Council. By an act of indemnity, his Majesty pardoned all who had been
at Bothwell Bridge, ministers and lesser barons excepted, provided they
appeared before such persons as the Council should appoint, and signed
a bond that never again would they rise in arms against the government.
It may readily be believed that very few gave this promise; and from
the minutes it would appear that Dalyell and Sir George Mackenzie of
Rosehaugh, urged that all who had _not_ done so should be proceeded
against as rebels. The President and others pled that to proceed to
further extremities would be cruel, as more than four thousand persons,
many of whom might be sick or ignorant of the King's letter, were
involved in the measure proposed, and ultimately Dalyell, and those who
adhered to him, agreed that the King should once more be addressed on
the subject.
The next entry connected with the General runs thus:--
November 6, 1679. "At Privy Council there is a letter read from his
Majesty, nominating Lieutenant-General Dalziel commander-in-chief of
all the forces of Scotland, with power to him _to act as he shall think
fit_, and only be liable and accountable and judgeable by his Majesty
himself; for Dalziel would not accept of it otherways; only he promised
and declared, that in difficult exigents he should take the advice of
his Majesty's Privy Council." (_Fountainhall_, vol. i.) On the 3rd
June, 1680, the Council received a letter from Charles on this subject.
It declared that when he gifted forfeitures, he always reserved for
his own use the houses standing on the forfeited lands. He also gave
Dalyell a Commission of Justiciary, with the advice of nine others, to
execute justice on all who were in arms at Bothwell, or failed to take
the bond within the period stated, since the 1st of January.
In 1680, the Duke of York and Albany arrived in Edinburgh, to supersede
Lauderdale, and took up his residence at Holyrood. Dalyell received
him at the head of the troops and a body of armed citizens, consisting
of sixty men chosen from the sixteen companies of the Trained Bands
which lined the streets. After his arrival, he and his Duchess, Marie
d'Este of Modena, so celebrated for her beauty, left nothing undone
to ingratiate themselves with the Scottish people, to the end that,
if excluded by the Act of Succession from the English throne, they
might for themselves secure the ancient crown of Scotland. Everything
was studied, done, and adopted to ensure popularity; and one fact
is certain, that after the Duke's arrival the persecution of the
Covenanters was much less severe than before. By ostentatious pageants,
he revived in the nation what it was even then beginning to forget, the
memory of its regal independence and the pride of better days; and thus
he sought to make his family less abhorred in the hearts of the people.
He projected many improvements at Edinburgh. Among others, the plan for
building a bridge across the North Loch, and having a new town built
upon the northern ridge; and the Holyrood parties, where _tea_ was seen
for the first time in Scotland, the balls and masques of the Ladies
Anne, afterwards of Denmark, and Mary, afterwards of Orange, were long
the theme of aged demoiselles and stately dowagers in Edinburgh, where
the beauty and charming suavity of the young princesses, with their
natural gaiety, brightened the gloomy towers and tapestried rooms of
the ancient palace: and the memory of these things was transmitted by
many a mother and grandmother to their little ones, when the last of
that old royal race was far away in hopeless exile and obscurity, and
the first grass of spring was sprouting on the graves of Culloden.
The Duke of York and his Duchess are said to have been warned of the
lofty spirit and haughty punctilio of the old Scottish aristocracy from
a speech of General Dalyell.
James had invited this stern and bearded cavalier to dine with them at
Holyrood soon after his arrival; but the Duchess Mary, as a daughter of
the ducal Prince of Modena, seemed to consider it somewhat derogatory
to her rank to sit with a subject at table, and declined to take her
place.
"Madam," said the old veteran, "I have dined at a table where _your_
father must have stood at _my_ back."
In this instance it is supposed that he alluded to the board of the
Emperor of Germany, whom the Duke of Modena, if summoned, must have
attended as an officer of the household. Abashed by the firm retort of
this grim old man, the haughty princess at once took her seat, and from
thenceforward she and her husband resolved, in their intercourse with
the Scottish noblesse, to exercise all the suavity and affability they
could command. By various acts of leniency the Duke also sought to win
favour.
"General Dalyell," says old Lord Fountainhall in his _Diary_, "having
caused to be condemned by court martial a sentinel who had been found
sleeping at one of the gates of the Abbey, the Duke caused him to be
remitted and forgiven all punishment."
