Sketches of the history of the Church of Scotland : from the period of the reformation

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SKETCHES OF THE HISTORY

OF THE

CHURCH OF SCOTLAND

FROM THE PERIOD OF THE

REFORMATION.

BY

The very REV. A. RANKEN, M.A.

Dean of Aberdeen and Orkney.

©trittfctirgjb : •

ST. GILES' PRINTING COMPANY,
13 JOHNSTON TERRACE.

1882.

PREFACE.

HE following Sketches of portions of Scottish Church
History were, in substance, read in Aberdeen in the
course of 1875, before the Scottish Church Union.
^^^^ Hence the form in which the lecture is cast, without the
measured tread of formal history, and with a preponderatmg element
of local allusion and personal reminiscences. There is also, no doubt,
a somewhat unusual incisiveness and frankness in the treatment of
certain disputed points, which might probably have been toned down
to some extent had the writer thought that the lecture would ever
appear before a wider public. In particular, an occasional acerbity
may, no doubt, be perceived, — which, however, he has allowed to
stand as originally written, as being, he thinks, justifiable, — in speak-
ing of the Covenanting religionists and their times ; for it appears to
him that it is impossible to exhibit these enthusiasts in their true
colours, of whom even the genial and gentle-hearted Walter Scott
felt impelled to make use of a contemptuous expression, which it is
needless to reproduce, without employing the language in question.
We do not, however, hold our Presbyterian friends and fellow-country-
men responsible for the sayings and doings of their forefathers.
They have inherited their religion, with all its qualities, good, bad,
and indifferent, and cannot help its history. Many of them, we
rejoice to know, condemn their Covenanting ancestors and their ways
as heartily as we ourselves do. They are fast drifting from their old
moorings. Increasing numbers of them are beginning to realize
something of the beauty of liturgical worship. Many are deploring
our unhappy divisions, which give such occasion to infidels to
blaspheme, and are longing for the blessedness of a corporate
re-union, which would present an Established Church of Scotland,
with peer and peasant worshipping side by side ; and which would,
we believe, exhibit a power and a strength which at no period of its
history has it yet possessed,

iv Preface.

A short extract from the latter portion of the Lecture was read at
a crowded meeting of at least a thousand Church people, mostly com-
posed, the writer was glad to see, as being something hitherto
unknown in Edinburgh, of working men and women, many of the
latter with babies in their arms, in the Queen Street Hall, on
the evening of the 13th of October last; on which occasion, the
honour was done to the Lecturer by over-partial friends, of requesting
him to allow the Paper in its entirety to be printed. Having given
his consent, he has accordingly prepared it for the press \ making it,
by certain alterations and additions better fitted, he would fain hope,
for the purposes for which the wish was expressed ; namely, the
defence of the Scottish Church, at certain critical and crucial periods
of her history, from the misrepresentations and calumnies under
which she has long and largely suffered, and is still suffering ; and
for the enlightenment, it may be, of her humbler members on some
disputed principles and facts.

A. R.

The Epiphany, 1882.

SKETCHES OF THE HISTORY

OF THE

CHURCH OF SCOTLAND

N a Paper such as this, it is not proposed to go back into
the several and separate details of the history of the
Church of Scotland from the time of the Reformation,
and the various changes in respect of government, dis-
cipline, and worship which it has been made to undergo;
that is the province of the historian, and has been amply fulfilled.
The writer will confine himself to the task of exhibiting a few sketches
of that history, wherein, as he beHeves, historical truth has been
violated, either by direct misrepresentation, party bias, or a deliberate
suppression of facts.

Whatever may have been the views of the Early Reformers in
Scotland, when the Papal supremacy was renounced in 1560, it is
clear to any impartial student of the history of those times, although
it suits Presbyterians to deny it, that they were sincerely attached to
Episcopacy as the divinely instituted government of the Church,
which the Papal usurpation had corrupted, but which they did the
best they could in purifying and continuing by the imperfect Super-
intendency, which was the best Episcopacy they could procure under
the circumstances ; seeing none of the Roman Bishops accepted the
Reformation, and when, nationally, the succession ceased. In the
first General Assembly of the Reformed, held at Perth in 157 1, a
nominal Episcopacy was adopted under the equivalent name and
title of Superintendents ; and these Superintendents speedily assumed
the ancient titles of Archbishops and Bishops, according to the num-
ber and limits of the old Dioceses, but without that valid consecration
by which the continuity of the Episcopal succession is secured.

Sketches of the History of

Calvin, the great Continental authority among the Reformed, and
from whom they confessedly imbibed their peculiar doctrinal views,
and who is popularly supposed to have been a Presbyterian and a
minister, whereas he was neither, gives forth a maxim which strikes
at the root of Presbytry: — "Parity," he says, ''or equality in the
government of the Church, breedeth strifes.''^ For fully fifteen years
after the establishment of the Reformation in Scotland, no such prin-
ciple as that of the unlawfulness of any superiority of office in the
Church above presbyters, which was the standpoint and contention
among the first Presbyterians, was either professed or insisted on.

Again, it is the all but universal belief in Scotland that the Re-
former Knox was a Presbyterian, whereas the fact is he maintained
the system of Superintendency, or the nominal Episcopacy with ^yhich
the Reformation began ; he was offered an English Bishopric, which
he declined ; his mission, as he thought, being to purify and con-
solidate his native Church ; and two of his sons held benefices in the
Church of England. It is better known that John Knox and the
Reformed Church of Scotland used a Liturgy or Public Common
Prayer. As a proof that the Church's Days of Holy Remembrance
were celebrated under the system in which Knox ministered, we
remark that after his death, and while the new development of Pres-
bytry was working its way, a petition was presented to the Regent
praying "that all days which heretofore have been kept holy, such as
Christmas Day, or Yule, Saints' days, and Lent, may be abolished,
and a civil penalty," i.e., fine or imprisonment, "be appointed against
the keepers thereof, by ceremonies, banquetings, playings, fastings,
and other like vanities."

The same General Assembly distinguished itself by an ordinance
on the subject of the dress of ministers and ministers' wives, on which
we suspect its successors at the present day would hardly venture.
The ladies, as well as their husbands, were put under such stringent
regulations as would now go far to create a female rebellion. " We
think," said these grave divines, "all kind of broidering unseemly;
all begares of velvet [coloured stripes or slashings sewed on the dress |
in gown, hose, or coat ; and all superfluous and vain cutting out ;
steeking with silks ; all kind of costly sewing on passments [fringes or
trimmings], or variant hues in sarks ; all kind of light and variant
hues in clothing, as red, blue, yellow, and such like ; all wearing of
rings, bracelets, buttons of silver, gold, or other metal, be interdicted;"
and much more to the same effect.

Presbyterianism has, indeed, continued the abolition of Yule as a
religious festival, but the popular feeling has always been too strong
to permit its abolition as a time for merry-makmg and good cheer.
Symptoms of rebellion, however, are of late cropping up in favour of
its restoration as a day of religious observance. Places of worship,
both Established and Free, are being opened in increasing numbers

The Church of Scotland.

on Christmas Day, in some cases with ornate ritualistic services. A
few years more, and the edict against High Days and Holy Days will
probably be formally repealed, and Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost
be observed throughout Scotland, as those Festivals are among the
Lutheran communities in Germany and Scandinavia, and even in
Presbyterian Holland. Knox had been scarcely two years in his
grave, Vv'hen Andrew Melville, the real founder of Scottish Presbytry,
arrived from Geneva, where, under the tutorship of Beza, the inventor
of Presbyterianism, he had imbibed principles and views contrary to
those of Knox, and for the first time introduced them into Scotland.
Fierce and turbulent, and fiery in his undisciplined temper, this heresi-
arch set himself to make his principles popular; and to a large extent
he succeeded. " Melville was a man," says Bishop Sage, "by nature
fierce and fiery, confident and peremptory, peevish and ungovernable.
Education in him had not sweetened nature, but nature had soured
education ; and both, conspiring together, had tricked him up into a
true original ; a piece compounded of pride and petulance, of jeer
and jangle, of satire and sarcasm, of venom and vehemence. His
democratical principles made him hate the crown, as much as the
mitre ; the sceptre as much as the crosier ; and made him as bold
with the purple as with the rochet." The Presbyterian or Genevan
faction among the Scottish Reformers, as it gathered strength, re-
peatedly tried to upset this Reformed Prelatical constitution under
the Superintendents ; and at last, after a struggle of several years,
this party, taking advantage of the King's minority, in 1592 succeeded
in introducing the novel system which Melville had brought with him
from the Swiss Reformers. But this system, although the lower and
more ignorant portion of the people was vastly taken with it, did not
long continue; for in 16 10, the old succession of Bishops having died
out soon after the change of religion, Spottiswoode, Hamilton, and
Lamb, three of the Preformed ministers under the Superintendents or
Knoxian Episcopate, were consecrated in London as true and valid
Bishops, for the re-constituted Church of Scotland. In 16 18 the
famous Articles of Perth, which were framed distinctly atagonistic to
the Presbyterian polity, were debated, confirmed, and ratified by the
Three Estates of the Realm. So far was the foreign importation,
Presbytry, from being, as is pretended, the system by which the Re-
formation was effected in Scotland, and " agreeable to the inclination
of the people," that a true and genuine Episcopacy when it was
restored by the English consecrations which I have mentioned, was
generally and heartily welcomed as the guarantee of settled order in
Church and State. It formed, in fact, a recognised element of the
Constitution, and continued with acceptance until the breaking out of
the Great Rebellion in 1638, itself the work of a clamorous, violent,
and unscrupulous minority; when the Covenanting preachers in the
Western Shires, after calumniating their Bishops, and branding them
with every crime, conceivable and inconceivable, in order to blacken
their characters and render them odious in the eyes of the people,

Sketches of the History of

proceeded to depose them,"^ and to convoke both General Assemblies
and Parliaments without the royal sanction, and in defiance of the
King's prohibitions. They even raised an army, and levied war
against the King, /// the King's name. In the midst of the tumults of
the time, they so far prevailed on the King,— Charles the First, who
was betrayed on all hands, even by the counsellors nearest his person,
and whom he most trusted, — as to extort his reluctant consent to
abolish Episcopacy in Scotland. Of this concession to the Scottish
rebels, the King, when it was too late, and seeing how the English
rebels " bettered the instruction," bitterly repented. He has left on
record his solemn protestation, that " if God should restore him to
the peaceable possession of his throne, he would do public penance
for iiis error, by walking barefooted to S. Paul's, in the habit of a
penitent, and make satisfaction before the Altar for the wrong he had
done to Holy Church, through an unworthy fear of the people."

That the king's desire to uphold the Church and order in his
northern kingdom was not a mere piece of state policy, but a con-
scientious conviction, appears, among other abundant proofs, from
his published controversy with Alexander Henderson, one of the
" Apostles of the Covenant," and by far the most learned and respect-
able man among them : in which, with the learning of a theologian,
and the acuteness of a debater, his Majesty defends the Episcopal
regimen on the principles of Divine Right. And Scotland was not
so overrun with the new opinions as to lack other defenders of
Apostolical order. The Diocese of Aberdeen, and its two famous
universities, produced such divines as Bellenden its bishop, and
Forbes, Barron, Ross, Scroggie, and Lesly, who are known in history
as the " Aberdeen Doctors," the stout maintainers of orthodoxy and
loyalty ; divines who were only beaten and silenced, not in debate,
but by the conclusive and persuasive arguments of chains and
imprisonment, or by the self-banishment to which some of them were
forced to save their lives. The king's care for the Church of Scotland
had also been shown before the breaking out of the troubles, by his
singling out, and promoting to a Bishopric specially founded for him,
one of those x^berdeen Doctors whom I have just named, — the
most learned, where all were learned— William Forbes, the first
Bishop of Edinburgh, the author of a Plea for the Corporate Re-
union of Christendom, the " Considerationes Modestae et Pacificae,"
which deserves the study of all who have the healing of the Church's
divisions at heart. Bishop Forbes, in an age and country when the
fear of Popery amounted almost to an insanity, calmly and modestly
vindicated the doctrines and discipline of Primitive Christianity,
which the popular Protestantism of the time had calumniated,
and among them that of the Holy Eucharist which the same popular

* Wise in their generation, they acted on the well understood Macchiavellian
maxim, " calumniare audacter, aliquid adhoerebit."

