrow cites no evidence for his tale. Doubtless the troops seized horses and arms, but Law, the Covenanting author of the Memorials, says that the Covenanters, after Drumclog, did precisely the same thing. The military also harassed all and sundry on suspicion of having been at Bothwell, with an eye to their share of the fines. We may conceive that the lesser gentry were always exposed to the visits of men like Frank Bothwell at Milnwood, in 'Old Mortality,' in that scene which might fire the blood of a coward. In the hunt for the murderers, whom no man, woman, or child would betray, it is highly probable that the soldiers applied torture, just as Albemarle's
PUNISHMENT OF THE REBELS (1679). 355
officers did to the Highlanders when Prince Charles was a fugitive.44 Wodrow gives examples of such atrocities by "the soldiers under Claverhouse," but does not say that Claverhouse was present, which he would do if he could ; and only quotes vaguely " instances in his hands." In fact he relies, it seems, on tradition, and gives no vouchers for cases " well vouched and certain." * We may be certain that the country endured the brutal excesses of a soldiery not found by the Government in proper quarters and supplies, and given to rob wherever they had the chance.
As to the prisoners, the king, on June 29, gave the Council leave to torture such of them as might possess valuable information. Three or four hundred were to be banished to the colonies, as was practised by the Parliament in the Civil War. The rest might be dismissed on signing a promise not to take arms again ; if they attended conventicles their pardon dropped. There was no mas- sacre of captives, as after Philiphaugh, and at Dunaverty.45 Two preachers, Kid and King, were hanged on the day, August 14, when an indemnity (London, July 27) was published. In this the king spoke of those who "poisoned our people with principles inconsistent with true piety and all human society, as well as with our royal government." The ideas of the extremists, in fact, were inconsistent "with human society." With exceptions, the indemnity covered all who would promise to live peaceably.46 Fifteen prisoners were sentenced to death ; all but two were persuaded by the Rev. Mr Jamison, deputed by "an Erastian meeting of ministers," to sign the bond of peaceable behaviour.47 The mass of prisoners, some twelve or thirteen hundred, were warded "in the inner Grey- friars Churchyard," without shelter, till huts were erected in winter. Wodrow describes the guards as brutal and licentious. About eight hundred signed the bond, and were released ; about a hundred escaped by simply climbing the wall, or putting on women's clothes in the huts and walking out. Many of those who signed the bond actually argued, so Wodrow "finds it said," that "their rising was not
* "Multitudes of instances, once flagrant, are now at this distance lost; not a few of them were never distinctly known ..." (Wodrow, iii. pp. 120-123). An example of the worst is cited by Wodrow's editor from Sergeant Nisbet's Diary, iii. p. 122, note. The present writer, in childhood, had a Cameronian nurse, who assured him that a conventicle was held beside a burn in Selkirkshire, that Claverhouse occupied the brae above, and fired into the crowd, and that the bones of the Covenanters were still on the scene. I cannot find historical mention of this ill-sentinelled conventicle in a hollow.
356 CAMERON AND THE DUKE OF YORK (1679).
against his Majesty's authority, and consequently that it did not bind them up from any such appearance when occasion offered again."
What Wodrow "finds said" is not always evidence, but, if his story be true, we must suppose that, as Gates swore, wicked Jesuits had been at work in Scotland. Candid Presbyterian minds could not surely be so " Jesuitical " ! 48 Of the prisoners who would not sign, and professedly thought "killing no murder" in the case of an archbishop, about two hundred were drowned when their ship was wrecked off the Orkneys.49 The skipper is said to have been a Papist, the crew monsters of cruelty. Blackader tried to prevail on the prisoners not to sign the bond to live peaceably ; " that foul compliance," says Patrick Walker. Mr Blackader was soon after- wards taken and sent to the Bass, where the prisoners " paid at a twopenny rate for a glass of the halfpenny ale." 50 Here he died in 1686. In November five recalcitrant prisoners were hanged on Magus Moor ; not that they had been engaged in Sharp's murder — the slayers could not be caught. A rude monument to their memories is still reverently regarded.*
After these punishments and some forfeitures (Claverhouse re- ceived, but did not much enjoy, the estate of Macdowall of Freuch), the Kirk and people might have awaited quietly the abdication of James II. But M'Ward, the exiled preacher, who " had the wyte of all the sorrows of Scotland " in these days, with others, consecrated Richard Cameron in Holland. It seems that Cameron returned in the autumn of 1679, bidden by M'Ward to raise the fallen standard, and prophetically warned that his own head should fall.51 While Cameron was fanning the embers of revolt, Monmouth fell from power, when the Duke of York hurried to the sick-bed of the king. The duke may or may not have been in part responsible for the failure of a new Indulgence, the third granted under Monmouth's influence. On November 24, 1679, ^e was welcomed at Holyrood, and took his seat on the Council, being dispensed from taking the oaths. Cameron, who had no preacher ally save the elderly Cargill, held fasts on account of the duke's arrival, being urged thereto by letters from M'Ward, safe in Holland. The Duke of Hamilton and his party had again failed to oust Lauderdale; the Presbyterians generally were inclined to be quiet, but Cameron preached sermons
* " I do not know of any cairn where the archbishop was killed, but I do know one to the holy men that killed him," said a farmer's wife to a lady who asked about Sharp's cairn.
CAMERON'S PROPHECIES (1679). 357
in favour of renewed civil war. Some passages appear to recommend assassination. "Are there none to execute judgment upon these wicked men, who are both treacherous and tyrannical. . . . And, if it be done, we cannot but justify the deed, and such as are to be commended for it, as Jael was." On the other hand, Cameron bade hearers, if asked whether such or such a fugitive was in the house, to " beware of lying on any account." 62 The Rev. Henry Erskine was composing a sermon against Cameron (who was most distasteful to peaceful Presbyterians), but he heard a voice saying "Audi! Audi I" (Hear); '•''Audi est" says Mr Erskine, meaning " Hear it is ! " when the divine voice, dropping into the vernacular, remarked, " Beware of calling Cameron's words vain." Patrick Walker records this hallucination at second hand.53
Cameron is credited with prophecies less veridical than those of Jeanne d'Arc. The faithful were "to get a right Reformation." By their own confession they got nothing of the kind. In all Ayr- shire and Clydesdale a man was to ride a day without seeing a smoking chimney before "the right Reformation" came. These judgments and mercies might be seen by some of the hearers. Cameron, like Knox, according to Lethington, was "a drivelling prophet," though he made the very easy prediction that after Charles I. there should not be a Stuart crowned in Scotland. It then seemed that the Act of Exclusion of the Duke of York would pass, one day or another, and the duke had no son. Cameron said that " he was assured the Lord would set up a standard against Antichrist that would go to the gates of Rome and burn it with fire, and that ' Blood ! ' should be their sign, and ' No Quarters ' their word, and earnestly wished that it might first begin in Scotland." M So Patrick Walker lovingly declares, but Cameron was quite mistaken in his assurance from the Lord. He was not a genuine Highlander, but the son of a Falkland tradesman ; and he had not the second sight. His love of blood and "no quarter" is characteristic of the extreme left of the Covenanters. Such was this " Saint of the Covenant." We are told that he and men like him fought for " freedom of con- science." His ideal, on the other hand, was to persecute people whose consciences differed from his, beginning in Scotland, and carrying fire and blood and the banner of " No Quarters " to the gates of Rome. This was a vast plan of campaign, and the means were inadequate.
Cargill and one Henry Hall of Haughhead (traditionally said to
358 AIRS MOSS (1680).
have owned "The Bluidie Banner ") used to skulk and conspire near Queensferry. One of the preachers whom these men were wont to threaten, boycott, and insult, gave information. Hall was wounded mortally in a scuffle with the governor of Blackness ; old Cargill escaped, and Hall died as he was being conveyed to Edinburgh (June 3, i68o).55 In his pocket was found a long unsigned "testi- mony," or draft of a testimony, known as the " Queensferry Paper " or "New Covenant." The king and monarchy, according to this docu- ment, were to be abjured, a Commonwealth on Mosaic principles was to be established. Presbyterianism of the strictest kind (as in 1592, and 1638, or more so) "is the only right government of the Church, and ought to be rightly exercised, not after the carnal manner by a plurality of votes. . . ." This appears to mean that the Protesters, though in a minority, and not the Resolutioners, had a right to govern the Kirk, as being more godly. The banders were to destroy " all relics of idolatry and superstition," and " exercise righteous judgment " on all Malignants, that is, Royalists. The king, and all preachers not of their own sort, these men disown, and so forth.56
On June 22 Cameron and twenty mounted men of his way of thinking rode into Sanquhar, in Dumfriesshire, and promulgated a manifesto, in which they defied and disowned the king and the Hamilton Declaration, issued by Welsh's party before Bothwell Bridge.57 If we may believe Row, the son-in-law and biographer of the celebrated Covenanter, Mr Blair, Cameron's faction meant to kill Millar and Veitch, two Indulged ministers. One of the party warned Millar, who informed Sir James Cochrane, later prominent in Argyll's rising in 1685. Dalziel, who now commanded in Scotland, sent Bruce of Earlshall on the track of Cameron ; there was a sharp skirmish at Airs Moss; Richard Cameron and his brother Michael fought with as much determination as the Gunpowder Plot conspirators, and, happily for themselves, died in battle. Hackston of Rathillet was taken, and he, who had looked on while an old man was slowly mangled to death before his daughter's eyes, perished by the same cruel English method of execution as the captives of Carlisle and Culloden in I746.58 "They gave us all testimony of brave resolute men," says the unhappy Rathillet, speaking of his opponents. That testimony they certainly deserved ; but the majority of the milder Presbyterian party regarded these martyrs in the spirit of Row, Blair's biographer. They and their successors were " the
THE SWEET SINGERS. 359
Remnant." The Kirk at large held aloof from them ; they formed " Societies " with an organisation of their own ; and, of course, were much disgusted by the "Erastian" settlement, under an uncovenanted king, William III., which followed the Revolution of 1688. Such were the people who came to be called Cameronians, a title which, in the next generation, was refracted on to the general mass of all shades of Presbyterians assembled at Bothwell Bridge.
It is not to be supposed that all Cameronians even in "The Societies" went all lengths with the framers of the crazy Queensferry Paper, whoever they may have been. To found a non-democratic hierocratic republic, in which carnal plurality of votes was not to decide questions, to carry the war of " No Quarters " from Scotland to the heart of Italy (as Walker says that Cameron desired), can scarcely have been the ambition of all Cameronians. Wodrow tries to split hairs about the authorship and authority of the Queensferry Paper, and tells us that the Cameronians and Society people them- selves " did not pretend to vindicate every expression . . . yea, afterwards, in some of their public papers, they expressly disown it, in as far as it does anyway import any purpose of assuming to themselves a magistratical authority."69 However, in 1684 a number of sufferers for the Queensferry Paper were exiled to America, and they very frankly write, " We adhere to the eight articles of the New Covenant drawn by Mr Donald Cargill, and taken of the worthy Henry Hall at the Kueens-ferrie, and does own the samin in all things as is agreeable to the Word of God."60
If we take the liberty to call the ideas of Cameron and Cargill delirious delusions, we only use the brotherly freedom which their disciple, Patrick Walker, employs in the case of another Saint of the Covenant, Meikle John Gibb. Mr. Gibb, indeed, was not even dubiously ordained, being a mariner, yet "a great professor." He drew about twenty-six women and three men after him, " the greater part of them serious, exercised, tender, zealous, gracious souls." Their nonconformist consciences rebelled against " all Crown dues, excise, and customs," wherefore they consistently abstained from " ale, tobacco, and other fool things." They retired to the Pentlands " to see the smoke and utter ruin of the sinful bloody city Edinburgh." Here they confessed to each other " sins that the world had not heard of," which argues extreme originality in vice. As they skulked in a great moss called The Deer Slunk, Mr Cargill visited them, though Gibb said that they did much better without
360 MEIKLE JOHN GIBB (1681).
ministers. Gibb carried pistols to use on husbands who came seeking their gracious exercised wives.
Cargill decided that Gibb was " an incarnate devil," for Gibb had outgone even Cargill. When he and his ladies were taken, the Duke of York " rejoiced," and, being set at liberty again, Gibb burned a Bible, apparently because the versified psalms are not " inspired," a point about which doubt is impossible. On the night before, a light shone round Gibb and another man as they prayed in the moss ; just as " a strange light surrounded " Mr Welsh while he walked in the dark. Mr Gibb, like many another sufferer, was sent to America, where, says Walker, " he was much admired by the heathen for his familiar converse with the devil bodily," — in fact, he seems to have become a Joss-a-keed, or medicine man, or was so held and reputed.61 Mr Gibb has been accused of taking freedoms with his flock not unusual among prophets; he was also even more exclusive than Cameron and Cargill, holding aloof from them, as they did from the Indulged. As to burning the Bible, that was a mere protest against the human admixture of the Table of Contents, and the rhymed psalms. Walker does not charge Gibb with immoral license, and the admiration of the heathen for Gibb may have been misunderstood. On the whole, Gibb only went a little further than the other saints, being less educated than they in mere book-learning. His " strong delusions," as Wodrow calls them, were not more delusive than " the assurances from the Lord " which Cameron uttered in his prophecies, according to his admirer Walker. On Gibb's showing, it only "seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to us to take out of our Bibles the psalms in metre." 62 Gibb denounced " making a tyrant patron of the Church," as Cameron and Cargill did. He also, most commendably, objected to " putting horrid pictures " into illustrated Bibles. He denounced the preachers for " making their books their God and their leader," " and their saying that learning is essential of a minister, without grace."68 Gibb was a " Dopper": the preachers did not go far enough for him, as Welsh did not go far enough for Cargill, and Wodrow did not go far enough for Walker, and Walker did not go far enough for the brethren who called him " a vile old apostate."
Meanwhile the majority of Presbyterians were wearying of all these excesses. Nearly a century of religious violences had fatigued the country, and the day of a compromise between Kirk and State was approaching.
NOTES. 36 *
NOTES TO CHAPTER XII.
1 ' Men of the Covenant,' by Alexander Smellie, M.A., pp. 66, 243.
2 See elegant extracts by C. K. Sharpe, in Kirkton, p. 82, note. 8 ' Scottish Review,' iv. pp. 29-30.
4 ' State Trials,' vi. 1257 ; Hill Burton, vii. p. 203.
6 ' Hind Let Loose,' p. 635 ; Wodrow, iii. p. 48, note.
6 ' Hind Let Loose,' p. 123. 7 Kirkton, p. 83.
8 Narrative of Russell, and letter, in Kirkton.
9 ' Memoirs of Dundee,' Napier, ii. 202. 10 Napier, ii. pp. 203-207. 11 Wodrow, iii. p. 52, note. 12 Kirkton, p. 422
13 Lauderdale Papers, iii. p. 169. 14 Napier, ii. pp. 221-223.
15 M'Crie, ' Veitch and Brysson,' p. 441.
16 Hamilton's letter of Dec. 7, 1685 ; ' Faithful Contendings Displayed,' p. 201.
17 ' Veitch and Brysson,' p. 452. 18 Napier, ii. p. 220.
19 Ross to Linlithgow, June 2 (Lauderdale Papers, iii. p. 166).
20 Cf. Wodrow, iii. pp. 83, 84.
21 Linlithgow's Account, Lauderdale Papers, iii. pp. 167-170.
22 Lauderdale Papers, iii. p. 166 ; Wodrow, iii. p. 71.
23 Wodrow, iii. pp. 86, 87.
24 The petition of the loyal clans is published by Wodrow, iii. p. 88, who, of course, discredits their veracity.
25 ' Faithful Contendings,' p. 188 ; Kirkton, p. 452 note, 453 ; Law's Memorials.
26 The Rev. Mr Butler, ' Life and Letters of Leighton,' p. 574 (1903).
27 See the Rev. Professor Herkless's very sympathetic ' Richard Cameron,' p. 79. Cameron was in Scotland early in May 1679 (see ' Claverhouse to Lin- lithgow,' Napier, ii. p. 206). For a Welshite view of the quarrels, see Ure, in ' Veitch and Brysson,' pp. 456-474.
28 ' Veitch and Brysson,' p. 470.
29 Ure, in ' Veitch and Brysson,' p. 468.
30 Pamphlets of 1679 and 1682, and Indictment in the High Court of Justiciary, November 10, 1679, cited by Napier, ii. p. 229, note.
31 Wodrow, iii. p. 104. ** Hill Burton, vii. p. 233.
33 Aiton, ' The Rencounter at Drumclog,' p. 72 (1821).
34 Wodrow, iii. p. 106. He cites no authority, and the demands are not in the written address, iii. p. 105.
35 Wodrow, iii. p. 106. Ure in ' Veitch and Brysson,' p. 476.
36 ' Veitch and Brysson, p. 481.
37 ' Men of the Covenant,' p. 248. ffl 'Veitch and Brysson,' p. 483. 39 Lauderdale Papers, iii. pp. 171-173. 40 Hill Burton, vii. p. 232.
41 ' Saints of the Covenant,' ii. p. 217.
42 Kirkton, p. 469, note. M'Crie in 'Veitch and Brysson,' p. 459, note. ' Memoirs of Blackader,' p. 229, note.
43 Russell, in Kirkton, p. 469.
44 Albemarle Papers, New Spalding Club.
45 Wodrow, iii. p. no, and note. 46 Wodrow, iii. p. 1 1 8, and note.
47 Patrick Walker, ' Six Saints of the Covenant,' i. p. 54.
48 Wodrow, iii. p. 126. 49 Wodrow, iii. pp. 130, 131.
362 NOTES.
50 ' Blackader's Sufferings,' Crichton's Blackader, p. 267, note.
51 ' Six Saints of the Covenant,' i. p. 225 ; ii. pp. 1 10, 163.
52 See Herkless, 'Richard Cameron,' pp. 107-109.
53 ' Six Saints of the Covenant,' i. pp. 227, 228.
54 ' Six Saints of the Covenant,' i. p. 230.
55 Wodrow, iii. p. 206. 56 Wodrow, iii. pp. 207-211, note. 57 Wodrow, iii. p. 212, note.
68 Row's ' Blair,' pp. 569, 570 ; Wodrow, iii. pp. 218-223 ; ' Six Saints of the Covenant,' ii. p. 165.
69 Wodrow, iii. p. 208.
60 MS. cited by Dr Hay Fleming, ' Saints of the Covenant,' ii. pp. 223-231.
61 'Saints of the Covenant,' ii. pp. 17-26.
62 Wodrow, iii. p. 350, note ; Gibb's Testimony.
63 Wodrow, iii. pp. 350-353, note.
3^3
CHAPTER XIII.
THE KILLING TIME. 1680-1685.