In this year, soon after the Duke's arrival, the services of the
General were required to repress a dangerous demonstration among the
students of the Edinburgh University. Being deeply imbued with the
sentiments of the Covenanters, on Christmas Day, 1680, these young men
resolved to manifest publicly their horror of all prelacy, by burning
an effigy of the Pope, a ceremony eminently calculated to offend
the royal Duke, as a zealous Catholic; and the magistrates, having
resolved at all hazards to prevent this impolitic display, immediately
communicated with General Dalyell, that he might have the troops in
readiness to overawe the city. In furtherance of their daring scheme,
the students posted on all the gates and public places of Edinburgh the
following curious placard:--
"AN ADVERTISEMENT.
"These are to give notice to all noblemen, gentlemen, and citizens,
that we, the students in the Royal College of Edinburgh (to show our
detestation and abhorrence of the Romish religion, and our zeal and
fervency for the Protestant), do resolve to burn the effigies of
_Antichrist, the Pope of Rome_, at the Mercat-cross of Edinburgh, at
twelve o'clock in the forenoon--being the festival of our Saviour's
nativity. And since we hate tumults as we do superstition, we do
hereby, under pain of death, discharge all plunderers, robbers,
thieves, whores, and bawds to come within forty paces of our company,
and such as shall be found disobedient to these our commands, _sibi
caveant_.
"By our special command, Robert Brown, Secretary to all our Theatrical
and Extra-Literal Divertisements."
By an oath, the students bound themselves to stand by each other, under
a penalty, and employed a carver in wood to make them an effigy of
his Holiness, "with clothes, triple crown, keys, and other necessary
habiliments."
The Lord Provost, Sir James Dick, reported their intentions to the
Duke of York, and threatened that "he would make it a bloody Christmas
for them;" while Dalyell marched all the troops from Leith into the
Canongate. The Grassmarket, an old quaint street lying to the south of
the Castle rock, was filled with troops, whose patrols scoured all the
wynds and closes, as the narrow alleys of the ancient city are named.
The militia, or trained bands of Edinburgh, occupied the High-street;
guards were placed on the College, which stood without the walls, and
those at the palace were doubled for additional security to the royal
duke and his family.
Undismayed by all these warlike preparations, the students, many of
whom were armed with swords and pistols in their belts, mustered in
the High School yard, and with loud shouts bore, shoulder high, an
effigy of the Holy Father, clad in pontifical robes, with mitre and
keys, down the narrow wynd that led from the school to the wynd of the
Blackfriars, from whence they boldly issued by an archway into the
lower end of the High-street; and there, after reading an accusation
and sentence, amid a general cry of _Pareat Papa!_ they set fire to
the effigy, which was hollow and filled with gunpowder. To these
proceedings the city militia offered no opposition; but, according
to the history of this affair, published in Paternoster-row in 1681,
"on the first report of what was doing, General Dalyell galloped in
with his dragoons through the Netherbow-porte, and was followed by the
infantry under the Earl of Mar."
A scuffle ensued. The Earl of Linlithgow, a Catholic peer, with a few
of his Foot Guards, dispersed the students sword in hand, and in making
a pass at one of them, fell, amid loud laughter, prostrate before the
blazing figure, which was burned to the complete satisfaction of all
concerned therein. Many students were captured and threatened with
torture by the Council; but for his loyalty in this affair, the house
of the Lord Provost, an old manor at Priestfield, near Duddingstone,
was one night set on fire by ignited powder-balls, and burned to the
ground. A proclamation was issued, banishing all students fifteen miles
from the capital, and for closing the gates of the university; but
the circumstance of a gunpowder barrel, bearing the Edinburgh Castle
mark, being found near Priestfield, caused a general suspicion that
some officers of the garrison had a hand in the affair. A reward of two
hundred merks was offered for each of the leaders in these outrages;
but it was to the honour of the students that not one was betrayed by
his comrades.
The civil commotions were now of a nature so serious, that the local
government forced the magistrates of Edinburgh to _number_ the
inhabitants of the city and its suburbs, and to make accurate lists
of all men and women between the ages of sixteen and sixty, for the
information of the Lords of Council. The name, rank, or profession of
persons in lodgings or hostelries, and of all strangers in the city,
were to be delivered nightly by the bailies to the captain of the city
guard, who, under a penalty of 100_l._ Scots, was to send it to the
commander-in-chief, or officer next in command.
