_Containing a brief account of the persecution of the last period, and
of the great suffering whereby all the parts of its testimony were
sealed._
The foregoing deduction, being the first thing I proposed to be
discussed in the method of this essay, hath now swelled to such a bulk,
that the last period of it doth, in a manner, swallow up what I intended
to have said on the second: because it gives grounds to gather the
methods and measures that our adversaries have managed, for the ruin of
this witnessing remnant, and also discover some special steps of their
sufferings within these 27 years past, under the tyranny of both the
brothers. It will now be the more easy to glean the gradations of the
means and machines, used by this popish, prelatical, and malignant
faction, to raze the work of reformation, and to build their Babel of
popery and slavery on the ruins thereof; and to aggregate an account in
brief of the great sufferings of the faithful. Which though it be beyond
my power, and besides my purposes at present, to offer a narrative of
it, with any proportion to the greatness of the subject; a more
particular relation thereof, being now projected, if providence permit,
to be published to the world, which will discover strange and unheard of
cruelties: yet, in this little heap of some hints only of the kinds of
their sufferings, I do not question but it will appear, that the
persecution of Scotland hath been very remarkable, and scarcely out-done
by the most cruel in any place or age, in respect of injustice,
illegality, and inhumanity, though perhaps inferior in some other
circumstances. But that none could be more unjust, illegal, or inhuman,
I need not further, I cannot better, demonstrate than only to declare
the matter of fact, as it fell out in the several steps of the last
period.
I. In the entry of this fatal catastrophe, the first of their
mischievous machinations was to remove out of the way all who were
eminent instruments in carrying on the former work of God, or might be
of influence for obstructing their antichristian and tyrannical designs,
both in the state and in the church. And accordingly, when the marquis
of Argyle, who had a main hand in bringing home the king, and closing
the second treaty at Breda, went up to London, to congratulate his
return from exile, he was made prisoner in the tower, thereafter sent
down to Scotland, indicted of high treason, at length beheaded, and his
head placed upon the tolbooth of Edinburgh (a watch-word of warning to
our addressers, who may, ere all be done, meet with the same sauce) for
no other alledged cause, but for his compliance with the English, when
they had our land in subjection; a thing wherein the judges who
condemned him were equally criminal; but really for another provocation
that incensed the king against him, which made him a tyrant as infamous
for villany as for violence, to wit, for his reproving the king (when
others declined it) for an adulterous rape, which he held for so
piacular a crime, that he resolved nothing should expiate it but the
blood of this nobleman. For the same pretended cause was the lord
Wariston afterwards executed to death at Edinburgh, after they had
missed of their design of taking him off by clandestine ways abroad.
Then they fall upon the ministers: and because Mr. James Guthrie was a
man, who had been honoured of God to be zealous and singularly faithful,
in carrying on the work of reformation, and had asserted the kingly
authority of Christ, in opposition to the erastian supremacy encroaching
thereupon, therefore he must live no longer, but is condemned to die,
and most basely handled, as if he had been a most notorious thief or
malefactor; he is hanged, and afterward his head placed upon one of the
ports of Edinburgh, where it abideth to this day, preaching not only
against the enemies rebellion against God, but against the defection of
many ministers since, who have practically denied that great truth for
which he suffered, to wit, his testimony against the supremacy, and for
declining the usurped authority of him who arrogated it. At the same
time there was a proclamation, which they caused to be read at all the
church-doors, discharging ministers to speak against them or their
proceedings, whereby profane and malicious persons were encouraged to
witness against their ministers. By which means (though many were in no
hazard, thinking it commendable prudence, commended indeed by the world,
but hateful unfaithfulness before God, to be silent at such a time) some
faithful ministers giving faithful and free warning, and protesting
against the present defection, were condemned of treason, and banished
out of the three dominions. Others, without a legal citation, or without
access to give in their defences, were sentenced with banishment, and
could never get an extract of their sentence: and further, were
compelled to subscribe a bond, under pain of death, to remove out of all
the dominions betwixt and such a day. This was the lot, and also the
blot of these famous and faithful ministers, Mr. John Livingston, Mr.
Robert Macward, Mr. John Brown, &c. who spent the rest of their days in
Holland, serving their generation by their excellent writings. Then,
after they had disposed of many other ministers, whom they thrust out,
for not keeping the 29th of May, having now laid by the most eminent,
and whom they feared most of the ministry, they shortly thereafter
outed, and violented the rest from the exercise of their ministry, and
straitned them with strange and severe confinements; yea, because they
would not be outdone in suppressing religion by any, no, not by Julian
the apostate, they proceeded to poison all the springs and fountains of
learning; ordaining that none be masters in universities, except they
take the oath of supremacy, and own the government of prelacy; and none
be admitted to teach in a school, without the prelate's licence. These
courses brought many ministers and expectants to great sufferings.
II. Hitherto they reached only noblemen, gentlemen and ministers, and
others whom they thought might stand in their way of advancing their
cursed designs. The next drift is, when they had emptied the churches of
ministers, and filled them with the vermin of ignorant and scandalous
curates, to force the people to conformity, and to disown and
discountenance their own ministers; first, by severe edicts of
exorbitant fining not only the persons themselves contraveening, but
those that had the superiority over them, and rigorous exaction of these
fines, to the depopulation of a poor country, by military force;
whereby, where there was but one church in the bounds, still enjoying a
minister whom the people could hear, the profane soldiers would beset
that church in time of worship, and cause all within to pay their fines,
or take the garments from them that could not, and beat them to the
effusion of their blood: and where the church was planted with a curate,
the soldiers would come, and call the names of the parishioners, and
amerciate the absents in such fines as they pleased. In other places
they went to private houses, and by force drove them to church, even
though sick and unable. But where the dissenters were numerous, great
bands of legal robbers were sent to exact and extort these exorbitant
fines, by plundering, quartering, beating, wounding, binding men like
beasts, chasing away from houses, and harassing whole country-sides in a
hideous manner. And yet after all these insolencies, some of the common
sort were compelled to subscribe an acknowledgment, that the captain had
used them civilly and discreetly; though the account of others of that
place manifests the violence to have been so monstrous, that it
justified the great barbarity; shewing their exactions to have been
intolerable, both for the quantity, without all proportion or pity, and
for the manner of it, consuming and wasting poor people's provision by
their very dogs, and sparing no more these who conformed, than others
who did not conform at all, and punishing husbands for their wives, yea,
doubling and tripling the same exactions after payment. Next, though at
first they did not imprison any for simple absenting themselves from the
curates, yet they began to fill prisons with such as at any time shewed
more than ordinary zeal against the curates intrusion, and testified
their dissatisfaction to his face; for which, some were imprisoned,
scourged, stigmatized, and thereafter carried to Barbadoes. Others,
because they would not give the prelates their title of lords, when
conveened before them, were also scourged: and one minister seized for
preaching, and offending the prelates by the same fault, was carried
first to the thieves hole, laid in irons in company with a madman, and
then banished to Shetland, the coldest and wildest of all the Scots
islands.
