You have paid the heavens your function,
and the prisoner the very debt of your calling.
Measure for Measure.
Jeanie Deans,--for here our story unites itself with that part of the
narrative which broke off at the end of the fourteenth chapter,--while
she waited, in terror and amazement, the hasty advance of three or four
men towards her, was yet more startled at their suddenly breaking
asunder, and giving chase in different directions to the late object of
her terror, who became at that moment, though she could not well assign a
reasonable cause, rather the cause of her interest. One of the party (it
was Sharpitlaw) came straight up to her, and saying, "Your name is Jeanie
Deans, and you are my prisoner," immediately added, "But if you will tell
me which way he ran I will let you go."
"I dinna ken, sir," was all the poor girl could utter; and, indeed, it is
the phrase which rises most readily to the lips of any person in her
rank, as the readiest reply to any embarrassing question.
"But," said Sharpitlaw, "ye _ken_ wha it was ye were speaking wi', my
leddy, on the hill side, and midnight sae near; ye surely ken _that,_ my
bonny woman?"
"I dinna ken, sir," again iterated Jeanie, who really did not comprehend
in her terror the nature of the questions which were so hastily put to
her in this moment of surprise.
"We will try to mend your memory by and by, hinny," said Sharpitlaw, and
shouted, as we have already told the reader, to Ratcliffe, to come up and
take charge of her, while he himself directed the chase after Robertson,
which he still hoped might be successful. As Ratcliffe approached,
Sharpitlaw pushed the young woman towards him with some rudeness, and
betaking himself to the more important object of his quest, began to
scale crags and scramble up steep banks, with an agility of which his
profession and his general gravity of demeanour would previously have
argued him incapable. In a few minutes there was no one within sight, and
only a distant halloo from one of the pursuers to the other, faintly
heard on the side of the hill, argued that there was any one within
hearing. Jeanie Deans was left in the clear moonlight, standing under the
guard of a person of whom she knew nothing, and, what was worse,
concerning whom, as the reader is well aware, she could have learned
nothing that would not have increased her terror.
When all in the distance was silent, Ratcliffe for the first time
addressed her, and it was in that cold sarcastic indifferent tone
familiar to habitual depravity, whose crimes are instigated by custom
rather than by passion. "This is a braw night for ye, dearie," he said,
attempting to pass his arm across her shoulder, "to be on the green hill
wi' your jo." Jeanie extricated herself from his grasp, but did not make
any reply.
"I think lads and lasses," continued the ruffian, "dinna meet at
Muschat's Cairn at midnight to crack nuts," and he again attempted to
take hold of her.
"If ye are an officer of justice, sir," said Jeanie, again eluding his
attempt to seize her, "ye deserve to have your coat stripped from your
back."
"Very true, hinny," said he, succeeding forcibly in his attempt to get
hold of her, "but suppose I should strip your cloak off first?"
"Ye are more a man, I am sure, than to hurt me, sir," said Jeanie; "for
God's sake have pity on a half-distracted creature!"
"Come, come," said Ratcliffe, "you're a good-looking wench, and should
not be cross-grained. I was going to be an honest man--but the devil has
this very day flung first a lawyer, and then a woman, in my gate. I'll
tell you what, Jeanie, they are out on the hill-side--if you'll be guided
by me, I'll carry you to a wee bit corner in the Pleasance, that I ken o'
in an auld wife's, that a' the prokitors o' Scotland wot naething o', and
we'll send Robertson word to meet us in Yorkshire, for there is a set o'
braw lads about the midland counties, that I hae dune business wi' before
now, and sae we'll leave Mr. Sharpitlaw to whistle on his thumb."
It was fortunate for Jeanie, in an emergency like the present, that she
possessed presence of mind and courage, so soon as the first hurry of
surprise had enabled her to rally her recollection. She saw the risk she
was in from a ruffian, who not only was such by profession, but had that
evening been stupifying, by means of strong liquors, the internal
aversion which he felt at the business on which Sharpitlaw had resolved
to employ him.
"Dinna speak sae loud," said she, in a low voice; "he's up yonder."
"Who?--Robertson?" said Ratcliffe, eagerly.
"Ay," replied Jeanie; "up yonder;" and she pointed to the ruins of the
hermitage and chapel.
"By G--d, then," said Ratcliffe, "I'll make my ain of him, either one way
or other--wait for me here."
But no sooner had he set off as fast as he could run, towards the chapel,
than Jeanie started in an opposite direction, over high and low, on the
nearest path homeward. Her juvenile exercise as a herdswoman had put
"life and mettle" in her heels, and never had she followed Dustiefoot,
when the cows were in the corn, with half so much speed as she now
cleared the distance betwixt Muschat's Cairn and her father's cottage at
St. Leonard's. To lift the latch--to enter--to shut, bolt, and double
bolt the door--to draw against it a heavy article of furniture (which she
could not have moved in a moment of less energy), so as to make yet
farther provision against violence, was almost the work of a moment, yet
done with such silence as equalled the celerity.
Her next anxiety was upon her father's account, and she drew silently to
the door of his apartment, in order to satisfy herself whether he had
been disturbed by her return. He was awake,--probably had slept but
little; but the constant presence of his own sorrows, the distance of his
apartment from the outer door of the house, and the precautions which
Jeanie had taken to conceal her departure and return, had prevented him
from being sensible of either. He was engaged in his devotions, and
Jeanie could distinctly hear him use these words:--"And for the other
child thou hast given me to be a comfort and stay to my old age, may her
days be long in the land, according to the promise thou hast given to
those who shall honour father and mother; may all her purchased and
promised blessings be multiplied upon her; keep her in the watches of the
night, and in the uprising of the morning, that all in this land may know
that thou hast not utterly hid thy face from those that seek thee in
truth and in sincerity." He was silent, but probably continued his
petition in the strong fervency of mental devotion.