WE have seen that, to Cargill, the Gibbites appeared to be extremists. He himself, after Airs Moss, " without any concert, and to the surprise of many," excommunicated the king, and many other gentlemen, at an assemblage in the Torwood. That Charles deserved excom- munication is not to be doubted, but that Mr Cargill should take upon himself the function of a Church " was approven by none that I know of," says Wodrow, " but his own followers," who now set themselves up in distinction from the rest of the Presbyterians in Scotland, and " refused to partake in ordinances dispensed by any Presbyterian minister, till Mr Renwick came home to them from Holland, about three or four years after this." l In the following year Cargill was captured by " wild Bonshaw," of the fierce border clan of Irvine or Irving (July 12, 1681). One or two of his persecutors were smitten by "judgments." "Die what death I will, your eyes will not see it," he said to Rothes, — according to Patrick Walker. Rothes, already very ill, grew worse, and confessed to Mr Carstairs,2 that he found Cargill's sentence of excommunication " binding upon me now, and will bind to eternity." If this be truly reported, Rothes exaggerated. Rothes and Cargill had signed the Covenant together, when at St Andrews, where the document exists. Rothes, we have seen, had been dangerously ill just before Cargill's alleged prophecy, which is thus open to criticism. He died on July 26; Cargill with four others was hanged on July 27, 1681. Lord Fountainhall reports timidity on Cargill's part. He declined to answer the Council on the " merely ecclesiastical question " of excommunicating the king and others. The truth is that he gave evasive replies, and asked for time to consider his answers. He
364 DEATH OF CARGILL (1681).
advocated the Jael and Phineas doctrine of the right of individuals to kill people, — "the Lord giving a call to a private man to kill," — as warranted by Scripture. Lethington would have replied that these are unusual motions of the Spirit, and that the subjective opinion of a private man to the effect that " the Lord has given him a call " is hardly evidence.3 In a last document, Cargill, like John Gibb, denounced "the ministers of Scotland." "How have they betrayed Christ's interest and beguiled souls ! " Unluckily this " interest " (as understood by Knox, Andrew Melville, and Cargill), seems to be incompatible with the existence of human society, and the extreme Presbyterian view throughout had been the cause of the miseries of a century.
According to Walker the Council would have sent Cargill to the Bass, as being old and incapable of further mischief, but Argyll's vote for death turned the scale.4 Argyll was presently in trouble himself. Parliament met the day after CargilPs death, and framed " the cursed Test," which Argyll would only take with a qualification.
The Duke of York was Royal Commissioner, and his interest, of course, was to secure his own succession to the throne, much imperilled by Protestant alarms in England, and by the Exclusion Bill; but secured by the conduct of the king, and the reaction against the insanity of Oates's pretended plot, with its reign of terror. The creed of James, and his infatuated behaviour when king, not the vagaries of the Camerons and Cargills, were to cause his abdication, or flight, in 1688.
Sir George Mackenzie, the Lord Advocate, exhibited in office about as little scruple as Scroggs did when a judge during the fury of the Popish Plot in England. In an unofficial capacity, however, Sir George wrote, " it fares with heretics as with tops, which, so long as they are scourged, keep foot and run pleasantly, but fall so soon as they are neglected and left by themselves."5 Nevertheless, Mackenzie, less wise than witty, now helped the Government to whip the fanatical tops. At this time it seems that the Government might wisely have offered the most extensive Indulgence, and neglected the fanatics of Cargill's kind, as they were "left by themselves," and became negligible after the Revolution. But Claverhouse, a clear-headed man, was strongly opposed to a new Indulgence. " I hope nobody is so mad as to advise it," he writes (April i, 1682). We must remember, too, that the Government, for political reasons in England, could not abandon Episcopacy in
POSITION OF ARGYLL (1681). 365
Scotland. But, after 1688, Episcopacy was abandoned in Scotland, Episcopal ministers were " rabbled," and the Kirk was allowed to persecute Episcopalians. So the Kirk, after 1688, was contented enough, and the Cameronians could safely be left by themselves. Nothing short of what William III. conceded to the Kirk could have left the fanatics in a negligible condition, and what William gave, Charles, though by temperament averse to persecution, could not possibly give. Thus it was inevitable that the Scottish Government should continue, in Mackenzie's phrase, to whip the tops, and incur perpetual odium.
The king's message to Parliament urged remedies for the cure of the "violent distempers," which, at this distance, seem to have deserved mere contempt. Executions, as of two women who defied authority, merely won for the sufferers the reputation of martyrs, and the sympathy of the public. Into the act ratifying Protestantism, Argyll is said to have wished to introduce (and Dalrymple of Stair did introduce) an approval of the old Confession of Faith, and other matter unpalatable to the Catholic Duke of York, " so that nothing but his blood would satisfy him." Argyll, thenceforth, becomes, rather late, a Saint of the Covenant.6
After Worcester, and before the Restoration, Argyll, then Lord Lome, had taken the royal side, and was "out," while his father, the marquis, stayed at home, and gave Monk information about the Royalists' movements. When the marquis had suffered for this, his son, after a period of distrust, was restored to the rank of earl, and held the wide heritable jurisdictions, as of a principality, whereby his descendant helped to hang James of the Glens in 1752. Argyll was thus a noble of vast influence, and, as he remained steadily loyal, he had, so far, no claim to be a Scottish worthy — rather, he persecuted the saints. As against the doctrine of the Protesters he fought at Worcester ; he was " out " till Middleton retired from his opposition to the Cromwellian invasion. During the Pentland Rising he seized all the doubtful gentlemen of Kintyre, and raised 2000 men for the king ; and he was waiting for Dalziel's order when the Covenanters fled from Rullion Green. He put down the Macleans, who, though disorderly, were not godly, and, if Patrick Walker tells truth, he gave the casting vote that hanged Mr Cargill.7 There is no documentary evidence to this effect, as that part of the Register of Council has been lost or destroyed. Walker was familiar with the leaders of the Remnant, and reports what they believed.
366 THE DUKE OF YORK AND PARLIAMENT (1681).
Argyll himself, after the Pentland Rising of 1666, wrote from Edinburgh to Lauderdale (January 28, 1667): "The outed ministers that meddled in the late rebellion I think deserve torture." * How little Argyll guessed that, for " meddling in re- bellion," he himself would be sentenced to suffer torture, though, luckier than the Rev. Mr Mackail, tortured in 1667, he escaped the boot ! Argyll rebuked Sharp for calling him a Presbyterian : " I was a while bred under Presbytery, but I had been in other parts of the world, where church government was not made so great a matter of as by some in this country ; but whatever was past, I took it not well to go under names" (Edinburgh, Feb. 2, 1667).
Not till he was most iniquitously condemned to death, escaping into exile, do we see any trace of the staunch Presbyterian in a nobleman who approved of the torture of the martyred Mackail. Yet this Argyll, soon after Cargill's execution, perhaps came near to sharing Cargill's fate. The circumstances are more or less mysterious.
The Duke of York, before the Parliament in which he was Com- missioner, had made himself popular with the nobles, and — the saints excepted — with the people. He was an excellent golfer, and, as he writes himself, " I live here as cautiously as I can, and am very careful to give offence to none." 8 He was on good terms with Argyll, but Burnet avers, and Wodrow (in his gossiping ' Analecta ') has a note to the same effect, that Argyll warned the duke that he would oppose the restoration of Catholicism. An opposition to the Duke of York's appearance as Commissioner was intended, but the party of Hamilton were faint-hearted. A general confirmation of the old laws against Papacy was passed, with an Act confirming, as a thing of divine right, the succession to the throne of the next representative of the Stuart line, that is, the Catholic Duke. " Argyll ran into this with zeal," says Burnet, — curious conduct in an earnest Protestant.
Haltoun (Charles Maitland, Lauderdale's brother) was accused of perjury in the case of poor Mitchell. Haltoun had denied, as we know, that promise of life had been given to Mitchell ; but his own letters in proof of the fact (which have been already cited) were pro- duced against him. The letters had been written to Kincardine, whose widow now made them public. Lord Auchinleck, father of
* ' Letters from Archibald, Earl of Argyll, to John, Duke of Lauderdale,' p. 56. Edinburgh, 1829.
THE INCONSISTENT TEST (1681). 367
Dr Johnson's Boswell, and himself grandson of Kincardine, writes that the Duke of York got copies of the letters of Haltoun from Lady Kincardine, and showed them to the king, " who was stunned at the villany, and ashamed he had employed such a minister ; and immediately ordered all his posts and preferments to be taken from him."9 On August 31 an Act was passed as to religion. Charles is represented as zealous for the Confession of Faith made law in the Parliament of 1567. At that hour a queen had been deposed and imprisoned, and the creed of Knox was at its highest flight. That Charles, a king and, by conviction, a Catholic, should be zealous for this Confession seems a truly preposterous assertion. All manner of Papists and fanatics are denounced, and everybody is to be driven to church by ministers, magistrates, and bishops. A test oath is imposed, to keep Papists and fanatics out of every conceivable office ; and this is done while a Papist holds the highest of all offices, that of Royal Commissioner. It is said that Dalrymple (Stair) had the Confession of 1567 put into the Test Act, thinking that it would be opposed, and that the Act would be dropped. But apparently nobody had ever read the Confession, which approves of resistance to tyrants. The takers of the test had to swear both to the Confession (which makes Christ head of the Kirk) and also to the headship of Charles II. They had to declare all Leagues and Covenants unlawful, and promise never to try to alter anything in Church or State ! Finally, they had to swear that they took the oath, " in the plain genuine sense and meaning of the words," which are a set of plain genuine contradictions in terms. They made " no mental reservation or any manner of evasion." 10
They might as well have sworn, in a phrase of John Stuart Mill's, that " Humpty Dumpty is Abracadabra." So elastic and incompre- hensible a test was later applied as a means of persecution. No man could take it who had not a much stronger sense of humour than of honour. No man could keep it, for " the end of its commonwealth forgetteth its beginning." Gibbites and Cameronians were accurate and tranquil logicians compared to the framers of this test, which was passed in a day ; and the members of the Royal Family, to make a comble of absurdity, were excepted out of it. A Catholic, the Duke of York, when he became king, would apparently be free to introduce his own creed, and the takers of the test would have to choose between adherence to the Confession and adherence to the rest of the paralysing document. Argyll had more logic than
368 ARGYLL'S ESCAPE (1681).
humour (his poem on the subject proves that point), and he opposed the exception of the Royal Family, except, indeed, of the Duke of York.11 Many of the conformist ministers (eighty, says Burnet) are for once applauded by Wodrow ; they put forth their objections to the monstrous absurdity, and resigned their livings.
Explanations and attempts at reconciling contradictories were made by the Bishop of Edinburgh, and admitted by an Act of Council.12 Argyll took the test with a qualification, " as far as it is consistent with itself, and with the Protestant religion." 13 On November 8 the Council wrote to the king, accusing the earl of " gross and scandalous reflections, . . . depraving your Majesty's laws, misrepresenting your Parliament . . . teaching your subjects to disappoint all laws and securities," and so forth. The perjured Haltoun, with Sir George Mackenzie, and Airlie, keeping up the Ogilvy feud, were among the writers of the letter.14 Argyll was indicted of "leasing -making" — that elastic offence, — of treason, and other crimes, and sent before a jury. Montrose, Claverhouse, and Airlie were among the fifteen jurors, Ogilvies and Grahams had a Campbell at their mercy, and an unani- mously voted verdict brought the earl in guilty. The king's pleasure in the matter had to be waited for ; and Argyll, perhaps rashly, escaped in the dress of a footman, holding up the train of Lady Sophia Lindsay, who had visited him in prison. Every one has heard how he dropped the train in the mud, and how the quick- witted lady slashed him across the face with the wet and dirty garment.
Argyll fled to London, where the king knew his place of retreat, but would not disturb him, and, later, retired to Holland : his adventures, with the useful dreams that are sent to save saints, make a stirring page of romance. But escapes of this kind are almost always, if not always, collusive. Fountainhall asserts that Melfort deliberately permitted Argyll to walk off,15 though elsewhere he seems to contradict this. Probably the Council simply wished to frighten Argyll away : indeed, it was believed at the time that he was merely meant to lose the power implied in his wide jurisdictions. The Duke of York writes, during the trial by judges, "that little lord will be once again at his Majesty's mercy" (December 13, i68i).16 Burnet remarks that it was said, " Lauderdale had restored the family with such an extended jurisdiction that he was really the master of all the Highlands, so that it was fit to attaint him,
ABERDEEN AND QUEENSBERRY (1682). 369
that, by anew restoring him, these grants might be better limited. This, as the duke wrote to the king, was all he intended by it, as Lord Halifax assured me." 17
The king knew, as we saw, where Argyll lurked in London, " but he would have no search made for him, and retained still very good thoughts of him," — of his brave ally at Worcester fight On the whole, the design probably was to terrify Argyll, and have his power reduced ; but to place Airlie, Montrose, and Claverhouse on his jury was "simply iniquitous," as an apologist of Claverhouse frankly remarks.18 None of us is perfect, and Grahams and Ogilvies could have escaped the post of jurors by paying a fine. The feud of Clan Diarmaid with the Stuarts, to whom, from Sir Nigel's day to 1638 they had been loyal, burned up again, and it was not the Stuarts who won the victory. The whole affair is conspicuous even among the mean rascalities of the Restoration.
Meanwhile the Duke of York was regarded as likely to prove "a terrible master" when he came to the throne. Already the Edinburgh students had insulted him by burning the Pope in effigy. The schoolboys tried their watch-dog for licking the butter off a copy of the Test, and not swallowing it whole (as Argyll took the Test " with a qualification "), but there seems reason to hope that the tyke was not hanged till he was dead. Haltoun escaped from the consequences of his perjury and peculations by paying ^20,000, part of which went to Gordon of Haddo, who was later made chancellor, and first Earl of Aberdeen in the present line.
"The new chancellor exceeded all that had gone before him," says Burnet.19 In summer Lauderdale died ; his picture is drawn by Lord Ailesbury, in his memoirs, where he appears as a coarse buffoon by taste, and as the detested butt of Charles II., who hated to have Lauderdale's fingers in his snuff-box. To escape this infliction, Charles invented a snuff-box on the lines of a pepper-caster ! The Duke of York, after Argyll's escape, was wrecked, and hardly escaped, on a voyage to England. Whether he displayed cowardice and neglect of the crew is disputed ; if so, it was against his previous character as a brave naval officer, and in consonance with his want of courage during the Revolution. Courage apparently may be lost, as " nerve " may be lost by hunting men.20 With Aberdeen as chancellor and Queensberry as treasurer, the exaction of fines and compulsory church-going were more rigorously exacted. As Monmouth, Hamilton, and others had not taken the
VOL. III. 2 A
370 CLAVERHOUSE IN GALLOWAY (1682).
Test, there were new appointments to their jurisdiction, Claverhouse succeeding to those of Kenmuir (a family always engaged in all losing sides), and Agnew of Lochnaw (January 1682). Government and Claverhouse averred, with truth, that the deposed magistrates had connived at the safety of rebels, and murderers of soldiers ; and Claverhouse was to punish all disturbances and church irregularities — pretty duty for a man of the sword ! 21 Several commissions of this kind were granted, and David Graham, Claverhouse's brother, who "held courts in Galloway and Nithsdale," is accused of many severities.22 Claverhouse's orders were to seize persons who would not go to church, and "a soldier only has his orders." As to Wodrow's tales of persons tortured by the soldiery, we do not find them in the contemporary ' Historical Notices ' of Lord Fountainhall. We do find an appeal by Cheisley of Dairy (a murderer) against life -guardsmen who invaded his premises, and wounded him and his servants ("hamesucken"), to which the soldiers replied that they were requisitioning fodder, and were attacked by Cheisley. One guardsman was banished for life, the other was cashiered, and had to find sureties for good behaviour.23 Thus soldiers could be checked, but Cheisley was a laird ; the persons (anonymous usually) who are said to have been tortured were poor and powerless.
Claverhouse's letters, and a report by him, before the Committee of the Council, give his version of his proceedings. Galloway was in such a condition that, for many months, the Government "had looked on it as almost in a state of war, and it was thought unsafe for anything less than an army to venture into it." Claverhouse himself, a little later, had no apprehensions of a rising. But the flight of the Covenanters from Bothwell Bridge had left all their mounted men (some 2000, according to Russell) at large, with perhaps 3000 foot — men who were ready, in the Jacobite phrase, " to do't again." The escaped rebels of position, some 300 or 400, owning between 30,000 and 40,000 merks a year, were left un- disturbed by Kenmuir and Vans Agnew, and other magistrates. " The churches were quite deserted, — no honest man, no minister, in safety."
Claverhouse first provided magazines of corn and fodder, and quartered on the rebels. His report (undated) is a summary. From his frequent letters to Queensberry, we learn that he was pained to find Kenmuir in relations with Barscobe. The inveterate rebel was living at home undisturbed. There should
POLICY OF CLAVERHOUSE (1682). 371
be a garrison at Kenmuir Castle, "a mighty strong place," standing on what looks like a very high artificial moat or mount, above the marshes, at the junction of Ken with Loch Ken. The house had suffered in Cromwell's time. Claver- house meant to begin with rebels, accessories, and harbourers of these (such as John Brown, the Christian carrier, later shot), also to deal with field conventicles, or armed "demonstrations." What remains of the laws against the fanatics, he would try to enforce by threats "rather than severe execution." This means that he would enforce attendance at church, — as, indeed, the Kirk did by its officers, far into the eighteenth century. He had not so much as called at Freugh (forfeited to him), nor, apparently, had he drawn any profits therefrom. The Sanquhar exploit, — excommuni- cation of the king and all, — had just been repeated at Lanark, and the town was fined.24
For dealing with such things, Claverhouse observed that it was usual "to put laws severely, against great and small, in execution, which is very just ; but what effect does that produce, but more to exasperate and alienate the hearts of the whole body of the people? ... in the greatest crimes it is thought wisest to pardon the multitude and punish the ringleaders." Claver- house had called some parishes together, explained the existing state of the law, remarked that he, for one, had no wish to "enrich himself by their crimes," and advised them — to go to church. Resellers and ringleaders must expect no favour. This military beadle had some success ; church was attended, but the ministers would soon unsettle the parishioners, "so mad are some of their wives." He asked for 100 dragoons, whom he would superintend " without any pay." " I should take horses here among the suffering sinners." If all failed, he must "do as others, and get as much money as I can (which I have not thought on yet), by putting the laws in execution " (March i, 1682). 25
Again he writes, " it will be of more consequence to punish one considerable laird" (he had the Dalrymples of Stair in his mind) " than a hundred little bodies. Besides it is juster." He caught the blacksmith of Minnigaff, who made the sharp steel hooks for cutting bridles; he resolved to hang the rebel armourer, as an example. Claverhouse, however, neither tried nor hanged the smith.26 There were reports, not credited by Claverhouse, of a western rising. By March 25 he had taken the veteran Barscobe,
372 SUCCESS OF CLAVERHOUSE (1682).
of the Pentland and Bothwell Bridge risings. Barscobe submitted and was pardoned, — " offers, if he could get a remission, he would be active and useful to me in the business of the Glen Kens." 27
This hardened rebel had been living undisturbed in his lonely peel tower, where his arms, painted and carved, may be seen above the door. He shortly afterwards died, — was killed by extremists, says Law, in his 'Memorials,' and so says Glen Kens tradition. He certainly died in a brawl, but it seems to have been unpolitical ; and medical evidence pointed to epilepsy as the cause of death. By April the churches were thronged, and all was orderly, " without having received a farthing money, or imprisoned anybody." " I never saw people go more cavalierly from one extremity to another than this people does," says Claverhouse.