III. But when fining would not do, and still the people were more averse
from the curates, by getting sometimes occasions of hearing their own
ministers in private; hence were houses forced and searched, many hawled
to prisons, and several necessitate to escape at windows with the hazard
of their lives, spies sent unto and set in suspected places, to seize
and fall upon such as they found at such meetings, or but suspected to
have been there. Whence it came to pass, that many, both men and women,
young and old, have been dragged to prisons, and there close kept as
malefactors, besides several other outrageous and illegal acts of
violence and oppression committed against them, contrary to all law,
equity and conscience.
IV. After Pentland defeat, they ruled by rage more than either law or
reason. There 40 prisoners, who were taken upon quarter, and solemn
parole to have their life spared, yet treacherously and bloodily were
all hanged (except five that were reprieved) who had much of the Lord's
presence at their deaths, and assurance of his love, strengthening them
to seal a noble testimony. One of them, a much honoured young minister,
only for having a sword about him, though not present at the fight, did
first most patiently endure the cruel torture of the boots (a cruel
engine of iron, whereby with wedges the leg is tortured, until the
marrow come out of the bone) and afterwards death, with great courage
and constancy. Upon the scaffold, at their execution, they then began
that barbarity never practised in Scotland before, but frequently, and
almost always at all the executions since, to beat drums, that they
might not be heard. After this conflict, many were forefaulted of their
estates, and intercommuned, with inhibition to all to reset, conceal, or
correspond with any that had escaped, under the pain of being accounted
guilty of the same rebellion, as they called it. Soldiers are permitted
to take free quarter in the country, and licensed to all the abuses,
that either rapine or cruelty may suggest; to examine men by tortures,
threatning to kill or roast alive, all that would not delate all they
knew were accessory to that rising; to strip them who did so much as
reset the fugitives, and thrust them into prisons, in cold, hunger and
nakedness, and crowd them so with numbers, that they could scarce stand
together, having the miseries of their own excrements superadded; yea,
to murder without process, such as would not, nay could not, discover
those persecuted people. But not only time, but heart and tongue would
fail, to relate all the violences and insolencies, the stobbings,
woundings, stripping and imprisonings of mens persons, violent breaking
of their houses both by day and night, beating of wives and children,
ravishing of women, forcing of them by fire-matches and other tortures,
to discover their husbands and nearest relations, although not within
the compass of their knowledge, and driving away all their goods that
could be carried away without respect to guilt or innocency, and all the
cruelties that were exercised without a check by these ruffians at that
time.
V. After all these tender mercies and clemencies, or cruelties, which
his gracious majesty was pleased to confer or commit upon these poor
contenders for religion and liberty, he and his cabal the council
thought it not enough to suppress them with oppressions and force,
distrusting the authority of his law (that he knew the people would no
more observe, than he would observe a promise or oath) and diffiding
also the authority of his sword, which he had above their heads, he
proposes terms of bargaining with them, whereupon he would suffer them
to live, and to which he would have them bound to live according to his
prescript; therefore, besides the old oaths of allegiance and supremacy,
that were still going among hands, he caused coin new ones to keep the
peace, and to live orderly, meaning to conform themselves to the
disorders of the times! whereby, after he had wrought such destruction
to their bodies and estates, and almost nothing was left them but a bit
of a conscience, he would rob them of that too, verifying the constant
character of the wicked, they only consult to cast a man down from his
excellency. What is a man's excellency but a good conscience? But these
men, having feared consciences of their own, not capable of any
impression, they presume to impose upon all others, and cannot endure so
much as to hear of the name of conscience in the country, except it be
when it is baffled in the belchings of beastly mouths; as one, that was
well acquaint with the council's humour in this point, told a gentleman
that was going before them, to have one of these oaths imposed upon him,
who was beforehand signifying his scruples, that he could not do such
things in conscience. Conscience (said he) I beseech you whatever you
do, speak nothing of conscience before the lords, for they cannot abide
to hear that word. Therefore it is, that since this last revolution,
there have been more conscience-debauching and ensnaring oaths invented
and imposed, and some repugnant and contradictory to others, than ever
was in any nation in the world in so short a time: and hereby they have
had woful success in their designs, involving the generality of the land
in the sin of perjury and false swearing with themselves. And it hath
been observed, that scarcely have they let one year pass, without
imposing some oaths or bonds upon presbyterians; such always as are
unlawful to take, yea and impossible to keep, sometimes more obviously
gross, sometimes more seemingly smooth, sometimes tendered more
generally through the kingdom, sometimes imposed upon particular shires;
and these carried on by craft and cunning, sometimes by force and
cruelty. Doubtless it is not the least part of their design, hereby to
make oaths and bonds become a trivial and common thing, and by making
all men of as capacious consciences as themselves.