His daughter retired to her apartment, comforted, that while she was
exposed to danger, her head had been covered by the prayers of the just
as by an helmet, and under the strong confidence, that while she walked
worthy of the protection of Heaven, she would experience its countenance.
It was in that moment that a vague idea first darted across her mind,
that something might yet be achieved for her sister's safety, conscious
as she now was of her innocence of the unnatural murder with which she
stood charged. It came, as she described it, on her mind, like a
sun-blink on a stormy sea; and although it instantly vanished, yet she
felt a degree of composure which she had not experienced for many days,
and could not help being strongly persuaded that, by some means or other,
she would be called upon, and directed, to work out her sister's
deliverance. She went to bed, not forgetting her usual devotions, the
more fervently made on account of her late deliverance, and she slept
soundly in spite of her agitation.
We must return to Ratcliffe, who had started, like a greyhound from the
slips when the sportsman cries halloo, as soon as Jeanie had pointed to
the ruins. Whether he meant to aid Robertson's escape, or to assist his
pursuers, may be very doubtful; perhaps he did not himself know but had
resolved to be guided by circumstances. He had no opportunity, however,
of doing either; for he had no sooner surmounted the steep ascent, and
entered under the broken arches of the rains, than a pistol was presented
at his head, and a harsh voice commanded him, in the king's name, to
surrender himself prisoner. "Mr. Sharpitlaw!" said Ratcliffe, surprised,
"is this your honour?"
"Is it only you, and be d--d to you?" answered the fiscal, still more
disappointed--"what made you leave the woman?"
"She told me she saw Robertson go into the ruins, so I made what haste I
could to cleek the callant."
"It's all over now," said Sharpitlaw; "we shall see no more of him
to-night; but he shall hide himself in a bean-hool, if he remains on
Scottish ground without my finding him. Call back the people, Ratcliffe."
Ratcliffe hollowed to the dispersed officers, who willingly obeyed the
signal; for probably there was no individual among them who would have
been much desirous of a rencontre, hand to hand, and at a distance from
his comrades, with such an active and desperate fellow as Robertson.
"And where are the two women?" said Sharpitlaw.
"Both made their heels serve them, I suspect," replied Ratcliffe, and he
hummed the end of the old song--
"Then hey play up the rin-awa bride,
For she has taen the gee."
"One woman," said Sharpitlaw,--for, like all rogues, he was a great
calumniator of the fair sex,*--"one woman is enough to dark the fairest
ploy that was ever planned; and how could I be such an ass as to expect
to carry through a job that had two in it?
* Note L. Calumniator of the Fair Sex.
But we know how to come by them both, if they are wanted, that's one good
thing."
Accordingly, like a defeated general, sad and sulky, he led back his
discomfited forces to the metropolis, and dismissed them for the night.
The next morning early, he was under the necessity of making his report
to the sitting magistrate of the day. The gentleman who occupied the
chair of office on this occasion (for the bailies, _Anglice',_ aldermen,
take it by rotation) chanced to be the same by whom Butler was committed,
a person very generally respected among his fellow-citizens. Something he
was of a humorist, and rather deficient in general education; but acute,
patient, and upright, possessed of a fortune acquired by honest industry
which made him perfectly independent; and, in short, very happily
qualified to support the respectability of the office, which he held.
Mr. Middleburgh had just taken his seat, and was debating in an animated
manner, with one of his colleagues, the doubtful chances of a game at
golf which they had played the day before, when a letter was delivered to
him, addressed "For Bailie Middleburgh; These: to be forwarded with
speed." It contained these words:--
"Sir,--I know you to be a sensible and a considerate magistrate, and one
who, as such, will be content to worship God, though the devil bid you. I
therefore expect that, notwithstanding the signature of this letter
acknowledges my share in an action, which, in a proper time and place, I
would not fear either to avow or to justify, you will not on that account
reject what evidence I place before you. The clergyman, Butler, is
innocent of all but involuntary presence at an action which he wanted
spirit to approve of, and from which he endeavoured, with his best set
phrases, to dissuade us. But it was not for him that it is my hint to
speak. There is a woman in your jail, fallen under the edge of a law so
cruel, that it has hung by the wall like unsecured armour, for twenty
years, and is now brought down and whetted to spill the blood of the most
beautiful and most innocent creature whom the walls of a prison ever
girdled in. Her sister knows of her innocence, as she communicated to her
that she was betrayed by a villain.--O that high Heaven
Would put in every honest hand a whip,
To scourge me such a villain through the world!
"I write distractedly--But this girl--this Jeanie Deans, is a peevish
puritan, superstitious and scrupulous after the manner of her sect; and I
pray your honour, for so my phrase must go, to press upon her, that her
sister's life depends upon her testimony. But though she should remain
silent, do not dare to think that the young woman is guilty--far less to
permit her execution. Remember the death of Wilson was fearfully avenged;
and those yet live who can compel you to drink the dregs of your poisoned
chalice.--I say, remember Porteous, and say that you had good counsel
from
"One of his Slayers."
The magistrate read over this extraordinary letter twice or thrice. At
first he was tempted to throw it aside as the production of a madman, so
little did "the scraps from play-books," as he termed the poetical
quotation, resemble the correspondence of a rational being. On a
re-perusal, however, he thought that, amid its incoherence, he could
discover something like a tone of awakened passion, though expressed in a
manner quaint and unusual.