His report to the Committee of Council adds details about the treatment of rebels. They were pursued, quartered on ; their houses were seized, their goods ruined, " their wives and children brought to starving." All this was done to make them renounce their designs of rising in arms, and to take the oath to live peaceably and accept safe-conducts. All lairds, but two or three, including Gordon of Earlstoun, " signed a bond much to that purpose," but not the Test. This Earlstoun, a huge and noisy man, " the Bull," dwelt in a little peel by the Ken, a mile or two above the clachan of Dairy where the Pentland Rising began. A wasted oak tree near the house is pointed out as his usual hiding place. Now it could not conceal a rook. The tenants might sign something equivalent to the Test, but not the Test itself, " by cause of their ignorance " ! As for church-going, Claverhouse had made it almost universal. He had officially assured the people that "whatever their guilt was, if they gave obedience they need fear no great severity." Obstinate lairds he imprisoned till they found security for their fines. He "actually brought in two outed disorderly ministers." Galloway was peaceful, " the rebels are reduced without blood," " the ministers " (conformist) " are in safety." 28 This report is probably of the middle of May 1682. It certainly shows Claverhouse combining the offices of policeman and military beadle, or " kirk-officer," but it does not present him as sanguinary or rapacious, the epithets conferred by Macaulay. After meeting Dalziel in Lanarkshire, he escaped in June from an alleged enterprise of Clydesdale Whigs, near the inn of " The Bille " (The Crook ?) on upper Tweed.29
The Sir James Dalrymple of Stair, who is said to have included
CLAVERHOUSE AND THE DALRYMPLES (1682-1683). 373
the Confession of 1567 as the Test, had been gently warned by Claverhouse to "walk warily." This Stair was author of the famous " Institutes of the Law of Scotland," and father of the author of the Glencoe massacre. His family had an interest in " regalities " and "hereditable jurisdictions," which might be compromised if their holders connived at the safety of rebels. Wodrow accuses Claver- house, in August, of imprisoning and quartering on men merely because they were nonconformists, and would not promise to " live regularly " (whether this means to go to church, or to keep the peace and forswear rebellion).30 The Bride of Lammermuir was the daughter of the elder Stair ; unfortunately one man (Dr Hickes), who heard her story from Stair's own lips, did not trust his memory, and declined to write it down. In his August raid at Glenluce, Claverhouse's jurisdiction collided with that of the younger Stair, Sir John Dalrymple. He derided Claverhouse's jurisdiction, and " offered him a sum of money not to meddle with that regality," — so Claverhouse avers.81 Failing here, and failing to thwart Claverhouse by proceedings in his own court, he found his factor and tenants heavily fined. The younger Stair brought charges against Claverhouse, who chose the offensive defensive strategy, and retorted with heavier accusations. Stair meant, he said, to stir up the people, and had behaved illegally and passionately. Claverhouse won his case, and was congratulated by Aberdeen, — " they wondered that he, not being a lawyer, had walked so warily in so irregular a country, while young Stair, though a lawyer . . . had exceeded his bounds, and had weakened the hands of his Majesty's authority " (February 12,1 683).82 He was fined, and warded in the castle for a short time. His father went to Holland and intrigued, as Argyll was doing.
From his first arrival in Galloway (February 1682), Claverhouse had desired to make an example of a highly placed conniver at or shielder of rebels. He meant Stair, and, after gentle warnings, he carried through the policy of " Thorough." The lords of the Privy Council found Stair guilty of employing confessed harbourers of rebels as clerk and baillie of his jurisdiction, of imposing inadequate fines and not exacting them, of keeping people from appearing in Claverhouse's court, of falsely accusing Claverhouse of oppressions, and of other offences.33 Young Stair's family, especially his awful mother, of whom tradition tells strange tales, were Whiggish, but it was his hereditable jurisdiction for which he was fighting. The Dalrymples never were loved in Scotland, and the Glencoe massacre,
374 INCREASED SEVERITIES (1683).
with the later attempts of a member of the family to assassinate the Chevalier de St. George, are not more glorious than the policeman's career of Claverhouse.
As an example of ferocities not in Claverhouse's jurisdiction, we might select the hanging of a woman named Christian Fyfe, because "she did beat the Rev. Mr Ramsay in the old Kirk at the ending of the sermon, and the reason was, she thought he was profaning the Sabbath." She disowned all authority — there was no honest minister in Scotland ; she said that she went to church " not to beat a lawful minister, but one whom she thought a Judas and a devil." A reprimand of a humorous character would have been enough, but Christian was hanged. All this would be very terrible if correctly reported, but Christian was released as a lunatic rather than a fanatic : she was not hanged.
In November half the lairds in the Glen Kens, young Knock- nailing, Holme, Overton, and many others, were sentenced, but Wodrow "thinks none of them were executed."
" Persecution " kept on running its course — that is, men suspected of accession to the Bothwell Bridge rising were hunted for, and, when taken, if they persisted in maintaining a rebellious attitude, were in many cases hanged. In May 1683 Claverhouse was placed on the Privy Council : in March and April he had been at Court in England, mainly busy about a claim to lands forfeited by Haltoun, which led to a quarrel between him and Aberdeen.84 We find Claverhouse pressing (June 9) for the execution of a very slippery rebel, who tried to escape, he says, by aid of " a false sham certificate," — the word "sham" was then new. "I am as sorry to see a man die, even a Whig, as any of themselves. But when one dies justly, for his own faults, and may save a hundred to fall in the like, I have no scruple."35 Two other fellows were hanged for attacking a small party of guardsmen, killing one, and wounding another. The rebels suffered during a great Circuit through the disturbed districts.
At this time, the autumn of 1683, various circumstances pro- ducted greatly increased severities, culminating in martial law, which has been called " no law at all " : it permitted, or rather enjoined, the shooting of suspicious persons who declined to own the king's authority, or to pronounce the Bothwell Bridge affair "rebellion." As we have seen, many denied that a rising "for the Gospel" was rebellion, and held themselves ready to repeat the
A MEDLEY OF PLOTS (1683). 375
action. The country was thus harassed by oaths, tests, and fines inflicted for even conversing with fugitive rebels, and for not de- nouncing them. Ladies, as Mrs Mure of Caldwell, were harshly used for merely hearing a minister preach in their own drawing- rooms, just as, long after i688,-the Duke of Hamilton was im- prisoned for a similar offence in his own house. Not only peasants and tradesfolk, but gentlemen like Scott of Harden and many others, were heavily fined, often for the Presbyterian devoutness of the women of their families.
The causes which provoked an increase of persecution were the blending of the Russell and the Rye House Plots, in England, with the designs of the exiles in Holland and of Argyll, and the arrival from Holland of Mr James Renwick, to raise the standard that fell from the hands of Cameron. It not unusually happens that the respect- able members of a suffering party are engaged in political intrigue, while the wilder members have a plot to assassinate some one, or to raise the rabble. Thus, after the Revolution, a plot to assassinate William III. coincided with the intrigues of Berwick and the excellent Lord Ailesbury, and, still later, Layer's plot became inter- woven with Bishop Atterbury's. We thus find Monmouth, Lord Russell, Sidney, and others more or less in touch with Ramsay, Ferguson, and other would-be assassins, on one hand ; and with Baillie of Jerviswoode, Argyll, the Rev. Mr Carstairs, an intimate of the Prince of Orange, on the other : and some of them were acquainted with the murder plot, while, through Renwick, who came back from Holland, more or less ordained, in the late summer of 1683, the organised "Societies" of Cameron's followers were in contact with the ramified discontents in England and Scotland. The trial of Earlstoun, in October 1683, threw no light on the Holland and other intrigues of the time; for Earlstoun, on the approach of the boot, "roared like a bull, and cried and struck about him so, that the hangman and his man durst scarce lay hands on him." He then swooned, and, reviving, accused Dalziel, where- on he was pronounced mad, and warded in the Bass, though he was only canny (November 23, 1683). Earlstoun had been examined already in July, when he implicated a few preachers and others, including Renwick. He probably told about as much as he knew.*
* S.P. Domestic, Charles II., vol. 427. Record Office. These papers contain nothing very important on the intrigues of Argyll and the rest.
376 WEDDING OF CLAVERHOUSE (1684).
On October 8, 1683, young Renwick was proclaimed for re- viving field conventicles and for traitorous designs fostered in Holland.36 Jerviswoode, Carstairs, and others mixed up with the Russell, Sidney, and Monmouth intrigues, were sent to Scotland to be tried. The irreconcilables appear to have shown themselves in the west, for (January 3, 1684) our old acquaintance, Sir James Turner, as well as Claverhouse and his brother, David Graham, were put on a commission to apprehend and try such persons.37 Wodrow " scarcely thinks " that the commission at Dumfries (Claverhouse's) "would spare all who came before them," but he has no evidence on the matter, and only expresses a pious opinion.
In 1684 the Indulged ministers were again "outed," and many prisoners were sent to the American colonies. At this time Claver- house should have been "in merry pin," like Lethington when in love, for he was wooing Lady Jane Cochrane, of the Dundonald family, which was Presbyterian and Whiggish. He was therefore accused, apparently by the Duke of Hamilton and others, of dis- loyalty. Sir John Cochrane (accused of betraying Richard Cameron) was in Baillie of Jerviswoode's plot. " He is a madman," wrote Claverhouse to Queensberry, "and let him perish, — they deserve to be damned who would own him" (May 19, 1684). "'Tis not in the power of love, or any other folly, to alter my loyalty." M " Had the young lady been right principled " (in the sense of the Covenanters) " she would never, in despite of her mother and relations, made choice of a persecutor, as they call me."
Meanwhile Queensberry and Aberdeen were at feud : Aberdeen had the worse of the quarrel, lost the seals, and was finally succeeded as chancellor by the Earl of Perth, who became a Catholic. On June 9 Claverhouse's wedding contract was signed, and on that very day an armed conventicle was found at the Black- loch, and Claverhouse had to leave his bride, and scour the mosses near Lesmahagow. " They might have let Tuesday pass," his wedding day, he writes.39 But again he had to mount and ride, while old Dalziel insinuated, thinking of Drumclog, that "some people hazard small forces on very unequal terms." Dalziel antici- pated a general rising, but Claverhouse (June 15) writes that "we have left no den, no knowe, no moss, no hill unsearched." There had been a slight skirmish with the royal foot ; but, though Claver- house "threatened terribly," he does not seem to have tried the
HUMANITY OF CLAVERHOUSE (1684). 377
effect of lighted matches between the fingers, or even to have flogged peasants to extort evidence, like King George's officers in 1746. These raids opened the honeymoon of " Black John of the Battles." In July the Covenanters had a success at the pass called the Enterkin, among the hills on the way to Edinburgh through Moffatdale. Some twenty-eight soldiers were conveying sixteen prisoners; they were fired at from an ambush, and lost several prisoners, and one or two of their own party.40 Claverhouse was now appointed to the command of the forces in the west ; but in August he took his bride to Dudhope, near Dundee, the spoils of the Lauderdale family, lost by them for Haltoun's peculations when Master of the Mint. Claverhouse was now Constable of Dundee, where he secured the commutation of the capital punishment on small pickers and stealers, there in prison. For the future, too, the cruelty which persisted so late in English law was to be abolished, thanks to "bloody Clavers."41
Efforts were still being made to unravel the part of Scottish mal- contents in the intrigues for which, on the English side of the border, Sidney and Lord Russell died. The Scottish conspirators were, many of them, lairds in the peaceful glens of Tweed, Gala, Ettrick and Yarrow, such as Hume of Polwarth, Baillie of Jervis- woode (who suffered), and Murray of Philiphaugh. A laird declined to join an intrigue with the squires of such ominous names as " Hangingshaw," on Yarrow, and " Gallowshiels " (Gala). Lord Tarras and Philiphaugh confessed, betraying their associates, and evidence was wrung from Spence and Carstairs under torture. Foun- tainhall records (July 26, 1684) the torture of Spence, a retainer of the exiled Argyll. He did not deny that he could read the captured letters of Argyll in cypher (June 1683), but endured the boot and the odious "waking" (inflicted on witches, as on Father Ogilvie, S.J.) with manly resolution. Then he was tried with the thumb-screws, and was next offered the boot again. Like a Highlander of 1746, who bore a hundred lashes rather than betray Prince Charles, but gave some information when threatened with another hundred before the first wounds were healed, Spence finally lost heart — who can blame him ? — and read " these hieroglyphic letters." To their con- tents we shall return. The sight of the horrors of torture was loathsome to Privy Councillors compelled to be present, whether in the reign of Charles II. or William III. Scott (in ' Old Mortality ') represents Claverhouse as looking calmly on, in 1679, wrien he had
3/8 THE CASE OF CARSTAIRS (1684).
nothing to do with the matter, not being of the Council, and Macaulay versifies from Burnet the " cruel eyes " of the Duke of York, " that dared to look on torture, but not to look on war." 42 Whether Burnet tells truth of the duke or not, we observe that torture was becoming a hateful spectacle to men. Nobody, like the lover in Moliere, would have proposed the spectacle of torture as a treat to his lady. In earlier days we hear of no delicacy in the matter, whether Catholics or Protestants were being tormented.
Another victim of torture, Carstairs, gave Wodrow an account of his own conduct. He was mixed up in the intrigue with the notorious Shepherd and Ferguson the Plotter, who seems to have loved conspiring for its excitements, and he was arrested in Kent, being mistaken for Ferguson. After three months' detention in town he was sent for trial to Scotland, and languished in Edinburgh Castle for several months. He was known to be acquainted with the cyphers of the Argyll letters, but preferred torture to treachery. He also argued that, if accused in England, he should be tried by English law : in that case judicial torture would not have been administered.43 This was overruled — illegally, it would seem — and he endured an hour and a half of the thumbikins, but not, as Macaulay erroneously said, of the boot. That was to be applied next day. He assured Wodrow that he and his Scottish associates had no murderous intentions; but he had certainly listened to Ferguson's proposals of murdering or seizing the king, which was sailing near the wind, as he continued to plot with Ferguson. Before he was put to the torture he was offered conditions — pardon, it seems — if he would speak out, and that " nothing I said should be used directly or indirectly against any man in trial that I should mention." ** He rejected the conditions, and gallantly resolved to face the torment.
As we saw, on the sight of the boot, after an hour and a half of the thumb-screw, he faltered. What he confessed was used at Jerviswoode's trial as an "adminicle" of evidence against him. The position was that, when Carstairs shrank from a second infliction, he was offered "full pardon and remission," and "that he shall never be brought as witness against any person or judicatory, directly or indirectly, for anything contained in his answers." These are the chief parts of the conditions on which Carstairs capitulated and answered questions, and Wodrow prints them as "under the secretary's hand."45 But many years later,
EXECUTION OF JERVISWOODE (1684). 379
shortly before his death in 1715, Carstairs stated the conditions thus in a letter to Wodrow : " no person was directly or indirectly to be mentioned in any trial as to that matter, nor anything in my depositions was to be adduced against any person ; which condition was openly violated." ** Principal Story, in his ' Life ' of Carstairs, frankly remarks that "the engagement not to use his evidence against any accused party is not so distinctly expressed as his own report " (to Wodrow) " of his agreement with Melfort would have led us to expect." 47
Whether Carstairs was absolutely straightforward or not, few, in- deed, can presume to blame him. Jerviswoode was hanged on Christmas Eve, 1684. There was nothing in Carstairs's evidence as published to connect Jerviswoode with even knowledge of a plot to seize or kill the king : he was merely represented as nibbling at schemes "for rising in arms for rectifying the Government" Unluckily such schemes are regarded as treasonable by most Governments. Carstairs " heard the design of killing the king and duke from Mr Shepherd,* who told the deponent that some were full upon it." If Jerviswoode knew nothing about it, we shall see that Argyll, though absent in Holland, apparently knew very well. Jerviswoode left a last speech attributing his ruin to the faintness of his zeal for Protestantism. How still more furious zeal for Pro- testantism could have saved him, unless he had successfully con- ducted a revolution, is not apparent ; but he denied that he had intended either the murder of the king and Duke of York, or "subversion of the Government"; only Carstairs puts it that "this unpleasant subject" — their plot — was not aimed at the persons of the royal brothers, or at "government by monarchy." What he intended may readily be conjectured. " Carstairs had some secrets of great consequence from Holland entrusted to him," says Burnet. The wind blew from the Dutch coast.48 To bring in the Prince of Orange was neither to overthrow monarchy, as suchr nor to murder Charles and James. But, whatever Argyll and Jervis- woode intended, their conduct was certainly treasonous.
As the Prince of Orange's hour had not yet come, the plans of Argyll and the other plotters were of the vaporous kind that cloud the dreams of exiles. They were not more coherent than most of the visions which amused the Jacobites of 1688-1786.
* This Shepherd told what he knew, on June 27, 1683. S. P. Dom. Charles IL vol. 426.
380 ARGYLL AND THE RYE HOUSE PLOT.
Argyll's letter to Major Holmes,* of June 21, deciphered by Spence, shows the state of affairs. Argyll had asked his accomplices in England to raise a sum of money, ^30,000, and thought that 1000 horse would be needed for "the first brush" with the royal forces. Government had 1200 horse and 2000 foot, by way of an army in Scotland. These, when the rebellion began, would probably concentrate at Stirling, and would be aided by "all the heritors" or lairds,. perhaps " 50,000 men," though possibly half the number would hold back. This does not sound as if a rising was to the mind of the country. There was also the militia, 22,000 of all arms. Forces would come, too, from England and Ireland. Argyll's only hope, it is plain, was not in his clan, the Campbell claymores, but in " Browne," that is the Whig English peers.
He ends, very significantly, " some things are to be done to prevent the designs of enemies, that I dare not now mention, lest it should put them on their guard." If these phrases do not apply to a plot for murdering or seizing Charles and the Duke of York, no other interpretation was more likely to occur to the Government.49 Moreover, Argyll speaks of " Mr Red " as a person whom he must consult with. Carstairs was " Mr Red," and Carstairs, through Shepherd, knew of the murder plot. Principal Story, defending Carstairs, admits that he " did not altogether withdraw from such intercourse with " — Ferguson, who sounded him about murder, — "as he deemed to be necessary in the interests of Argyll." 50 Meanwhile Argyll (" in the interests of Argyll ") knew of " some things to be done to prevent the designs of enemies, that I dare not now mention, lest it should put them on their guard." Now Principal Story admits that Ferguson had managed, "by veiling the cowardly character of the scheme, to enlist the aid of some men of high character and principle to the extent of agreeing to an attack on the king's escort and seizure of his person." 61 The learned Principal is surprised by this " casuistry" among Whigs and Protestants ! But to seize the king, and chance killing him, was simply the old Gowrie method, in Scotland, of changing the administration ; and Argyll's letter can scarcely refer to anything else. Argyll's letter of June 2 1 was written while he clearly was not aware that, on June 12, the Rye House scheme had
* Holmes was examined in the Gate House, on June 29, 1683. S. P. Dom. Charles II. vol. 426. He said that Lord Grey was to lend Argyll ,£10,000 towards a rising in Scotland.
THE MINGLED PLOTS (1684). 381
been betrayed. The distinction between a plot to kill, and a plot to seize a man of spirit with armed guards, is indeed casuistry of the most fine-spun tissue. Each party, when out of power, framed such plots ; and to look on Whigs as more scrupulous than Jacobites is to evince great lack of humour, and keen partisanship.
What the conspirators really had in view, if they did seize the king, is uncertain. Some hoped that Monmouth, like Absalom, would head a rising against his own father, " of which no particular method was laid down."
If the king and duke had been got rid of, then, failing Monmouth and the Duke of Hamilton, the Prince of Orange seems the likeliest person to profit by the plot; and Carstairs never, even after 1688, told the secret of the Dutch Court which he possessed in 1683-84. He wrote to Wodrow shortly before his death that the whole affair was "an unpleasant subject," and he did not exaggerate.52 Taking everything into account, the long smouldering conspiracies and the renewed eccentricities of the hill folk, or extreme Cameronians, it is plain that human wisdom could not now have saved the Dynasty, that is, considering the religion of the Duke of York, the next heir to the throne, which was, after all, the main cause of the crisis. The dread of Popery was the strongest emotion of the vast majority of both nations ; with the death of Charles II. the new king must, at the very least, insist on toleration, no Catholic king with a rag of honesty could do less, and once grant even toleration, and "then are we all gone ! "
The result of the stormy state of the country was the beginning of " the Killing Time " strictly so called. It cannot be denied that the Government had good cause to look to its own safety, when a plot to murder was interwoven with two plans for armed risings, and with the arrival of Renwick from Holland, full of zeal, and breathing forth threats of organised assassination. Yet in a work from which more people have learned Scottish history than from any other — Scott's ' Tales of a Grandfather ' — the worst deeds of " the Killing Time " are introduced before the causes of that cruel period of repression are indicated, and the main cause, the threats of Renwick, is omitted. The repression shocked a politician not famous for mildness. Claverhouse himself objected to a bond making land- holders responsible for harbouring or comforting of fugitives by their people. " It is unjust to desire of others what we would not do ourselves ; for I declare I think it a thing not to be
382 REN WICK'S APOLOGETICAL DECLARATION (1684).
desired, that I should be forfeited and hanged, if my tenant's wife, twenty miles from me, in the midst of hills and woods, give meat or shelter a fugitive" (October 30, 1684). 53 Those about Renwick, in 1684, declared war, in their apologetical declaration (October 15-28). This document is attributed by Wodrow to their "General Society," for they were now organised. They disowned the royal authority of Charles, " and all authority depending upon him ; " they explain that they are at war " with all in civil or military powers who make it their work to imbrue their hands in our blood, or by obeying such commands," including " viperous and malicious bishops and curates," and all witnesses who appear when summoned to courts of justice in such cases. They pretend to have courts of their own to judge offences against them.