On the 15th of November, 1681, Dalyell raised that celebrated
dragoon regiment, so well known in military history as the Scots
Greys, from the peculiar colour of their horses. They were a corps
of horse-grenadiers, and were recruited almost exclusively among
the sons of the Cavalier gentry and their tenants.[37] The regiment
is now numbered as the 2nd Cavalry of the Line. They wore the old
heavy-skirted buff coat; and it is worthy of remark, that the _last
time_ such a garment was worn in the British service was by the colonel
who commanded them at Minden, seventy-four years after.
Captain Creichton mentions that, when he was lying in his lodgings
at Edinburgh, suffering from sword wounds received at Airsmoss,
Dalyell was wont to visit him daily, as he went to the Duke's Court at
Holyrood, and once "did me the honour," he continues, "to mention me
and my services to His Royal Highness, who was desirous to see me. I
was admitted to kiss his hand, and ordered to sit down in consequence
of my honourable wounds, which would not suffer me to stand without
great pain."
About this time the Reverend John Blackadder, a pious and good man, who
had long continued preaching in solitary places, revisited his native
country, after having been in Holland, and was captured by a party of
soldiers, and brought to Edinburgh, where Johnstone, the town major,
at once conveyed him, under escort, to the house of Dalyell, in the
Canongate. The account of their interview, and of the examination of
Blackadder before the inexorable Lords of Council, are graphically
detailed in the memoirs of that unfortunate Covenanter.
The Major conducted him down that long and ancient street to where
the General lived, near the old palace porch, which has now been
demolished. The prisoner was accompanied by his son Thomas, who in
after years died a merchant in New England. It chanced that the dreaded
Dalyell, whose white vow-beard and lofty bald head impressed with fear
and respect all on whom he bent his stern grey eye, opened the door as
they approached, being probably about to walk forth.
"I have brought you a prisoner," said Major Johnstone.
"Take him to the guard," replied Dalyell, briefly.
On this the poor minister, whose emotions on finding himself confronted
by the scourge of the Covenanters must have been far from enviable,
stepped up the stair, and said timidly--
"Sir, may I speak with you a little?"
"You, sir, have spoken too much already," replied Dalyell, in anger,
for he never controlled his wrath at the sight of a Covenanter. "I
should hang you with my own hands, over that outshot!"
At that moment Dalyell knew not who Blackadder really was; but finding
him in a mood so sullen, and aware that the old man's anger was not to
be trifled with, the Major took his prisoner away. Instead, however,
of consigning him to the common guard-house--for Blackadder was a man
alike venerable by his years and character--he gave him a room in the
house of Captain Murray, of Philiphaugh, where he remained until he was
brought to the dread Council chamber for examination before the Duke of
Rothes, then Lord High Chancellor of Scotland; Sir George Mackenzie,
of Rosehaugh, King's Advocate; General Dalyell, and Paterson, the last
Bishop of Edinburgh.
"Are you a minister?" asked Rothes.
"I am," replied Blackadder.
"Where?"
"At Troqueer, in Galloway."
"How long since?"
"Since 1653."
"Did you excommunicate the King at the Torwood, or were you there at
the time?" continued the Chancellor.
"I have not been at the Torwood for these four years."
"But what do you _think_ of it (the excommunication)? Do you _approve_
of it?"
He was asked the usual ensnaring questions (and, like other prisoners,
had the instruments of torture on the table before him) as to whether
he approved of the execution of Charles I.; if he had preached in the
fields and on the hill-sides, and so forth; but his answers proved
unsatisfactory, and, after a long examination, he was sent back to
Philiphaugh's apartments at Holyrood.
On the morning of the next day he sent his son Thomas to a kinsman
named Blackadder, who bore the rank of colonel, and had been Dalyell's
comrade in the expedition at Skelko Castle in 1654, and who now exerted
himself in his favour, and made such interest with the stern General,
that he received the recusant divine with great politeness in the
forenoon, when he was again brought before the Council.
"Mr. Blackadder," said he, "of what family are you--the House of
Tulliallan?"
"Yes, General, I am the nearest alive now, to represent that family,
although it is now ruined and brought so low."