VI. Further, they never ceased to express their fear of another rising,
(their guilty consciences dictating that they deserved greater
opposition.) Hence, to secure themselves, and incapacitate the people
from further attempts of that nature, they order all withdrawers from
churches, all who did not join to suppress the Lord's people, to deliver
up their arms betwixt and such a day, and not keep a horse above such a
very mean price, unfit for service.
VII. When force could not do the business, then they try flatteries; and
hence contrive that wicked indulgence to divide and destroy the
ministers that remained, and to suppress meetings. But when this bait,
so well busked, could not catch all, but still there were meetings for
administring the ordinances; their flattery turns to fury, and the
acceptance of that indulgence by some, and despising of it by others,
did both animate and instigate them unto a following forth of their
design, by all the cruel acts and bloody executions. And hereby the
residue of the faithful of the land were exposed unto their rage, while
the indulged became interpretatively guilty of, and accessory to all the
cruelties used and executed upon ministers and professors, for adhering
unto that way. Hence it was common at private and peaceable meetings,
when, without arms of defence, they were disturbed by soldiers, and
exposed to all manner of villanous violence, some being dragged to
prisons, some banished and sold to French captains to be transported
with rascals, many intercommuned and driven from their dwellings and
relations, great sums of money were proffered to any that would bring in
several of the most eminent ministers, either dead or alive; yea several
at several times were killed, and others cruelly handled: all which, for
several years, they patiently endured without resistance. But
especially, when not only they were driven to the fields to keep their
meetings in all weathers, summer and winter, but necessitate to meet
with arms, then they raised more troops of horse and dragoons to pursue
them with all rage, as traitors and rebels. Hence what pursuings,
hornings, huntings, hidings, wanderings through mountains and muirs, and
all kinds of afflictions, the people of God then met with, because of
their following that necessary and signally blessed duty; all the lands
inhabitants know, the jailors can witness to this day, and the barbarous
soldiers, bloody executioners of the commands of their enraged masters,
having orders to wound and kill, and apprehend all they could take at
these meetings, or on the way suspected to be going to or coming from
them, having encouragement to apprehend some ministers, and bring them
dead or alive, by the promise of 2000 merks, others valued at 1000, and
several professors also with prices put upon their heads. Hence others
that were taken of them were sent into the Bass, a dry and cold rock in
the sea, where they had no fresh water, nor any provision but what they
had brought many miles from the country; and when they got it, it would
not keep unspoiled. And others, both ministers and many hundreds of
professors, were outlawed; whereby all the subjects were prohibited to
reset, supply, intercommune with any of them, or to correspond with them
by word, writ, or message, or furnish them with meat, drink, house,
harbour, victual, or any other thing useful, under the highest pains.
Hence also prisons were filled, and the wives and children of the outed
ministers, that were come to Edinburgh for shelter, were commanded to
dislodge, within a short day prefixed, under the pain of being forcibly
shut up or dragged out. For which and other such uses, to apprehend and
seize, on meetings, a major was appointed in Edinburgh, with command
over the town guards, and a good salary for that end. Then prisons being
filled, they were emptied to make room for others in ships, to be taken
away to be sold for slaves, in one of which were sent to Virginia above
60 men, some ministers; who, through the kindness and sympathy of some
English godly people, were relieved at London. A greater barbarity not
to be found in the reigns of Caligula or Nero.
VIII. But all this is nothing to what followed; when, thinking these
blood-hounds were too favourable, they brought down from the wild
Highlands an host of savages upon the western shires, more terrible than
Turks or Tartars, men who feared not God nor regarded man; and being
also poor pitiful Skybalds, they thought they had come to a brave world,
to waste and destroy a plentiful country, which they resolved, before
they left it, to make as bare as their own. This hellish crew was
adduced to work a reformation, like the French conversions, to press a
band of conformity, wherein every subscriber was bound for himself and
all under him, wife, children, servants, tenants, to frequent their
parish churches, and never to go to these meetings, nor reset, nor
entertain any that went, but to inform against, pursue, and deliver up
all vagrant preachers, as they called them, to trial and judgment. Which
they prosecuted with that rigour and restless, boundless rage, that the
children then unborn, and their pitiful mothers do lament the memory of
that day, for the loss of their fathers and husbands. Many houses and
families then were left desolate in a winter flight, many lost their
cattle and horses, and some, in seeking to recover them, lost their
lives, by the sword of these Burrios. So that it was too evident, both
by what orders was given, the severity of prosecuting, and the
expressions of some great ones since, that nothing less than the utter
ruin and desolation of these shires was consulted and concluded, and
that expedition, at that time, calculated for that end; for what else
can be imagined could induce to the raising 10 or 11,000 barbarous
savages, the joining them to the standing forces, and with such cruel
orders the directing them all to the west, where there was not one
person moving the finger against them: neither could they pretend any
quarrel, if it was not the faithfulness of the people there in their
covenanted religion, and their hopelessness of complying to their popish
and tyrannical designs, and therefore no course so feasible as to
destroy them; so for dispatching thereof, order is given forth, that
whosoever refuseth to subscribe that hell-hatched bond, must instantly
have 10, 20, 30, 40, more or fewer according to his condition as he is
poorer or richer, of these new reformers sent to him, to ly not only
upon free quarters to eat up and destroy what they pleased, but also
(for the more speedy expedition) ordered to take a sixpence for each
common soldier a-day, and the officers more, according to their degrees,
and so to remain till either the bond was subscribed, or all destroyed;
nor was these trustees deficient to further their purposes in
prosecuting their orders, who, coming to their quarters, used ordinarily
to produce a billgate for near to as many more as came, and for these
absents they must have double money, because their landlord was not
burdened with their maintenance, and, where that was refused, would take
the readiest goods, and if any thing remained not destroyed and
plundered at their removing, which was not transportable, rather than
the owner should get any good of it, they would in some places set fire
to it, as they did with the cornstacks. It would require several great
volumes to record the many instances of horrid barbarities, bloods and
villanies of that wicked expedition; so that what by free quarterings,
exactions, robberies, thefts, plunderings, and other acts of violence
and cruelty, many places were ruined almost to desolation, all which the
faithful choosed rather to suffer, than to sin in complying: and albeit
their oppression was exceeding lamentable, and their loss great, yet
that of the compliers was greater and sadder, who losed a good
conscience in yielding to them, and compounding with them.