" We are a people by holy Covenants dedicated unto the Lord," 54 and, as Cromwell told the preachers, "there is such a thing as a Covenant with Death and Hell," — a Covenant after Cameron's own heart, to begin the war of No Quarter in Scotland, and carry fire to the gates of Rome. The declaration was to be fixed on market crosses and church doors. Wodrow attributes the " forming " of the paper to Renwick, who "was forced to go in with them to keep peace, as far as might be, among themselves." " And in prosecution of this " declaration, writes Fountainhall, " some of those ruffians fell in, at Suin Abbey, beside Blaikburn in west Lothan, and murdered Thomas Kennoway and Duncan Stewart, two of the king's Life-guard, in a most barbarous manner." 55 On December 1 2 the conformist minister of Carsphairn, in a lonely part of Galloway, was murdered. Kennoway is represented as a peculiarly oppressive ruffian and robber, and Mr Peirson of Carsphairn as not only serviceable to the authorities, but a defender of the doctrine of purgatory. The Privy Council, however, being irritated and alarmed by Renwick's declara- tion of war, and by the acts of war which followed, "give out a terrible commission," and "agree upon the bloody orders to murder in the fields all who should not expressly disown the aforesaid declaration."66 One act of war was an attack on the town of Kirkcudbright, by a hundred and eight men, who broke open the prisons, and carried away such arms as they could seize. (Reported by Dalziel and others to Queensberry, December 18, i684.)57
On December 20 Claverhouse's report came in : he had dis- covered and shot five skulkers, and taken three prisoners. The strange hallucinations of showers of blood and blue bonnets and swords
THE ABJURATION (1684). 383
falling in open places, are reported by Fountainhall,68 and by Patrick Walker, who was present but saw nothing unusual. As for Claverhouse's success, Mr Napier has dealt with Wodrow's account of it, averring that one of the victims, James Macmichan, is the James Macmichael who, according to Wodrow, had just pistoled the Rev. Mr Peirson.59 By Wodrow's account Claverhouse fired on and killed four out of six people "who were lurking and hiding, for what I can find they had no arms." Fountainhall (December 20, 1684) says that Claverhouse reports having "met with a party of these rogues who had skulked," killed five and taken three, " some of which were of the murderers of the minister of Carsphairn." m Space does not permit a criticism of all the evidence as to outrages ; but, in this case, contemporary signed evidence seems better than Wodrow's anonymous " accounts " given long after date. Fountainhall notes (October 1684) even a more hideous trait of the times. Marion Purdie, a beggar woman in Edinburgh, had been accused of many acts of witchcraft. Mackenzie, the Lord Advocate, "gave no great notice to such informations against witches," and the unhappy Marion was allowed "to die of cold and hunger in prison about Christmas." The godly had no pity on witches, and Wodrow was of their mind.
Claverhouse's own report of his doings is not in the Queensberry papers. He no longer wrote to that newly made duke, whose title he had pleaded for at Court. Queensberry's brother, Colonel Douglas, was a martinet, who impounded his men's pay to purchase for them new cravats and ribbons, though he also tried to keep them sober.61 On December 1 1, at the Council, Claverhouse defended some soldiers whom Douglas had cashiered, and whose arrears of pay he had used for clothing his regiment. Queensberry resented this, and the " warmth " of Claverhouse ; and, after James II. came to the throne, had Claverhouse dismissed from the Council, for a few weeks only. But the military continued to act on the decision of the Lords of Council and the Judges ; that for any one to refuse to abjure Renwick's declaration of war was to be "guilty of high treason," and, by decree of the Council, such men should be " immediately shot before two witnesses," by order of " the person or persons having commission from the Council for that effect."62 The abjuration of Renwick's declaration of war, and erection of courts to try enemies of the Covenanters, does not seem a test very difficult to take, and it says nothing about religion, for the declara-
384 FEROCITIES OF BOTH PARTIES (1685).
tion was only to be abjured " 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 Majesty." Now to abjure the infamous declaration which Wodrow quotes from a paper in Renwick's own hand, might seem rather a pleasure than a duty to a Christian.
Suppose that any one denied (as some did deny) that the de- claration was correctly described in the abjuration, then he who took the abjuration committed himself to nothing. The abjuration, says Sheilds, who took it, and repented, was " universally un- scrupled, even by the generality of great professors and ministers too." ^ Sheilds, and others like him, devoted themselves to hair- splitting. On the whole, to abjure would be to enter on " an elective confederation with these wicked usurping judges," who audaciously imputed to the Renwickites that they "asserted murderous principles," which the friends of Renwick's document denied that they did hold. For, first, they did not threaten to take off " all who serve the king," but only " bloody " persons who serve the king. Sheilds has forty closely printed pages full of these flimsy sophistries to beguile the innocent, and it was this odious declaration, with the entangled scrupulosities of the preachers, that led to the martyrdom of Margaret Wilson and Margaret M'Lauchlan. Claverhouse was not present when the Council passed their decision ; he did not scruple to act on his orders. Meanwhile, honest men were in a sad case. If they obeyed the law when summoned as witnesses against the saints, they came within the jurisdiction of Renwick's courts; and, if they took the abjuration of Renwick's paper, they found "the western phanatiques very insolent"; while, if they did not take the abjuration, they might be shot out of hand.64
Wodrow represents Douglas, Queensberry's brother, as surprising " six persons at prayer," and shooting them, merely because " they were upon their hiding and at prayer." His authorities do not say whether the abjuration was offered, nor does he tell us what authorities lay before him. His date is January 23,. 1685. But Fountainhall, under January 1685, avers that Douglas, with eight or ten soldiers, met a small party of rebels, who killed two of his men, and Captain Urquhart, Meldrum's brother, "and had very nearly shot Douglas himself dead, had not the Whig's carabine misgiven, whereon Douglas pistoled him presently." Urquhart was buried in Edinburgh : he fell near Minnigaff in Galloway.65 Fountainhall was a contemporary, a judge ; Wodrow's authorities are undated, and
DEATH OF CHARLES II. (1685). 385
anonymous. We can thus easily estimate the value of Wodrow's account.66
On February 6, 1685, died Charles II., and the usual foolish talk about poison was rife. The king, by temperament, was the reverse of saintly ; his unchecked boyhood in the great war, his Bohemian life of wandering adventure in exile, and the utter ruin of his character under the pressure of the Covenanters and Argyll, had left him a man with few virtues except good nature, personal courage, and scientific interests. Yet Lord Ailesbury's " good king " was sincerely loved and lamented by many, and, despite his Scottish experiences of the Covenanters, he was of milder mood towards them than most of his advisers. Had he but visited Scotland, and seen for himself with his own eyes, the country would have been better governed. But to the Covenanters he was but one of the worst of " the treacherous and lecherous House of Stuart," epithets thoroughly deserved by the great wit who, if not born to a crown, might have been happy as the playwright of such a troop as Moliere's Theatre Illustre. His brother had no charm — even the loyal Ailesbury could not love him, and had a fatal remnant of honesty where the religion that conquered him by satisfying his intellect was concerned. James II. was no mere dullard ; the Duke of Wellington and a celebrated Field Marshal of our own day have pronounced him a most lucid writer on military subjects. But the obstinacy, the want of good faith, the fanatical belief in his own prerogative of James II., with what must be called his cruelty in success, and his strange loss of the courage which he once possessed, brought shame and ruin on himself, and misery on his unfortunate descendants, the kings " over the water."
James promised to maintain religion as by law established : he never was crowned at Scone, and took no Scottish coronation oath, and so, at the Convention of April 1689, was denounced as no king de jure. Despite a more or less illusory Indemnity, the war against the refusers to abjure Renwick's abjuration went on, and the recalcitrants were shot. Grierson of Lag, the model of Scott's Redgauntlet, acquired a diabolical reputation which his subsequent existence of some fifty years did not outlive. It is impossible here to analyse all Wodrow's accounts of shooting in the fields. His information is apt to fail him when we ask, Why were the men shot? On the celebrated case of the Christian carrier, John Brown of Priesthill, slain by order of Claverhouse, who reports the fact to
VOL. III. 2 B
386 JOHN BROWN AND MARGARET WILSON (1685).
Queensberry on May 3, 1685, much has been written.67 The shooting was well within the terms of the Act of Council ; the man had arms, treasonable papers, refused to acknowledge royal authority, and, as was proved after his death, was harbouring a rebel red-handed from an attack on the king's soldiers. But, whatever doubt may cloud other points, the man was shot before the eyes of his wife, though he might easily have been sent to any justiciary — Claverhouse at that time was not of the Privy Council. In this particular the behaviour of Claverhouse seems beyond palliation, while his conduct to Brown's nephew, described with his usual careless candour, may, to many, seem only to deepen the stain upon his name.
Claverhouse was not concerned in the drowning of Margaret M'Lauchlan and Margaret Wilson near Wigtown (May u, 1685). These women were aged, Margaret Wilson eighteen (or twenty- three), Margaret M'Lauchlan or Lauchlison sixty -three (or, on the evidence of her own fellow parishioners, eighty). From 1687 onwards, we find brief notices that women, " some " of extreme age, " some " very young, were drowned by the persecutors. Renwick and Sheilds, who published these notices, here apparently lied; only one old and one young woman were drowned. Not till 1714 do we get two accounts of the circumstances with any detail ; these two accounts of 1714 vary, as do the narratives taken in February 1711, in the parishes of Kirkinner and Penninghame. Wodrow combined the story given in 'A Cloud of Witnesses ' (1714) with that of the Penninghame record. Patrick Walker seems to have followed the narrative in 'Popery Reviving ' (1714), and he garnished it with the oaths of the persecutors, omitting some beautiful utterances elsewhere attributed to the younger sufferer.
In these circumstances, as the record of the assize at which the women were tried by jury has perished, we cannot pretend to know the exact truth of this inexplicable affair. No women were to be examined, the Privy Council had decreed, who had not been active in a special manner " in these courses," and they, if found guilty, were to be drowned — an old Scottish punishment for high treason, and more merciful than the English punishment of burning, as in the case of Elizabeth Gaunt, burned in 1685.
We know nothing of special activity by the two women martyrs. We hear (Wodrow, Penninghame Kirk Session's Report) that Gilbert Wilson was a prosperous farmer or yeoman, a con- scientious Episcopalian, as was his wife. We are told that his
THE WIGTOWN MARTYRS (1685). 387
three children, Margaret, Thomas, and Agnes, deserted their parents when " yet scarce of the age that made them obnoxious to the law," and " fled to the hills, bogs, and caves " to avoid their father's form of religion. In 1685, after their flight, they were aged, Margaret, eighteen, Thomas sixteen, Agnes, thirteen. The most fanatical field preacher might have insisted that these babes should leave their life in caves, and the society of armed men whom they must have met, and should be restored to their most unhappy parents. However, they were left to the lessons of the partisans of Renwick's murderous declaration, and to the preachers of " Blood," and "No Quarters," with the natural results. Early in 1685, it seems, for dates are absent, the two Wilson girls and the old Mrs. M'Lauchlan were arrested in Wigtown, why we do not know, some say for refusing to drink the king's health with one Patrick Stewart. They were imprisoned, and (on April 13, 1685) were all three tried by a jury, before Grierspn of Lag, Major Winram, Captain Strachan, and David Graham, sheriff of the county. All three were found guilty, and condemned to die by drowning. So Wodrow and Penninghame : as to the two women, ' A Cloud of Witnesses ' avers that little Agnes was not condemned, or even tried, but released on bail of ;£ioo, and Wodrow and the Penninghame record admit that she was released on bail after being condemned.
On April 30 the lords of the Council bade the secretaries of state ask for the royal pardon, and command the magistrates of Edinburgh not to proceed to the execution of sentence till a day left blank. This, Wodrow says, was then regarded as "a material pardon." The elder martyr had petitioned and asked leave to take the abjuration, " I being most justly condemned to die ... for my not disowning that traitorous apologetical declaration," which she had not read. On this showing, that refusal to abjure was the solitary ground of her condemnation. The old woman could not write, and the words are the form of the attesting notary, William Moir. A petition must also have come from Margaret Wilson, and, in that case, we may presume that she signed it, as she was able to write to her friends a long letter of reasons for not abjuring the murderous declaration of Renwick. No entry in the Register of Privy Council records the withdrawal of the reprieve, or the granting or refusal of pardon.
Before the royal intentions could have reached Edinburgh, and thence been conveyed to Wigtown, the old and the young woman
388 VARIOUS VERSIONS.
were drowned, apparently in the estuary of the Blednoch water close to Wigtown. The details are variously reported, and it was denied in 1703, by a writer credited with full knowledge, that the women were tied to stakes. The same witness says that, if ever the circumstances are published, men "will not be very hasty to exclaim against the then governors." What the alleged palliating circumstances may have been we cannot guess, — indeed, no account but Wodrow's hints at the reprieve, which Wodrow only discovered after writing his narrative, and did not publish in full, omitting the remark which seemed to show that the women were, or were by the Council expected to be, in Edinburgh. Why the women were drowned at Wigtown, in the circumstances, is a puzzle. If their petitions were forged for them, or if, having consented to abjure, they "relapsed," the authorities at Wigtown, as Wodrow suggests, may have acted on powers which they did not possess, and so were "deeply guilty."
The accounts of this abominable crime, apparently so motiveless, in the case of a young girl and an old woman, agree in declaring that the elder sufferer was drowned first, that the younger refused to be terrified by her fate ; that she herself was dragged out nearly inanimate, and persuaded to say something like " God save the king, if it be his will " ; that either Winram or Grierson of Lag (in Walker's account) offered her the abjuration ; that she refused it, and was thrust below the water. There are different accounts of her singing psalms and reading the eighth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, and of her dying words, " I am Christ's." Such discrepancies also occur in the evidence as to the death of Jeanne d'Arc, taken some twenty-five years after the event. The Penninghame evidence of 1 7 1 1 is twenty-six years after the event. On -the whole, it seems probable that death was inflicted by ducking, as in the swimming of witches. Some facts cannot be disputed : first, the horror of a crime that would soil " the calendar of hell " — a crime never punished by man ; next, the courage which places Margaret Wilson in the white sisterhood of Jeanne d'Arc; and, finally, the infamy of the fanatic preachers or leaders who lured children into the wilderness to entangle them with sophistries re- jected by the honourable Presbyterians of Scotland. The ministers, we learn from Sheilds, taught the people to flee from Renwick; when he was hanged " the ministers generally said, that though he might die in Christ, yet he died not for him, nor as a Presbyterian." 6a
THE RENWICKITES (1685). 389
In almost all modern popular books on Covenanting times, this matter of Renwick's declaration of murder, and the nature of the counterstroke, the abjuration of that declaration in so far as that paper asserts the right to murder, are left designedly vague. They are stated, but lost sight of, in a work of I903.69 We find a brief account of Renwick's career, but therein not a word concerning his " Apologetical Declaration" of murder in October-November 1684. That declaration, however, had already been described by the author (without being attributed to Renwick, and with circumstances quite erroneous) as " a good-bye to meekness and gentleness," as if these qualities had marked the previous preachers of " Blood and No Quarters." " Perhaps the vehement and volcanic sentences ought not to have been penned." Perhaps not. But when we reach the martyrdom at Wigtown, we learn that the sufferers died for no " little matter." " It was a fringe of Christ's royal robe, and in their hands no harm, however apparently trifling, must befall the seamless vesture of their Monarch." 70 A " vehement and volcanic " " good- bye to meekness and gentleness " has become a fringe of the raiment of the Divine Sufferer ! It was not so regarded by the contemporary Presbyterians of Scotland, who have no lot or part in the anarchist documents of Renwick's party.
The simple truth declared as such by Sheilds, Renwick's admirer and biographer, as by a recent historian, no friend of the " Praying Societies," is that " these hunted wanderers fell back on a doctrine which had been asserted by Scottish Presbytery when in the zenith of its powers . . . this, in substance, had been the teaching of Andrew Melville and before him of Knox." 71 Sheilds quotes Knox in corroboration, when Knox justifies resistance to tyranny, which needs no justification ; what needs justification is organised murder. This Knox applauded, as in the case of Riccio, and clamoured for a Phineas to stab the idolater. Isolated Covenanters had acted on this doctrine, when private men had " a call from the Lord " to kill the ungodly. The declaration of Renwick was as official as " the Societies " could make it, and into this were expressed the last dark drops of the Lord's peculiar people in Scotland.
The penman of the party at once denied that they approved of murder, and also admitted that "some private persons, with the consent of the brethren of their community . . . did put forth their hand, as they found opportunity, to execute judgment, . . . They saw no other way possible than to put them to death, who had so forfeited
390 PARLIAMENT OF APRIL 1685.
their lives to justice, when there was no access to public justice." 7a Every anarchist who fires a bomb in a crowd, or stabs a woman because she is crowned, regards himself as " executing judgment " ; but no anarchist, perhaps, has ever yet associated with his justice the name of Him who wore the seamless raiment. The Renwickian fanatics disclaimed the murder of Mr Peirson, and excluded the actors (several of whom seem to have been shot) from their communion. Apparently this murder was not the right sort of murder.73
By these impudent sophistries the minds of innocent rustics were debauched; again, they would not take the apparently harmless abjuration, because it was "homologating" the authority of the king who had renounced the Covenant, or of the king who was an idolater. Such persons — girls, crones, ploughboys — were, as a rule, quite harmless ; they were only misled by men like Renwick and Sheilds. They were shot down in the fields of Galloway and the south-west corner of Scotland for the sake of consciences per- plexed by Cameronian casuistry. Their blood is on the heads of the casuists, as well as of the Council ; and the posthumous honours of their tombs, with rhyming epithets, are certainly due to their dauntless courage. But, as regards the abjuration, they did not die for the religion of the Presbyterian Church of Scotland ; and the Government which now imposed oaths to the king, or against the declaration, merely imitated the Government which had made swearing to the Covenant compulsory.
The April— May shootings coincided with the new steps of Argyll, and the Lowland exiles (Hume of Polwarth, Sir John Cochrane, Balfour and another murderer of Sharp, with Rumbold of the Rye House conspiracy) towards the invasion of Scotland. Preachers had been sent from Holland to stir up the Remnant, and the Council was well acquainted with the facts.