Dalyell was also allied by blood to the family of Tulliallan.
"Are you the son of Sir John Blackadder?" asked Bishop Paterson; but
the inflexible Covenanter declined _his_ authority as a spiritual lord,
and would not reply even to this trivial question.
In the sequel, he was sent prisoner to the Bass, escorted by three Life
Guardsmen, and an officer named Rollock, who threatened to pistol him
at Fisher-row, when the people gathered to see him pass. On that dreary
rock, which was then the home of many a broken heart, the old man died
in his seventieth year, and he now lies in the churchyard of North
Berwick.[38]
The publication of a stern and high-toned manifesto against _Charles
Stuart_, and all supporters of his authority, together with the secret
murder of two gentlemen of the Life Guards, who had been particularly
active in discovering conventicles, and who were assassinated a few
nights after its appearance in November, 1684, excited great alarm in
the minds of the Scottish ministry. An oath, abjuring the principles
inculcated by this document, was ordained to be put to all persons
above sixteen years of age, and capital punishment was the penalty
of all who refused it. Dalyell took measures still more decisive
with the parish where the guardsmen were murdered; and he marched a
body of troops to Livingstone, where the officers had authority to
summon before them the inhabitants of that parish, and of five others
adjacent, that they might be interrogated upon the late seditious
manifesto.
Those who owned it were instantly to be shot; and those who refused to
answer were also to be shot. Officers and soldiers were sent through
Edinburgh--particularly to the Calton, where the poorest and most
humble class of citizens resided--to enforce the oath of abjuration
and ask ensnaring questions, as to whether the rising at Bothwell was
a _rebellion_, and the slaying of Archbishop Sharpe a _murder_? "Old
women were taken from their wheels, and journeymen and apprentices from
the forge, to answer these teazing and captious questions," and the
thumbikins were always at hand to freshen their memories.
A document preserved in the General Register House at Edinburgh,
signed by Charles II. at Windsor, 16th of June, 1684, and printed by a
literary club, affords us a list of the Scottish standing forces, then
commanded by Dalyell, and irrespective of the militia which formed the
main strength of the country.
Reduced since Bothwell, the Life Guards then consisted of a hundred
men; each officer was furnished with two horses; the pay, sterling, of
a captain was 1_l._ per diem; of the lieutenants 12_s._; of the cornets
7_s._; of the troopers 2_s._ 6_d._
His Majesty's regiment of Foot Guards, still commanded by
Lieut.-General George, Earl of Linlithgow, consisted of ten companies,
each consisting of three officers, two sergeants, two drummers, and
seventy-three rank and file, making a total strength, staff included,
of eight hundred and seven men.
The grenadiers of the Foot Guard were the same in number as the ten
preceding companies.
The Earl of Mar's regiment consisted of eleven companies of eighty
strong. The pay of a captain of infantry was 8_s._ sterling per diem;
the privates received 5_d._
A regiment of horse (armed with sword and pistol), consisting of five
troops of fifty men each, including officers and men.
A regiment of dragoons (armed with sword, pistol, and _musket_, for
service on horseback or on foot), the _Scots Greys_, consisting of "six
companies," also of fifty-nine each, including officers. All troopers
received 1_s._ per diem.
The garrison of Edinburgh Castle consisted of 5 officers and 121
soldiers; of Stirling Castle, 3 officers and 47 soldiers; of Dunbarton
Castle, 3 officers and 32 soldiers; of the Bass Rock, 1 officer and 28
soldiers.
The train of artillery was commanded by a Master of the Ordnance, whose
pay was 120_l._ per annum, with a conductor, engineer, fireworker, and
master gunners.--(_Miscellany of the Maitland Club._)
Dalyell's pay as a Scottish General was 400_l._ per annum.
Assisted by a militia, this small force proved sufficient, for a time,
to coerce all the Lowlands of Scotland.
In July, this year, Mr. William Spence, a follower of the recently
forfeited Marquis of Argyle, was tortured by the Privy Council, that
he might be forced to reveal all he knew of that noble's intrigues
with the English, and to read certain letters in cypher, which were
placed before him by Major Holmes; but on the torture failing to
produce the desired effect, "he was," according to Lord Fountainhall,
"_put in General Dalyell's hands_; and it was reported that by a hair
shirt and pricking (_i.e._, with a needle), as the witches are used,
he was five nights kept from sleep, till he was half distracted. He
ate very little that he might require less sleep; yet all this while
he discovered nothing; though had he done so, little credit was to be
given to what he should say at such a time."