IX. Then the country behoved to pay the soldiers for all this service,
and hire them to do more, by paying the imposed cess; whereby they were
sharpened into a greater keenness in cruel executions of their orders,
returning to those places of the country whither they had chased the
persecuted people, who still kept their meetings wherever they were,
though they could not attend them, but upon the hazard of being killed,
either in the place (where some had their blood mingled with their
sacrifice) or fleeing, or be exposed to their dreadful cruelties, more
bitter than death. For then it was counted a greater crime, and punished
with greater severity, for persons to hear a faithful minister preach,
than to commit murder, incest, adultery, or to be guilty of witchcraft,
or idolatry, or the grossest abominations: for these have passed
unpunished, when some, for their simple presence at a meeting, have been
executed unto the death. Then also, when some were forced to flee into
the English border for shelter, there also were parties ordered to
pursue these poor hunted partridges, who could not find a hole to hide
their head in. There we lost a valiant champion for truth, and truly
zealous contender for the interest of Christ, that universally
accomplished gentleman and Christian, Thomas Ker of Heyhope, who was
cruelly murdered in a rencounter with a party of the English side.
Thereafter followed that lamentable stroke at Bothwel, where about 300
were killed on the field, and about 10 or 1100 taken prisoners, and
stript, and brought into Edinburgh in a merciless manner. After which,
first two faithful and painful ministers and witnesses of Christ, Mr.
John Kid and Mr. John King, received the crown of martyrdom, sealing
that testimony with their blood, and many others after them for the same
cause. Then the enemy, after the manner used before, first to wound our
head, and then put on a hood upon it, (as they have done always after a
mischief, and intending a greater), offered their bond of peace, on
terms that clearly condemned the cause, never to rise in arms against
the king, &c. by which bond, many of the prisoners, after they had lien
several weeks in a church-yard, without the shadow of a house to cover
them night and day, were liberate: and many of the rest, by the
persuasion of some ministers, at whose door their blood lies as well as
at the enemy's, took that bond; and yet were sent away with others that
did not take it, in a ship bound for America between 2 and 300 in all,
who were all murdered in the ship, being shut up under the hatches, when
it split upon a rock in the north of Scotland, except about 50 persons;
whereof many to this are living witnesses of such a cruelty.
X. Hitherto only the common rules and rudiments of the art of
persecution were put in practice, exactly quadrating with the rules of
Adam Contzen the Jesuit for introducing of popery, in his polit. lib. 2.
cap. 18. which are, (1.) To proceed as musicians do, in tuning their
instruments gradually. (2.) To press the examples of some eminent men to
draw on the rest. (3.) To banish all arch-heretics at once (that is the
most zealous witnesses of Christ) or at least with all expedition by
degrees. (4.) To put them out of all power and trust, and put in friends
to the catholic interest. (5.) To load the protestant opinions, as are
most obnoxious, with all odious contions. (6.) To discharge all private
conventicles. (7.) To make and execute rigorous laws against the most
dangerous. (8.) To foment all quarrels among protestants, and strengthen
the party that is ready to comply. But these, and many other of a deeper
projection, and greater perfection, were fallen upon afterwards,
equalling the most mischievous machines of Spanish inquisition, or the
methods that effectuated the desolation of the church of Bohemia; that
were exactly followed, as they are related in Clark's Martyrology.
Especially the last of Contzen's rules were industriously observed, in
the device of the indulgence both before and after Bothwel, which
contributed more to the rending and ruining the remnant, and to expose
the faithful to rage and cruelty, than any thing; for when, by these
ensnaring favours, many were drawn away from their duty, the rest that
maintained it, and kept up the testimony, were both the more easily
preyed upon, and more cruelly insulted over. Hence the field-meetings
that were kept, were more fiercely pursued after Bothwel than the many
before, and more cruel laws were made against them, and more bloody
executions, than I can find words to express in short. But, in a word,
no party of Tartars invading the land, or crew of cut-throats destroying
the inhabitants, or the most capital malefactors, could have been more
violently opposed, or more vigorously fought to be suppressed, than
these poor meeters were. But I must make some more special hints.
1. They not only raised more forces to exhaust the strength and
substance of the already wasted country, and laid on and continued from
one term to another that wicked exaction and cruel oppression of the
cess, for the same declared ends of suppressing and banishing what
remained of the gospel, and imposed localities for maintaining the
soldiers employed in those designs; for refusing which many families
were pillaged, plundered, and quite impoverished, besides the beating
and abusing them: but also they went on unweariedly with their courts
of inquisition, pressing the bonds of peace, and dragging them like dogs
to prisons that would not subscribe them, and for taking up in their
Porteous' rolls the names of all that were suspected to have been at
Bothwel insurrection: which they gathered by the information of
sycophants, and reputed them convict, if being summoned they did not
appear, and forced others to swear concerning things that are to be
enquired after, and delate upon oath whom they did either see or heard
that they were in arms, or went to meetings; and such as refused,
suffered bonds or banishment. Yea, having made it criminal to reset,
harbour, correspond, or converse with these whom they declared rebels,
they thereupon imprisoned, fined, and ruined vast numbers, for having
seen or spoken with some of them, or because they did not discover or
apprehend them when they fancied they might, and even when they were not
obliged, and could not know whether they were obnoxious persons or not:
for which many gentlemen and others were indicted and imprisoned, and
some arraigned and condemned to death. For these causes, the country was
harrassed and destroyed by four extraordinary circuit courts,
successively going about with their numerous train, whereby many were
grievously oppressed, and with their oppressions tempted with many
impositions of conscience-debauching oaths, and bonds to compear when
called, and to keep the church, and to refrain from going to meetings,
&c. and by these temptations involved in compliances and defections.