At the same time Parliament met in Edinburgh, on April 28. The House "will offer such laws" as may best secure the king and his family and administration, and will be " exemplarily loyal." The Chancellor denounced " a new sect, sprung up from the dung- hill and the dregs of the people . . . who kill by pretended inspira- tion." The Renwickites, in fact, had few or none of the Presbyterian gentry in their ranks, though some of their womenkind were devoted to young Renwick. The kingdom was to be "put in a posture of defence " (April 2 8), and the lieges to be ready in a fort-
PARLIAMENT OF 1685. 391
night. An Act was passed inflicting on witnesses who refused to depone, as to treason and conventicles, the punishment due to those who were actually guilty. If they did depone, then they had the fear of Renwick's private courts before their eyes. Owning of the Covenants was made treasonable, " an overt act of treason against heaven," says Wodrow. Husbands were made liable for the fines of their pious wives, and (May 8) all preachers and hearers at conventicles were decreed punishable by death and confiscation. Conventicles are described as " the nurseries and rendezvouses of rebellion." In some cases they deserved the title, but obviously not in all. The law applied even to small gatherings in private houses, but does not seem to have been carried out in action. By way of supply ^216,000 was voted yearly to James for life.
All this is said to have "awakened people out of their slumber and security"; though Argyll, when he landed, found them fast asleep. The Act imposing the test was voted not to be applicable to women, thanks to the Bishops of Ross and Dunblane, as against Lauderdale, Eglintoun, and Linlithgow. Catholics, too, were relieved from the test, which must not be confused with the abjuration of Renwick's declaration. Cochrane, Polwarth, and other conspirators were forfeited. No Parliamentary approval was given to the edict of Council for shooting non-abjurants at sight. Clauses were to be inserted in leases binding tenants to orderly behaviour, as some lairds, in 1638, bound tenants to have family worship, "and to bear witness against the sins of their neighbours," and the like, — a practice which Wodrow wished to see revived.74 An Act of Security for officers of State against all complaints for actings in his Majesty's service was passed on June 4. Breaking into and robbing the houses of conformist clergy was made a capital offence, and the Act seems to show that this pious practice was not unusual. It might easily have reached the pitch of " hamesucken," which was already a capital crime. " Since the Revolution, Presbyterian ministers required no such Act," but it would have been useful to Episcopalian ministers who were " rabbled."
In short, judging by Parliament, a king never had a more loyal country. And James might have had such Parliaments, and non- conformists might have endured such laws, if he had not made the fatal error of " licking up the vomit of toleration," as Mr Guthrie warned Charles II. not to do. Conceivably even his interest in protecting his innocent Catholic subjects might have passed, if his
392 NOTE ON JOHN BROWN.
proceedings, especially in England, had not shown that he was bent on something far beyond toleration. Hoc nocuit?1
NOTE TO CHAPTER XIII. The Case of John Brown.
THE story of the shooting of John Brown of Priesthill in Muirkirk parish has been much discussed. Wodrow heard his praises as of a devout man, addicted to the instruction of the young, "from people of sense and credit yet alive, who knew him. " He owned or farmed a small piece of land, was a carrier, and appears in a list of harbourers and rebels in 1684. " He w? 3 in no way obnoxious to the Government, except for not hearing the Episcopal ministers," says Wodrow ; yet " he had been a long time upon his hiding." A man so devout and peaceable might have been expected to abjure those parts of Renwick's declaration which de- clared war by murder, and no law inflicted summary capital punishment for staying away from church. He was carting peats one day, near his house, when Claver- house, " whether he had got any information of John's piety and nonconformity I cannot tell," seized Brown. Wodrow " could not find " that the abjuration oath was offered to him. He was allowed to pray before being shot for his piety, and his eloquence so moved three troops of dragoons that "not one of them would shoot him." Claverhouse, "in a pet," did what was necessary with his own hand, before the eyes of Mrs Brown (herself about to be a mother) and of " a young infant standing by." The woman had " vainly tried tears and entreaties," and the deed finished, said, " Well, sirs, you must give an account of what you have done." The bloody Claverhouse replied, " To man I can be answerable, and, for God, I'll take Him into mine own hand."1
Wodrow gives no authority ; and the story, if true, came from Mrs Brown, the young infant, the three troops of mutinous dragoons, or the guides of the dragoons through the mosses. Macaulay follows Wodrow, but says that the soldiers refused to shoot, not because of the moving nature of Brown's prayer, but in pity for Mrs Brown.2 This motive Macaulay invented of his own will and fantasy.
Patrick Walker mentions Brown's marriage, in 1682, "upon Isabel Wier," and tells how Mr Peden prophesied Brown's bloody end. In early May 1685, Mr Peden stayed a night with Brown, and, on leaving, remarked that it was "a dark misty morning." About 5. 30 A.M. next day, Brown, after family prayers, was going to the peat moss, when "bloody cruel Claverhouse" surrounded him with three troops of horse, and brought him back to his house. There he examined Brown, and asked his guides if Brown had ever preached. They replied no, but he had prayed much. He bade Brown pray before death, but thrice interrupted him. Brown took a touching farewell of his wife, with her child in her arms and her step-child, by Brown's first wife, standing by. Claverhouse then bade six soldiers fire, and Brown's brains were scattered on the ground. He brutally taunted the poor woman, and made the speech about taking God in his own hands. 1 Wodrow, iv. 244, 245. 2 Macaulay, i. 388 (1866).
JOHN BROWN. 393
She gathered her husband's brains and tied up his head, and straightened his body, and covered him with her plaid, and sat down and wept over him — it being "a very desert spot, where never victual grew, and far from neighbours." She was comforted by an old woman, Jean Brown (elsewhere Walker calls her Elizabeth Menzies), one of whose sons, Thomas Weir, fell at Drumclog, while another, David Steel, was " shot when taken." Whether this old woman's maiden name was Brown or Menzies, she must apparently have had a son by a husband named Weir, and another by a husband named Steel.
Walker does not say why Claverhouse had Brown shot ; he does not say that it was merely for his nonconformity and piety. But he says that Mrs Brown (calling her by her maiden name, Weir), sitting on her husband's grave, told him that she never fainted or felt confused, though " her eyes dazzled when the shots were let off." This is excellent evidence for Mrs Brown's presence, and that she was present is attested in works of 1690, 1691, and 1693, in identical terms, but without any details or any account of -why Brown was shot. The same brief entry is quoted in 'A Cloud of Witnesses' (1714). But the ' Cloud' gives lines from Brown's epitaph which are not in Patrick Walker's version, though, if he stood beside Mrs Brown at her husband's grave, he might have copied —
Butchered by Clover* se and his bloody band, Raging most raifnously Jer all the land.
The evidence of Walker and Wodrow is, of course, very late, being published thirty years and more after the occurrence. There are traces of confusion, for the story told of the shooting of Brown — refusal of the soldiers to fire, compliance of less scrupulous Highlanders, the brains and bones of the skull collected by the widow — is also told of David Steel, son of Jean Brown, or Elizabeth Menzies, mentioned by Walker as the comforter of Mrs Brown and mother of David Steel. The melancholy narrative is printed by W. MacGavin, Esq. , editor of ' Scots Worthies' (1831), and is derived from "a MS. composed from the oral accounts of some of the descendants of the said John Steel," a cousin of David Steel. The oppressor is not Claverhouse but Crichton.1 On the whole, it seems certain that the Steels borrowed the story of Walker about Brown, not that Walker attributed to Brown a tale originally told about Steel.
Claverhouse's own account of the incident is contemporary, being dated May 3, 1685, in a letter to Queensberry. He says that last Friday he chased two fellows in the mosses, "a great way." The eldest, John Brown, refused to abjure Renwick's declaration of war, and so, under the orders of the Council, should be shot. He would not promise not to rise in arms, " but said he knew no king." Claverhouse took him to his house and searched it — bullets, match, and " treason- able papers" were found. "I caused shoot him dead, which he suffered very unconcernedly."
It was not, then, for mere piety that Brown was shot. The other man, Brown's nephew, "John Brownen," was ready to take the oath, but would not swear (which proves his respect for an oath) that he had not been in a recent attack and rescue of prisoners at New Mills. According to a tradition in the ' New Statistical Account ' (v. 838), one Browning had been in arms at Airs Moss, and also at the attack on New Mills. In any case, Claverhouse says, " I did not know what to do with him. I was convinced that he was guilty, but saw not how to proceed against him." So, when the carabines were presented, Claverhouse promised to spare him for the time, "and plead for him," if he would make an ingenuous 1 ' Scots Worthies,' i. 566-568.
394 JOHN BROWN.
confession. So he confessed to having come straight from the attack on New Mills to his uncle's, John Brown's, house. Meanwhile the soldiers found "a house in the hill, under ground," with swords and pistols in it, the property of Brown.
" Brownen " gave abundance of useful information about armed rebels, and Claverhouse adds, " I have acquitted myself when I have told Your Grace the case." The young fellow had only been in arms for a month or two, Claverhouse added, " and if Your Grace thinks he deserves no mercy, justice will pass on him, for I, having no commission of justiciary myself, have delivered him up to the Lieutenant-General, to be disposed of as he pleases."
This pleading is not passionate, but Claverhouse was on the worst terms with Queensberry. We now see why Brown was "long on his hiding," as Wodrow says. He was a rebel. The mode of getting information out of "Brownen" is less legal than the shooting of Brown. As to " Brownen," Claverhouse, having no justiciary, handed him over, as he says, to Drummond, the Lieutenant- General.
Brownen, or Browning, was, I think, Walker's "John Binning," Sheilds's "John Buiening," an obvious misprint, who, with four others, had a soldier jury, and the rope, at Mauchline on May 5, May 6, 1685, under Drummond. Brunen, or Buiening, or Binning is clearly the " Bruning " of the gravestone to the memory of these five sufferers —
" Bloody Dumbarton, Douglas, and Dundee, Moved by the devil and the Laird of Lee, Dragged these five men to death by gun and sword."
If " Brownen " is Brunen, Buiening, Bruning, and Binning, Walker was misin- formed, for he says that the Highlanders took Binning " waiting upon cattle without stocking or shoe." On the other hand, Browning, or Buiening, or Bruning, or Binning was, obviously enough, the John Brownen whom Claverhouse was to hand over to Drummond, and under Drummond, Bruning, Binning, or Buiening suffered two days later. Neither Wodrow nor Walker, nor any of the authors of 1690, 1691, 1693, and 1714, says a word of John Brown's nephew. As Walker and Wodrow omit so much that Claverhouse tells at the time of the occurrences, we do not know what is true in the stories they tell, while Claverhouse does not. It is only certain that John Brown was shot, in the presence of his wife, for refusing to abjure Renwick's declaration of war, and for possessing bullets, match, and treasonable papers. After his death (a few minutes) he was found to own swords, pistols, and a hiding place, and to be harbouring a red-handed rebel. He did not die for "his piety and nonconformity."
The Rev. John H. Thomson, in his popular edition of the ' Cloud,' gives the Steel variant of the Brown story, in all its pathetic details ; neither noting Crichton's absolutely different version nor the improbability that exactly the same events occurred in the cases of both martyrs.
In preparing this note, I have used Mr Hay Fleming's ' Saints of the Covenant ' (in which the identity of Binning, Buiening, Brownen, Bruning, and Browning is not recognised) and ' The Despot's Champion,' with Napier. Mr Hay Fleming writes that though Claverhouse's letter of May 3, 1685, is contemporaneous, "it does not follow that all the details he gives are perfectly reliable " ; which details are not- " perfectly reliable " the critic does not say. That Wodrow's and Walker's details are the reverse of trustworthy, in omission if not in commission, seems highly probable, as they are late authorities, and in places contradictory, though
NOTES. 395
resting clearly on one story, told also of David Steel and Crichton. Crichton himself tells a totally different story of the end of Steel, and we may be sure that the Steel legend, given by Mr J. H. Thomson, is a myth.
NOTES TO CHAPTER XIII.
1 Wodrow, iii. p. 224.
2 Carstairs was the father of " Cardinal Carstairs," and much disliked his habit of conspiracy.
8 'Six Saints of the Covenant,' ii. pp. 53, 209, 210; Wodrow, iii. pp. 279-283. 4 ' Six Saints of the Covenant,' ii. pp. 58, 211.
3 " The Stoic's Address to the Fanatics," cited by Principal Story, ' William Carstares,' p. 90.
6 Wodrow, iii. pp. 290, 291, note.
7 Argyll's Defence, Wodrow, iii. pp. 317-322, note.
8 James to Dartmouth. Burnet, ii. p. 301, note.
9 Burnet, ii. p. 307, note.
10 Wodrow, iii. pp. 296, 297 ; Burnet, ii. p. 311.
11 Wodrow, iii. pp. 298, 299. u Wodrow, iii. p. 309, note. 13 Wodrow, iii. p. 317, note. 14 Wodrow, iii. p. 318.
16 ' Historical Notices,' ii. p. 762. 18 Burnet, ii. p. 319, note.
17 Burnet, ii. pp. 320, 321. 18 ' The Despot's Champion,' p. 101. 19 Burnet, ii. p. 323. 20 Burnet, ii. pp. 323, 324, and notes.
21 Wodrow, iii. p. 370, note ; Claverhouse's commission, January 31, 1682.
22 Wodrow, iii. p. 383.
23 ' Historical Notices,' i. pp. 353, 363.
24 ' Historical Notices,' i. pp. 345, 346. * Napier, ii. pp. 265-268. 26 Napier, ii. p. 271, note. 27 Napier, ii. p. 274.
28 Napier, ii. pp. 270-279. » Napier, ii. pp. 283, 284.
80 Wodrow, iii. pp. 384, 385. a Napier, ii. p. 289.
82 ' Historical Notices,' i. p. 416. w Napier, ii. pp. 305, 306.
84 Napier, ii. p. 315 et seq. ; ' The Despot's Champion,' pp. 146, 152.
85 Claverhouse to the Chancellor, Napier, ii. pp. 358-360.
88 Wodrow, iii. p. 446. w Wodrow, iv. p. 5.
38 Napier, ii. pp. 387-389. » Napier, ii. p. 397.
40 Wodrow, iv. pp. 172, 173 ; Napier, ii. p. 404.
41 Napier, ii. p. 410, citing ' Register of Privy Council,' September 10, 1684.
42 Burnet, ii. p. 428.
43 Compare MSS. of the Duke of Buccleuch at Drumlanrig, vol. ii. pp. 30, 31 (1903). 44 Wodrow, iv. p. 98.
45 Wodrow, iv. p. 102. 48 Wodrow, iv. p. 99.
47 In a document given by Principal Story, " the Council's copy of the condi- tions," the words "directly or indirectly a witness" are omitted. The Principal argues that these words were in the paper which Carstairs accepted, but that the Council " fraudulently omitted them in their copy." To myself the words in either copy appear to mean that Carstairs would not be compelled to appear in Court personally against his associates, and it is a moot point whether the terms of the
396 NOTES.
conditions excluded the use of his recorded confessions as "an adminicle." But a little more or less of dishonour on the Government may scarcely merit close examination. Story's ' Carstares,' pp. 95-97.
48 Burnet, ii. p. 431. ^ Story, 'William Carstares,' pp. 82-84.
50 Story, ' William Carstares,' p. 66.
61 Story, ' William Carstares,' p. 70.
52 Wodrow, iv. p. 99. M Napier, ii. p. 421.
54 Wodrow, iv. pp. 148, 149. M ' Historical Observes,' p. 141.
56 Wodrow, iv. p. 153. 87 Napier, ii. p. 428,
58 ' Historical Observes,' p. 142 ; Napier, ii. 428.
69 Wodrow, iv. pp. 177, 197 ; Napier, ii. pp. 429, 430 ; i. p. 89. Wodrow's informant, his cousin, wrote about thirty years after the events, and says that three of Peirson's assailants were killed by the soldiers before the end of 1684. These victims appear to have been among the party cut up by Claverhouse after Peirson's murder, and as Macmichael and Macmichan are both said to come from Nithsdale, Napier is probably right.
60 ' Historical Notices,' ii. p. 585. 61 ' Historical Notices,' ii. p. 561.
62 Wodrow, iv. pp. 154, 155. w ' A Hind Let Loose,' p. 486 (1744). 64 ' Historical Notices,' ii. p. 623. ^ ' Historical Observes,' p. 146.
66 Wodrow, if we follow Fountainhall, must have had imperfect information, or confused two different events. But the Rev. John H. Thomson, editor of ' A Cloud of Witnesses' (1871), appends Wodrow's tale to 'A List of Those Killed in the Fields ' (p. 539), without a hint at the existence of Fountainhall's, a contem- porary's, narrative. Fountainhall describes his own notes as containing "many errors and mistakes heir insert, on trust and from report, which on review will be purged and cut off. " But it seems incredible that an advocate, living in Edinburgh in 1685, should have taken on trust the shooting and burial of a gentleman like Captain Urquhart. Criticism will never invade popular books on the Covenanters. Wodrow's own authority was probably the anonymous ' Cloud of Witnesses ' of '.1714. He quotes an edict of the Council as to the shooters of Urquhart (January 28, 1686), but does not connect it with Douglas's slaying of prayerful men (iv. p. 198).
67 See Note to this chapter.
68 Life and death of Mr James Renwick, p. 118 (1724). The documents for the narrative here given may be found in the Rev. Dr Stewart's ' History Vindicated,' second edition, 1869, a completely successful and courteous reply to Mr Napier's attempt to prove that the martyrs were never drowned at all ! Mr Napier's learned but prolix and far from courteous arguments are in the third volume of his ' Dundee,' his ' Case for the Crown,' and his ' History Rescued' (1870). He built much on the apparent pardon, the reference therein to " Edinburgh," not Wigtown ; the seemingly implicit denial of Sir George Mackenzie, who was present when " the material pardon " was passed ; the absence of notice of the event in Fountainhall, and in many places where notices might be expected ; and on the denials of the facts reported in 1714, and later by Wodrow and Walker. But the fact of the drowning is really beyond dispute.
69 ' Men of the Covenant,' by the Rev. Alexander Smellie, M.A.
70 ' Men of the Covenant,' pp. 315, 346, 347.
71 ' Politics and Religion in Scotland,' ii. p. 310 ; Mathieson. 73 Sheilds, ' Life of Renwick,' p. 63.
73 Sheilds, ' Life of Renwick,' p. 65.
74 Wodrow, iv. p. 280. 7S Wodrow, iv. pp. 259-282.
397
CHAPTER XIV.
ARGYLL'S RISING.
1685.
THAT the Presbyterians of Scotland could never have freed them- selves unaided from black Prelacy was made evident by the miserably futile expedition of Argyll. That adventure is interesting rather for the curious displays of Highland and Lowland character, of Presby- terian and Cameronian difficulties, than for other reasons. The account given by Macaulay, following Wodrow, who relied on papers of Argyll's, is perhaps unfair to the Lowland gentlemen, who are accused of poltroonery. The memoirs of two Lowlanders, Sir Patrick Hume of Polwarth and George Brysson, redress the balance, and are really as interesting almost as if Mr Louis Stevenson had told the story. When Argyll, Monmouth, and the Lowland gentle- men in exile began to meet and discuss projects for an invasion of England and Scotland, after the death of Charles II., it is probable that Polwarth, Fletcher of Saltoun, and others were not well dis- posed towards the great Highland Earl. " It was remembered that he beat Mrs Brisbane down his stairs for craving her annual rents, though he would have bestowed as much money on a staff or such like curiosity," says Fountainhall. " He used cruel oppression, not only to his father's, but even to his own creditors." These high- handed ways were not popular in the Lowlands. Polwarth believed, or pretended to believe, in " the hellish popish plot " invented by Titus Gates, and even as undesirable an ally as Argyll, a defender of Prelacy up to the date of his imprisonment, was welcome.1 On the meeting of Argyll and Monmouth, in the Low Countries, they also were found to be at odds.