"It is a cruelly severe statute," said the magistrate to his assistant,
"and I wish the girl could be taken from under the letter of it. A child
may have been born, and it may have been conveyed away while the mother
was insensible, or it may have perished for want of that relief which the
poor creature herself--helpless, terrified, distracted, despairing, and
exhausted--may have been unable to afford to it. And yet it is certain,
if the woman is found guilty under the statute, execution will follow.
The crime has been too common, and examples are necessary."
"But if this other wench," said the city-clerk, "can speak to her sister
communicating her situation, it will take the case from under the
statute."
"Very true," replied the Bailie; "and I will walk out one of these days
to St. Leonard's, and examine the girl myself. I know something of their
father Deans--an old true-blue Cameronian, who would see house and family
go to wreck ere he would disgrace his testimony by a sinful complying
with the defections of the times; and such he will probably uphold the
taking an oath before a civil magistrate. If they are to go on and
flourish with their bull-headed obstinacy, the legislature must pass an
act to take their affirmations, as in the case of Quakers. But surely
neither a father nor a sister will scruple in a case of this kind. As I
said before, I will go speak with them myself, when the hurry of this
Porteous investigation is somewhat over; their pride and spirit of
contradiction will be far less alarmed, than if they were called into a
court of justice at once."
"And I suppose Butler is to remain incarcerated?" said the city-clerk.
"For the present, certainly," said the magistrate. "But I hope soon to
set him at liberty upon bail."
"Do you rest upon the testimony of that light-headed letter?" asked the
clerk.
"Not very much," answered the Bailie; "and yet there is something
striking about it too--it seems the letter of a man beside himself,
either from great agitation, or some great sense of guilt."
"Yes," said the town-clerk, "it is very like the letter of a mad
strolling play-actor, who deserves to be hanged with all the rest of his
gang, as your honour justly observes."
"I was not quite so bloodthirsty," continued the magistrate. "But to the
point, Butler's private character is excellent; and I am given to
understand, by some inquiries I have been making this morning, that he
did actually arrive in town only the day before yesterday, so that it was
impossible he could have been concerned in any previous machinations of
these unhappy rioters, and it is not likely that he should have joined
them on a suddenty."
"There's no saying anent that--zeal catches fire at a slight spark as
fast as a brunstane match," observed the secretary. "I hae kend a
minister wad be fair gude-day and fair gude-e'en wi' ilka man in the
parochine, and hing just as quiet as a rocket on a stick, till ye
mentioned the word abjuration-oath, or patronage, or siclike, and then,
whiz, he was off, and up in the air an hundred miles beyond common
manners, common sense, and common comprehension."
"I do not understand," answered the burgher-magistrate, "that the young
man Butler's zeal is of so inflammable a character. But I will make
farther investigation. What other business is there before us?"
And they proceeded to minute investigations concerning the affair of
Porteous's death, and other affairs through which this history has no
occasion to trace them.
In the course of their business they were interrupted by an old woman of
the lower rank, extremely haggard in look, and wretched in her
appearance, who thrust herself into the council room.
"What do you want, gudewife?--Who are you?" said Bailie Middleburgh.
"What do I want!" replied she, in a sulky tone--"I want my bairn, or I
want naething frae nane o' ye, for as grand's ye are." And she went on
muttering to herself with the wayward spitefulness of age--"They maun hae
lordships and honours, nae doubt--set them up, the gutter-bloods! and
deil a gentleman amang them."--Then again addressing the sitting
magistrate, "Will _your honour_ gie me back my puir crazy bairn?--_His_
honour!--I hae kend the day when less wad ser'd him, the oe of a Campvere
skipper."
"Good woman," said the magistrate to this shrewish supplicant--"tell us
what it is you want, and do not interrupt the court."
"That's as muckle as till say, Bark, Bawtie, and be dune wi't!--I tell
ye," raising her termagant voice, "I want my bairn! is na that braid
Scots?"
"Who _are_ you?--who is your bairn?" demanded the magistrate.
"Wha am I?--wha suld I be, but Meg Murdockson, and wha suld my bairn be
but Magdalen Murdockson?--Your guard soldiers, and your constables, and
your officers, ken us weel eneugh when they rive the bits o' duds aff our
backs, and take what penny o' siller we hae, and harle us to the
Correctionhouse in Leith Wynd, and pettle us up wi' bread and water and
siclike sunkets."
"Who is she?" said the magistrate, looking round to some of his people.
"Other than a gude ane, sir," said one of the city officers, shrugging
his shoulders and smiling.
"Will ye say sae?" said the termagant, her eye gleaming with impotent
fury; "an I had ye amang the Figgat-Whins,* wadna I set my ten talents in
your wuzzent face for that very word?" and she suited the word to the
action, by spreading out a set of claws resembling those of St. George's
dragon on a country sign-post.
* [This was a name given to a tract of sand hillocks extending along the
sea-shore from Leith to Portobello, and which at this time were covered
with _whin_-bushes or furze.]
"What does she want here?" said the impatient magistrate--"Can she not
tell her business, or go away?"
"It's my bairn!--it's Magdalen Murdockson I'm wantin'," answered the
beldam, screaming at the highest pitch of her cracked and mistuned
voice--"havena I been telling ye sae this half-hour? And if ye are deaf,
what needs ye sit cockit up there, and keep folk scraughin' t'ye this
gate?"
"She wants her daughter, sir," said the same officer whose interference
had given the hag such offence before--"her daughter, who was taken up
last night--Madge Wildfire, as they ca' her."