2. To enrich themselves, by these means, with the spoil of the country,
did not satisfy these destroyers; but they must glut themselves with the
blood of the saints, upon every pretext that they could catch, under any
colour of law. As upon the account of Bothwel insurrection, many were
cruelly executed to the death, some gentlemen, and some common country
men, without any legal conviction, by packing bloody juries and assizes
most partially for their murdering ends, besides more than can be
reckoned that were kept to perish in their imprisonments. And not only
for being actually in arms, or any ouvert act of transgressing their
wicked laws, but even for their extorted opinion of things, or because
they could not condemn these necessitated risings in arms to be
rebellion, and a sin against God, which they were forced to declare by
terrible menacings of death and torture, they have been condemned to
death; making their arbitrary laws to reach the heart, thoughts, and
inward sentiments of the mind, as well as outward actions. Whereupon
this became a criminal question robbing many of their lives, Was the
rising at Bothwel-bridge rebellion, and a sin against God? And this
another, Was the killing of the bishop of St. Andrew's horrid murder?
Which if any answered negatively, or did not answer affirmatively, they
were cruelly condemned to death; for which, first, five innocent
Christians were execute upon the spot, where that murderer fell. Though
they declared, and it was known, they were as free as the child unborn,
and that some of them had never seen a bishop that they knew from
another man, and were never in that place of the country where he was
killed. And afterwards this was the constant question that all brought
before them were troubled with, which some avouching to be duty, were
dismembered alive, their hands struck off, and then hanged, and their
heads cut off when dead.
3. After Sanquhar declaration, they observed the jesuits rules more
exactly, especially that mentioned above, to load the opinions that are
most obnoxious with all odious constructions, and to make it both
criminal to declare them, and also criminal to conceal and wave their
intrapping questions thereupon. For after Mr. Hall was killed at the
Queensferry, and Mr. Cameron with several worthies were slain at
Airsmoss, and after Mr. Hackston for declining the authority of his
murderers, head and tail, and for being accessory to executing judgment
upon the arch traitor, or arch bishop of St. Andrew's (though he laid
not his hands on him himself, nor was present at the action, but at a
distance when it was done) was tortured alive, with the cutting off of
his hands, and then hanged, and before he was dead, ripped up, his heart
taken out, and carried about on the point of a knife, and thrown into a
fire, and afterwards his body quartered. Then, not only such as were
with that little handful at Airsmoss were cruelly murdered, but others
against whom they could charge no matter of fact, were questioned if
they owned the king's authority? which if any did not answer
affirmatively and positively, he was to look for nothing but exquisite
torments by terrible kinds of tortures, and death besides. And if any
declared their judgment, that they could not, in conscience, own such
authority as was then exercised; or if they declined to give their
thoughts of it, as judging thoughts to be under no human jurisdiction;
or if they answered with such innocent specifications as these, that
they owned all authority in the Lord, or for the Lord: or according to
the word of God, or all just and lawful authority, these underwent and
suffered the capital punishment of treason. And yet both for declining
and declaring their extorted answers about this, they were condemned as
unsufferable maintainers of principles inconsistent with government.
4. But here, as in Egypt, the more they were afflicted, the more they
grew, the more that the enemies rage was increased, the more were the
people inflamed to inquire about the grounds of their suffering, seeing
rational men and religious christians die so resolutely upon them; and
the more they insisted in this inquisition, the more did the number of
witnesses multiply, with a growing increase of undauntedness, so that
the then shed blood of the martyrs became the seed of the church, and as
by hearing and seeing them so signally countenanced of the Lord, many
were reclaimed from their courses of compliance, so others were daily
more and more confirmed in the ways of the Lord, and so strengthened by
his grace, that they chose rather to endure all torture, and embrace
death in its most terrible aspect, than to give the tyrant and his
complices any acknowledgment: yea, not so much as to say, God save the
king, which was offered as the price of their life, and test of their
acknowledgment, but they would not accept deliverance on these terms,
that they might obtain a better resurrection. Which so enraged the
tygrish truculency of these persecutors, that they spared neither age,
sex, nor profession: the tenderness of youth did not move them to any
relenting, in murdering very boys upon this head, nor the grey hairs of
the aged; neither were women spared, but some were hanged, some drowned,
tied to stakes within the sea-mark, to be devoured gradually with the
growing waves, and some of them of a very young, some of an old age.
Especially after the murder of the never to be forgotten martyr, Mr.
Cargil, the multitude of merciless sufferings upon this account cannot
be enumerated; which increased far beyond all the former steps, after
the Lanark declaration, which was burnt with great solemnity by the
magistrates of Edinburgh in their robes, together with the solemn league
and covenant, which had been burnt before, but then they would more
declaredly give new demonstrations of their rage against it, because
they confessed, and were convinced of its being conform unto and founded
upon that covenant. And because the incorporation of Lanark did not,
because they could not, hinder the publishing of it; therefore they were
threatened with the loss of their privileges, and forced to pay 6000
merks. Upon the back of which, the sufferings of poor people that owned
the testimony were sadder and sharper, and further extended than ever:
some being banished for soldiers to Flanders, &c. some to be sold as
slaves in Carolina, and other places in America, to empty the filled
prisons, and make room for more, which were daily brought in from all
quarters, and either kept languishing in their nasty prisons, or thieves
holes, in bolts and irons to make them weary of their life, or
dispatched as sacrifices, and led as dumb sheep to the slaughter,
without suffering them to speak their dying words, for beating of drums,
or disposed of to masters of ships to be transported to slavery.