Argyll asked "who of us would take our hazard and go" to rescue Scotland. Polwarth, Sir John Cochrane, and other Low-
39^ ARGYLL AND POLWARTH (1685).
landers cannot be blamed for wishing to understand the conditions and chances of the enterprise before committing themselves. The earl declined to go into details. He had been financed to the extent of about ;£i 0,000 by a Mrs Smith of London (retired to the Low Countries) and her friends, and had laid out the money very judiciously on arms and munitions of war, and on a frigate.* But he claimed the whole management, and in war, no doubt, a general should be untrammelled. But the Lowlanders were risking all ; moreover, they were to commit their friends in Teviotdale and Tweeddale. If there was to be a combined movement, they must know with whom, and when, and where the six hundred border riders were to meet the Campbells. There was no harm in that amount of caution and foresight. Both Argyll and Polwarth were afraid that Monmouth would declare himself king : a Campbell would be the subject of a bastard Stuart, calling himself Scott by the name of his neglected and injured wife, the Duchess of Buccleuch.
To Polwarth, Monmouth said that he could prove his legitimacy, which was absurd, for Charles II., writing to his eldest bastard, James de la Cloche, gives him the precedence over Monmouth, by priority of birth, and by the rank of his unknown mother (i667).2 Monmouth, however, promised to "lay no claim, or use no title, but by advice and to the advantage of the common cause," and, if successful, to place himself in the hands of Parliament. Argyll would not hear of Monmouth's going to Scotland, and stood firm to his post as responsible general. He was told that he had not yet been elected, and no information could be got from him as to the 5000 or 6000 clansmen who would come, he said, to his call. Except in clan fights, the Campbells had never done much successful service ; at Glenrinnes as at Inverlochy, the Gordons under Huntly, the Macdonalds and Atholl men under Montrose, had found them an easy prey ; at Flodden they had not stood to avenge their chief. The " Mountain Men," the Cameronians, on whom Argyll also relied, proved dissident, as was to be expected, when the time for action came. They believed Argyll to be guilty of the death of Cargill. Polwarth 3 argued in the pragmatical and provok- ing Lowland way. " General ! General of what ? Where is the army, and who has appointed my Lord for General ? " This was in
* From Major Holmes's evidence, already cited, it seems that Argyll had provided arms as early as June 1683.
VARIOUS VERSIONS OF ARGYLL AND POLWARTH. 399
conference with Sir John Cochrane, to whom Claverhouse, years before, had wished the reverse of salvation. Cochrane was un- doubtedly brave, and, at this time, was of Argyll's party. The Lowlanders wrung from the earl his assent to the selection of a Council. Prince Charles, later, had to submit to the same kind of control. The thing was practically inevitable, men of conflicting ideas and interests being engaged in a common venture. On April 24 the Council was framed, Argyll receiving "as full and ample power as any captain-general is ordinarily in use to have from any free state in Europe." The Dutch practice of sending to an army deputies, " without whose consent no great blow could be struck," was probably the fatal model.4
Rumbold, of the Rye House Plot, the tortured Spence, and, according to Fountainhall, two of the archbishop's murderers, Balfour and Fleming, sailed, with Argyll and the Lowland gentlemen.5 They touched in three days, most foolishly, at Kirkwall, where the bishop seized the luckless Spence and another man who went on shore. Spence had a close view of the boot again, and Government, which had known of the scheme for some time, was duly warned from Orkney. Wodrow says that Argyll ordered Polwarth to attack the town of Kirkwall. Polwarth says that he and his friends urged this method of rescuing Spence. "The earl and Cochrane opposed this motion vigorously."6 Throughout, Wodrow, speaking for Argyll, and Polwarth, speaking for himself, contradict each other. Argyll was one of Macaulay's favourites ; Polwarth he detested, and, in one place, speaks of " the worst action of his bad life " ; and he remarks, " wherever there is a question of veracity between Argyll and Hume, I have no doubt that Argyll's narrative ought to be followed." 7 Probably each gentleman told what he conceived to be the truth. In any case, all that they did in Kirkwall was to capture some gentlemen as hostages for Spence and Dr Blackader, and, according to Fountainhall, to seize a ship with money and supplies.
Government was prepared ; they summoned all the lieges, ordered Irish troops to the north of Ireland, made Atholl Lord Lieutenant of Argyll, with his headquarters at the earl's castle of Inveraray at the head of Loch Fyne — all this by April 28, before the invaders sailed. The great Campbell cadets were secured, or thought it prudent to desert their chief, and would not or could not, as a rule, raise their retainers. The obvious fact is that Argyll would have
400 THE LEADERS THWART EACH OTHER (1685).
been better advised had he stolen over like the prince in the song —
The Prince who did in Moidart land
With Seven Men at his right hand,
And all to conquer Kingdoms three,
Oh, that's the lad to wanton me.
The Campbells were well armed; Argyll's store of weapons was meant for the Lowlanders. Had the chief of Clan Diarmaid un- expectedly appeared at Inveraray, and sent round the fiery cross, he might have had 5000 muskets and claymores at his back, and, even if unsuccessful, could not have been taken in his own rough bounds. The ;£i 0,000 of Mrs Smith, too, would have been in his coffers. The alliance with the Lowlanders, the large preparations, were his ruin. They got wind, Government was ready, Inveraray was occupied by Murrays and Stewarts, the subordinate chiefs were overawed ; and the Polwarth group kept pressing for a descent in Ayrshire, while Argyll naturally desired to clear the Atholl men out of his country. It is certain enough that Polwarth and Cochrane would have found scanty help in the south, the armed guerillas of Renwick would not join the earl who gave his casting vote for the death of a preacher, while, in all probability, Clan Diarmaid would have rallied to a chief who threw himself on the honour of his children. The expedition never had a chance. The Lowlanders thwarted every effort of Argyll to clear his country of the Atholl men ; Argyll's changes of plan frustrated the Lowlanders' strategy of a march to the south.
After leaving Orkney, Argyll made for his own country, where his son, Charles, found that no gentleman would rise — they were prisoners, or in Edinburgh. Isla was Argyll's next point — he hoped to raise troops among the Campbells who had supplanted the Macdonalds in the old home of the Celtic sea-kings. Stewart of Ballechin commanded for Atholl in Isla; he had warning, and retired by sea, with all the arms in the island. Argyll made for Kintyre, also a Campbell conquest from the Macdonalds. Here some Lowlanders joined, and pressed for a march south. Here time was wasted, an enormous declamatory manifesto was issued, and Argyll emitted another, promising to pay his own and his father's creditors if he was successful.8 Polwarth thought that the earl devoted too much time to polishing the style of these manifestoes. At Tarbet the whole force was of but 1800 men.
ARGYLL'S PARTY DIVIDED (1685). 401
The kin of the earl, when approached by his son, Charles Campbell, "basely discovered all, and others were very backward to join." The eldest cadet of the clan, Lochnell, " gave his solemn promise to join the earl with all the men he could raise, and that upon a day appointed, and yet most treacherously he sent by an express the earl's letters, and probably his declarations, to the Council at Edinburgh, and afterwards joined the Marquis of Atholl, with his forces, at Inveraray." Wodrow, who gives these statements, used jottings made by Argyll later when a prisoner.9 If the story be true, Lochnell behaved to his chief, in 1685, exactly as Macleod behaved to his prince in 1745. Sir Duncan Campbell of Auchen- brack came in with about eight hundred men. Delays had driven time to the end of May, when, on Argyll's showing, he desired to attack Stuart of Ballechin, who, at Inveraray, had only 600 men, and was awaiting reinforcements under Atholl and Breadalbane. "This vexed us exceedingly," says Polwarth, speaking for the Royalists ; " we told him that Atholl, having the castle, might keep it till he got succours." Montrose, forty years earlier, could not take the castle of Inveraray for lack of guns, and whether Ballechin or Atholl now held the strength, Argyll's four-pounders in his ships would have battered the walls in vain. Argyll proposed this use of the ships, but the Lowlanders answered that the English ships would catch them, and that the Atholl men would merely manoeuvre and detain the adventurers.10 Wodrow, following Argyll, says that Cochrane averred he would go to the Lowlands, if he went alone "with a corn-fork in his hand," and that the others insisted on marching south with half of the force and arms. The Highland gentlemen, according to Polwarth, favoured the march southward. Argyll consented to divide the force, and then changed his mind, " which maddened Sir John Cochrane and the rest of us." Cochrane had a letter from Cleland (who fought at Drumclog and Bothwell Bridge), promising hopefully " to put all in a flame " in that country of the saints.11
But though Argyll had sent over preachers in April to stir up the remnant (which may partly account for the shootings of martyrs in May), Mr. Peden had prophesied that " Monmouth and Argyll will work no deliverance " as early as the end of February. Moreover, Renwick and the United Societies demurred, " because no mention was made," in Argyll's declaration, "of the Covenants," though " these sacred and solemn engagements " are named with all respect.
VOL. in 2 c
402 CROSS MARCHINGS.
Again, Argyll " opened a door for confederacy with Sectarians and Malignants," and had himself voted for Cargill's hanging, while Cochrane " was guilty of that great gush of the precious blood of Mr. Cameron and these with him at Airsmoss." 12 Hamilton, the No Quarter hero of Drumclog, averred that Argyll's money and Monmouth's came from "Sectaries, Papists, Malignants, and the Indulged, and other enemies of the, Lord's cause."13
Thus the saints were divided among themselves : the gallant Cleland only created division in ranks always ready to split up, and the martyred Argyll is no martyr to the heart of the Remnant. Trusting, probably, to Cleland, the Lowlanders induced Argyll to give up the attack on Inveraray, and sail to Bute. Differences now arose between Polwarth and Cochrane as to landing and seizing supplies at Greenock, then a fishing village. Polwarth disapproved, but, as a few men were going, accompanied them. They stole some meal and "a pretty barque," after a slight skirmish, and returned to Rothesay.14 Meanwhile Argyll had burned Rothesay Castle, in retaliation for the burning of a house of his own in Cowal. " This vexed us much, because it savoured of private revenge," smacking of " the bonny House of Airlie." Wodrow says nothing of the fire- raising. Charles Campbell had been defeated by the Atholl men in the Cowal country of Argyleshire ; his fugitives gathered in Eilean- greig Castle.
Argyll again wanted to attack the Atholl men ; Polwarth again had a stormy conversation with him, but Wodrow declares that the Lowlanders now saw an attempt on the south to be impos- sible. Probably Cochrane took this view, and Polwarth took the opposite.15 Argyll went and examined Eileangreig Castle, and announced that English frigates could not reach it in the narrows and shallows of the sea, whereas they certainly would capture the Lowlanders if they sailed south. There was every risk of a fight between Argyll's men and the sailors of the ships, who had been secured for Polwarth's interests. They all went to Eileangreig, and Polwarth, instructed by the seamen, said that frigates, well piloted, could come within easy gunshot. The ammunition and arms were entrusted to the castle, and the tiny guns installed in earthworks, but the English frigates blockaded the entrances of the channels. Meanwhile Rumbold, with three or four hundred men, marched to the head of Loch Fyne, and seized Ardkinglas Castle, opposite In- veraray. But Atholl's men only skirmished and detained Rumbold's
CONTRADICTIONS OF EVIDENCE. 403
forces, whom Argyll joined, and had some small success. Wodrow says that, with 1200 men, he meant to attack Atholl with 5000 and the Castle of Inveraray. But, whether through mutiny of the Low- landers or not, he did not make this daring onfall, but retreated to his fort at Eileangreig, Here he meant to man all his vessels and prizes, and to attack the English frigates, which, says Polwarth, could have sunk any of his flotilla with one discharge. As Wodrow puts it, " a mutiny was raised among the seamen by those who still embarrassed the earl, so the design was entirely broke, and the earl forced into the measures of those who, cost what it would, resolved to be at the Lowlands." 16 By this time, too clearly, whatever these disunited helpless adventurers did must cost life and lands to all who could not make their escape, and there were many desertions. If ever any of them had a real plan of campaign it is inconspicuous ; never was a conspiracy so helplessly futile.
Leaving the ships and a garrison at his fort, Argyll marched to Glendaruel. Raiding the country for cattle did not encourage the owners of the beasts; the Highlanders dwindled to about 500, the English frigates appeared before Eileangreig, and the garrison ran away, leaving guns, ammunition, ships, and supplies to the Eng- lish. Too clearly Argyll made an error in placing his material where ships of war could take it at will. There was now no alternative but an abandonment of the Lowlanders (which would have been justi- fiable, perhaps), or a march with them to the discontented western Lowlands. Large forces beset the adventurers, and Glasgow was reported to be strongly held. The earl, says Wodrow, again wished to fight any opponents he might meet. Polwarth says that he advised Argyll to retreat with his men into his own country, but that the earl persisted in making for Glasgow. On June 10 they started thither, and met a considerable force of militia and regulars. Argyll was for fighting, Polwarth for continuing the march. After some manoeuvring till dark, the earl insisted, says Polwarth, on a night retreat, the blazing camp fires deceiving the Royalists. Wodrow says that Rumbold proposed, and Argyll voted for, a night attack on the enemy. Here one or the other author, Wodrow, speaking for Argyll, or Polwarth, must be in error.17
They all lost their way in the morasses. A few reached Kilpatrick, not Glasgow ; and now Argyll, through Wodrow, says "Sir John Cochrane, Sir Patrick Hume (Polwarth), and some other gentlemen went straight to Clyde, and would not
404 ARGYLL TAKEN (1685).
so much as stay to reason the matter with my lord Argyll."18 Polwarth says that, after eating a crust at a public -house, he went to look for Argyll, but met Cochrane, who was about to cross the Clyde in a boat. " I said, where is Argyll, I must see him." " He is gone away to his own country," replied Sir John.19 Cochrane's party fought bravely, say Brysson and Polwarth, in a skirmish at a place called Muirdykes, escaped, and kept together till they heard that Argyll was taken (June 18). (Veitch and Brysson, p. 334.) "He would not come alongst with us over Clyde," says Brysson. Cochrane's party then broke up, Polwarth escaped, and, under William III., was made Earl of Marchmont. The story of his munching sheep's head brought to him by his daughter Grizel in the family vaults is too familiar for repetition. By Polwarth's account, derived from a gentleman who was present at the last meeting of Cochrane and Argyll at Kilpatrick, the earl asked Sir John whether he should cross Clyde or make for his own country, and Sir John advised the latter course.20
Fox, in his ' History of the Reign of James II.,' avers that Polwarth and Cochra Ue " would not stay even to reason with him whom . . . they had engaged to obey," but crossed the river with two hundred men. Fox had not seen Polwarth's narrative, but Macaulay had. He leaves the point open : Argyll " was forced to cross the Clyde " (Macaulay, i. 435). This Argyll did, finding no shelter near Kil- patrick, and was captured by two militiamen and a weaver in cross- ing a burn. He was not recognised, being dressed as a peasant, but betrayed his name, it is said, by exclaiming " unfortunate Argyll ! " The militiamen were servants of Sir John Shaw of Greenock (ancestor of Sir Hugh Shaw-Stewart), and, though the weaver and the servants were incredulous, Sir John recognised the earl, despite a beard which he had grown in exile, so says Fountainhall.21 Macaulay writes, with naivete", that some of the captors " wept, but were not disposed to relinquish a large reward," and face the "vengeance of Government."
In prison, Argyll reflected on his adventure and wrote, what was true, " there are some hidden ones " (the Remnant ?), " but in this country I see no great party that desire to be relieved." Where were Polwarth's promised 600 horsemen of the Border shires? Their fathers deserted Montrose, they did not rise for Argyll — indeed they could not join him, unless they had been cavaliers like Edward Wogan. Argyll accuses his Lowland companions of embezzling
ARGYLL'S CONFESSIONS. 40$
stores : " some of them lived riotously and spoiled the provisions as they pleased. ... I spent all the silver upon them, and they claimed all as their due. Blank and blank" (Cochrane and Polwarth?) " were the greatest cause of our rout, and my being taken, though not designedly, I acknowledge, but by ignorance, cowardice, and faction." Later, " I am not pleased with myself, I have so hard epithets of some of my countrymen." As to cowardice, we have seen that, by Polwarth's account, Argyll countermanded the night surprise, and ordered the night retreat.
Argyll, perhaps to expedite matters and discourage Monmouth, was condemned on the old absurd charge, and had no second trial, though that could only have ended in one way. He was not to escape again, whether by collusion or by a ruse. He writes, "this evening orders came that I must die upon Monday or Tuesday, and I am to be put to torture, if I answer not all questions upon oath." 22 Did he answer all questions upon oath? Wodrow gives the list. To answer truly, was to betray every accessory, every associate. " I answered but in part, according to a paper under my hand and signed," writes Argyll. Wodrow could not get the paper of answers. Macaulay and Fox ask how Argyll escaped torture ; but Fox forgot that he had published the answer in his Appendix, a letter of July 1 6, from Barillon, the French ambassador at St. James's; and Macaulay, though fond of quoting Barillon, leaves his remark in silence. Writes the ambassador of France to Louis XIV., "The Earl of Argyll has been executed at Edinburgh : he left a full confession in writing, revealing the names of all those who helped him with money, and aided his plans. Thus he escaped torture."23 But on the very day of his doom, June 30, Argyll wrote to the lady who gave him the money, Mrs. Smith, saying "your name could not be concealed . . . otherwise I have named none to their disadvantage." Mrs. Smith was safe in Holland : ^ and the sympathy of the Lords of the Council for one of their order probably induced them to be satisfied with the harmless disclosure of her not uncommon name. The story, as it reached Barillon, must have been grossly exaggerated.25 It seems almost detective's or informer's work to allude to Barillon's letter, but it is better to face the evidence, and show in how innocent a sense his narrative is true, than to ignore his testimony. For the rest, we hear of no one molested on the score of the revelations which, according to Barillon, were made by the earl.
406 DEATH OF ARGYLL (1685).
His conduct in prison was marked by more than one fine trait, especially by his care for the unfortunate clansmen who were true to him. " Only my poor friends " (kinsmen) " in Argyll have appeared in all Scotland. I was busy this day treating for them and in some hopes." We are reminded of the gentle Lochiel, in France, after 1 746, " Let me perish with the people I have ruined ! " Argyll had been anything but a foe of Prelacy ; before his misfortune under the Test Act, he said "my gross compliances are now sad and grievous to me," and predicted that "deliverance shall come very suddenly." The story of how he took his usual sleep between his last meal and his execution is familiar, and his worst enemies never denied his personal courage. He was accompanied on the scaffold by two conformist ministers, if Charteris, whom he asked for, and who had refused the Test, can be called a conformist. His last speech was fortified by many scriptural citations, chapter and verse being carefully given. He declared that he died "with a heart-hatred of Popery and Prelacy," the religions of the over- powering majority of his fellow-Christians. Like Montrose, he had penned some last verses : they had no poetical merit.
Fountainhall's remarks on Argyll's affair are odd and prolix : he supposed that the family, of which he speaks tartly, was now for ever ruined. As to the earl, " it was observed he has neyer been very solid since his trepaning of his skull in 1653," a circumstance which might account for the reported flights of temper. The Council, we learn, decided not to inflict on the earl the monstrous indignities heaped upon Montrose when brought prisoner into Edinburgh, when " it was reported that . . . this Argyll was feeding his eyes with the sight in the Lady Murray's balcony, in the Canongate, with her daughter, his lady, to whom he was new married, and that he was seen playing and smiling with her." 26 A majority of the Council " who are recovering somewhat of their power now " (as against the Treasurer and Chancellor) voted for death by the Maiden, not by the gibbet, as in Montrose's case, and for that of Rumbold, who was taken fighting hard. It is unfortunate that no good biography of the unhappy earl exists. He practically " conquested " Mull for his family, from the Macleans, thereby weakening a clan which would have been very serviceable to the Stuart cause in later years. The causes of his fall, at the time of the Test, are obscure, but probably it was determined to put at him as too powerful a prince ; and the pretence chosen was infamous. Had he not been treated in this
CRUEL ORDERS OF COUNCIL (1685). 407
manner one sees no reason to suppose that he would have enter- tained, so late in the day, "a heart-hatred" of Episcopacy. He had disclaimed the name of Presbyterian in 1667. His adventure was ill timed, ill managed, and based on the sort of flattering in- formation which commonly beguiles exiles, as it beguiled Monmouth. The Lowlands would not, in any case, have risen, especially as many may have believed with Fountainhall, that the Highlanders had no religion whatever, — Campbells being no better than Mac- donalds. It is certain that the earl, who, whether he turned the scale in favour of Cargill's death or not, had expressed approval of torturing rebel preachers, no more deserved than his father the title of " martyr " which Principal Story confers on both noblemen. In private life he was, as some of his unpublished letters prove, a man of singularly affectionate character and tender heart.