"Madge Hellfire, as they ca' her!" echoed the beldam "and what business
has a blackguard like you to ca' an honest woman's bairn out o' her ain
name?"
"An _honest_ woman's bairn, Maggie?" answered the peace-officer, smiling
and shaking his head with an ironical emphasis on the adjective, and a
calmness calculated to provoke to madness the furious old shrew.
"If I am no honest now, I was honest ance," she replied; "and that's mair
than ye can say, ye born and bred thief, that never kend ither folks'
gear frae your ain since the day ye was cleckit. Honest, say ye?--ye
pykit your mother's pouch o' twalpennies Scots when ye were five years
auld, just as she was taking leave o' your father at the fit o' the
gallows."
"She has you there, George," said the assistants, and there was a general
laugh; for the wit was fitted for the meridian of the place where it was
uttered. This general applause somewhat gratified the passions of the old
hag; the "grim feature" smiled and even laughed--but it was a laugh of
bitter scorn. She condescended, however, as if appeased by the success of
her sally, to explain her business more distinctly, when the magistrate,
commanding silence, again desired her either to speak out her errand, or
to leave the place.
"Her bairn," she said, "_was_ her bairn, and she came to fetch her out of
ill haft and waur guiding. If she wasna sae wise as ither folk, few ither
folk had suffered as muckle as she had done; forby that she could fend
the waur for hersell within the four wa's of a jail. She could prove by
fifty witnesses, and fifty to that, that her daughter had never seen Jock
Porteous, alive or dead, since he had gien her a laundering wi' his cane,
the neger that he was! for driving a dead cat at the provost's wig on the
Elector of Hanover's birthday."
Notwithstanding the wretched appearance and violent demeanour of this
woman, the magistrate felt the justice of her argument, that her child
might be as dear to her as to a more fortunate and more amiable mother.
He proceeded to investigate the circumstances which had led to Madge
Murdockson's (or Wildfire's) arrest, and as it was clearly shown that she
had not been engaged in the riot, he contented himself with directing
that an eye should be kept upon her by the police, but that for the
present she should be allowed to return home with her mother. During the
interval of fetching Madge from the jail, the magistrate endeavoured to
discover whether her mother had been privy to the change of dress betwixt
that young woman and Robertson. But on this point he could obtain no
light. She persisted in declaring, that she had never seen Robertson
since his remarkable escape during service-time; and that, if her
daughter had changed clothes with him, it must have been during her
absence at a hamlet about two miles out of town, called Duddingstone,
where she could prove that she passed that eventful night. And, in fact,
one of the town-officers, who had been searching for stolen linen at the
cottage of a washer-woman in that village, gave his evidence, that he had
seen Maggie Murdockson there, whose presence had considerably increased
his suspicion of the house in which she was a visitor, in respect that he
considered her as a person of no good reputation.
"I tauld ye sae," said the hag; "see now what it is to hae a character,
gude or bad!--Now, maybe, after a', I could tell ye something about
Porteous that you council-chamber bodies never could find out, for as
muckle stir as ye mak."
All eyes were turned towards her--all ears were alert. "Speak out!" said
the magistrate.
"It will be for your ain gude," insinuated the town-clerk.
"Dinna keep the Bailie waiting," urged the assistants.
She remained doggedly silent for two or three minutes, casting around a
malignant and sulky glance, that seemed to enjoy the anxious suspense
with which they waited her answer. And then she broke forth at once,--"A'
that I ken about him is, that he was neither soldier nor gentleman, but
just a thief and a blackguard, like maist o' yoursells, dears--What will
ye gie me for that news, now?--He wad hae served the gude town lang or
provost or bailie wad hae fund that out, my jo!"
While these matters were in discussion, Madge Wildfire entered, and her
first exclamation was, "Eh! see if there isna our auld ne'er-do-weel
deevil's-buckie o' a mither--Hegh, sirs! but we are a hopeful family, to
be twa o' us in the Guard at ance--But there were better days wi' us
ance--were there na, mither?"
Old Maggie's eyes had glistened with something like an expression of
pleasure when she saw her daughter set at liberty. But either her natural
affection, like that of the tigress, could not be displayed without a
strain of ferocity, or there was something in the ideas which Madge's
speech awakened, that again stirred her cross and savage temper. "What
signifies what we, were, ye street-raking limmer!" she exclaimed, pushing
her daughter before her to the door, with no gentle degree of violence.
"I'se tell thee what thou is now--thou's a crazed hellicat Bess o'
Bedlam, that sall taste naething but bread and water for a fortnight, to
serve ye for the plague ye hae gien me--and ower gude for ye, ye idle
taupie!"
Madge, however, escaped from her mother at the door, ran back to the foot
of the table, dropped a very low and fantastic courtesy to the judge, and
said, with a giggling laugh,--"Our minnie's sair mis-set, after her
ordinar, sir--She'll hae had some quarrel wi' her auld gudeman--that's
Satan, ye ken, sirs." This explanatory note she gave in a low
confidential tone, and the spectators of that credulous generation did
not hear it without an involuntary shudder. "The gudeman and her disna
aye gree weel, and then I maun pay the piper; but my back's broad eneugh
to bear't a'--an' if she hae nae havings, that's nae reason why wiser
folk shouldna hae some." Here another deep courtesy, when the ungracious
voice of her mother was heard.
"Madge, ye limmer! If I come to fetch ye!"