The Church of Scotland,

Protestantism had obscured and explained away, in which he was
followed at a long interval by another Bishop of the same honoured
name and race, whose passing away before his time, as in our short-
sightedness we think, from the Church which he loved and served,
and which his learning and piety adorned, we are yet lamenting.

The violent abolition and suppression of Episcopacy in both
kingdoms, which was in fact the suppression of the Church as the
Body of Christ in the land, was followed by the deposition and
murder of the king. By an eternal and unerring law, the sins of
schism, rebellion, and bloodshed are closely linked together. The
Scottish Covenanters who sold their king to the English regicides for
a sum of money ready down — the antitype of the bargain of the
traitor Judas — were not permitted to profit long by the blood-money.
Cromwell and his Ironsides speedily overran Scotland. It is a pop-
ular boast that the kingdom was never conquered. It is conveniently
forgotten that Cromwell accomplished that feat. As a retributive
punishment, we may believe, for its disloyalty to God and the king,
the battle of Dunbar saw the country at the usurper's feet. Cromwell
suppressed Presbytry in Scotland as he had done Episcopacy in
England, with the strong hand, and at the sword's point. He
despatched one of his colonels to the General x\ssembly, who stalked
in as Dickson, the Moderator, was calling the roll. The officer
contemptuously interrupted him while beginning to say a prayer, and
bade him and the rest of them begone. They obeyed on the instant.
A company of foot soldiers conducted them to the West Port, from
which they were escorted by a troop of horse to Bruntsfield Links.
After being ordered to stand while their names were called
over, and written down, they were forbidden to meet agam,
and so dismissed. Yes; the very men who had defied their king,
burnt his Prayer Book, and excommunicated the Bishops, went out
from their Assembly with the submission of sheep, and never met
again for forty years.

For twelve of these years, Scotland groaned under the heel of the
Republican despot, whose little finger it found heavier than the King's
hand. England at its core, how^ever, and we may say the same of
Scotland, was loyal. As happens in most revolutions, it was a bold,
determined, and noisy faction, a minority of the nation, that over-
threw the Government in Church and State and slew the King. On
the black morning of the 30th of January, 1649, the scaffold had to
be guarded by mounted dragoons, and military music was kept play-
ing to drown the indignant murmurings of the crowd. And the wail-
ings and sobbings of the multitude rose above those sounds, when the
masked executioner held up the head of the martyr, and proclaimed
" this is the head of a traitor." Numbers rushed forward to dip their
handkerchiefs in the blood of their anointed King, to be treasured in
their families as a memorial of the sacrilegious murder.

Sketches of the History of

A monograph, which is hardly a digression, of an incident on the
fatal morning, not generally known, may fittingly be inserted here.
The pretended High Court of Justice had set their hands and seals
to the warrant, and the carpenters had been hard at work all night
framing the scaffold in the open street in the front of Whitehall. By
ten in the morning the sable-hung platform, the block, the sawdust,
and the man in the mask with his axe, were ready. Then the royal
captive, closely encompassed by the unpitying guards who, during the
mock trial, had puffed tobacco smoke into his face, mixed with loath-
some spitting, was brought on foot across the park from St. James's
to Whitehall. The mournful procession passed through the Long
Gallery, and entered the Presence Chamber of the Banquetting House,
where, in grim mockery, a stately repast was set out, in case the
doomed captive should wish to "refresh himself" before he was
slaughtered. Tlien the chief actors in the tragedy came forth through
the opened window on to the scaffold, and the mighty multitude burst
into a groan of pity for the victim who was to be sacrificed. All
know what was done on that morning ; how the illustrious prisoner,
calling not " on the gods in vulgar spite, to vindicate his helpless
might," calmly tried with his hand the edge of the axe, and then
bowed his comely head down as upon a bed, and gave his soul to
God.

" I saw a Royal Form with eye upturned,

Rising from furnace of affliction free;
And knew that brow of deep serenity,

Whereon, methought, a crown of glory burned,
With a calm smile, as if the death-cry turned

On his freed ears to seraph sounds on high.
Still in the guilty place the hideous cry

Bark'd impotent. In quiet hope inurned
Was his poor fleshly mantle ; but the breath

Of our bad world o'er this unquiet stage
Flouts his blessed name, unpardoned even in death.

And thus his holy shade on earth beneath
Still walks 'mid evil tongues, from age to age,

Bearing the Cross, his Master's heritage.
But no unkindly word for evermore

Can reach his rest, or pass the eternal door."

/\t that moment, while the King was delivering his jewelled George
to Bishop Juxon, with the mysterious monition ^^ Remefuber^'' the
meaning of which we can only guess at, the boys of W^estminster
School were at prayers. Those daily orisons were still the forbidden
prayers of the Church, albeit the altars of the neighbouring abbey
had been desecrated, and the horses of the Puritan dragoons had
been stabled in the chaples. The Doctor of Divinity, the Head
Master of Westminster, still reigned supreme in his little kingdom.
He prayed for the afflicted Church of England prostrate in the dust;
he prayed for her Bishops and Clergy cast forth as wanderers and
beggars. And then as the time, the prescience of which was in all
hearts, approached, the whole school, with the vergers and monitors,

The Church of Scotland.

and the poor old bedesmen and almsvvomen from without, bowed
themselves to the ground. Four King's scholars, armed with broad-
swords and pistols, stood and kept the door, while the Head Master,
kneeling down, prayed for the Royal Family, for the Queen Henrietta
Maria, for the Princes and Princesses, and for the King, who, ere the
prayer, broken by passionate sobs, had ended, was dead, and had
become King Charles the Martyr.

Scotland, although leavened with the sour and bitter leaven of
Puritanism, had never, at its worst, been Republican. The murder
of the King, to which a faction in Scotland had contributed by their
traffic with Cromwell and the other regicides, the paid down price
being thirty thousand pounds, startled the land. The dominant party
was bent on concussing the King to adopt an ecclesiastical polity
which he abhorred, but it remonstrated against the measures which
encompassed his death. And so it forthwith proclaimed Charles the
Second King, and submitted unwillingly to the Cromwellian yoke.
The bloodstained usurper, when his time came, died as he had lived,
the remorseless enemy of God's order in Church and State.

Even in the western shires, where Presbyterian ism was strongest,
and where the Covenant was most popular, those who stuck to these
principles were chiefly the ignorant and excitable peasantry. The
people of those districts, for the most part, had, it is true, no favour
for Episcopacy, which their preachers told them meant Popery and
the Mass ; but those who could not conscientiously conform to the
estabhshed order were " indulged ; " that is to say, an Act of
Toleration was specially passed for them. A portion even of the
revenues of the Church was assigned for the maintenance of the
indulged Presbyterian preachers who were perfectly content to accept
it, and to live and let live, as loyal leiges of the king. There was, in
effect, a concurrent establishment and endowment both of Prelacy
and Presbytry ; and the indulged Presbyterians, so far as the Church
and the State were concerned, were left to the exercise of their
religion in peace. It was their own Presbyterian co-religionists, " the
hill folk," who troubled them ; and because these " moderates," as
they would now have been called, had disavowed the Covenant as a
seditious bond of conspiracy, and desired to live in peace and quiet-
ness, the fanatics hated them with a heart-hatred, only inferior, and
scarcely that, to the hatred they accorded to the established Episco-
pacy ; and the " black indulgence," and the " black Prelacy," were the
twin abomination which they held they were divinely commissioned
to testify against and forcibly to uproot. As the Jews were commis-
sioned to extirpate the heathen Canaanites, so, reading between the
lines, the Covenanters believed, as their preachers taught them, that
they were foreordained to extirpate Popery and Prelacy, betwixt
which there was only a paper wall, as they affirmed, together with the
" indulged " and sinfully complying indulged Presbyterians, by every

8 Sketches of the History of

available means, including fire and sword. And their language and
deeds corresponded. At the beginning of the Covenanting times, for
the crime of " malignancy," which was their fa.vourite epithet for
loyalty to Church and Throne, they put to death in cold blood men
like Sir John Spottiswoode, the son of the Primate, and President of
the Court of Session ; and he is but a single specimen of hundreds
of loyal gentlemen that might be named, who were put to death for
the crime of " malignancy." These butcheries, for executions they
cannot be called, so rejoiced the soul of one of the preachers, Mr.
David Dickson, a shining light of the Covenant, that while feasting
his eye? on the bloodshed, he exclaimed in ecstacy, " O, the Lord
be praised, the wark o' God gangs bonnily on ! " which, says Bishop
Guthrie, passed into a proverb among the people. On the defeat of
the great and gallant Marquis of Montrose at Philiphaugh, General
Lesly, the leader of the rebel army, promised quarter to the remnant
of the defeated royalists ; but Nevay, one of the Covenanting preach-
ers, seconded by the Marquis of Argyle, Montrose's deadly enemy,
prevailed on Lesly to break his word. The prisoners of war were
disarmed and butchered on the spot, Lesly, horror-struck at the
carnage he had unadvisedly sanctioned, turned round to the preacher,
who was walking with Argyle, both of them up to the ankles in blood,
and sternly said, " Now, Mess John, methinks you have for once got
your fill of blood ! " Even Bishop Burnet, who treats the Coven-
anters as tenderly as he decently can, is compelled for once to speak
the truth. " Upon this occasion," he says, " the Marquis of Argyle
" and the preachers showed a very bloody temper. Many prisoners,
" who had quarter given them, were murdered in cold blood. The
" preachers thundered against all who did the work of the Lord
" deceitfully, and cried out on all those that were for humanity and
" moderation, ' thine eye shall not pity, neither shalt thou spare.' "
The Bishop adds, " The Covenanters triumphed with so Uttle
" decency, that it gave the people very ill impressions of them."

