the headquarters of the Scottish army at Stirling. Four days after the
battle, Cromwell took possession of the city, but it was not till the
end of December that the castle surrendered. Other fortresses, Glasgow,
and all Scotland south of the Forth, submitted to Cromwell. But the
Scottish army was so strongly posted at Stirling that he did not attempt
to dislodge it. In the western shires, a party calling themselves
Remonstrators, opposed to Charles, and also to Cromwell and his army of
Independents, raised an army of about four thousand men, and attacked a
body of English troops at Hamilton. They were at first successful, but
through their very success they got into disorder, and were ultimately
defeated.
The Scottish Parliament, having retired beyond the Forth, now ordered
that Charles should be crowned at Scone. He was residing in Perth, and
had been so preached at, prayed for, and pelted with good advice, that
his patience became exhausted, and one day he made a bolt for the
highlands. He reached Clova, a village amongst the Grampians, expecting
to find there a large concourse of Royalists, pure and simple. But very
few such met him, and he returned to Perth with a small party which had
been sent after him.
On 1st January, 1651, the coronation took place. A sermon was preached,
in which the insincerity of the Stuart family was a leading topic. Then
Charles swore to the Covenants, and to the maintenance of the
Presbyterian Kirk, and he was duly crowned and annointed King of
Scotland. Thereafter, not being lacking in personal courage, he took a
more prominent place in the field. He was sadly in want of money. The
Edinburgh mint was in the hands of the English; a mint was established
in Dundee—then well fortified—but there was a scanty supply for coinage
of the precious metals.
The records of the Dundee Town Council give a letter from the king dated
from Dunfermline, May 12th, 1651, asking the town to advance by way of a
royal loan, one thousand pounds sterling; but the King’s personal
security was then of doubtful value, and the Estates having passed an
Act ordering all the lieges to contribute voluntarily for the
necessities of the army, the cautious Dundonians at once entered into
such a contribution.
Meanwhile, the northern passes being strictly guarded, Cromwell sent
gunboats up the Forth. These were beaten off at Burntisland; but at
Queensferry they effected a landing of Commonwealth troops, and Cromwell
made his way through Fife, and took Perth. He thus gained a commanding
position in the rear of the Scottish army. But his northerly movement
left for the Royalists a clear way into England; and Charles expected to
find many friends there. So with the Scottish army he entered England by
Carlisle; and, by rapid marches, in three weeks from leaving Stirling he
reached Worcester. In hot pursuit, to give no time for raising a
Royalist army, Cromwell followed the king. He left General Monk with a
small army to complete the subjugation of Scotland.
Six days after Charles arrived at Worcester, Cromwell was there, at the
head of thirty thousand men. On the 3rd of September—being the
anniversary of the battle of Dunbar—a desperate battle was fought on the
banks of the Severn, and the inferior Scottish army—for comparatively
few English Royalists had joined on the march—was utterly routed. Three
thousand Scots were slain in the battle, and ten thousand were made
prisoners; the majority of these were barbarously shipped off to the
plantations, and sold into slavery. After many adventures and narrow
escapes, Charles contrived to reach France. For eight years he was a
hanger-on at various continental courts, and looked upon as a hopeless
claimant to thrones which had vanished from the earth.
When Cromwell left Scotland, Dundee was almost the only fortified town
which held for the king. Many Royalists, with their valuables, had taken
refuge therein. In anticipation of an attack by the English gunboats,
heavy guns were placed on the river frontage, and other means of defence
were hurriedly adopted. A committee of the Estates sat in the town; and
when, in the middle of August, General Monk, with four thousand horse
and foot, appeared before it and demanded its surrender, this committee
issued a defiant proclamation, and then decamped to Alyth, a little town
about eighteen miles to the north of Dundee, carrying with them a
considerable amount of public money. Monk, by a sudden swoop, captured
the committee; some, and amongst them the veteran General Leslie, were
killed; the others were sent to the Tower of London, and the troopers
enriched themselves by their plunder.
[Illustration:
THE PROTECTOR OLIVER CROMWELL.
(_From a painting by Vandyke._)
]
On 1st September, after a fortnight’s bombardment, Dundee was taken by
assault. Monk had had a training in military savagery under Cromwell in
Ireland, and he now beat the record of his master. Not only was the
brave governor Lumsden—after quarter had been given him—with eight
hundred of the garrison, put to death in cold blood, but it is said that
two hundred women and children shared the same fate. Carlyle, without
any note of disapproval, says: “Governor Lumsden would not yield on
summons; General Monk stormed him; the town took fire in the business;
there was once more a grim scene, of flame and blood, and rage and
despair, transacted on this earth.” It is said that the plunder of the
town exceeded two-and-a-half million pounds, Scots (£125,000 sterling.)
There were sixty vessels in the harbour. After the fall of Dundee,
Montrose, Aberdeen, and St. Andrews surrendered, and Monk was, for
Cromwell, master of Scotland.
And Cromwell was now virtually sovereign of England and Ireland also.