"Hear till her," said Madge. "But I'll wun out a gliff the night for a'
that, to dance in the moonlight, when her and the gudeman will be
whirrying through the blue lift on a broom-shank, to see Jean Jap, that
they hae putten intill the Kirkcaldy Tolbooth--ay, they will hae a merry
sail ower Inchkeith, and ower a' the bits o' bonny waves that are
poppling and plashing against the rocks in the gowden glimmer o' the
moon, ye ken.--I'm coming, mother--I'm coming," she concluded, on hearing
a scuffle at the door betwixt the beldam and the officers, who were
endeavouring to prevent her re-entrance. Madge then waved her hand wildly
towards the ceiling, and sung, at the topmost pitch of her voice,
"Up in the air,
On my bonny grey mare,
And I see, and I see, and I see her yet;"
and with a hop, skip, and jump, sprung out of the room, as the witches of
Macbeth used, in less refined days, to seem to fly upwards from the
stage.
Some weeks intervened before Mr. Middleburgh, agreeably to his benevolent
resolution, found an opportunity of taking a walk towards St. Leonard's,
in order to discover whether it might be possible to obtain the evidence
hinted at in the anonymous letter respecting Effie Deans.
In fact, the anxious perquisitions made to discover the murderers of
Porteous occupied the attention of all concerned with the administration
of justice.
In the course of these inquiries, two circumstances happened material to
our story. Butler, after a close investigation of his conduct, was
declared innocent of accession to the death of Porteous; but, as having
been present during the whole transaction, was obliged to find bail not
to quit his usual residence at Liberton, that he might appear as a
witness when called upon. The other incident regarded the disappearance
of Madge Wildfire and her mother from Edinburgh. When they were sought,
with the purpose of subjecting them to some farther interrogatories, it
was discovered by Mr. Sharpitlaw that they had eluded the observation of
the police, and left the city so soon as dismissed from the
council-chamber. No efforts could trace the place of their retreat.
In the meanwhile the excessive indignation of the Council of Regency, at
the slight put upon their authority by the murder of Porteous, had
dictated measures, in which their own extreme desire of detecting the
actors in that conspiracy were consulted in preference to the temper of
the people and the character of their churchmen. An act of Parliament was
hastily passed, offering two hundred pounds reward to those who should
inform against any person concerned in the deed, and the penalty of
death, by a very unusual and severe enactment, was denounced against
those who should harbour the guilty. But what was chiefly accounted
exceptionable, was a clause, appointing the act to be read in churches by
the officiating clergyman, on the first Sunday of every month, for a
certain period, immediately before the sermon. The ministers who should
refuse to comply with this injunction were declared, for the first
offence, incapable of sitting or voting in any church judicature, and for
the second, incapable of holding any ecclesiastical preferment in
Scotland.
This last order united in a common cause those who might privately
rejoice in Porteous's death, though they dared not vindicate the manner
of it, with the more scrupulous Presbyterians, who held that even the
pronouncing the name of the "Lords Spiritual" in a Scottish pulpit was,
_quodammodo,_ an acknowledgment of prelacy, and that the injunction of
the legislature was an interference of the civil government with the _jus
divinum_ of Presbytery, since to the General Assembly alone, as
representing the invisible head of the kirk, belonged the sole and
exclusive right of regulating whatever pertained to public worship. Very
many also, of different political or religious sentiments, and therefore
not much moved by these considerations, thought they saw, in so violent
an act of parliament, a more vindictive spirit than became the
legislature of a great country, and something like an attempt to trample
upon the rights and independence of Scotland. The various steps adopted
for punishing the city of Edinburgh, by taking away her charter and
liberties, for what a violent and overmastering mob had done within her
walls, were resented by many, who thought a pretext was too hastily taken
for degrading the ancient metropolis of Scotland. In short, there was
much heart-burning, discontent, and disaffection, occasioned by these
ill-considered measures.*
* The magistrates were closely interrogated before the House of Peers,
concerning the particulars of the Porteous Mob, and the _patois_ in which
these functionaries made their answers, sounded strange in the ears of
the Southern nobles. The Duke of Newcastle having demanded to know with
what kind of shot the guard which Porteous commanded had loaded their
muskets, was answered, naively, "Ow, just sic as ane shoots _dukes and
fools_ with." This reply was considered as a contempt of the House of
Lords, and the Provost would have suffered accordingly, but that the Duke
of Argyle explained, that the expression, properly rendered into English,
meant _ducks and waterfowls._
Amidst these heats and dissensions, the trial of Effie Deans, after she
had been many weeks imprisoned, was at length about to be brought
forward, and Mr. Middleburgh found leisure to inquire into the evidence
concerning her. For this purpose, he chose a fine day for his walk
towards her father's house.
The excursion into the country was somewhat distant, in the opinion of a
burgess of those days, although many of the present inhabit suburban
villas considerably beyond the spot to which we allude. Three-quarters of
an hour's walk, however, even at a pace of magisterial gravity, conducted
our benevolent office-bearer to the Crags of St. Leonard's, and the
humble mansion of David Deans.
The old man was seated on the deas, or turf-seat, at the end of his
cottage, busied in mending his cart-harness with his own hands; for in
those days any sort of labour which required a little more skill than
usual fell to the share of the goodman himself, and that even when he was
well to pass in the world. With stern and austere gravity he persevered
in his task, after having just raised his head to notice the advance of
the stranger. It would have been impossible to have discovered, from his
countenance and manner, the internal feelings of agony with which he
contended. Mr. Middleburgh waited an instant, expecting Deans would in
some measure acknowledge his presence, and lead into conversation; but,
as he seemed determined to remain silent, he was himself obliged to speak
first.
"My name is Middleburgh--Mr. James Middleburgh, one of the present
magistrates of the city of Edinburgh."