And yet, as we all know, these are the very men who, when the
day of reprisals came, are held up to popular admiration and eulogy
as " The Scottish Martyrs," " The Martyrs for Christ's Crown and
a Broken Covenant." Nay, even from many Churchmen of the
present day, not very well read we must suppose, in the history of
those times, one hears admissions made to the effect that the poor
Covenanters were badly treated ; that they were persecuted for
conscience' sake, however ill informed their conscience, and however
mistaken their religion may have been ; and that this is a portion of
Scottish history for which Churchmen ought to feel shame and regret.
Now I take leave to express my distinct and deliberate conviction
that such shame and regret are entirely misplaced. The truth ought
to be known about those so-called " martyrs," which it is the aim of
partisan writers and platform orators to conceal, that they refused
either to accept toleration^ or to grant it. Their avowed object was

The Church of Scotland.

supremacy ; to force their Covenant on the King himself and all his
subjects throughout the three kingdoms, without the right or liberty
to dissent. Until this claim should be acknowledged, they renounced
their allegiance to the king, witholding the title from him, refusing to
pray for him as such in their conventicles, and vilifying and threat-
ening his person, under the name of "the man, Charles Stuart."
Those of them who suffered for their disloyalty died the death of
rebels, many of them taken with arms in their hands, or found con-
cealed in their houses. They were offered their lives if they would
acknowledge the royal authority, and accept the legalised indulgence,
under which their more reasonable fellow religionists lived in peace
and safety. But their avowed aim was to force their religion upon
all at the point of the sword. And their suppression by the sword
was an act of positive necessity, unless anarchy and a reign of terror
were to ensue. As I have said, it is so much the fashion in these
days to represent those rebellious fanatics as poor, oppressed, hunted
sufferers for conscience', if not for truth's sake, that it needs a certain
amount of boldness to represent them in their true colours. And I
cannot help thinking that it is a matter of regret, as I have indicated,
that there is a manifest disposition in certain circles of Scottish
Churchmen to sympathise with these firebrands of sedition, rebellion,
and schism, and to accuse the Restoration Government of harshness
and cruelty towards them. Our predecessors of the last century,
many of whom I have known and conversed with, when they were
old and I was young, inherited truer traditions and beliefs about the
great Rebellion and policy of the Restoration Government ; which
taught them to beware of treating the history of those times in the
mawkishly sentimental way which is now so fashionable in certain
circles of Churchmen. They taught me to believe that it was -a stern
necessity to stamp out treason and rebellion, at work under the mask
of religion ; that this probably was not done, and could not be done,
with rose water ; but that persecuted for their religion, mixed up as
it was with principles and practices which rendered settled rule and
order impossible, those enthusiasts certainly were not.

All throughout those troubles, the northern Dioceses, and among
them the Diocese of Aberdeen, were so many green spots in the
desert. The arts of insurgency had been so successful in other
districts as to create a specious but false appearance of national
sympathy with, and adherence to, the Covenant, and of disaffection
to the Church and the Throne. Throughout the larger half of
Scotland, and especially in Aberdeenshire, all that was sober-minded,
well ordered, and loyal, was in the ascendant. The two northern
Universities spoke out, true as ever to Church and King. The
University Chairs, and the city pulpits were filled with the famous
" Aberdeen Doctors," who did battle with the Puritan preachers,
and held their own against the Apostles of the Covenant, Dickson,
Henderson, and Cant, who were despatched to recruit in the city of

lo Sketches of the History of

the " Malignants." The citizens, at the breaking out of the rebeUion,
when the Covenant was imposed upon them at the sword's point,
had unwillingly submitted to brute force. The rural districts were
scarcely molested, and followed the guidance of their natural leaders,
Huntly, and the host of loyal nobles and lairds of the north. With
these, puritanical cant did not pass current for piety, nor the ravings
of fanaticism for the out-pourings of the Spirit. On the approach of
the Covenanting rebel army to Aberdeen, Bellenden, the Bishop of
the see, certain of the Professors of the two Universities, and the
principal burghers, took shipping, and sought safety and shelter
abroad from the persecution which had come to their doors. At
that time, Dr John Forbes, the son of the late Bishop of Aberdeen ;
Dr William Lesly, the Principal of King's College, of the same family
as the famous nonjuror and divine, Charles Lesly; and Doctors
Scroggie and Barron, Professors of Divinity, occupied the University
chairs ; Doctors Sibbald and Ross were the city clergymen. These
defenders of the nation's Faith and loyalty were, of course, the butts
of the Covenanting attack. With such antagonists as these, it is
not surprising that the ministers who had visited Aberdeen on their
proselytizing mission had been so utterly worsted, that their historian
Rutherford bitterly complains that they had not been able to gain a
single adherent in that grace-forsaken city of the " Malignants."

At last the weary nation, on the death of Cromwell, came to itself,
and " spoke of bringing back the King." Scotland joined heart and
soul in accomplishing the Restoration, and the bulk of the people
hailed as a blessing one of its earliest acts, the rehabilitation of the
Church and its hierarchy. Beyond dispute, this was the popular
feeling "north of the Tay, that is to say, in the larger half of Scotland,
and at that time probably the more populous ; and this candid Pres-
byterian writers are now forward to admit. On the Restoration of
the Monarchy, the northern Synods, whicii had been silenced during
the Commonwealth, immediately met, and among them the large and
influential Synod of Aberdeen ; and gave expression to the feelings
and principles which had been forcibly kept down by Cromwell and
his Ironsides. In the north, the Synods were Episcopalian unmixed,
and as a consequence loyal. Throughout that half of Scotland the
principles of the Church and order had taken deep root, and had
never been extirpated. But such was the violence of the times, that
both Clergy and people had mostly succumbed to the pressure.
Now, however, they looked forward with quiet satisfaction to that
change of which none had any doubt.

At the re-placing and re-adjustment of the Church as the religious
establishment of Scotland, Sydserf, Bishop of Orkney, was the sole
survivor of the Hierarchy which the Covenanting rebels in 1638 pre-
tended to depose, and succeeded in overcoming. Four of the most
distinguished of the moderate Presbyterian ministers, Sharp, Fair-

The Church of Scotland.

foul, Hamilton, and Leighton, who were well inclined to a restored
Episcopacy, were selected, and after being ordained Deacons and
Priests pei- saltum, were consecrated at Westminster in 1661 ; and
from them the present Scottish Episcopal succession has continuously
flowed. The small element of Presbyterian Resolutioners, or Mode-
rates, as those indulged ministers would now be called, made no
opposition to the restoration of the hierarchy; but on the contrary
were generally inclined to welcome it. Dr James Sharp, who was
nominated Primate, — he was a native, I may mention, of the Diocese
of Aberdeen, and was educated at one of its Universities, — is a
specimen of those well affected Presbyterian Moderates, who in their
hearts were never far from the principles of Evangelical Truth and
Apostolical Order combined ; and for these principles, moderately
carried out under the restored Episcopacy, he incurred the implacable
resentment of the Covenanting Presbyterians, and died under their
hands a Martyr's death ; but his name to this day is covered with
obloquy and slander by the descendants and admirers of the Cove-
nanters, who continue to justify and applaud the murder, as an act
of righteous vengeance.

The Synod of Aberdeen met, and was largely attended ; about
sixty ministers appearing. Without a dissenting voice, it agreed to
a petition to the King in Council, which was signed by all present.
After describing the miserable condition of the Church and Kingdom
during the great Rebellion and the Cromwellian usurpation, they
prayed the Royal Commissioners to transmit their Petition to His
Sacred Majesty, " that he would be pleased in his wisdom and good-
" ness to settle the government of this rent Church, according to
" the Word of God, and the practice of the Ancient and Primitive
"Church;" — there is no mistaking the meaning of these words ; —
" and this Paper," the Synod added, " we have ordained to be re-
" gistered in our Synod Books, ad fiitiiram rei niemoriam ; and in
" testimony of our unanimity herein, we have all subscribed it with
" our hands, at King's College, at Aberdeen, the 18th April, 1661
" years." We notice that the date of the Document is nearly six
weeks before the King's return on the 29th of May, so eager was the
Diocese of Aberdeen for the restoration of the Church and order.

But matters were not so peaceable in other parts of the kingdom.
The snake of disaffection and rebellion, though scotched, was not
killed. In the western districts, ever the hot-beds of turbulence and
schism, the Covenanting preachers, to the number of about a hun-
dred, refused to acknowledge an uncovenanted king. They had
entrapped the poor king, when only a boy, to subscribe and swear to
the Covenant. Probably he would have subscribed and sworn to
anything when a prisoner in their hands, and they were perfectly
aware of his insincerity while doing it, and so were sharers in the sin,
far more deeply so than the poor youth whose life would likely have

12 Sketches of the History of

been the forfeit on his noii-compliance. They denounced all com-
pilers with the Restoration and its Acts as " Ivimbs of Anti-Christ,"
and " brats of Babylon," whom at all opportunities they were com-
missioned to slay. " The man Charles Stuart," was branded as a
perjured wretch and malefactor, and allegiance to him renounced.
Their treasonable Covenant, which had worked such mischief in the
reign of the first Charles, was eagerly renewed and sworn to ; and
with arms in their hands, they refused to accept the toleration offered
to them, and denied the same to all others ; claiming supremacy for
" King Jesus and the Covenant ; " that is to say, for themselves and
their teachers. This ought to be steadily kept in view as the key to
the treatment to which they were necessarily subjected. Conventicles
were held among the hills and mosses where they could best, and with
least hindrance, organise their opposition to the Government, and
were attended by armed multitudes. The disaffected districts were in
open rebellion. Now, it ought not to be forgotten that the Episcopal
Establishment of the Restoration was cautiously framed, — ^far too
cautiously, as the subsequent history of the Scottish Church has
proved — so as to shock Presbyterian sympathies and prejudices as little
as possible. Of ritual, as we now understand the word, it had absolutely
none. The Book of Common Prayer and Administration of the
Sacraments, which had been prepared for the use of the Church
of Scotland in the reign of Charles the First, and had been riotously
rejected in the Cathedral Church of Edinburgh, was not re-imposed.
The worship in the Parish Churches was conducted in much the
same fashion as in the indulged Meeting Houses, and, indeed, with
much less formality than in many of tiie Parish Churches at the
present day. It was essentially an extemporaneous worship, with
this exception, that the Established Clergy were in the habit of
introducing the Lord's Prayer and the Doxology into some part of
the service, both of them the abomination of the fanatics, as savour-
ing of Liturgical forms. Occasionally the Apostles' Creed was said,
and the Ten Commandments ; but there was no direction for this.
Every Parish Minister exercised his own discretion. Even in the
Cathedral Churches, nothing beyond this bare and meagre service
was attempted. The King and the Royal Family were, of course,
prayed for, instead of being denounced and cursed, as in the Con-
venticles ; and peace and order, and submission to the constituted
authorities in Church and State were preached and prayed for. So
far as appears, the rite of Confirmation was held in abeyance under
the restored Episcopacy ; so cautious were the Bishops not to offend
Presbyterian prejudices. To the outward eye and ear that Episcopacy
was hardly distinguishable from the legalised indulged Presbyterian-
ism except that die Bishops, with no official dress beyond a preacher's
black gown, were the perpetual moderators of Synods. Synods, Presby-
teries, and Kirk Sessions went on much as at present ; General
Assemblies were not convoked. Probably the only Liturgical
formulary in use was the English Ordinal, which, to secure beyond

The Church of Scotland. 13

challenge a valid ministry, and the integrity of the succes-
sion, seems always to have been used at ordinations, and at
the consecration of Bishops. As I have indicated, there were no
priestly vestments ; not even the surplice, which a choir boy now
wears. And this continued to the days of my own youth, when the
black gown was still in all but universal use at all services, including
the celebration of the Holy Eucharist. Probably Bishop John
Skinner of Aberdeen, whom I faintly remember to have seen at a
Confirmation in a County Chapel arrayed in a black gown and a
huge pair of bands, never wore a surplice, and certainly not the
Episcopal robes ; neither did Bishop Jolly, whom I have often seen
conducting all the services at Fraserburgh in a black gown and
bands. Once, and once only, did I see Bishop Torry vested as a
Bishop at an Ordination, not in his own diocese, but in a chapel
where a brother Bishop was incumbent, and which probably
accounted for the fact ; and once habited in a surplice at a public
baptism, also out of his own diocese ; and in both cases within
a few years of his death. I distinctly remember the introduction of
the surplice in the rural congregations of the Diocese of Aberdeen,
about the years 1819 and 1820. It was not much relished by
the flocks; nor, for that matter, by some of the older clergy. The
Dean of the diocese, Mr. Sangster of Lonmay, continued, as I have
often seen him, to wear his home-spun black serge gown to the time
of his death in 1826. For many years after the introduction of
the surplice, it was the universal practice to preach in the black
gown. In most of the chapels there was no vestry, and the awkward
puttings off and on before the people during the singing of a couple
of verses of " Tait and Brady," intensified the dislike.