After this is the following entry:--
"August 7th, 1684. At Privy Council, Spence (mentioned 26th July)
is again tortured, and has his thumbs crushed with thumbiekins. It
is a new invention used among the colliers when transgressors, and
discovered by General Dalziell and Drummond, they having seen them used
in Muscovy. After this, when they were about to put him in the boots,
he, being frightened, desired time, and he would declare what he knew;
whereon they gave him some time, and sequestrated him in the Castle of
Edinburgh, as a place where he would be free from any bad advice or
impression to be obstinate in not revealing."
There is something alike quaint and horrible in the quiet and
matter-of-fact way in which this old senator records such
extra-judicial barbarities; but instruments of torture were then as
necessary to the Privy Council as the pen and ink with which their
minutes were recorded.
To repress the reviving spirit of the Covenanters, four Commissions
of Lieutenancy were, in September, ordained to meet at Glasgow, Ayr,
Dumfries, and Dunse. The first, as Dalyell ordered, to be guarded by
Lord Ross's troop of Horse and Captain Inglis's Dragoons; the second
by the troop of Guards and his own Grey Dragoons; the third by the
Horse of Claverhouse, Drumlanrig, and Strachan; the fourth by the Horse
of Balcarris and Lord Charles Murray's Dragoons; but now the horrors
of this civil and military persecution received a check by the death
of Charles II. on the 6th February 1685, and on the accession of his
brother, who was immediately proclaimed at Edinburgh, James VII. of
Scotland, by the Lyon King and magistrates, and Dalyell received a
new commission as commander-in-chief of the kingdom; but the Catholic
tendencies of the new court--tendencies to which, with all his hatred
of Covenanters and Low Churchmen, "the old Muscovite" was rigidly
averse--would not have permitted him to retain his authority long.
Death now, however, solved the important problem of how he was to act
at this peculiarly dangerous juncture; he was thus, to use the words of
his comrade Creichton, "rescued from the difficulties he was likely to
be under, between the notions he had of duty to his prince on one side,
and true zeal for his religion on the other;" as he expired suddenly at
his house in the Canongate of Edinburgh, in the month of July, 1685.
On the 7th August, while the minute-guns boomed from the dark portholes
of the ancient half-moon battery of the castle, his body, in a
magnificent hearse, drawn by plumed horses, and having six pieces
of brass cannon, his led charger, his suit of armour, and his many
trophies, sword, spurs, helmet, and gauntlets, and his general's
bâton, all borne by officers of rank, and escorted by all the standing
forces in Edinburgh, with drums muffled, standards craped, and arms
reversed, was slowly conveyed through the western gate of the city to
Linlithgowshire, and interred in the family vault of the Dalyells at
Binns, in the parish of Abercorn.
There the persecuting Cavalier rests in peace, though the superstitious
peasantry still aver that his tall, thin, and venerable figure, in
buff coat and head-piece, with his vast white beard floating from his
grim visage to his military girdle, is seen "in glimpses of the moon,"
flitting, like an unquiet spirit, about the old manor house, or in the
avenues and parks which were formed by himself around it.
He died in his eighty-fifth year.
The hearts of the Covenanters gathered hope, and held jubilee at his
death; and if all be true that is recorded of him, it can scarcely be
a matter for wonder that his name and memory are still execrated in
Scotland, and that the reputation he has left behind him is not one to
be envied.
General Drummond, his old Russian comrade, succeeded him as
Commander-in-Chief of the Scottish army; Charles, Earl of Dunmore, was
appointed Colonel of the Scots Greys, and the Laird of Livingstone
filled the seat left vacant by him, as Commissioner in Parliament for
the shire of Linlithgow.
His son Thomas, who succeeded him, was created a baronet of Nova
Scotia, and left a daughter, Magdalene Dalyell, who, by her marriage
with James Menteith, of Auldcathie, transmitted the property to her
son, who thus represented the ancient line of the Earls of Menteith.
In reviewing the life of this singular officer, I cannot do better than
quote the words of one of the most temperate and popular of Scottish
writers:--