"It may be sae," answered Deans laconically, and without interrupting his
labour.
"You must understand," he continued, "that the duty of a magistrate is
sometimes an unpleasant one."
"It may be sae," replied David; "I hae naething to say in the contrair;"
and he was again doggedly silent.
"You must be aware," pursued the magistrate, "that persons in my
situation are often obliged to make painful and disagreeable inquiries of
individuals, merely because it is their bounden duty."
"It may be sae," again replied Deans; "I hae naething to say anent it,
either the tae way or the t'other. But I do ken there was ance in a day a
just and God-fearing magistracy in yon town o' Edinburgh, that did not
bear the sword in vain, but were a terror to evil-doers, and a praise to
such as kept the path. In the glorious days of auld worthy faithfu'
Provost Dick,* when there was a true and faithfu' General Assembly of
* Note M. Sir William Dick of Braid.
the Kirk, walking hand in hand with the real noble Scottish-hearted
barons, and with the magistrates of this and other towns, gentles,
burgesses, and commons of all ranks, seeing with one eye, hearing with
one ear, and upholding the ark with their united strength--And then folk
might see men deliver up their silver to the state's use, as if it had
been as muckle sclate stanes. My father saw them toom the sacks of
dollars out o' Provost Dick's window intill the carts that carried them
to the army at Dunse Law; and if ye winna believe his testimony, there is
the window itsell still standing in the Luckenbooths--I think it's a
claith-merchant's booth the day*--at the airn stanchells, five doors
abune Gossford's Close.
* I think so too--But if the reader be curious, he may consult Mr.
Chambers's Traditions of Edinburgh.
--But now we haena sic spirit amang us; we think mair about the warst
wallydraigle in our ain byre, than about the blessing which the angel of
the covenant gave to the Patriarch even at Peniel and Mahanaim, or the
binding obligation of our national vows; and we wad rather gie a pund
Scots to buy an unguent to clear out auld rannell-trees and our beds o'
the English bugs as they ca' them, than we wad gie a plack to rid the
land of the swarm of Arminian caterpillars, Socinian pismires, and
deistical Miss Katies, that have ascended out of the bottomless pit, to
plague this perverse, insidious, and lukewarm generation."
It happened to Davie Deans on this occasion, as it has done to many other
habitual orators; when once he became embarked on his favourite subject,
the stream of his own enthusiasm carried him forward in spite of his
mental distress, while his well-exercised memory supplied him amply with
all the types and tropes of rhetoric peculiar to his sect and cause.
Mr. Middleburgh contented himself with answering--"All this may be very
true, my friend; but, as you said just now, I have nothing to say to it
at present, either one way or other.--You have two daughters, I think,
Mr. Deans?"
The old man winced, as one whose smarting sore is suddenly galled; but
instantly composed himself, resumed the work which, in the heat of his
declamation, he had laid down, and answered with sullen resolution, "Ae
daughter, sir--only _ane._"
"I understand you," said Mr. Middleburgh; "you have only one daughter
here at home with you--but this unfortunate girl who is a prisoner--she
is, I think, your youngest daughter?"
The Presbyterian sternly raised his eyes. "After the world, and according
to the flesh, she _is_ my daughter; but when she became a child of
Belial, and a company-keeper, and a trader in guilt and iniquity, she
ceased to be a bairn of mine."
"Alas, Mr. Deans," said Middleburgh, sitting down by him, and
endeavouring to take his hand, which the old man proudly withdrew, "we
are ourselves all sinners; and the errors of our offspring, as they ought
not to surprise us, being the portion which they derive of a common
portion of corruption inherited through us, so they do not entitle us to
cast them off because they have lost themselves."
"Sir," said Deans impatiently, "I ken a' that as weel as--I mean to say,"
he resumed, checking the irritation he felt at being schooled--a
discipline of the mind which those most ready to bestow it on others do
themselves most reluctantly submit to receive--"I mean to say, that what
ye o serve may be just and reasonable--But I hae nae freedom to enter
into my ain private affairs wi' strangers--And now, in this great
national emergency, When there's the Porteous' Act has come doun frae
London, that is a deeper blow to this poor sinfu' kingdom and suffering
kirk than ony that has been heard of since the foul and fatal Test--at a
time like this"
"But, goodman," interrupted Mr. Middleburgh, "you must think of your own
household first, or else you are worse even than the infidels."
"I tell ye, Bailie Middleburgh," retorted David Deans, "if ye be a
bailie, as there is little honour in being ane in these evil days--I tell
ye, I heard the gracious Saunders Peden--I wotna whan it was; but it was
in killing time, when the plowers were drawing alang their furrows on the
back of the Kirk of Scotland--I heard him tell his hearers, gude and
waled Christians they were too, that some o' them wad greet mair for a
bit drowned calf or stirk than for a' the defections and oppressions of
the day; and that they were some o' them thinking o' ae thing, some o'
anither, and there was Lady Hundleslope thinking o' greeting Jock at the
fireside! And the lady confessed in my hearing that a drow of anxiety had
come ower her for her son that she had left at hame weak of a decay*--And
what wad he hae said of me if I had ceased to think of the gude cause for
a castaway--a--It kills me to think of what she is!"
* See _Life of Peden,_ p. 14.
"But the life of your child, goodman--think of that--if her life could be
saved," said Middleburgh.