And it was a Prelacy such as I have described ; so maimed, and
so crippled; so timid and unobtrusive; and so little in it of "lording
it over God's heritage," as it was accused of doing by the Covenanting
preachers; and a worship so diluted and colourless, and shorn of
all liturgical dignity and grace, that the fanatics rejected. Not con-
tent with the legal exemption and toleration accorded to them, and
which the more sober-minded Presbyterians thankfully accepted, they
assembled themselves tumultuously in open conventicles, the hearers
armed, and the preachers thundering out treason, and exhorting
them to fight for " Jesus and a broken Covenant." Need it excite any
surprise that the Government found itself compelled to meet force
with force, and to suppress the insurrection at the point of the sword?
But even had the policy of the State been blameable, and deserving
of all the execration which it meets with in our popular histories,
on the platform, and in the current thought and expression of many
of our fellow-countrymen, the Church was blameless. She was
doing her work, so far as her maimed and crippled condition would
allow, among a loyal and contented people, in three-fourths of Scotland.
But the fanatical disturbance in the western shires was chronic and

14 Sketches of the History of

unappeasable. There the Established Clergy were held up to popular
obliquy as " dumb dogs," and " Priests of the Synagogue of Satan,"
and their persons and property were attacked. These proceedings
culminated in the murder of the Primate, under circumstances of
such shocking atrocity as at length aroused the authorities to more
vigorous measures of suppression. I have already adverted to that
murder; and how it is defended and gloried in to this day; and
how the assassins who suffered for the crime are enrolled among the
Martyrs of the Covenant. It is painful to have to state these facts,
and to tell that Colonel Graham of Claverhouse, for discharging his
duty as a soldier, commissioned to disperse the armed Conventiclers
guilty of these atrocities, and to execute military punishment, on
those found with arms in their hands, or concealed in their houses, — •
as in the well-worn case of John Brown of Priesthill, in whose house
an underground apartment was discovered, well-stored with arms, —
and who stubbornly persisted in disowning the King and his Govern-
ment, continues to have his name loaded with every species of abuse
which the language supplies."^

But I hope to be able to show that the gallant Graham is not the
" vulgar ruffian," — for that is a specimen of the language which a
titled lecturer recently indulged in, — which it is the pleasure of plat-
form orators to call him. Sir Walter Scott, whose true instincts told
him that the hero of Killiecrankie did not deserve the abuse popu-
larly heaped upon him, was among the first to rescue Lord Dundee's
character from the misrepresentations and falsehoods of our partisan
historians ; while his portrait was the only picture that he allowed to
grace the walls of his study. But since the date of " Old Mortality,"
important documents have been brought to light, chiefly by the re-
search of the late Mr Mark Napier, the biographer of Dundee, which,
to all impartial minds, have completely re-habilitated his name and
character. Even such a cautious writer as Dr. Robert Chambers,
one not likely to risk his well earned popularity lightly, is ''con-
strained," he tells us, " as an act of common justice," to speak of
Lord Dundee in these terms : — " Colonel Graham of Claverhouse,
" as Constable of Dundee, represented to the Privy Council that
" he found several persons in prison there for theft, ' which will,' said
" he, ' be fittter to be punished otherwise than by death.' " We all
know that within the memory of the present generation theft was a
capital offence ; so merciful, long in advance of the temper of the age,
was Graham of Claverhouse. " In compliance with this humane
" suggestion," Dr. Chambers goes on to say, " he was empowered to
"restrict the treatment of those criminals to an ordinary punishment,
" such as whipping, as he shall find cause. It may excite surprise,"

* To this day, many an ignorant Scottish peasant believes that '* the Bloody
Claver'se " was in league with Satan, who supplied him with a black horse which
he rode, and did impossible leaps, and climbed impracticable rocks.

The Church of Scotland. 15

he continues, "to find the man whom popular odium has stigmatised
as ' the bloody Claver'se,' interposing for a gentler sentence in behalf
of criminals whom the law had adjudged worthy of death, — he who
ordered the death of so many of the Covenanting rebels in Clydes-
dale and Galloway ; but it is no more than justice to one who was a
gallant soldier, and a stedfast friend in adversity to the sovereign who
had employed him, if we remember how amiable in private life has
been many modern statesmen, noted for their severity in public duties.
Claverhouse had made up his mind to the particular course of action
by which the interests of his country were to be advanced and pro-
tected against the Covenanting Presbyterians in revolt against the
Government, and ivho refused to accept or to ^ive tolei'ation. With the
help of a strong will and under the call of duty, he scrupled not to
walk in that path, although he was the reverse of harsh or inhumane
in the matters of ordinary life. In a letter to the Earl of Aberdeen,
written in June 1683, Dundee reveals to us his principle of action in
one brief sentence. " I am," says he, " as sorry to see a man die,
even a rebel Whig, as any of themselves ; but when one dies justly for
his own faults, and may thereby save a hundred others from falling
into the like, I have no scruple."

The judge on the bench, v/hen he puts on the black cap of doom,
and pronounces the sentence which is carried out on the scaffold,
is not usually denounced by law-abiding people as a " blood-thirsty
ruffian." Nor are the Peers who sentenced Lords Kilmarnock, Bal-
merino, and Lovat to the block for their share in the Rising of the '45,
historically known by the same odious title. The truth is, rebellion
is a desperate and dangerous game to play at, and requires success
to justify it. Those Covenanters played it, and lost. Their modern
defenders metaphorically tear their hair, and stamp their feet, and
call ugly names. But had the Covenanters won, does it need the
Primate's murder, or the apparatus of a gallows and ropes which they
brought with them to Bothwell Brig, in the confident assurance of
the victory which their preachers had promised them, to convince us
that they would have hanged Claverhouse as high as Haman, and
butchered his dragoons in cold blood ; aye, and gloried in the act !

The cabals of the Whig faction, and his own inconsiderate and
head-strong folly, forced James the Seventh, terrified that the fate of
his father might be his own, to flee from the kingdom, and take refuge
abroad. The policy was a fatal mistake ; the King's life was safe
enough. Much had happened since the mornmg of the 30th of
January, 1649; ^^e scaffold in front of Whitehall, and the masked
headsman and his axe. The Revolutioners would not have dared
to spill the King's blood, nor would public opinion have suffered it.
So, in running away, he simply played into the hands of his enemies.
But the flight of the King rendered the throne de facto vacant ;
although, as its de jure possessor, he only waited for better times to

1 6 Sketches of the History of

return to it. William of Orange, the Dutch usurper, invited over by
the faction who traded in disloyalty, sat in his father-in-law's seat,
along with Mary his wife, the King's eldest daughter; she the Goneril
of her day, as her sister Anne was the Regan. So keenly was this
noted by the Tory wits and satirists of the time, that an order in
Council came out, forbidding the tragedy of Lear to be acted in the
theatres " until further notice ! "

The Revolution speedily became an accomplished fact; and together
with it the downfall of the Church of Scotland as an Establishment.
The two Archbishops, the whole of their twelve suffragans, and the
larger half of the thousand parochial Clergy, refused to transfer their
allegiance from James to the Dutchman. Had they seen their way
to accept him, it is an historical fact, capable of the clearest proof,
although quietly suppressed by the popular historians of Scottish .
affairs, that WiUiam would have upheld the Church, if the Bishops
and Clergy had supported him. The Bishop of Edinburgh, who
had an interview with William, tells us what happened : — "Upon my
being admitted into the Prince's presence, he came three or four
steps forward from his company, and prevented me by saying, ' My
Lord, are you going for Scotland?' My reply was, ' Yes, sir, if you
have any commands for me.' Then he said, ' I hope you will be
kind to me, and follow the example of England.' Wherefore being
somewhat difficulted how to make a mannerly and discreet answer,
without entangling myself, I readily replied, ' Sir, I will serve you,
so far as law, reason, and conscience shall allow me.' How this
answer pleased,' continues the Bishop, ' I cannot well tell ; but it
seems the limitations and conditions of it were not acceptable ; for
instantly the Prince, without saying anything more, turned away
from me, and went back to his company." This interview with
William followed a highly significant one which took place the day
before between the Bishop of Edinburgh and the Bishop of London ;
at which the latter said, " My Lord, you see that the King, having
thrown himself upon the water, must keep himself a-swimming with
one hand, the Presbyterians having joined him closely, and offered
to support him ; and therefore he cannot cast them off, unless he
could see how otherwise he could be served. And the King bids
me tell you that he now knows the state of Scotland much better
than he did when in Holland ; for while there he 7C'as made to believe
that Scotland generally was all over Presbyterian ; but now he sees
that the great body of the nobility and gentry are for Episcopacy,
and only the trading and inferior sort for Presbytery ; wherefore he
bids me tell you that if you will undertake to serve him to the purpose
that he is served here in England, he will take you by the hand,
support the Church and order, and throw off the Presbyterians."
That was plain speaking, and there is no mistaking it ; but again it
suits our popular historians to suppress it. The Bishop of Edinburgh
answered his brother of London in much the same way as he did

The Church of Scotland. i'f

the Prince his employer; and from that day the Scottish Church was
doomed as an Establishment, and her sufferings soon began. The
Act for transferring it to the Presbyterians speedily followed; and all
the Bishops, as I have said, and half the Clergy, were at once ejected
from their sees and benefices, with no reservation of life interests,
and without a penny of compensation. With the Bishops and the
half of the Parochial Clergy nearly all the Principals and Professors
of the five universities threw in their lot. The other half of the
Clergy complied with the new order of things, and were continued in
their Kirks and Manses.

The Covenanting zealots, now on the sunny side of the hedge, —
although sadly grieved that the Revolution settlement did not embrace
the Covenant, and that William was not a covenanted king, — lost
no time in re-commencing their favourite work. The Revolution
was hardly consolidated before the "rabWing" of the Clergy in the
Western districts began, not a few of whom were maimed, mutilated,
or brutally murdered in their manses ; and hundreds, with their wives
and families, were driven forth destitute in stormy wintry weather, —
Christmas Day was purposely chosen for beginning the "rabbling;" —
when many of them perished from cold and hunger. As usual, it
suits the party historians and platform orators to withhold all men-
tion of those outrages. Nevertheless, I am telling the simple truth.

But a bold stroke was made for the King. John Graham of
Claverhouse, now Lord Viscount Dundee, clothed with the exiled
King's commission and authority, hastened to Scotland to arm its
loyalty and chivalry. How he fought, and how he won, and how he
fell in the moment of victory on the field of KiUiecrankie, it boots
not to tell. What Scottish Churchman does not know it ? His battle
cry on that field was, '' King James, and the Church of Scotland!'''
And nobly did the clansmen, and many a loyal lowlander besides,
respond to the cry. In five minutes the battle was over, and the
victory won. But dearly was it won. The gallant Graham had
received his death wound, and the victory was fruitless ; for the leaders
that succeeded him were wanting in the military genius, resolution,
and fiery energy for which Dundee was conspicuous, and the enter-
prize collapsed.