As to the vengeance on the rebels in Argyllshire, Wodrow heard, vaguely, of "extraordinary cruelties exercised there," and that Atholl hanged twenty-three Campbells, but was checked, while ravaging the country, by the Council, who gave his lieutenancy of the shire to Lt.- General Drummond.27 After the Revolution, Atholl, defending himself against a "calumnious process" of the new Argyll, averred that, beyond cutting down trees for huts, his Highlanders behaved well, whereas a regiment under Argyll, in 1689, destroyed his plantations at Dunkeld and Blair. For his own part, he says that he was blamed for not acting up to the orders of the Council, which he publishes. On May 20, 1685, the Council, through Perth, bade him burn Inveraray, and " destroy all houses, goods, and persons of any who join with Argyll." Again, " all men who joined are to be killed or disabled from ever fighting again." "Burn all houses except honest men's, and destroy Inveraray and all castles" (May 31). "Let the women and children be transported to remote isles. . . . But all this is with submission to your judgment." All heritors taken are to be executed, and a hundred of the ringleaders among the tenants and commoners (June 23)!
Atholl declares that he took, and, if he had acted on his orders, would have hanged, over a hundred men, not twenty-three only, and he only burned Dunstaffnage Castle, and that for military reasons. He did not spare Inveraray merely because he resided there ! " the marquis never liked the place so well as to make it his residence had it been his own," and he could have burned it under
408 TOLERATION FOR CATHOLICS (1686).
his orders, when he left it. He had also spared the life of " Mr. Charles Campbell," and prints his grateful letter. We incidentally learn that three or four hundred western Whigs rose at Sanquhar, but were scattered by Claverhouse.28
The greatest sufferers by Argyll's rising were the Covenanting prisoners in Edinburgh. They were taken from their prisons on May 18, and sent, enduring countless hardships, to Dunnottar Castle, where they were crowded, with hateful disregard of health and decency, into a dungeon not much better than the Black Hole of Calcutta. Some took the oaths, some escaped, but about one hundred and seventy of both sexes were immured. The horrors of their captivity were caused by George Keith, sheriff depute of the Mearns, and were but slightly assuaged by the intercession of his wife and the orders of the Council. Even water was grudged them, and some died, a few escaped, the soldiers tortured all whom they caught. Many who would not take an oath involving the royal supremacy were banished.29 The new Sanquhar rising and treasonous declaration made there in May led to severities in Galloway by Claverhouse, "without any pretended crime," says Wodrow, but we may con- jecture that the affair at Sanquhar, and fear of aid from the Remnant to Argyll, was the cause of or pretext for the dragoonings.
On April 29, 1686, Parliament met, the king's purpose being to secure toleration for Catholics. "We cannot be unmindful of .... our innocent subjects, those of the Roman Catholic religion who have, with the hazard of their lives and fortunes, been always assistant to the crown in the worst of rebellions and usurpations, though they lay under discouragements hardly to be named." 30
Nothing could be more true, and James had more honesty than Charles II. But the outbreak of persecution in France, and the unshaken belief among true Protestants in Oates's popish plot, with the moral certainty that James would not be satisfied with mere toleration, but would fill all offices with Catholics, proved fatal to the king. Queensberry was superseded by Melfort, a convert ; Murray, reputed to be a convert, was Commissioner in Parliament : such appointments practically justified resistance to tolerance, even if accompanied by the largest indulgence to nonconformists. If he could, and as soon as he could, James would certainly follow the example of Louis XIV. ; and this certainty, with his own folly and loss of nerve, cost him
EXERCISE OF PREROGATIVE (1686). 409
three crowns. Real toleration in these days was not in the range of practical politics ; persecution must be practised on the line of least resistance. The Episcopalians were soon to suffer in their turn, as the wheel of fortune revolved. The Commissioner, the Earl of Murray, offered free trade with England, with right to refuse free trade with Ireland, which sent cattle, horses, and victual, whence " this kingdom suffers great prejudice," and all the cruelty of cheap commodities. Supplies were not demanded, an indemnity (of which we hear little more) was offered, and these gifts were to be repaid by toleration for Catholics.81
Late in 1685, Perth, the Chancellor, had become a Catholic, whether from conviction or to ingratiate himself with James is uncertain, but he contrived the ruin of his house, which remained Jacobite to the last. He "bought altars, candlesticks, priests' garments," and " such trash " for Holyrood, says Fountain- hall; and this audacious act met its natural reward. On January 31 there was a tumult of "the Mobilee" in Edinburgh — "the rabble against the mass priests." Three persons were killed by the soldiers, and a drummer and a fencing-master were hanged.32 Thus threatened with Popery, the Parliament, on May 6, returned a cautious reply to the king's message, — they would be as tolerant as their consciences permitted, in considering the royal request. The Lords of the Articles (May 27) went as far as they dared in offering to permit Catholic worship in private ("all public worship being hereby excluded"), and the laws against Popery remaining in force.33 This was going much further than the Covenanting strugglers for "freedom of conscience" could approve. As it reached the Estates the Act " countered the Court's design to bring in Papists to places of trust and power." The Chancellor therefore dropped the Act; the Council was to some extent purged of resolutely intolerant Protestants, while Catholics — the Duke of Gordon, Traquair, and Seaforth — took their places. Sir George Mackenzie lost his place as Lord Advocate; the post {February 1687) was conferred on the old foe of Claverhouse, Sir John Dalrymple.
On August 24 James wrote a letter to the Council: "we resolve to protect our Catholic subjects," "against all their enemies and the laws made against them," "according to our •undoubted right and prerogative." Meanwhile, it seems that Mr. James Renwick announced that "I separate from and excom-
4IO NEW INDULGENCES (1687).
municate all the ministers belonging to Scotland " ; so Mr. Robert Cathcart, " a very pious and knowing Christian in Carrick," informed the world.84 The Remnant were all at odds among themselves, and lost, by natural death, the celebrated Mr. Peden the prophet, remarked for his piety and clairvoyance. He prophesied that his body would be buried at the gallows foot, as it was ; but it needed no super-normal information to convince him that this was highly probable. Little as we may like the spirit of religious persecution under Charles II., it had this plea, that the Presbyterian claims to dominate the State must be, and were, put down ; with every circumstance of cruelty and superfluous military oppression. But James was now actually playing the royal Pope of a religion which was not even his own, and the Archbishop of Glasgow, and the Bishop of Dunkeld, were deprived of their sees by the Catholic Head of a Protestant church. The king, perhaps, dared not have attempted such a high-handed act by virtue solely of the royal supremacy in England, where the seven bishops were protected by a verdict of their countrymen. But in England as well as in Scotland, and in England to his ruin, he began to repeal the penal laws by virtue of his prerogative, enforcing toleration and abolishing religious tests, by proclamation. In 1687 he presented three successive forms of Indulgence to Scotland; into the third, of July, the Presbyterian ministers fell, and at a meeting of July 21 accepted better terms than they ever had hoped to obtain, with "a deep sense of your Majesty's gracious and surprising favour." They defended their loyalty, and the mass of them had been loyal, — so manifestly that perhaps Charles II. might, he certainly should, have tried the experiment of allowing Presbytery, deprived of the weapon of excommunication with civil penalties, to exist after the Restoration. The ministers who thus addressed the king acted, of course, on their own motion, as there was not in existence a ruling assembly of the Kirk.
Renwick, and the few preachers who thought with him, of course stood out against accepting toleration from a Popish usurper, as they called the king. Renwick, in Wodrow's opinion, would have come in at the Revolution; but probably he would have maintained the extreme attitude of the Cameronian Societies, and refused allegiance to an uncovenanted latitudinarian prince. In any case, the mass of the preachers had learned opportunism enough to take what they could from James, though they shared
EXECUTION OF RENWICK (1688). 411
the boon with Catholics, Quakers, and Episcopalians.85 They can- not but have seen that the liberty which a royal proclamation gave, another proclamation could withdraw; but in the meantime they saw no harm in practising the public exercises of their religion. "Their subserviency showed how sorely broken was the ancient Presbyterian spirit," says a recent historian, but civil society was impossible till " the ancient Presbyterian spirit " had been crushed.36 Had it not been broken down, the peaceful Revolution of 1688 would have been impossible in Scotland ; for the preachers would have insisted on the acceptance of the Covenant, by the Prince of Orange, with compulsory Presbyterial Government in England. It was left for a Whig Lord Advocate, Sir James Dalrymple, Claverhouse's old enemy, to prosecute the last martyr, Mr. James Renwick. He was hanged on February 17, 1688, and the commission of Sir George Mackenzie to supersede Dalrymple was read on the same day.87
Renwick, whose most notable feat was the Apologetical Declara- tion of war by murder, had foolishly hidden in the house of a friend in Edinburgh, who seems to have been a professional smuggler; "He dealt in English goods, and the Custom House officers were frequently searching his house for prohibited goods," says Wodrow.88 Fountainhall says they were seeking " unfree goods stolen from the customs." Among other clandestine commodities was found Mr. Renwick. He fired a pistol at the searchers, missed, ran down the Castle Wynd to the head of the Cowgate, and was caught " by a profligate fellow." He was offered his life if he would acknow- ledge the Government, but pride and principle alike forbade. Under threat of torture, accompanied by promise from Dalrymple of indemnity for any on whom he might bring suspicion, he deciphered certain ciphered names in his papers. Bishop Paterson vainly interceded for his reprieve, and "professed kindness and concern in him." Renwick was only twenty-six at the time of his death, and in everything but his extreme fanaticism, which was the occasion of the deaths of so many ignorant people, seems to have deserved the affection of his friends. Wodrow, who disliked " the heights " to which he ran, has a singular tenderness for his memory, and constantly urges that he merely followed and tried to mitigate the opinions of his adherents. He was the last victim of the preachers who, safe in Holland, kept stirring the embers of extreme Presbyterianism. Every effort was vainly made to save him on the easiest possible terms.
412 BIRTH OF THE PRINCE OF WALES (1688).
The history of the nascent intrigues for the invasion by the Prince of Orange is difficult, and the part in which a Scot was concerned is specially obscure. Burnet, who had been making a tour in Europe, was invited to the Hague in 1686. In April 1687 he was accused, in Scotland, of treason, and of dealings in 1685 with Argyll. Among witnesses against him were named the notorious William Carstairs, and Sir John Cochrane, who had procured his pardon for the Argyll rising.89 Fountainhall says that " the true quarrel " partly rested on a private letter of Burnet's, declaring that he had seen at Rome the document of a League, signed by James and all Catholic princes, "to extirpate the Protestants," "which is certainly false."40 But Burnet had naturalised himself in Holland, where he was to marry a rich Dutch woman. He could not be given up, and plots to kidnap him were laid in France, and, he says, by Whitford, whom he denounces as the murderer of Dorislaus nearly forty years agone. He was intimate with the Prince of Orange, to whose character he dealt a stab murderous, and, we may trust, mendacious.41 He cleared up, he says, the political mistrust between William and Mary, as good a wife as she was a bad daughter. "I found the prince was resolved to make use of me," says Burnet ; but the full and precise nature of the uses to which Burnet was put remains undivulged. He avers that William had predictions "from a man that pretended a commerce with angels," — a Medium of some sort. The Regent Murray burned Sir William Stewart for this very crime.42 Burnet was removed from the prince's presence, but remained in constant correspondence with him. On June 10, 1688, the Queen of England gave birth to her unfortunate son, James, " the Chevalier de St. George," and the Prince of Orange, in his manifestoes of October, sank so low as to pretend to believe in the various and contradictory lies circulated by the Whigs. On this point Arbuthnot's treatise on Political Lying may be recommended. As Macaulay says, "posterity has fully acquitted the king of the fraud which his people imputed to him." They imputed it in various discrepant ways : on one theory the young prince was a brother of Fanny Oglethorpe, his mistress according to Thackeray. To Burnet's blundering version of events t)ean Swift adds the note, " So here are three children ! " " To palm one child upon a nation is certainly a thing very difficult ; but to palm three, one after another ! " 43 Populus vult dedpi, but that the Prince of Orange shared the fatuous illusion we cannot readily
DUTCH INVASION (1688). 413
suppose. The lies were useful, and he used them. As early as July 1 7 verses and letters, reflecting on the birth of the Prince of Wales, were seized in Scotland.44
As is common in political affairs, each side was indifferent to honesty and honour. The proceedings of James were so grossly obvious as to clear his Jesuit advisers from the charge of being " Jesuitical." Holyrood with its Catholic, or rather Jesuit, press and schools, was the centre of an illegal propaganda, while Protestant books of controversy were suppressed as dishonouring his Majesty's religion. The Castle of Edinburgh was in the hands of the Catholic Duke of Gordon, representing, in creed, and in the futility of his conduct, a long line of Huntlys. The usual autumn municipal elections in royal boroughs were prohibited, and royal nominees were appointed. The conformist or Episcopal clergy of Scotland were peculiarly active in their opposition to Popery, and their Presbyterian brethren no longer concealed their sense of the true nature of the king's conversion to the doctrine of toleration. The best account of affairs is probably that of Lord Balcarres, son of Balcarres who had pawned and ruined his estate in the royal cause, and died at Breda in the year before the Restoration. Charles gave a pension of £1000 a year to Lady Balcarres and her eldest survivor ; and Lord Lindsay, editing the narrative of this survivor for the Bannatyne Club, "thinks it only due to the memory of the unfortu- nate House of Stuart to bear witness to the constant kindness and sympathy which my own family experienced at their hands, not merely during the sunshine of their prosperity, but in the darkest hours of mutual destitution and exile."45 Young Balcarres, by marrying a daughter of Lord Northesk, fell into the shady side of Charles's favour, but recovered interest on the death of his wife, and became the friend of John Churchill (Marlborough), who often said that "he was the pleasantest companion he ever knew." James made him one of the six Commissioners of the Treasury. When an invasion by the Prince of Orange became certain, in the September of 1688, Balcarres found that the Treasury was well supplied, and proposed to levy ten battalions of foot, to raise 5000 Highlanders, and the Arriere Ban; and with 1200 horse of the gentlemen, and the 3000 of the regular army under Douglas and Dundee, to march to York and keep the northern counties of England in order. Melfort, the1 evil genius of James, rejected the scheme, and sent for Dundee with the regular army, thus denuding Edinburgh and
414 JAMES AND CLAVERHOUSE (1688).
Scotland of regular forces, and leaving the Government, the Council, at the mercy of the mob, for the militia could not be trusted. Balcarres with difficulty reached London, where he found Dundee with James, after the king's return from his flight. Balcarres and Dundee declared that the army which James had deserted after his own desertion by Marlborough at Salisbury, would gather at beat of drum, and that they could collect 20,000 men. Lord Ailesbury also reports in his Memoirs, that Dundee assured James that, if he would mount and ride with him, he would carry him safely to Scotland. At that moment Dundee and Balcarres were alone with the king, alone faithful among the faithless found. Their loyalty seems to have been based upon personal affection and the point of honour. The title of Viscount Dundee, bestowed on Claverhouse in November 1688, had not increased the loyalty of his com- manding officer, Douglas, the brother of Queensberry, but made it impossible for any man like John Graham to desert the falling cause. Otherwise, it would have been as easy for Dundee as for Douglas to take service under William of Orange, who used all men of courage and ability. Already, with James at Rochester before his return to London, Dundee had made his offer to the king ; Carte reports it in the same terms as Lord Ailesbury.46
But James had lost heart as well as head. At the last attempts of Balcarres and Dundee to impart courage to the king, he informed them of his intention to fly for the second time, and promised to Balcarres a commission for civil, to Dundee for military affairs (Balcarres, xviii.). Dundee remained in town, till " he had fixed a correspondence both with England and France," says Burnet, " though he had employed me to carry messages for him to the king " (William), " to know what security he might expect if he should go and live in Scotland without owning his government. The king said, if he would live peaceably, and at home, he would protect him : to this he answered that, unless he were forced to it, he would live quietly." " Quietly " Dundee did not live, whether he was " forced to it," or not.47 While the regular Scottish army sent into England was scattered like sheep without a shepherd by the desertion of the king, the country, in mid October, learned that William and Mary " lay no claim to the crown at present " — " that the object of this expedition is that the late king's murderers be tried in Parliament, that the Impostor be sent back to his natural parents." Charles II. had not been murdered; the
BEHAVIOUR OF THE BISHOPS. 415
Prince of Wales was not an impostor ; and Wodrow says that these and other proposals, "that excellent paper," were "so worthy of the prince " ! ^ On November 3 all the Scottish bishops except Argyll and Caithness wrote to congratulate James on the storm which frustrated William's first attempt to cross. They styled James " the darling of Heaven," and in that light they and their flocks, after they had nothing but persecution to gain by it, continued, with an invincible and unreasonable fervour of loyalty, to regard the king's son and grandson. The bishops were, not much later, offered William's alliance against the Presbyterians. For himself, Bishop Rose refused it, and said that he believed his brethren were with him.49 Yet while, after William had succeeded, the Episcopalians of Scotland took this certainly unselfish attitude, before William arrived their clergy had been denouncing the White Rose Prince as an impostor, and were, as Balcarres tells James, " extremely over- joyed at the noise of the Prince of Orange's coming over." 50 Of a people proud of its logical gifts, the Episcopalian Jacobites and the Covenanters are singular children.
When we study the character and conduct of James II. it seems impossible that any man should have been a Jacobite. But his domestic misfortunes bore such an ill look for his son- in-law and his daughter; his son was so natural an object of pity and affection ; a Dutch or German ruler was so distasteful ; the new Government with its wars so loaded the country with the National Debt, that the ancient sentiment of loyalty rose to a love passing the love of women, and the canniest of nations entered into a period of romantic struggles for an impossible Cause, cupitor impossibilium. That set of men, the bishops, who had been so slavish and so self-seeking, suddenly appeared ready to sacrifice all for a sentiment, a song, a flower ; living in poverty and hope
Till our White Roses do appear To welcome Jamie the rover.
This curious behaviour may, perhaps, suggest that the Scottish bishops were not quite such " hounds " as an eminent Presbyterian historian, the Rev. Principal Story, is pleased to style them. " The Scotch bishops regarded James's throne with an attachment akin to that of the hound to the master who has fed him when he wanted food, and lashed him when he needed discipline."51 Principal Story repeats the anecdote of William's interview with Bishop Rose,
416 WILLIAM AND THE BISHOPS (1689).
but omits the bishop's statement that he believed his brethren to share his sentiments ; that they never would acknowledge the Dutchman as king, and that, for his own part, he would liefer forfeit all his interests in the country. Now Rose and the other bishops abandoned everything — above all, cast themselves a prey to the Presbyterians, though William " had desired to save the Scotch Episcopal Establishment because he believed it was acceptable to many, if not most, of the powerful, but unprincipled, nobility of the kingdom," — and for other reasons of State.52 So says Principal Story. It would seem that the bishops, if dogs, were honest dogs, who rejected the greatest of bribes rather than desert a ruined master. As this very " unselfish faithfulness to a ruined master " is admitted in the case of Dundee,53 it does not appear that bishops ought to lose the benefit of the act of grace, merely because they are bishops.