5. Had they satisfied themselves with murdering them out of hand, it
would have been more tolerable, and reckoned some degree of mercy, in
comparison of their malice; which, after all their endeavours to murder
their souls, by ensnaring offers, enslaving bonds, blasphemous and
contradictory oaths, and multiplying captious questions to catch the
conscience, or at least vex the spirits of the righteous, whom they
could not prevail with to put forth their hands into iniquity, did
proceed to invent all exquisite torments more terrible than death. Some
at their first apprehending were tortured with fire-matches, burning and
for ever thereafter disabling their hands: then laid fast, and locked up
in great irons upon their legs, where they lay many months in the cold
of winter, without any relaxation. Some were tortured with the boots,
squeezing out the marrow of their legs: others with thumbkins, piercing
and bruising the bones of their thumbs: and some tormented with both one
after another, and besides, kept waking nine nights together by watchful
soldiers, who were sworn not to let the afflicted person sleep all that
time.
6. All this tyranny had been the more tolerable, if they had kept within
any bounds of colourable or pretended shadow of legality, or in any
consonancy to their own wicked laws, or exemplars of any former
persecutions. But in an ambition to outdo all the Neros, Domitians,
Dioclesians, duke d'Alvas, or Lewis le Grands, they scorned all forms,
as well as justice of law, and set up monstrous monuments of
unprecedented illegality and inhumanity. For when, after all their
hornings, harassings, huntings, searchings, chafings, catchings,
imprisonments, torturings, banishments, and effusions of blood, yet they
could not get the meetings crushed, either in public or private, or the
zeal of the poor wanderers quenched, with whom they had interdicted all
harbour, supply, comfort, refreshment, converse or correspondence, and
whom they had driven out of their own and all other habitations, in
towns, villages, or cottages, to the deserts, mountains, muirs, and
mosses, in whose hags and holes they were forced to make dens and caves
to hide themselves, but that they would still meet for the worship of
God, either in public (though mostly in the cold winter nights) or in
their private fellowships for prayer and conference; and to rescue their
brethren, and prevent their murder in these extremities, would surprize
and take advantages of the soldiers now and then: they then raged beyond
all bounds, and not only apprehending many innocent persons (against
whom they had nothing to accuse them of, but because they could not
satisfy them in their answers) sentenced, and executed them, all in one
day, and made an act to do so with all; but allowed the bloody soldiers
to murder them, without either trial or sentence. Especially after the
apologetical declaration, affixed on the church doors, they acted with
an unheard of arbitrariness. For not only did they frame an oath of
abjuration, renouncing the same, but pressed it universally upon pain of
death, upon all men and women in city and country, and went from house
to house, forcing young and old to give their judgment of that
declaration, and of the king's authority, &c. to ridicule and reproach,
and make a mocking stock of all government: yea impowered soldiers, and
common varlets, to impannel juries, condemn, and cause to be put to
death, innocent recusants, and having stopt all travel and commerce
without a pass, signifying they had taken that oath, they gave power to
all hostlers and inn-keepers to impose oaths upon all passengers,
travellers, gentlemen and countrymen, who were to swear, that their pass
was not forged. And prisoners that would not take the oath were,
according to the foresaid act, condemned, sentenced and execute, all in
one day, and early in the morning, that the people might not be affected
with the spectacles of their bloody severities. Yea spectators also,
that gathered to see the execution, were imposed upon, and commanded to
give their judgment, whether these men were justly put to death or not.
And not only so, but after that, they gave orders and commands to the
soldiers to pursue the chase after these wanderers more violently, and
shoot, or otherwise put them to death wherever they could apprehend
them; whereby many were taken and instantly most inhumanly murdered.
XI. In the beginning of this killing time, as the country calls it; the
first author or authorizer of all these mischiefs, Charles II. was
removed by death. Then one would have thought the severity would have
stopped: and the duke of York succeeding, in his late proclamation would
make the world believe, that it never was his principle, nor will he
ever suffer violence to be offered to any man's conscience, nor use
force or invincible necessity against any man on the account of his
persuasion: smooth words, to cover the mischiefs of his former
destructions, and the wickedness of his future designs. To which his
former celebrated saying, that it would never be well till all the south
side of Forth were made a hunting field; and his acts and actings
designed to verify it, since his unhappy succession, do give the lie.
For immediately, upon his mounting the throne, the executions and acts,
prosecuting the persecution of the poor wanderers, were more cruel than
ever.
1. There were more butchered and slaughtered in the fields, without all
shadow of law, or trial, or sentence, than all the former tyrant's
reign; who were murdered without time given to deliberate upon death,
or space to conclude their prayers, but either in the instant, when they
were praying, shooting them to death, or surprizing them in their caves,
and murdering them there, without any grant of prayer at all; yea many
of them murdered without taking notice of any thing to be laid against
them, according to the worst of their own laws, but slain and cut off
without any pity, when they were found at their labour in the field, or
travelling upon the road. And such as were prisoners, were condemned for
refusing to take the oath of abjuration, and to own the authority, and
surprized with their execution, not knowing certainly the time when it
should be, yea left in suspense whether it should be or not, as if it
had been on design to destroy both their souls and bodies. Yea
Queensberry had the impudence to express his desire of it, when some
went to solicit him, being then commissioner, for a reprieval in favours
of some of them, he told them, they should not have time to prepare for
heaven, hell was too good for them.