I have already touched on the character of Lord Dundee ; but it
is one on which, did space permit, I would fain linger. Perhaps no
character in Scottish history has been more foully, more shamelessly,
and more persistently misrepresented and slandered. A biographer
of his time, speaking of the high sense of honour, and fidelity to his
word, by which he was distinguished, tells us that, " It proceeded
from a deep-seated principle of religion, whereof he was strictly
observant. For, besides family worship, performed in his household
regularly, morning and evening, he retired to his closet at certain

1 8 Sketches of the History of

hours, and employed himself in that duty. This I affirm," continues
the biographer, " on the testimony of those who lived in his neigh-
bourhood in Edinburgh, where his duties as Privy Counsellor often
obliged him to be ; and particularly from a Presbyterian lady who
lived long in the same house where he resided, and who was otherwise
so rigid in her opinions, that she could not believe a good thing of
any person of his persuasion, till his conduct obliged her to rectify her
mistake. Dundee kept up the same pious custom in the army ; and
though somewhat warm upon occasions in his temper, yet at a time
when profane swearing was common among the upper classes of
society, Dundee was never heard to swear. It is a remarkable con-
firmation of this fact, that a Presbyterian historian of the period, who
records the oaths of the CavaHers, the Lairds of Westraw, Lagg, and
others, with peculiar gusto, as if roUing them under his tongue, never
ventures to put a profane oath mto the mouth of Claverhouse. It
ought not to be forgotten, too, that while the unfortunate King
brought his power and influence to bear with success in perverting
many of his Courtiers and Officers to the Roman Catholic Religion
which he had himself embraced, he entirely failed with Lord Dundee,
whom he repeatedly tried to win over to the Roman Communion.
Dundee replied that his Hfe and goods were his King's, but that his
religion was a matter between himself and his God."

The same writer sums up the character of Lord Dundee by saying,
" He was formed by Heaven for great undertakings, and was in an
eminent degree possessed of those qualities that form the accom-
plished gentleman, the upright statesman, and the gallant soldier. In
his private life he was rather parsimonious than profuse ; but in the
king's service he was liberal and generous to all but himself, and
freely spent his own money in buying provisions for his army. In
days notorious for profligacy, there was no stain on Dundee's moral
conduct. In an age infamous for the almost universal treachery of
its public men, his fidelity was pure and inviolate. His worst enemies
have never denied him the possession of the most undaunted courage,
and military genius of the highest order."

Dundee is so largely mixed up with the religious and political
commotions of the period, that I have been tempted to devote a
larger space than I intended to the rescuing of his character from the
persistent abuse which has hitherto blackened it. But I close my
remarks with this eloquent tribute to his name and fame : " He was
generous, brave, and gentle; a Cavalier sans peur et scnis reproche ;
and as long as the summer sun shall pour his evening ray through the
dancing leaves of the birch and the copsewood, down to the dark
pools where the brown waters of the Garry whirl in deep eddies round
the foot of Ben Vrackie, so long will every generous and noble heart
swell at the recollection of him whose spirit fled with the sun's fading
beam, as he set on the last victory of ' Ian dhu nan Cath^' the ' Dark

The Church of Scotland. 19

John of the Battles ;' of him who died the death which the God of
Batdes, the Lord of Hosts, reserves for His best and most favoured
sons ; ahke on sea and on mountain ; on the blue wave of Trafalgar,
or on the purple heather of Killiecrankie."

Dundee was dead ; the king was in exile ; the Dutch conqueror
was on the throne, and the Revolution was an accomplished fact.
The Bishops and half the Clergy said non possumics ; and the Church
of Scotland was in the wilderness. There are many Churchmen of
the present day, both lay and clerical, who dispute the policy of sac-
rificing the Church's status as an Establishment for what they are
pleased to call a bit of political sentiment. The answer to the accusa-
tion is, I apprehend, that from the non-juring stand-point the con-
tention was, not for a sentiment, but for a distinct religious principle ;
that what is contemptuously termed a sentiment was to the non-jurors
a solemn duty. The oath of allegiance then, it should be remem-
bered, was not the same which the Revolution Settlement subse-
quently considerably modified, and which is now taken by the
Queen's subjects. The Scottish Bishops and Clergy, and the faithful
who adhered to them, had sworn allegiance to James the Seventh
and his heirs j and they were not men of flexible consciences, like the
Vicar of Bray, prepared to play fast and loose with their oath. The
oath of the period, moreover, compelled them to swear that the infant
Prince of Wales was a suppositious child. Only factious men believed,
or pretended to believe, that falsehood then ; no one believes it now.

Besides, we of the nineteenth century have the advantage of know-
ing the history of the political and religious change. Our non-juring
ancestors did not and could not know that the King and his heirs, by
the decree of Providence, were to be shut out from their inheritance
for ever. They looked and they prayed for a second Restoration,
which they fondly hoped might take place any day. Nor did the
hope seem to them the chimera that it does to us. Probably the
great majority even of those who outwardly compfied with the Revolu-
tion Settlement, and were among the most outspoken in its support,
hke Marlborough and others, were Jacobites at heart, and only waited
for an opportunity of openly declaring themselves. It is now capable
of distinct proof, from documentary evidence subsequently brought to
light, that many of William's courtiers and chief advisers were in
secret correspondence with the Court of St, Germains, and that the
Court of St. James's was honeycombed with Jacobitism. The hopes
of the early non-jurors were of the brightest; it was only after the
successive failure of the three enterprises of KiUiecrankie, Sheriffmuir,
and CuUoden, that hope deferred gradually made the hearts of the
Jacobites sick. Nevertheless, although with daily diminishing num-
bers, they hoped on. In their defence, it must also be remembered,

50 Sketches of the History of

that they maintained the principle of Divine Right in the line of the
kingly succession ; a principle, accounted I fear, in these more
enlightened days, but an antiquated superstition. Yet I am bound
to mention that this is one of the principles which the great divines
that adorn the later Church, including the saintly Bishop Andrewes, and
the martyred Archbishop Laud, and the entire catena of the Caroline
Bishops, whom we all admire, praise, and are ready confidently to fall
back upon in defence of truths which happen to please us better, had
taught, not merely as a political duty, but, as regards the principle of
obedience, and the inviolability of vows, part of the depositum of the
Faith. Indeed, on any other principle, one fails to see how persist-
ent loyalty to the sovereign who, by the grace of God, now rules over
us is possible. Should a democratic upheaval, — which may God avert,
— drive Queen Victoria from her throne, and substitute that human
device, a republic ; or should a continental invader conquer the
country ; then, upon Revolution principles, loyalty gives in, sheathes
its sword, makes its bow, and success justifies the iniquity. In fact.
Revolution principles are founded on robbery and violence ; on the
tyranny of the footpad ; your money or your life !

The dispossessed Church although stripped of her endowments to
the last penny, and vested interests, as we have before stated, totally
disregarded, did not at first suffer much active persecution at the
hands of the Revolution Government, beyond the abject poverty and
distress into which the outed Clergy and their families were immediately
plunged. Of this, deplorable instances are on record. But it
suffered every kind of molestation and annoyance at the hands of the
now dominant religious faction, which, by an immutable law, hated
with a heart-hatred the divine Institution which it had injured and
supplanted.* Queen Anne had written to the Scottish Privy Council
expressing her wish that the Episcopal Clergy and their flocks, — some
of the Clergy still in possession, and others worshipping in Meeting-
Houses, — should be protected in the peaceable exercise of their
rehgion. Encouraged by the royal wish and intention, the Earl of
Strathmore in 1702 proposed in Parliament that a toleration should
be granted to all Protestants in the exercise of religious worship.
Against this measure a strong representation was given in by the
Commission of the General Assembly. The Moderator signed the
Paper, in which the opinions of the Commission in regard to any con-
cession to Episcopacy may be judged of from the following passage :
— " We do, therefore, most humbly beseech, yea we are bold in the
Lord, and in the name of the Church of God in this land, earnestly
to obtest your Grace, and the most honourable Estates, that no such
motion of any legal toleration to those of prelatical principles be
entertained by the parliament ; being persuaded that to enact a tolera-
tion for those of that way (which God of His infinite mercy avert,)

* The proverb is as old as it is true, ^^ odisse qjievi Icesen's.

The Church of Scotland. 21

would be to establish iniquity by law, and would bring upon the pro-
moters thereof, and upon their families, the dreadful guilt of all those
sins, and pernicious effects both to Church and State that may ensue
thereupon." The principles embodied in this precious Document
were systematically acted upon and carried out for nearly a century ;
and so successfully that the Church was all but exterminated.

The population north of the Tay was, as ever, for the most part Epis-
copalian, and largely Jacobite ; and the newly established Presby-
terianism had the utmost difficulty in collecting Congregations in the
Parishes, and in forming Presbyteries. In the records of the
Presbytery of Deer, which I have had an opportunity of examining,
it appears that they had to import ministers from other districts to
make up a quorum; and the Episcopal Incumbent of the Parish of Deer,
Mr George Keith, a cadet of the noble house of Marischal, and a
staunch Jacobite, like the head of the family, and all his name and
race, kept possession of Kirk, manse, and benefice, and was upheld and
supported by the body of the parishioners and landed gentry, almost
to a man and woman, — indeed the women were the keenest partisans
of the exiled King, and in their allegiance to the Church, — for nearly
a quarter of a century after the Revolution. At Mr Keith's death in
17 1 1, the Presbytery at length ventured on the attempt to settle a
minister, but without success. The parishioners rose and resisted.
The Parish Kirk was hemmed in by village houses, from the roofs of
which stones and other missiles were hurled against the Presbytery.
It was in fact deforced ; and the ministers were compelled to depart,
re infecta, and complete the formalities in the Kirk of a neighbouring
parish, to which access was more easily procured. This incident is
known historically as "the rabble of Deer." In other parishes of
the Diocese of Aberdeen many of the parochial Clergy kept posses-
sion long after the '15, — down to 1725, and in some instances even
later. Such is a specimen of what was alleged to be " the inclinations
of the people," the Charter of the Presbyterian Establishment set up
in 1689. During the entire reign of Queen Anne, wlio was person-
ally favourable to the dispossessed Church, and showed her favour by
the gift for distribution of a large Edition of the Book of Common
Prayer, which was then coming into general use, — the Book, I may
mention, was introduced by Mr Keith into the Parish Church
of Deer the year after the Revolution, — the Church enjoyed
the protection of the Civil Authorities against the ill-will of those who
showed every inclination to harass and molest her. The Jacobites
looked upon Anne, as probably she herself did, in the light of her
brother's lieutenant ; and so they forbore from any overt act in
favour of the King's restoration during her lifetime. It was not until
the Queen's death in 17 15, and the accession of the Hanoverian
dynasty, that active persecution began. There is no need to conceal
the fact that the Rising in the '15 furnished the pretext. In the
autumn of that year the Earl of Mar unfurled the Royal Standard at

22 Sketches of the History of

Castletown of Brae Mar and proclaimed James the Eighth. The Earl
Marischal did the same in Aberdeen on the 20th of September,
attended by a large representation of the nobility and gentry of the
shire, the Clergy, and the Professors of the two universities. Among
the concourse of loyalists were the Marquis of Huntly, — the Head of
the noble House staying quietly at home, but his sympathies were
well known, and his power in the north was almost regal ; — the Earl of
Aboyne, the Lord Forbes of Pitsligo, Sir Robert Gordon who carried
the Royal Standard, and a numerous retinue of the lesser Barons and
Lairds, among whom were Invercauld, Pittodrie, Stoneywood, Drum,
PituUie, Turherhall, and upwards of two hundred of the chief bur-
gesses of the city. Aberdeen, ever true to Church and King, was
dehrious with joy. The mouth of the stone Lion which surmounts
the market cross was made to spout forth wine for the delectation
of the crowd, who drank the King's health, many of them, on their
knees. The Whig magistrates were summarily deposed ; and others,
well affected to the cause, reigned in their stead. The Presbyterian
ministers were turned out of the churches,and the dispossessed Clergy
were re-installed. The Prayer Book Service was said in the Parish
Church of St. Nicholas, which the Professors of the University, the
Magistrates and Town Coucil, and the Incorporated Trades attended
in state, arrayed in their robes of office. The '' braif toune of Bon-
Accord " was en fete ; and " the auld Stuarts back again" was on every
tongue ! On the 22nd of December James landed at Peterhead, then
little more than a fishing village, but every man and woman in it his
devoted partisans. Next day he passed on through Aberdeen to
Fetteresso, near Stonehaven, one of the castles of the Earl Marischal.
During the halt in Aberdeen, loyal addresses were presented to him
by the Professors of the two universities, by the Bishop and Clergy
of the Diocese, and the Jacobite magistracy. But soon the gleam
of gladness vanished. Sheriffmuir was fought and lost ; or rather the
battle was a drawn game ; for, in the words of the song : —

" Some say that ive won, and some say that they won,
And some say that nane won ava, man ;
But of ae thing I'm sure, that on Shirra Muir,
A battle was there which I saw, man."