They might have continued to be bishops, as William wanted to propitiate the unprincipled nobility of Scotland, but they would not yield an inch of their legitimist principles. They believed that hereditary monarchy was jure divino, as their opponents believed that Presbyterial government was of divine right. Both ideas are obsolete, but a man is not a hound because he adheres to his principles. William's proclamation of October 10, 1688, set forth with much vigour the grievances of the country. James's advisers were, in a constitutional tone, blamed for James's own measures, "religion, law, and liberties" were overturned, absolute power was openly proclaimed for the express purpose of "intro- ducing what religion they please." Papists, contrary to law, were entrusted with the chief posts, civil and military; charters were violated, and free elections in the burghs were prevented. The barbarities of the dragoonings — "hanging, shooting, and drowning" (an obvious reference to the case of the Wigtown martyrs) — were denounced. The liberty to dissenters was explained as a mere stalking-horse for favouring Popery, a freedom which could be destroyed, as it was granted, with the stroke of a pen. Then, as if the case was not good enough, so good as to be unanswerable, the prince's remark about the " impostor " was brought in, an unworthy concession to the popular desire to be deceived.54
On the withdrawal to England of the 3000 men of the regular army, the Presbyterian ministers temporised with the Council till they received hopes from Holland to have "the Government of
HOLYROOD SACKED (1688). 417
Church and State put into their hands," says Balcarres.55 They then told Sir Patrick Murray that they would deal no more with a Popish king, but " would carry themselves as God should inspire," that is, according to circumstances. The Council, in the absence of the army, found the militia useless and themselves impotent. The Presbyterian leaders held meetings, and, " according to their ancient custom, nothing was determined without consulting them " (the preachers) " and that they approved." The communications of the Council with the king in England were broken : when Melfort got a message through, he sent "the truth disguised, and quite different from what the Viscount Dundee wrote to me" (Balcarres). Mob outrages were threatened, to frighten away the Chancellor, Perth. Atholl was a partner in these proceedings : his conduct throughout was shifty, even for these times. Perth, the Chancellor, was per- suaded to disband such forces as were left, except four troops of horse , he himself, a timid man, fled to the country, and later was taken while attempting to escape by sea, and made prisoner for four years. These Drummonds, Perth and Melfort, hastened and secured the ruin of the king's cause, before and during his exile, and lost all for him and for their religion. By far the best of them, the Duke of Perth, fought bravely in 1745-1746, and died of wounds or fatigue when all was over.
The night after Perth left Edinburgh, December 10, the mob attacked Holyrood, held by Captain Wallace, with 120 men, and were repulsed with loss. Atholl, Tarbat, and Breadalbane gave the malcontents a summons to Wallace to surrender, and the town trained band, under Captain Graham, with the Provost, the Magistrates, and the Presbyterian leaders, headed a mob in a new attack. Cameronians took part in these faithful contendings. Wallace, attacked in front and rear, forsook his post; his men surrendered. "The gentlemen and rabble, when they saw all danger over, rushed in upon them, killed some, and put the rest in prison, where many of them died of their wounds and hunger."66 Wodrow has plenty to say about starvation of Covenanters in Dunnottar Castle ; about these sufferings of Royalists he is silent, alleging that "the youths killed all the soldiers they met with." The chapel was rifled, and next day all Catholic religious articles were plundered and burned, and the houses of several Catholics were sacked. "They opened the Chancellor's cellars and mine," says Balcarres, " and made themselves as drunk with wine as before
VOL. Ill 2 D
41 8 THE EXCESSES OF THE REMNANT (1688).
they had been with zeal. Two or three days they rambled about the town, and plundered the Roman Catholics, who were but very few; some of their ladies they treated with the utmost barbarity."67 . . . "They were willing to have done more, had it been in their power," says the author of 'Faithful Contendings Displayed,' for "in this reeling time the Societies were not idle," whether in Edinburgh or in the country. He says nothing about treating ladies "with the utmost barbarity."
At Traquair, under Ker of Kersland, they burned such pictures and books as they deemed "popish," including "The Queen of Peace, curiously drawn." "The work was gone about deliberately and methodically," says Dr. Hay Fleming. We are to presume that Lord Traquair's cellar had been moderately dealt with by the devotees who made an inventory of the works of art which they burned.58 The Cameronians of the Societies, their religious peculiarities apart, were, in fact, methodical men, intelli- gently organised. Patrick Walker, the biographer of the saints, was then a youth of twenty-two, who had lain long in prisons — for example, he had shared the horrors of the Dunnottar dungeon ; he had been condemned to torture, and it is believed that he had suffered both boots and thumbscrew. He makes no marvel of his own sufferings, but describes the process of rabbling conformist clergy. He had been present at fifteen rabblings, whence it appears that gangs of the Society men went about attacking ministers in parishes not their own, a kind of ambulatory conventicle. It has already been shown, from Burnet's evidence, that the conformist ministers in the south-west were " sair hadden doun " even before Drumclog; they were robbed, stoned, beaten, and insulted, while they had no body of excited public opinion to back them. When attacked by armed gangs in " that golden non-such interregnum," as Walker calls it, they merely trembled and submitted. , " How would they tremble and sweat if they were in the Grass Market, and other such places, going up the ladder with the rope before them, and the lad with the pyoted coat at their tail." They were merely being driven out of church and home, and deprived, with their families, of their subsistence. All of them, by law, had been forced to send in the names of nonconformist parishioners; and that, probably, was the extent of their offending. Their gowns were seized, with the church furniture, but, "we should not taste either their meat or their drink, or wrong anything that
CONVENTION OF 1689. 419
belonged to them, except their gowns." In the five western shires hardly one conformist dared to preach. The sufferings of the clergy in the alternate evictions by either party since 1638 must have been severe, and, in this instance, are specified in various pamphlets printed on the Jacobite side. But the persecuted " curates " carent vate sacro. They did not join any rising ; they were not shot, hanged, or tortured ; and it must be admitted that mob violence was never more leniently exercised against defenceless men. Walker calls their complaints "gross lies," nor is it worth while to criticise the amount of truth which they contain.59
" When the rabble became settled " in Edinburgh, says Balcarres, Atholl assembled the Council and proposed a grateful address to the Prince of Orange. A colder address was sent ; the archbishops and Sir George Mackenzie, with others, opposed the more effusive draft. The Chancellor, Perth, was now captured, and AtholPs faction confined him in Stirling Castle, under the Earl of Mar. James's party in the Council hurried to London, while Atholl distributed places among his friends, left Strathmore to keep order, and, with the heads of his faction, went to pay court to William. The prince refused to put any party or particulars to despair, by making them incapable of employment. Hamilton, who had been in London during all the turmoil, was sent for by William ; he had, we know, ever occupied a middle position and had at one time led the opposi- tion to Lauderdale. In a great meeting of the Scots in London, at White Hall, he was unanimously chosen President. His proposal, that for the present power must be placed in the hands of the Prince of Orange, till a Convention in March 1689, was accepted, "though unwillingly, from the great disasters at home, the mob being absolutely masters." ^
The Jacobites were in doubt as to attending the March Con- vention in Edinburgh, but James sent Mr. Hay with permission for them to be present. Queensberry entered with Balcarres and Dundee into James's interest, Atholl passed from party to party, and the Jacobites learned that forfeited persons were to be allowed to vote, and even "to sit in Parliament," while still legally excluded. Returning to Edinburgh, Balcarres and Dundee found that the advocates had formed themselves into a kind of " vigilance committee " for the preservation of order ; but Hamilton, by order of the Prince of Orange, disbanded the men of law, who were Jacobites. The Duke of Gordon was actually evacuating the
42 O JACOBITE PLANS.
castle, but was prevailed upon by Dundee and Balcarres to remain in a post where nothing energetic was to be expected from him. He did not fill the fortress with supplies, and this great strength was practically valueless to James ; Gordon was no Kirkaldy of Grange. Meanwhile Hamilton had quartered some companies of infantry in the town, and westland Whigs were lurking " in vaults and cellars," — lurking for a spring. Atholl was proposed as President, but the election of Hamilton discouraged the Jacobites, a score of whom withdrew, while the prince had a majority from the burghs. Dis- puted elections were decided in his interest, and Gordon would have surrendered the castle had not Dundee gone thither and told him that, in the old Scottish fashion of Queen Mary's wars, he meant to call a rival Convention at Stirling.
James had sent a letter entirely contrary to what had been settled between him and his party in London, "a fault of your advisers " (Melfort) " hardly to be pardoned," says Balcarres. The letter might forbid or dissolve the Convention, and both parties agreed that it could only be read after voting the Convention a free and legal meeting. This was "a pill to the loyal party so bitter it had never gone down, if they had not been persuaded your letter would have dissipated their fears"; they needed time to prepare for a rising if rise they must ; and James had already licensed their attendance at the Convention. The letter was from Melfort, the curse of the Cause, and exhibited James in the most arrogantly despotic temper. In the Convention his interest was certainly lost, and his friends might honourably have deserted a prince unteachable by adversity, and in the hands of a man like Melfort, despised and distrusted by both parties.
Obdurately loyal, they designed to meet at Stirling, where Mar, the keeper of the castle, gave assurances, while Atholl was to bring down his clan for a guard; but Atholl wavered, and "broke all our measures." Dundee was informed that six or seven of the western Whigs designed to murder Sir George Mackenzie and him, and their place of meeting was pointed out. Dundee, at the next meeting of the Convention, appealed to Hamilton to have the matter investigated, but the majority of the House refused to permit this. The viscount had already been insulted and threatened (March 16, 1689). This was on a Saturday; on Monday the Jacobite members were to retire to Stirling, but Atholl, at a meeting, persuaded them to wait and attend the House next day. Dundee
DUNDEE RIDES NORTH (1689). 421
was not at the meeting till the decision was taken ; he had gathered a band of fifty horse for an escort, and had a number of his party waiting for him " at a house near the town." He declined to dally longer, but rode down the West Bow, and, knowing that Gordon was beleaguered in the castle, "in a manner blocked up by the western rabble," he paused at the north face of the rock, "and clambered up with great difficulty, the rock there being extremely steep." The Whigs who were blockading the ordinary roads to the castle ran to tell the Convention ; Hamilton, in a passion, had the doors locked, " the bells were rung backwards, the drums they were beat," and it was anticipated that, with fifty men, Dundee would attack the town. But Dundee rode northwards, "wherever might lead him the shade of Montrose," and the half-hearted Jacobite members were left to their fate without the presence of him whom Swift calls " the best man in Scotland."
Macaulay supposed that Claverhouse feared assassination ; Malcolm Laing that he "affected an alarm which he did not feel." Probably his plans were laid ; he saw that Atholl and the others were irresolute, he and they might be victims of just such a plot as "The Incident" apparently was, and Dundee, with the whole weight of the Cause on the only shoulders fit to bear it, rode with Lord Livingstone towards the glens and the homes of the last hope. But Livingstone deserted him ; and he, from his own house, declined to obey a summons to a Convention where he had been insulted, an assembly overawed by Cameronians, and by four Dutch regiments under Mackay.61 It was in the middle of March that General Mackay embarked with three Dutch regiments for Edinburgh. He avers that Dundee and the bishops meant to seize the Williamite members of the Conven- tion, which they were not likely to attempt with Dundee's fifty horsemen, as against the concealed Cameronians, and a number of Highlanders under the son of the Argyll executed in 1685. These forces were brought in, says Mackay, to counteract the highly improbable plot which he attributes to Dundee, who, for his letter to the Convention, was denounced a rebel. Mackay, on his arrival, secured Stirling Castle, for its captain, Mar, like the other Jacobite nobles, was a broken reed. Mackay's men were, apparently, Scots in Dutch service, not born Hollanders. Why they were called " the Butterbox " is obscure.02
In the Convention, Tarbat and Stair proposed a Union which suited
422 WILLIAM MADE KING (1689).
neither Hamilton, the Presbyterians, nor the Jacobites. Queensberry came from London, apparently in James's interest, and Atholl wished Gordon to bombard the Convention from the castle, but he would not act without James's orders. Hamilton was in constant correspondence with William, who found it sagacious to trust him. The duke intercepted despatches of James to Dundee, sending him a commission as lieutenant-general, and promising help from Ireland — 5000 men. He would grant " property and liberty," and " maintain the national Protestant religion," Episcopal (Dublin Castle, March 29, 1689). All were to have an indemnity except those who voted against James " in the late illegal Convention." 63
When Gordon refused to fire on the Convention, the Jacobite members retired to their homes ; and the rest, on Sir John Dalrymple's motion, declared James to have forfeited his right to the crown by his illegal acts, the Prince of Wales being also barred. There were only four adverse votes, including those of Sir George Mackenzie and the Archbishop of Glasgow. As ever, in Scotland, the Opposition either did not attend at all, or retired. Hamilton then proposed to offer the crown to "the Prince and Princess of Orange, now king and queen of England." Queensberry and Atholl acceded, and at the Market Cross, Hamilton actually, as herald, proclaimed the new sovereigns (April 3). Lome (Argyll), Sir John Dalrymple, and Sir James Montgomery were sent to William with the Claim of Rights, passed on April 1 1, declaring any religion but Presbyterianism "contrary to the inclinations of the generality of the people," and Episcopal government an intolerable grievance. Sir James Dalrymple, writing from London to Lord Melville (April n), suggests that the Convention should "qualify torture that it can never be used except when there is one witness or half probation " (April i4).64 Atholl (April 13) told William that his conscience did not allow him to vote for abolishing Episcopacy ; he never was whole-hearted in all his waverings. Hamilton meanwhile received powers to imprison suspected persons ; Dundee took care of himself, but Balcarres, who was loyal but useless, was placed in the common jail, nor was his condition bettered by the intercepting of a silly letter to him from Melfort, with threats of what James would do to his enemies when he returned.65
William, as is well known, rejected the article proposed to him, " we shall be careful to root out all heretics and enemies to the true worship of God, that shall be convicted of the true Kirk of God
REGIFUGIUM. 423
of the foresaid claims, out of our lands and empire of Scotland." This would have involved the exile, at least, of all non-Presbyterians ; it was a survival of the ancient oath of the kings before the Reforma- tion. But, hearing that the words were a mere formula, William swallowed them, averring that he would not be a persecutor. Thus, on May n, William was king of Scotland, a country which neither he nor any later king of England ever saw, till George IV. made his visit about one hundred and thirty years later. The constitutional and ecclesiastical changes of the new reign are sub- jects for later discussion. As to the new Constitution, it endured for less than twenty years, ending with the Union. In practice, too, the long war of one hundred and thirty years' duration between Kirk and State closed with the restored prominence of the Kirk without the Covenants, and with a saner conception of the powers and duties of the preachers. The two divine rights, that of sacred hereditary monarchy, and that of the apostolic privileges of preachers, had clashed so long and fiercely that they destroyed each other. The friends of the fallen dynasty were to be intermittently troublesome for two generations, but never really dangerous. The religion of the House of Stuart was the sword in the hand of the Angel who closed against them the gates of their ancient Paradise.
NOTES TO CHAPTER XIV.
1 ' Historical Observes,' p. 184. Polwarth's Narrative, ' Marchmont Papers,' iii. p. 2.
2 ' The Valet's Tragedy,' ' Mystery of James de la Cloche.
8 Polwarth, ' Marchmont Papers,' iii. pp. 18-20.
4 Macaulay, i. p. 422 ; Wodrow, iv. pp. 283, 284. 6 ' Historical Observes,' pp. 183, 184.
6 ' Marchmont Papers,' iii. pp. 39, 40 ; Wodrow, iv. p. 285.
7 Macaulay, i. p. 440, note. 8 Wodrow, iv. pp. 286-291.
9 Wodrow, iv. pp. 282, 283, 288, 289.
10 ' Marchmont Papers,' iii. pp. 45, 46. n Wodrow, iv. p. 292.
12 'Six Saints of the Covenant,' i. pp. 71, 101, 102. Dr. Hay Fleming quotes Sheilds to the same effect, op. cit. ii. p. 141, notes 53, 54, 55.
13 'Faithful Contendings,' p. 211.
14 ' Marchmont Papers,' iii. pp. 47, 48.
13 ' Marchmont Papers,' iii. pp. 48, 49 ; Wodrow, iv. p. 293.
16 Wodrow, iv. p. 294.
17 ' Marchmont Papers,' iii. pp. 60, 6 1 ; Wodrow, iv. p. 294.
18 Wodrow, iv. p. 295.
424 NOTES.
19 ' Marchmont Papers,' iii. p. 6l. x ' Marchmont Papers,' iii. p. 62.
21 ' Historical Observes,' p. 181. M Wodrow, iv. p. 298.
23 Fox, 'James II.,' Appendix, cxiv.
24 Fountainhall, ' Historical Observes,' p. 190.
25 Dr. M'Crie, in his ' Brysson,' points out Fox's singular error in overlooking Barillon's letter, published by himself! Macaulay had read Dr. M'Crie: he quotes Brysson as Bresson, but he, too, abstained from citing Barillon, his favourite authority.
26 'Historical Observes,' p. 185. v Wodrow, iv. p. 310.
28 ' Additional Information for the Marquis of Atholl, against the Earl of Argyll.'
29 Wodrow, iv. pp. 321-328.
30 Wodrow, iv. p. 360. 31 Wodrow, iv. pp. 360-362.
32 Fountainhall, ' Historical Notices,' ii. pp. 700, 710-711.
33 Wodrow, iv. p. 366. M Wodrow, iv. p. 393, note. 35 Wodrow, iv. p. 428. 36 Hume Brown, ii. p. 436. 37 Wodrow, iv. pp. 438-445. ** Wodrow, iv. p. 446.
39 Wodrow, iv. pp. 406, 407.
40 Fountainhall, ' Historical Notices,' ii. p. 793.
41 Burnet, iii. p. 133. 42 Burnet, iii. p. 141.
43 Burnet, iii. pp. 257, 258.
44 Fountainhall, ' Historical Notices,' ii. p. 878.
45 Balcarres Memoirs touching the Revolution in Scotland, Bannatyne Club, 1841.
46 Macpherson, ' Original Papers,' iii. p. 299.
47 Burnet, iv. p. 39. 48 Wodrow, iv. p. 467.
49 Keith's ' Catalogue,' pp. 65-72.
50 Balcarres Memoirs touching the Revolution in Scotland, Bannatyne Club, p. 5. 61 ' William Carstares,' p. 161. 52 'William Carstares,' pp. 164,165. 63 'William Carstares,' p. 169. B4 Wodrow, iv. pp. 469-472.
55 Balcarres Memoirs touching the Revolution in Scotland, Bannatyne Club, 1841, p. 9.
56 Balcarres Memoirs touching the Revolution in Scotland, Bannatyne Club, 1841, p. 16.
57 Balcarres Memoirs touching the Revolution in Scotland, Bannatyne Club, 1841, p. 17-
58 ' Six Saints of the Covenant,' ii. pp. 182, 183.
59 ' Six Saints of the Covenant,' i. pp. 321-323 ; ii. pp. 184, 185.
60 Swift censures Burnet for using the word " mob," short for " mobile," which •was recently come into fashion.
61 Balcarres Memoirs touching the Revolution in Scotland, Bannatyne Club, 1841, pp. 26-32 ; Napier, ' Dundee,' iii., citing the MS. minutes of the Convention.
62 Mackay, 'Memoirs,' pp. 4-7 (1833).
63 'Historical MSS. Commission,' xi. pp. 6, 178.
64 Leven and Melville Papers, ii. (1843).
65 Balcarres Memoirs touching the Revolution in Scotland, Bannatyne Club, 1841, p. 37.
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