2. There have been more banished to foreign plantations in this man's
time, than in the other's. Within these two years, several shipfuls of
honest and conscientious sufferers have been sent to Jamaica, (to which
before they were sent, some had their ears cut) New Jersey, and
Barbadoes, in such crouds and numbers, that many have died in
transportation; as many also died before in their pinching prisons, so
thronged that they had neither room to ly nor sit. Particularly the
barbarous usage of a great multitude of them that were sent to Dunotter
castle, when there was no room for them in Edinburgh, is never to be
forgotten; which the wildest and rudest of savages would have thought
shame of. They were all that long way made to travel on foot, men and
women, and some of both sexes, very infirm and decrepit through age; and
several sick, guarded by bands of soldiers, and then put into an old
ruinous and rusty house, and shut up under vaults above 80 in a room,
men and women, without air, without ease, without place, either to ly or
walk, and without any comfort save what they had from heaven, and so
straitned for want of refreshment, which they could not have but at
exorbitant prices inconsistent with their poor empty purses, and so
suffocated with the smell of the place, and of their own excrements,
that as several of them died; so it was a wonder of mercy that any of
them could outlive that misery, yet there they remained some months, at
a distance from all their friends, being sent thither to that northern
corner out of the south and west borders of the country; and some out of
London. Whose transportation hither, if it were not a part of this
tragical story, would seem a merry and ridiculous passage to strangers,
discovering the ridiculous folly as well as the outrageous fury of their
persecutors. For at a private meeting in London, among others, some
Scotsmen, of very mean figure, some taylors, a shoemaker, a chapman, &c.
were taken, and being found to be Scotsmen, were not only examined at
the common courts there, but by Sir Andrew Foster, by express commission
from the late king a little before his death; who threatened them under
a strange sort of certification, (considering what fell out immediately
thereafter) that assuredly they should be sent to Scotland very shortly,
if there were not a revolution of the government. But this revolution,
following within a few days, retarded it a little: yet not long
thereafter they were sent in a yacht, with a guard of soldiers, and a
charge of high treason. But, when brought before the council of
Scotland, the amount of all that bustle was, a question posed to them
under pain of death, whether the king should be king or no? that is,
whether they owned his authority or not. Yet though some of the poor men
did own it, they were sent to Dunotter castle: and thence among the rest
banished and transported to New Jersey; in which passage, by reason of
their crude and bad provision, the most part in the ship were cast into
a fever, and upwards of sixty died, yea even since the former
proclamation for this pretended liberty, there are twenty-one men and
five women sent to Barbadoes, against whom nothing could be alledged but
matters of mere religion and conscience: which, as it proclaims the
notoriousness of these impudent lies, wherewith the proclamations for
this liberty are stuffed; so it puts an indelible brand of infamy upon
some London merchants, that are said to pretend to some profession of
religion, who sent the ship to transport them, thereby to make gain of
the merchandise of the Lord's captives.
3. There have been more cruel acts of parliament enacted in this
tyrant's time, than the former made all his reign. For in his first
parliament held by Queensberry, commissioner, not only was there an act
for making it treason to refuse the oath of abjuration, confirming all
the illegalities of their procedure hereupon before; but an act making
it criminal to own the covenant, and another act making it criminal for
any to be present at a field-meeting, which was only so to preachers
before. Yet neither these acts, and all the executions following upon
them, have daunted, nor I hope shall drive them, nor the indemnity and
toleration (so generally now applauded) draw them from the duty of
owning both these, that are so much the more publicly to be avouched,
that they are so openly interdicted by wicked and blasphemous tyranny,
though for the same they expect from the Scottish inquisition all the
murdering violence, that hell and Rome and malignant rage can exert.
But to conclude this tragical deduction: as these hints we have heaped
together of the kinds and several sorts (the particulars being
impossible to be reckoned) of barbarities and arbitrary methods, used in
carrying on this persecution, demonstrating the reign, or rather rage of
these two dominators, under which we have howled these twenty-seven
years, to be a complete and habitual tyranny, to discover the inhumanity
and illegality of their proceedings, having no other precedent save that
of the French conversions, or Spanish inquisition, out-done by many
stages, in respect of illegality, by the Scottish inquisition, and the
practices of the council of Scotland, and judiciary court; so I shall
shut up all in a summary relation of the common practices and forms of
procedure in these courts: which will be useful to understand a little
more distinctly, to the end the innocency of sufferers may more clearly
appear. 1. They can accuse whom they will, of what they please; and if
by summar citation, he will not, may be, because he cannot, compear; if
once his name be in their Porteons' rolls, that is sufficient to render
him convict. 2. They used also to seize some, and shut them up in prison
year and day, without any signification of the cause of their
imprisonment. 3. They can pick any man off the street; and if he do not
answer their captious questions, proceed against him to the utmost of
severity; as they have taken some among the croud at executions, and
imposed upon them the questions. 4. They can also go through all the
houses of the city, as well as the prisons, and examine all families
upon the questions of the council's catechism, upon the hazard of their
life, if they do not answer to their satisfaction, as has been done in
Edinburgh. 5. When any are brought in by seizures, sometimes (as is said
before) they let them lie along without any hearing, if they expect they
cannot reach them; but if they think they can win at them any way, then
they hurry them in such haste, that they can have no time to deliberate
upon, and oftentimes have no knowledge or conjecture of the matter of
their prosecution: yea, if they be never so insignificant, they will
take diversion from their weightiest affairs, to examine and take
cognizance of poor things, if they understand they dare vent or avow any
respect to the cause of Christ: and the silliest body will not escape
their catechization about affairs of state, what they think of the
authority, &c. 6. If they be kept in prison any space, they take all
ways to pump and discover what can be brought in against them: yea,
sometimes they have exactly observed that device of the Spanish
inquisition, in suborning and sending spies among them, under the
disguise and shew of prisoners, to search and find out their minds, who
will outstrip all in an hypocritical zeal, thereby to extort and draw
forth words from the most wary, which may be brought in judgment against
them the next day. 7. When prisoners are brought in before them, they
have neither libel nor accuser, but must answer concerning things that
are to be enquired after, to all questions they are pleased to ask. 8.