But Mar, the leader of the enterprise, was incompetent, if not a
poltroon. He made little or no attempt to keep his army together,
although the bulk of it marched off the field unbroken. The two
Marischal Keiths, — the younger brother, James, afterwards the great
Field Marshall of Frederic of Prussia, and both of them the bravest
of the brave, — failed to prevail with Mar to persevere in the attempt,
although they urged him on the field with passionate tears, and so it
took end. Li the battle, a gray-headed Highlander, who had fought
at Killiecrankie, was heard, shouting at every blow of his Lochaber
axe, " Och ! for an 'oor o' Dundee !" James himself was not made of
the stuff w^hich creates enthusiasm among soldiers. He seeemed but

The Church of Scotland. 23

half-hearted in his own cause, and was among the first to counsel the
dispersion of his adherents. About the only thing remembered of
him in connection with the Rising is a feeble joke that he made. At
Perth there was no bridge, as now, across the Tay. The season was
winter, and the river was frozen over. James was invited to cross,
and exhibited some reluctance. When assured that the ice would
bear, and that there was no danger, he ventured ; and turning round
to the gentlemen about him, said with a sickly smile, " Ah ! my
friends, you have indeed led me on the ice !" And so, through
faint-heartedness and mismanagement on the part of those who were
entrusted with conducting it, the gallant attempt took end ; and
nothing more was done till thirty years after, when Bonnie Prince
Charlie unfurled his father's standard at Moydart.

From what can be gathered from the Publications of the period,
and other sources, the number of the Clergy and Congregations dur-
ing Queen Anne's reign, down to the Hanoverian succession would
seem to have been about three hundred. In a rare Pamphlet, of
which I possess a copy, intituled, " A representation of the state of
the Church in North Britain, as to Episcopacy and Liturgy, and of
the sufferings of the Orthodox and Regular Clergy from the enemies
of both ; but more especially of the Episcopal Churches within the
Diocese and Shire of Aberdeen," there is a detailed account of the
cruel treatment to which the Clergy in those parts were subjected
after 17 15. It is significant of the virulence of the persecution, that
this Pamphlet was printed in London in 1718. Evidently it was not
safe for a Scottish printer to take it in hand.

The Honourable Archibald Campbell, a younger son of the House
of Argyle, was Bishop of Aberdeen about that time. By careful study,
he had worked himself out of those principles, religious and political,
in which he had been educated, which in that family were traditional,
and had become an ardent Jacobite and zealous Churchman. An-
other curious and similar change of front, it may be noticed in pass-
ing, took place about the same time, in the conversion of a grandson
of the famous Andrew Cant, the northern apostle of the Covenant,
who had renounced Covenanting and Presbyterian principles, and
ultimately became one of the Bishops of the suffering Church. The
see of Aberdeen was administered by a Commissary, in the person of
Dr James Gadderar, Bishop Campbell residing chiefly in London.
In the scarce Pamphlet, whose title I have given, most of the old
Congregations which still remain are mentioned, together with many
others which have long ceased to exist ; most of them, as is known,
coming to an end, either in the fiery persecution, — literally so, for in
many cases the chapels were burnt, — consequent on the failure in
the '15, and finally at CuUoden. Detachments of mounted dragoons
scoured the country ; and, acting on the information of the Presby-
terian authorities, harassed the nonjuring Clergy, spoiled their goods,

24 sketches of the History of

shut up their places of worship ; and, except in the cases where the
Clergy were in hiding, imprisoned their persons. But again I have
to tell that all this is carefully excluded from the popular histories
which treat of those times.

The Bishops, in continuing the succession, were obliged to act
with the greatest secresy and caution. To use the language of a his-
torian who describes it, " the prelates celebrated with a mournful
privacy the august solemnities of the Church. The rites were shorn
of the old cathedral splendour. The 'Ve7ii Creator' must be mur-
mured like a voice out of the dust. But yet they had with them the
eternal Pontiff, and the unfailing powers of His kingdom. They
were speaking His words, and doing His work ; and it was in full
assurance of Him for their unseen Consecrator, that the Priests about
to fill the places of those worn out old men, knelt before them to
receive the Holy Ghost for the office and work of Bishops in the
Church of God."

" As the Liturgy," says the little work from which I have been
quoting, " was the chief object of dislike, so the first attack was upon
the Pastors of the Episcopal persuasion, where the Liturgy was used."
It is to be observed that many of the dispossessed Clergy, when left
at liberty to do it, had introduced the Book of Common Prayer into
their churches, many of them being the parish churches, of which
public opinion was strong enough to help them to keep possession.
During the whole of Anne's reign, the substitution of the Prayer Book
Offices for the extemporaneous worship of the late Establishment
period, went on rapidly ; and to encourage it, the Queen sent a farther
gift of a large impression of the Folio Prayer Book for the use of the
Clergy in the public services of the Church. " These congregations
were instantly desolated. On the marching north of a party of
Argyle's army, the Presbyterians took advantage to threaten those
Clergy with imprisonment, which put those who could do so under
the necessity to abscond." As showing that the military were acting at
the instigation of the Presbyterian authorities, and that the persecu-
tion was quite as much a religious as a political one, it is noticeable
that in the churches of the Aberdeen Diocese, where the extempore
mode of worship still continued, the Clergy were not at first inter-
fered with. Doubtless it was expected that they would in time
comply, as they had not adopted the hated Service Book, which the
preachers were in the habit of denouncing as a thinly disguised Mass
Book. " The desolations, continues the writer of the pamphlet,
" began at Aberdeen, where the Liturgy had been used with great
decency and order for more than four years,"— in those congregations,
it is understood, which had been forced out of the parish church of
St. Nicholas, and the Cathedral. The violence used was very great.
" Mr. Dunbreck fled ; Dr. George Garden, who made not so much
haste to escape, was seized and thrown into prison, where he lay for

The Church of Scotland.

five months, until he managed to elude his jailors and make his
escape into a foreign country." Two others of the Aberdeen Clergy,
Dr. Burnett and Mr. Blair, were in hiding ; and " Dr. James Garden,"
Professor of Divinity in King's College, " cannot with safety keep his
own house, but under the infirmities of old age, has been forced to
wander from place to place. Thus was that congregation, corriposed
of the best and most intelligent burgesses and people of the town,
deprived of the worship of God, and of their rightful Pastors." In
the country parishes, the treatment of the Clergy was the same or
worse. The minister of Aberlour was banished the kingdom for the
crime of baptising an infant. In the western districts, the Clergy
were " rabbled ;" they, their wives and children, were driven from the
manses in the midst of a snow storm ; and more than one of the
" outed" ministers perished under the infliction. Once more I have to
state that this Confessorship is suppressed in the histories which cir-
culate most among Scotsmen, who have yet to learn that there are two
sides to this portion of the ecclesiastical history of our country.

" Mr. William Livingstone, the Parson of Deer after Mr. Keith's
death in 171 1, was seized by a party of military, and forced away
from his family and flock. They rifled his house of everything of
value within it ; leaving not so many clothes as would cover his wife
and an infant a few months old. Mr. Alexander, the aged Parson of
Kildrummie," — the father of Bishop Alexander, who ministered for
many years to the faithful in the town of Alloa, — " was seized, and
carried a prisoner to Aberdeen. From thence he was taken, along
with Dr. Garden, to Edinburgh. But on their way there, they were
both thrust into a noisome dungeon at Cupar-Angus, where the
worst of criminals were imprisoned ; and after many months of suffer-
ing were at last set at liberty on bail." Mr. William Dunbar, Parson
of Cruden, and afterwards Bishop of Aberdeen, underwent the same
sort of treatment. Mr. Dunbar, after his expulsion in 171 7, from the
church and parish of Cruden, retired to the neighbouring town of
Peterhead ; and on Bishop Gadderar's death, succeeded him as
Bishop of the Diocese. Bishop Gadderar presided over the Diocese
until 1733. About the beginning of his Episcopate in 1723, the per-
secution seems to have somewhat slackened. I possess a manuscript
record, probably in the Bishop's own handwriting, of the Ordinations
performed by him from 1723 to 1726. In the course of those three
years, he conferred Holy Orders on twenty-eight Deacons and Priests ;
a fact proving how numerous the congregations in the Diocese were
at the period. The memory of Bishop Gadderar continued green
among Aberdeen Churchmen down to the end of the first quarter of
the present century. As a youth, I have often heard his name men-
tioned with veneration by the older Clergy.

Of Bishop Dunbar, who resided, as I have said at Peterhead, where
he ministered to a numerous congregation, I have heard Bishop

26 Sketches of the History of

Torry, who succeeded him after a long interval in ministering to the
same flock, relate an anecdote, showing the Bishop's loyal principles
and ready wit. A company of soldiers, after the suppression of the
Rising in 1746, was sent to Peterhead to overawe its Jacobite in-
habitants ; that is to say, about the entire population. The com-
manding officer, an Englishman, and, as it happened, the son of an
English Bishop, out of a feeling of respect to one bearing the Epis-
copal title and character, invited Bishop Dunbar to the mess dinner.
After dinner, the first toast, as usual, was ^'' King George!'''' The
toast was duly honoured by all at the table, with the exception of the
Bishop ; who, lifting his glass, quietly but audibly drank to " Our
Lawful King. A young officer, with a rude oath, — exclaimed, " our
lawful King, sir ! why ... it, that is not King George I " " Gentle-
men," replied the Bishop, " I take you all to witness that this young
man affirms, although he need not have sworn it, that King George
is not our lawful King ! In that sentiment," he added, " I have the
honour of entirely agreeing with him." It need not be told on which
side the laugh of the company was.

I have mentioned Mr Alexander, the Parish minister of Kildrum
mie, as one of the persecuted Clergy, who under the protection of
his patron the Earl of Mar, and with the good will and affection of
the parishioners, kept possession until after the '15. His son, Mr
John Alexander, was ordained as his father's assistant, and successor
(as was hoped), while the father continued to minister in the Parish
Church. He became eventually Bishop of Dunkeld. Bishop Jolly,
as a young man, had seen and conversed with Bishop Alexander. I
myself had the privilege of knowing Bishop Jolly, I am proud and
thankful to say, from my school days in 182 1 to his death in 1838,
and took part in the solemnities at his burial. So it comes to this ;
that I knew and conversed with a man, who had known and con-
versed with a man who had ministered as a Scottish Priest in a Scot-
tish Parish Church. This may be accepted as a bit of commentary
on the boasted antiquity of " the Auld Kirk."