"Her life!" exclaimed David--"I wadna gie ane o' my grey hairs for her
life, if her gude name be gane--And yet," said he, relenting and
retracting as he spoke, "I wad make the niffer, Mr. Middleburgh--I wad
gie a' these grey hairs that she has brought to shame and sorrow--I wad
gie the auld head they grow on for her life, and that she might hae time
to amend and return, for what hae the wicked beyond the breath of their
nosthrils?--but I'll never see her mair--No!--that--that I am determined
in--I'll never see her mair!" His lips continued to move for a minute
after his voice ceased to be heard, as if he were repeating the same vow
internally.
"Well, sir," said Mr. Middleburgh, "I speak to you as a man of sense; if
you would save your daughter's life, you must use human means."
"I understand what you mean; but Mr. Novit, who is the procurator and
doer of an honourable person, the Laird of Dumbiedikes, is to do what
carnal wisdom can do for her in the circumstances. Mysell am not clear to
trinquet and traffic wi' courts o' justice as they are now constituted; I
have a tenderness and scruple in my mind anent them."
"That is to say," said Middleburgh, "that you are a Cameronian, and do
not acknowledge the authority of our courts of judicature, or present
government?"
"Sir, under your favour," replied David, who was too proud of his own
polemical knowledge to call himself the follower of any one, "ye take me
up before I fall down. I canna see why I suld be termed a Cameronian,
especially now that ye hae given the name of that famous and savoury
sufferer, not only until a regimental band of souldiers, [H. M. 26th
Foot] whereof I am told many can now curse, swear, and use profane
language, as fast as ever Richard Cameron could preach or pray, but also
because ye have, in as far as it is in your power, rendered that martyr's
name vain and contemptible, by pipes, drums, and fifes, playing the vain
carnal spring called the Cameronian Rant, which too many professors of
religion dance to--a practice maist unbecoming a professor to dance to
any tune whatsoever, more especially promiscuously, that is, with the
female sex.* A brutish fashion it is, whilk is the beginning of defection
with many, as I may hae as muckle cause as maist folk to testify."
* See Note F. Peter Walker.
"Well, but, Mr. Deans," replied Mr. Middleburgh, "I only meant to say
that you were a Cameronian, or MacMillanite, one of the society people,
in short, who think it inconsistent to take oaths under a government
where the Covenant is not ratified."
"Sir," replied the controversialist, who forgot even his present distress
in such discussions as these, "you cannot fickle me sae easily as you do
opine. I am _not_ a MacMillanite, or a Russelite, or a Hamiltonian, or a
Harleyite, or a Howdenite*--I will be led by the nose by none--I take my
name as a Christian from no vessel of clay. I have my own principles and
practice to answer for, and am an humble pleader for the gude auld cause
in a legal way."
* All various species of the great genus Cameronian.
"That is to say, Mr. Deans," said Middleburgh, "that you are a _Deanite,_
and have opinions peculiar to yourself."
"It may please you to say sae," said David Deans; "but I have maintained
my testimony before as great folk, and in sharper times; and though I
will neither exalt myself nor pull down others, I wish every man and
woman in this land had kept the true testimony, and the middle and
straight path, as it were, on the ridge of a hill, where wind and water
shears, avoiding right-hand snares and extremes, and left-hand
way-slidings, as weel as Johnny Dodds of Farthing's Acre, and ae man mair
that shall be nameless."
"I suppose," replied the magistrate, "that is as much as to say, that
Johnny Dodds of Farthing's Acre, and David Deans of St. Leonard's,
constitute the only members of the true, real, unsophisticated Kirk of
Scotland?"
"God forbid that I suld make sic a vain-glorious speech, when there are
sae mony professing Christians!" answered David; "but this I maun say,
that all men act according to their gifts and their grace, 'sae that it
is nae marvel that"
"This is all very fine," interrupted Mr. Middleburgh; "but I have no time
to spend in hearing it. The matter in hand is this--I have directed a
citation to be lodged in your daughter's hands--If she appears on the day
of trial and gives evidence, there is reason to hope she may save her
sister's life--if, from any constrained scruples about the legality of
her performing the office of an affectionate sister and a good subject,
by appearing in a court held under the authority of the law and
government, you become the means of deterring her from the discharge of
this duty, I must say, though the truth may sound harsh in your ears,
that you, who gave life to this unhappy girl, will become the means of
her losing it by a premature and violent death."
So saying, Mr. Middleburgh turned to leave him.
"Bide awee--bide awee, Mr. Middleburgh," said Deans, in great perplexity
and distress of mind; but the Bailie, who was probably sensible that
protracted discussion might diminish the effect of his best and most
forcible argument, took a hasty leave, and declined entering farther into
the controversy.
Deans sunk down upon his seat, stunned with a variety of conflicting
emotions. It had been a great source of controversy among those holding
his opinions in religious matters how far the government which succeeded
the Revolution could be, without sin, acknowledged by true Presbyterians,
seeing that it did not recognise the great national testimony of the
Solemn League and Covenant? And latterly, those agreeing in this general
doctrine, and assuming the sounding title of "The anti-Popish,
anti-Prelatic, anti-Erastian, anti-Sectarian, true Presbyterian remnant,"
were divided into many petty sects among themselves, even as to the
extent of submission to the existing laws and rulers, which constituted
such an acknowledgment as amounted to sin.
At a very stormy and tumultuous meeting, held in 1682, to discuss these
important and delicate points, the testimonies of the faithful few were
found utterly inconsistent with each other.*
* This remarkable convocation took place upon 15th June 1682, and an
account of its confused and divisive proceedings may be found in Michael
Shield's _Faithful Contendings Displayed_ (first printed at Glasgow,
1780, p. 21). It affords a singular and melancholy example how much a
metaphysical and polemical spirit had crept in amongst these unhappy
sufferers, since amid so many real injuries which they had to sustain,
they were disposed to add disagreement and disunion concerning the
character and extent of such as were only imaginary.