If at any time they form a sort of libel, they will not restrict
themselves to the charges thereof, but examine the person about other
things altogether extraneous to the libel. 9. They have frequently
suborned witnesses, and have sustained them as witnesses, who either
were sent out by themselves as spies and intelligencers, or who palpably
were known to delate those against whom they witnessed, out of a pick
and prejudice, and yet would not suffer them to be cast for partial
counsel. 10. If they suppose a man to be wary and circumspect, and more
prudent than forward in the testimony; then they multiply questions, and
at first many impertinent interrogations, having no connexion with the
cause, to try his humour and freedom, that they may know how to deal
with him: and renew and reiterate several criminal examinations, that
they may know whereof, and find matter wherein, to indict him, by
endeavouring to confound, or intrap, or involve him in confessions or
contradictions, by wresting his words. 11. They will admit no time for
advice, nor any lawful defence for a delay, but will have them to answer
presently, except they have some hopes of their compliance, and find
them beginning to stagger and succumb in the testimony; in that case,
when a man seeks time to advise, they are animated to a keenness to
impose, and encouraged to an expectation of catching by their snares,
which then they contrive and prepare with greater cunning. 12. If a man
should answer all their questions, and clear himself of all things they
can alledge against him, yet they used to impose some of the oaths, that
they concluded he would not take; and according to the measure of the
tenderness they discovered in any man, so they apportioned the oaths to
trap them, to the stricter the smoother oaths, to the laxer, the more
odious, that all natural consciences did fear at. 13. They will not only
have their laws obeyed, but subscribed, and they reckon not their
subjects obedience secured by the lawmaker's sanction, but the people's
hand-writing; and think it not sufficient that people transgress no
laws, but they must also own the justness of them, and the authority
that enacts them, and swear to maintain it: and yet when some have done
all this, and cleared themselves by all compliances, they will not
discharge them, but under a bond to answer again when called. 14. They
will have their laws to reach not only actions, but thoughts; and
therefore they require what people think of the bishop's death, and of
Bothwel insurrection; and whether they own the authority, when they can
neither prpve their disowning of it, nor any way offending it. 15. They
will have them to declare their thoughts, and hold them convict, if they
do not answer positively all their captious questions; and if they will
not tell what they think of this or that, then they must go as guilty.
16. If they insist in waving, and will not give categorical answers,
then they can extort all, and prove what they please by torture: and
when they have extorted their thoughts of things, though they be
innocent as to all actions their law can charge them with, then they
used to hang them when they had done. 17. They have wheedled men
sometimes into confession either of practices or principles, by
promising to favour their ingenuity, and upbraiding them for dissemblers
if they would not, and by mock expostulations, why were they ashamed to
give a testimony? and then make them sign their confessions at the
council, to bring them in as a witness against them at the criminal
court. 18. Yea, not only extrajudicial confession will sustain in their
law: but when they have given the public faith, the king's security the
act and oath of council, that their confession shall not militate
against them, they have brought it in as witness against them, and given
it upon oath, when their former oath and act was produced in open court,
in demonstration of their perjury. 19. When the matter comes to an
assize or cognizance of a jury, they use to pack them for their purpose,
and pick out such as they listed, who they think will not be bloody
enough. 20. Sometimes when the jury hath brought their verdict in
favours of the pannel, they have made them sit down, and resume the
cognition of the case again, and threatened them with an assize of
error, if they did not bring him in guilty. 21. Yea, most frequently the
king's advocate used to command them to condemn, and bring in the pannel
guilty, under most peremptory certifications of punishment if they
should not; so that they needed no juries, but only for the fashion. 22.
Sometimes they have sentenced innocent persons twice, once to have their
ears cut and be banished, and after the lopping of their ears, some have
been re-examined, and sentenced to death, and execute. 23. They have
sentenced some and hanged them both in one day; others early in the
morning, both to surprize the persons that were to die, and to prevent
spectators of the sight of their cruelty; others have been kept in
suspence, till the very day and hour of their execution. 24. Not only
have they murdered, serious and zealous followers of Christ in taking
away their lives, but endeavoured to murder their names, and to murder
the cause for which they suffered; loading it with all reproaches, as
sedition, rebellion, &c. which was their peculiar policy, to bring the
heads of sufferings to points that are most obnoxious to men's censure,
and accounted most extrinsic to religion, whereby they levelled their
designs against religion, not directly under that notion, but obliquely
in the destruction of its professors, under the odium and reproach of
enemies to government. 25. But chiefly they labour to murder the soul,
defile the conscience, and only consult to cast a man down from his
excellency, which is his integrity; that is a christian's crown, and
that they would rather rob him of as any thing, either by hectoring or
flattering him from the testimony: which they endeavour, by proposing
many offers, with many threatnings in subtile terms; and pretend a great
deal of tenderness, protesting they will be as tender of their blood as
of their own soul (which in some sense is true, for they have none at
all of their own souls) and purging themselves as Pilate did, and
charging it upon their own heads. 26. They will be very easy in their
accommodations, where they find the poor man beginning to faint, and
hearken to their overtures, wherein they will grant him his life,
yielding to him as cunning anglers do with fishes: and to persuade him
to complying, they will offer conference sometimes or reasoning upon the
point, to satisfy and inform his conscience, as they pretend, but really
to catch him with their busked hook. 27. Sometimes they used to stage
several together, whereof they knew some would comply, to tantalize the
rest with the sight of the others liberty, and make them bite the more
eagerly at their bait, to catch the conscience. But when they had done
all they could, Christ had many witnesses, who did retain the crown of
their testimony in the smallest points, till they obtained the crown of
martyrdom, and attained boldly to them without fear or shame, and
disdaining their flattering proposals, but looking on them under a right
notion, as stated there in opposition to Christ; whereby they found
this advantage, that hence they were restrained from all sinful
tampering with them, or entertaining any discourse with them, but what
was suitable to speak to Christ's enemies, or doing any thing to save
their life, but what became Christ's witnesses, who loved not their
lives unto the death. Of whom universally this was observed, that to the
admiration of all, the conviction of many enemies, the confirmation of
many friends, the establishment of the cause, and the glory of their
Redeemer, they went off the stage with so much of the Lord's
countenance, so much assurance of pardon and eternal peace, so much hope
of the Lord's returning to revive his work, and plead his cause again in
these lands, that never any suffered with more meekness humility and
composure of spirit, and with more faithfulness, stedfastness and
resolution, than these worthies did for these despised and reproached
truths; for which their surviving brethren are now contending and
suffering, while others are at ease.