The fierce and protracted persecution after CuUoden left the sup-
pressed Church with about forty Clergy of all orders, and in most
cases with mere skeletons of congregations. The nobility and gentry
could not attend the Episcopal worship, save at the risk of pains and
penalties, and they would not attend the Presbyterian worship ; the
result in many cases being the utter neglect of any religious profes-
sion whatever, and an immoral life and conversation. So violent and
persistent was the persecution, that even the most hopeful began to
despair of any successors to the hunted and harried Clergy, many of
whom were languishing in prison, or were in penal banishment; in
plainer language, they were sold as slaves to the American planters.
But our platform lecturers quietly suppress all mention of those suffer-
ings ; as also do our school histories ; in which, however I am bound

The Church of Scotland. 27

to mention, the Cameronian Covenanters are glorified as saints and
martyrs ; and Episcopacy, its ritual, and worship are disparaged and
viUfied ; and our children, who, in the absence of Church schools in
country districts, are conipulsorily sent to the Board Schools, are
systematically indoctrinated, under the guise of " use and wont," in
falsehoods and frauds such as these miscalled histories. It were
much to be wished that more notice were taken of this hardship in
the education of our children, and a remedy provided.

Mr Alexander Keith, the worthy son of a worthy father, the Parson
of Deer already mentioned, was the Pastor of the remnant of the
Cruden Congregation at the '45 period, and nearly twenty years later
on. The inscription on his gravestone in the church-yard of that
Parish is a touching proof of how deeply the iron had entered into
the souls of the Clergy ; and how they thought they had seen the last
of the ancient Church of Scotland. The inscription is as follows : —
" S. M. of the Rev. Mr. Alex. Keith, whose purity of heart, sanctity of
manners, easiness of conversation, and unwearied attention to all the
duties of his office as a Minister of the Church of Scotland under the
many trying events of eight and forty years, rendered his life valuable,
his death lamentable, and his memory precious. Ob. Oct. 27, 1763,
yEt. 68. Ultime Scotorum in Crudenanis, Kethe, Sacerdos ! Fratri-
bus et Plebi diu memorande, vale !" I remember standing many
years since at the side of the grave, in the company of the venerable
Dean of the Diocese, Mr. Cumming of Longside, and reading the
inscription. The Dean said to me, " The old man," the title by
which he always spoke of his grandfather and predecessor, Dean
Skinner, "The old man," said he, "wrote that epitaph," I went
back upon the word " ultime." " But why ' ultime,'" I said. Never
shall I forget the wistful look, the quivering lip, and the brimful eyes
of my venerable friend, as he replied, " Ah ! the Clergy of those sad
days never expected to have any successors." The epitaph is one of
the many proofs that might be adduced that the Church, at the lowest
point of her depression, although " minished and brought low through
oppression, plague, and trouble," clung to her inalienable title of the
the Church of Scotland, which she maintained she had never forfeited.
It was after the persecutions had virtually ceased, about the end of
the last century, and when those who managed her affairs thought it
would be indiscreet to assert the title when they were approaching the
Legislature to be freed from the pains and penalties which had nearly
extinguished her, that they described her as " the Scottish Episcopal
Church," and sometimes as " the Episcopal Communion in Scotland."
Probably the title page of her Eucharistic Office is the only document
in which her ancient title is still proclaimed; — "The Communion Office
of the Church of Scotland." John Skinner of Linshart, the accom-
plished divine and poet, the writer of the epitaph above described,
and of many a scholarly Latin composition, and who died Dean of
Aberdeen in 1808, lay in the jail of the county town for six months,

28 Sketches of the History of

for the crime of saying the Morning Service in the presence of a
congregation consisting of more than five persons which the statute,
made and provided for extinguishing Episcopacy in Scotland, declared
to be a congregation beyond which none should be allowed to meet.
The violation of the statute rendered the officiating Clergyman liable,
for the first offence, to imprisonment for six months ; and for the
second offence, banishment to the Plantations for life, which meant,
as I have before stated, being sold to the Planters as slaves.

Nor did the faithful laity escape. They incurred sharp penalties
for being present at the interdicted worship. I'hose of position were
subjected to heavy fines, in addition to their being mcapacitated for
any office of privilege or trust. If Peers, they were debarred from
taking their places in the House of their order ; if Commoners, from
being elected as members of Parliament ; or even from discharging
the humbler functions of Justices of the Peace. The law was fre-
quently evaded by the contrivance that only five worshippers were
under the purview of the officiating minister ; while the passages,
bed-rooms, and closets of the dwelling houses in which the wor-
ship was conducted, — as often as ten or twelve times in the course
of the Sunday, in the presence of fresh relays, — were packed full
of people, all more or less within ear-shot. But it sometimes
happened that more than the statutable five ventured, with or
without the sanction of the minister, to put in an appear-
ance ; in which case spies were seldom wanting to lodge in-
formation with the authorities, who rarely were inclined to show
mercy or forbearance. One of Dean Skinner's neighbours, Mr.
Sangster, — he died Dean of the Diocese in 1826, so near are those
times brought to our own day, — also suffered imprisonment for the
like offence. These are but specimens from the district which is best
known to the writer; but the same persistent persecution went on
throughout the whole of Scotland for nearly fifty years, until the
Church was reduced to the verge of extinction. Indeed, the marvel
is that a vestige of it was left. Much of this was told to the writer
by Bishop Jolly. When I went to pay my duty to him, and receive
his blessing, after my ordination as a Deacon, I well remember the
saintly man lifting up his eyes and hands, and, — adverting to the
faithlessness which had made himself and others despond and despair
when no light appeared in the thick gloom, — thanking God that
youthful labourers were at length being raised up in greater numbers
to take the places of the old.

Among the last of the Clergy whom I have known who had been
forced to worship God in the hidden, make-shift way I have men-
tioned, was Dr. Patrick Torry, Bishop of St. Andrew?, Dunkeld, and
Dunblane, who died at Peterhead in extreme old age, so late as 1852.
I have heard the Bishop tell that when a young Priest at Arradoul in
the Enzie, — now represented by the Buckie Congregation — he had

The Church of Scotland. 29

been forced to celebrate the Holy Communion on the table of a farm
kitchen, hastily scoured, and prepared for the occasion.

The persecutions had reduced the number of Clergy from about
five hundred who refused to conform to the new order of things at
the Revolution, and to accept the Prince of Orange as their king,
and Presbyterianism as their religion, to about one-tenth of that
number in the closing years of the century. Even down to the period
of my own youth, the number was hardly over seventy; and even
that small increase was chiefly made up of the ministers of the so-
called " English Chapels," who had qualified by taking the oaths to
the Hanoverian government, having previously received their orders
at the hands of English or Irish Bishops. For it is to be kept in
view that no submission on the part of those who had been ordained
by Scottish Bishops was of any avail. Mr. Skinner of Longside, and
others, whatever their leanings and sympathies may have been, were
ready to take the oath to the reigning sovereign. They did so,and prayed
for him publicly by name ; but it did not save them from the clutches
of the penal statute ; they were imprisoned notwithstanding. They
had received their orders from the politically tainted Bishops of Scot-
land ; and the object of the statute was to uproot Scottish Episcopacy.
Most of the ministers of the " English Chapels," on the submission
of the Bishops and Clergy at the close of the century, and the conse-
quent relaxation of the penal laws, — I say relaxation, for the whole of
the penalties were not swept away until about seventy years later, —
saw it to be their duty to abandon the schismatical position to which
only a supposed necessity gave the colour of justification, and to sub-
mit to their native Bishops. Fresh missionary ground, to which the
Church now owes so much of her expansion and increase year by
year, was not dreamed of in those days ; not, in fact, until within less
than twenty years since. In the early days of " the Church Society,"
a standing bit of the annual speeches by laymen of position and
influence was sure to be an elaborate apology for the existence of
Episcopacy in Scotland. Our Church, said the speakers, amid much
and hearty applause, was not a proselytizing Church, not aggressive; oh
no ! very far from it ; she only desired to keep together the few congrega-
tions she happened to possess, and to make the Clergy a little more
comfortable; our dear brethren of the Establishment and the "deno-
minations" need have no fear of our encroaching on their domains.
Happily such abject apologetic speeches are never heard now. The
Church is awakening to her mission and her responsibilities. An influx
of Home Missionary zeal, under the healthy and fostering influences of
the Representative Church Council, and an absence of the unworthy
fear of being stigmatised as proselytizers, have worked a marvellous
change. May this fresh Home Missionary zeal suffer no coldness or
abatement, and may our Divine Head prosper it, until Scotland is
re-conquered to the obedience of the Faith.

In my early youth, the dark shadow of the persecuting times,

30 Sketches of the History of

although direct persecution by the State had ceased, still brooded
over the elder Clergy. They shrank from observation. The Bishops
never allowed, if they could help it, the mention of an Episcopal act
to appear in the newspapers ; afraid that outsiders should come to
know that there were live Bishops in Scotland. Our Churches were
all Chapels; which term was in current use both in town and country,
Edinburgh not excepted, until within something less than fifty years
since ; nor is the term yet, although less frequently heard than it was,
by any means out of use. But even Chapel was an advance on the
Meeting House of a former generation. The truth is, that for a long
period, — all through the first half of the last century, — the Clergy
rather encouraged the use of the words Chapel and Meeting House as
provisional names, because they expected the Parish Churches to be
again restored to them. Culloden blasted the last remnant of that
hope.

The Ritual, as I have already mentioned, was the baldest and
meanest conceivable ; and the people, long accustomed to it, were
rather suspicious and intolerant of any thing better. The Clergy took
all sorts of liberties with the arrangements and words of the Prayer
Book ; here and there improving them, as they fondly imagined. Of
this, curious and grotesque instances might be mentioned. A sur-
pliced Priest was never seen ; except, perhaps, in one or two of the
large towns, and then only in the cases of Clergy imported from
England. All the Offices that could be performed in private were so
performed, including that for the Burial of the Dead ; which Office
was said in a mysterious, hidden sort of way, at the " Chesting," the
evening before the funeral, in the presence of a few women. This
mysterious manner of saying the Burial Service was much suspected
by the Presbyterian neighbours, especially when they happened to
see a plate with some earth carried in, as something superstitious and
unholy; and the more so, as at the period I am speaking of, they
had not themselves begun to have any "services" at funerals, now
so universal. I can distinctly remember their commencement in
some of the large towns before the custom had extended to the
country parishes. At first, it was in a very tentative sort of way. The
ministers knew that their " Directory for Public Worship" distinctly
prohibited any religious service at funerals ; so they made the prayer
a sort of prolonged grace before the compound called " Burial Wine "
and cake were handed round ; — a grace, with a few hortatory and
comforting words to the family mourners, couched more or less in a
precatory form. Gradually advances were made, to what is now
called " a funeral service." Now the refreshments are offered to each
guest on entering the house of mourning, without the formality of a
grace ; and, the company being all assembled, a bow is made to the
minister, who forthwith proceeds to read a chapter proper to the
occasion, often the Burial Lesson of our Office ; — after which a long
prayer is put up, largely partaking of the hortatory, the homeletic, and

The Church of Scotland, 31

the sympathetic. Of late, another step in advance has been taken,
and the " service" is occasionally performed at the open grave, in
defiance of the " Directory," by the minister arrayed in gown, hood,
and bands ; and very recently another venture has been made, and
the minister so vested, has actually been seen, Prayer Book in hand,
boldly reading the Church's Burial Office at the interment. The
change, whatever it may lead to, is most marked, and very marvellous.
The last small attempt at persecution that I know about happened to
myself, shortly after I became a clergyman. Greatly daring, I made
up my mind to brave public opinion and possible danger, and re-
solved to bury a deceased member of my flock in conformity with
the Rubric, by saying the prescribed portion of the Office at the
grave. The thing was hitherto unheard of. The grave-digger, and
the Presbyterian element of the company glowered at me. The
Episcopalian portion hung down its head, and looked uneasy and
sore distressed at the temerity of their young ritualistic parson ; and
I was afterwards told that the irate grave digger and the village heads
had met in solemn and indignant conclave to consider whether I
ought not to be informed upon, and the sheriff of the county be in-
vited to take notice of me. But happily, the effervesence subsided,
and nothing came of it.