The place where this conference took place was remarkably well adapted
for such an assembly. It was a wild and very sequestered dell in
Tweeddale, surrounded by high hills, and far remote from human
habitation. A small river, or rather a mountain torrent, called the
Talla, breaks down the glen with great fury, dashing successively over a
number of small cascades, which has procured the spot the name of Talla
Linns. Here the leaders among the scattered adherents to the Covenant,
men who, in their banishment from human society, and in the recollection
of the seventies to which they had been exposed, had become at once
sullen in their tempers, and fantastic in their religious opinions, met
with arms in their hands, and by the side of the torrent discussed, with
a turbulence which the noise of the stream could not drown, points of
controversy as empty and unsubstantial as its foam.
It was the fixed judgment of most of the meeting, that all payment of
cess or tribute to the existing government was utterly unlawful, and a
sacrificing to idols. About other impositions and degrees of submission
there were various opinions; and perhaps it is the best illustration of
the spirit of those military fathers of the church to say, that while all
allowed it was impious to pay the cess employed for maintaining the
standing army and militia, there was a fierce controversy on the
lawfulness of paying the duties levied at ports and bridges, for
maintaining roads and other necessary purposes; that there were some who,
repugnant to these imposts for turnpikes and pontages, were nevertheless
free in conscience to make payment of the usual freight at public
ferries, and that a person of exceeding and punctilious zeal, James
Russel, one of the slayers of the Archbishop of St. Andrews, had given
his testimony with great warmth even against this last faint shade of
subjection to constituted authority. This ardent and enlightened person
and his followers had also great scruples about the lawfulness of
bestowing the ordinary names upon the days of the week and the months of
the year, which savoured in their nostrils so strongly of paganism, that
at length they arrived at the conclusion that they who owned such names
as Monday, Tuesday, January, February, and so forth, "served themselves
heirs to the same, if not greater punishment, than had been denounced
against the idolaters of old."
David Deans had been present on this memorable occasion, although too
young to be a speaker among the polemical combatants. His brain, however,
had been thoroughly heated by the noise, clamour, and metaphysical
ingenuity of the discussion, and it was a controversy to which his mind
had often returned; and though he carefully disguised his vacillation
from others, and, perhaps from himself, he had never been able to come to
any precise line of decision on the subject. In fact, his natural sense
had acted as a counterpoise to his controversial zeal. He was by no means
pleased with the quiet and indifferent manner in which King William's
government slurred over the errors of the times, when, far from restoring
the Presbyterian kirk to its former supremacy, they passed an act of
oblivion even to those who had been its persecutors, and bestowed on many
of them titles, favours, and employments. When, in the first General
Assembly which succeeded the Revolution, an overture was made for the
revival of the League and Covenant, it was with horror that Douce David
heard the proposal eluded by the men of carnal wit and policy, as he
called them, as being inapplicable to the present times, and not falling
under the modern model of the church. The reign of Queen Anne had
increased his conviction, that the Revolution government was not one of
the true Presbyterian complexion. But then, more sensible than the bigots
of his sect, he did not confound the moderation and tolerance of these
two reigns with the active tyranny and oppression exercised in those of
Charles II. and James II. The Presbyterian form of religion, though
deprived of the weight formerly attached to its sentences of
excommunication, and compelled to tolerate the coexistence of Episcopacy,
and of sects of various descriptions, was still the National Church; and
though the glory of the second temple was far inferior to that which had
flourished from 1639 till the battle of Dunbar, still it was a structure
that, wanting the strength and the terrors, retained at least the form
and symmetry, of the original model. Then came the insurrection in 1715,
and David Deans's horror for the revival of the Popish and prelatical
faction reconciled him greatly to the government of King George, although
he grieved that that monarch might be suspected of a leaning unto
Erastianism. In short, moved by so many different considerations, he had
shifted his ground at different times concerning the degree of freedom
which he felt in adopting any act of immediate acknowledgment or
submission to the present government, which, however mild and paternal,
was still uncovenanted, and now he felt himself called upon, by the most
powerful motive conceivable, to authorise his daughter's giving testimony
in a court of justice, which all who have been since called Cameronians
accounted a step of lamentable and direct defection. The voice of nature,
however, exclaimed loud in his bosom against the dictates of fanaticism;
and his imagination, fertile in the solution of polemical difficulties,
devised an expedient for extricating himself from the fearful dilemma, in
which he saw, on the one side, a falling off from principle, and, on the
other, a scene from which a father's thoughts could not but turn in
shuddering horror.
"I have been constant and unchanged in my testimony," said David Deans;
"but then who has said it of me, that I have judged my neighbour over
closely, because he hath had more freedom in his walk than I have found
in mine? I never was a separatist, nor for quarrelling with tender souls
about mint, cummin, or other the lesser tithes. My daughter Jean may have
a light in this subject that is hid frae my auld een--it is laid on her
conscience, and not on mine--If she hath freedom to gang before this
judicatory, and hold up her hand for this poor castaway, surely I will
not say she steppeth over her bounds; and if not"--He paused in his
mental argument, while a pang of unutterable anguish convulsed his
features, yet, shaking it off, he firmly resumed the strain of his
reasoning--"And if not--God forbid that she should go into defection at
bidding of mine! I wunna fret the tender conscience of one bairn--no, not
to save the life of the other."
A Roman would have devoted his daughter to death from different feelings
and motives, but not upon a more heroic principle of duty.