The venerable Alexander Jolly, Bishop of Moray, is the typical
Scottish Churchman of the latter half of the last century, and eight
and thirty years of the present. In the early years of his Episcopate,
the Church began to emerge from the thick gloom in which she had
for a century lain. Charles Edward Stuart was dead ; — Charles the
Third, he was, by the Grace of God, but not by the will of the people,
in the eyes of the Loyal Remnant; — and his brother Henry Benedict,
the Cardinal of York, became Henry the Ninth, D.G., King of Great
Britain, France, and Ireland, Defender of the Faith. Henry had a gold
medal struck, which I have seen, with this inscription, " Henricus, Dei
gratia, sed non voluntate Hominum, Mag. Brit. Fr. et Hib. F. D. Rex."
Bishop Abernethy Drummond of Edinburgh, the ruling mind among
the Scottish Bishops of the period, contrived to satisfy himself, and
his reasoning pretty easily satisfied the majority of his brethren of the
Episcopate, that a Roman Priest was disqualified from sitting on the
throne of Great Britain. So the Bishops quietly ignored Henry's pre-
tensions, and forthwith came to terms with the Hanoverian govern-
ment. Some may think it was a pity that they stultified the high-
souled contention of a hundred years of their Church's history by
rushing up to the Hanoverian throne with such undue, not to say
indecent, haste, when the breath had scarcely left poor Charles's body.
If they could only have had a little longer patience, and waited on a few
years more, until Henry's death, their political logic, which they and
their predecessors had closely bound up with their religion, would
not have been so liable to be called in question. Henry the Ninth
was the last Stuart who claimed the allegiance of his subjects ; andl

32 Sketches of the History of

the stoutest maintainer of the doctrine of Divine Right has never
contended that allegiance is due, if no allegiance is claimed. The
moment Henry of York died, George the Third became " our law-
ful King;" but, on Divine Right principles, not a moment sooner.
On Revolution principles, of course, any lucky adventurer might
become " our lawful king" any day. Much, however, it must be
allowed, taking frail human nature as we find it, may be urged, if not
in defence, yet in palliation, of the step which the Bishops and Clergy
took. The Church was ground to the dust, and was moaning her
Psalm ^^ AdhcBsit pavimento'^ They feared its utter extinction. They
were weary and heart-sick with waiting for that which never came ;
and they saw that what, to a former generation, was a deep-seated
principle and an eager hope, was fast becoming an antiquarian senti-
ment. Yet Jacobitism died hard. One aged Bishop, — his brethren
discovered he was in his dotage, — two stout-hearted Highland Priests,
and one in the Diocese of Brechin, refused to give in. Nor were
the flocks altogether quiescent. There were many groanings, and
murmurings, and searchings of heart at the surrender. Who has not
heard of the redoubtable Charles Hacket, the Laird of Inveramsay
in the Garioch, who sternly interviewed the Bishops before they dis-
persed from the Aberdeen Synod, where Jacobitism was renounced,
and Hanoverianism accepted, and who roundly scolded the Right
Reverend Fathers, telling one of them, from whom he had hoped
for a firmer consistency, " As for you, sir, I would not have believed
this of you; I am perfectly ashamed of you !" It is related of the
same stout adherent of the fallen dynasty, that on the first Sunday
that George's name was pronounced in the Service at the Folia Chapel
where he attended, he got up from his knees, ostentatiously brushed
them with his hand, and blew his nose vigorously, as an indignant
protest against the falling away.

Another old Trojan was Mr. Oliphant, Laird of Gask, in Perth-
shire. When Charles-Edward died, and was succeeded by his brother
Henry, the bulk of the Scottish Jacobites, as we have said, transferred
their allegiance to the King in possession. Not so did the unswerv-
ing, uncompromising Laird of Gask. Mr. Cruickshank, the Clergy-
man at Muthill, — the old man was alive and ministering there for
several years after I was in orders, — and who used to perform the
Service at the houses of the Jacobite nobility and gentry in turn,
wrote to Mr. Oliphant to say that he had conformed to the Govern-
ment. An answer was speedily despatched in these words : — " July
3rd, 1788 — Mr. Oliphant presents his compliments to Mr. Cruick-
shank ; and as he has incapacitated himself from officiating at Gask,
his gown is sent by the carrier, and the books he gave the reading
of. As Mr. Cruickshank has received his stipend to this Whitsun-
tide, there is no money transactions to settle between him and Mr.
Oliphant." Thus did the compliant parson of Muthill receive his
mittimus ! About the same period George the Third was seized with

The Church of Scotland. 33

his mental ailment ; which being reported to the Laird of Gask, he
remarked to one of the conforming Clergy, in the broad Doric which
all classes of society then used, " Ye see what ye ha' dune to the
honest man ! he never has had a weel day sin' ye tuick him by the
han' !" The unswerving Jacobitism of Gask being reported to George
the Third, the member for Perthshire received this message from the
monarch to the sturdy upholder of the dethroned House ; — " Give
my comphments, — not the comphments of the King of England, but
those of the Elector of Hanover, — to Mr. OHphant ; and tell him
how much I respect him for the steadiness of his principles." He
was a specimen of many a Jacobite gentleman of the period, " the
brave old Scottish Cavalier, all of the olden time," true to his king
and to his God.

Jacobitism was a deep-seated principle, which a people of demo-
cratical tendencies scarcely understand ; and, as we have said, it died
hard. That there was a small but resolute phalanx of its adherents
in Edinburgh, after the defection of its Bishop, all the Clergy, and
the great body of Churchmen there, is proved by the records of
the Scotch Episcopal Friendly Society, where it appears they tried
by force of law to prevent certain funds of which they claimed the
management from being handed over to that institution, which con-
sisted of the conforming Clergy. They were non-suited, we need
hardly say, with certain contemptuous ohiter dicta from the bench.
They continued to meet as a congregation, — the remnant of a
remnant, — for several years after the surrender, declining to acknow-
ledge Dr. Abernethy Drummond, the renegade Bishop of that see;
and persisted in praying devoutly for " Henry, our most gracious
King and governor." But a few years more saw the last of the
Jacobites. They had, indeed, in the words of old Counsellor Pley-
dell, become *' the shadow of a shade."

The Church of Scodand's mission is, of course, an undying one,
unless she is to settle down, as was at one time, and not so very long
ago, but too Hkely, into a few fashionable Chapels for the accommoda-
tion of the rich ; where the poor were not expected, and were not
made welcome. The goodly tree has again and again been cut
down, even to the ground; but, blessed be God, it is now taking
root downward, and bearing fruit upward ; — slowly, no doubt, but on
that account, let us hope and believe, all the more surely. The
great mistake of her last Establishment was her unliturgical condition.
The people saw little or no outward difference in the worship when
Presbyterianism took her place, and so the gradual transference of the
masses was the more easily accomplished.

From the low estate of seventy Clergy, with, in most cases, their
scanty flocks, in 1828 when I began my ministerial life, I thank God
that I have lived to see a clerical roll of about two hundred and sixty.

34 Sketches of the History of

But it is the " day of small things " still. We are far away yet from
the reconquest of Scotland to Evangelical Truth and Apostolic order,
which is surely our mission, else we have no business here. Let us
not be high-minded, but fear. Perhaps it may not be the will of
Providence that our mission is to prosper and culminate under a
State Establishment again ; unless, if it should please God, by a
corporate re-union with the existing Establishment, which, we have
the strongest evidence for asserting, many on both sides are sighing
for, and praying for, under conditions which are daily becoming
more possible, more feasible, and more hopeful. The democratical
tendencies of the times, and the antagonism to all institutions that
are old and venerable, are, no doubt, to a large extent, against this
consummation. The religious Establishment of Scotland is at present
selected, from its supposed weakness compared with the Church of
England, as the object of the combined attack of the dissenting
bodies which at various times have forsaken its communion. Epis-
copalians, as we are called, let us say in passing, never having be-
longed to the Presbyterian EstabUshment, cannot properly be termed
dissenters from it ; and they never make common cause with dis-
senters against the present Establishment.

Although we do not forget that we were ourselves disestablished and
disendowed with extreme rigour, we accept the situation (under the old
historical protest), feel no resentment, and bear no malice. We are also
willing witnesses to the fact of the general mildness and tolerance of the
Establishment as it now exists, contrasted with the bitter intolerance
and malignity which it long manifested towards the communion which
it had supplanted, and therefore hated. We appreciate its willing-
ness to live and let live. Socially, its office-bearers are on the best
of terms with us ; although in their corporate capacity, as might be ex-
pected from the nature and extent of our exclusive claims, symptoms
may often be detected that, as a communion, they bear us no especial
good will. But in the time of the troubles that threaten them, and
possibly await them, it may be that they shall find that, while it is
the fruit of their own loins, their own " kith and kin," that are their
deadliest foes, the once hunted and harried Episcopalians are their
fastest friends. The politico-religious dissenters seem aware of the
hopelessness, as yet, of attacking the English Establishment, which
continues firm in the affections of the great majority of the people,
and whose roots are entwined with the social system of England, and
the institutions of the realm. When the democratical upheaval is
strong enough, if ever, to destroy it, it will probably perish along
with the monarchy, as it did before in the Great Rebellion. Mean-
while the crusade against the northern Establishment is gathering its
forces. It denounces what it calls " the unholy alliance of religion
with the State;" forgetting, it would appear, that God did once estab-
lish His Church upon earth, and allied it with the State, and made it
conterminous with the kingdom of His chosen people. (Christians

The Church of Scotland. 35

have generally accepted this as a lesson and a guide for Gospel times,
as a sanction for the principle of Church Establishments. They for-
get, also, that Christendom, so soon as it emerged from the Cata-
combs and pagan persecution, accepted that intimation of the Divine
will, and has, with rare and late exceptions, continuously acted upon
it. The exceptions, I may remark, have been the result of the suc-
cessful assertion of democratical principles, as in the American States,
and the work of sympathisers with those principles nearer home.
The hideous spectacle of democratical, atheistic France, where
Christianity is not only disestablished, but barely tolerated, it is
sufficient only to point to as a solemn warning.

Most Churchmen, I hope and believe, accept the principles of
religious Establishments, where the kings are the nursing fathers of
the Church, and their queens the nursing mothers. When the parties
to the compact are each careful to perform their respective duties,
and not to infringe, the one upon the province of the other, then the
Truth is defended ; Religion flourishes, is repected as the law of the
land, and is dignified in the sight of all beholders ; and the State is
sanctified and blessed, and God is glorified ; and the kingdoms of
this world become the kingdoms of God and of His Christ.

May our daily and diligent work, as Scottish Churchmen, be to
rebuild the waste places of Zion ; to rear and train afresh the im-
perishable vine, a slip of which S. Columba and his fellow-missionaries
planted in our Scottish soil ; but which the wild boar out of the wood
had ail-but rooted up, and the wild beast of the field devoured. And
let our prayers go up for our dear Mother, the Church of Scotland,
eslo perpetiia, till the Second Advent dawns:, and her King comes
back to claim His own trom the stewards or His mysteries.

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