After disbanding, with taunts and insults, the Long Parliament,—as a
servant of which he had risen to power,—and playing for a little while
with a mock parliament, composed of his own adherents, he found himself
strong enough to govern without a parliament. At an assembly of
notables—1653—General Lambert, in the name of the army and the three
kingdoms, asked him to accept the office of Lord Protector of the
Commonwealth. With real or assumed reluctance he gave his consent; he
took the oath of office, put on his hat, sat down in a chair of state,
and Lambert, on his knees, presented to him the great seal. With more
ample authority than had ever been possessed by their legitimate
monarchs, he governed these islands till his death. This event occurred
in 1658, on the 3rd of September, the anniversary of his Dunbar and
Worcester victories.
And so this great personality departed. He was only in his sixtieth
year, and up to his last year he had appeared strong and healthy. But as
Carlyle says,—“Incessant toil, inconceivable labour of head, and heart,
and hand; toil, peril, and sorrow manifold, continued for near twenty
years now, had done their part; those robust life-energies had been
gradually eaten out. Like a tower strong to the eye, but with its
foundations undermined, the fall of which on any shock may be sudden.”
We might add to the above causes for what seemed premature decline, his
knowledge that he had a host of bitter and deadly enemies, ever plotting
against his life. To live in constant dread of assassination, will eat
as a canker into the bravest of hearts.
His character has been diversely estimated, according to the standpoint
of the critic. To a strong believer in force of will and energy of
purpose, like the writer quoted above, he is England’s greatest soldier,
statesman, and ruler. Others have called him hypocrite,—dogmatic,
vindictive, cruel to ferocity. Of his administrative abilities, his
unswerving resolution, and his military genius, there can hardly be two
opinions. Under his government there was peace and order, social
progress, and comparative freedom at home; abroad, the Commonwealth
achieved high honour and respect. As a victorious soldier, Cromwell
shewed little magnanimity towards the vanquished. Retaliation and
revenge were common faults of the times—say his apologists; yes, but a
truly noble character will rise above the sins and shortcomings of his
times; he will be the prophet and pioneer of better times.
As to Cromwell’s religious professions, they were doubtless sincere, but
men make their gods after their own hearts, and his god was the Jehovah
of the old Hebrews; a god of war and of vengeance, rather than the All-
Merciful Father of the Sermon on the Mount. Macaulay has said of the
theologically-flavoured political writings of the Puritans, that one
might think their authors had never read the New Testament at all, so
full were they of “smiting the Amalekites,” of “hewing Agag to pieces,”
and of the hard and bitter spirit of the older times. Can we wonder that
the mind of the Prince of the Puritans had, unconsciously perhaps, run
in the same narrow groove?
Of the Scottish rule of “His Highness, the Lord Protector,” it may be
said that after a long period of conflict and general unsettledness, it
was a time of peace. The laws were administered, even amongst highland
hills and border wastelands. Monk, with a small army, and a few forts
garrisoned by English troops, managed, after their several defeats, to
keep a brave, and naturally a patriotic and freedom-loving people, in
thorough subjection. They did not love the man; but, although he would
not allow the General Assembly to sit, their church had that freedom of
worship which under a Covenanted king they had failed to accomplish.
There were two leading Presbyterian parties, the _Resolutionists_, who
had placed the Scottish crown on the head of Charles, and still called
themselves king’s men, praying for him in the public devotions; and the
_Remonstrators_, who had never, in spite of all his oaths and promises,
adopted or believed in Charles, and studiously kept him out of their
prayers. (One might have thought that the worse a man he was, the more
he needed praying for). Cromwell favoured the latter party, making a
certificate from three or four of its ministers the condition of a
minister, although he might be called to a church, being paid his
stipend. Cromwell taxed the Scots very heavily, but perhaps, all
considered, they got fair value for their money. On the whole, so far as
Scotland was concerned, we may indorse what, in his _History of his own
Time_, Bishop Burnet says of the Protectorate generally:—“There was good
justice done, and vice was suppressed and punished. So that we always
reckon those eight years of Usurpation a time of great peace and
prosperity.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Scotland under Charles the Second.
At the death of Cromwell there was not, in the general aspect of
political matters, any definite forecast of what twelve months after
would be the form of government; certainly an easy and unopposed
restoration of the Stuart monarchy was about the last idea, warranted by
the history of the previous fifteen years. But one man, the still-
tongued, close-minded General Monk, solved the question. By his
influence as head of the army, and his tact and sagacity in party wire-
pulling, he so managed that within eight months of the Protector’s
death, Charles II. was quietly proclaimed King of Great Britain and
Ireland. It was a twenty-seven years of as mean rule, as has ever
darkened the pages of British history. Retaliations and persecutions—one
long attempt to turn back the stream of progress—a corrupt court,
leavening the national life with foulness and frivolity, such might be
the general headings of the chapters chronicling the reign of the “Merry
Monarch.”
The restoration was in England baptized in blood. Ten “regicides” were
hanged at Charing Cross. This was harsh—revengeful; but not despicable
or unprecedented. But it is with disgust, with shame for our common
humanity, that we learn that the bodies of Cromwell, Ireton, and
Bradshaw were taken from their graves in Westminster Abbey, and on the
death anniversary (30th January) of “King Charles the Martyr,” drawn on
hurdles to Tyburn, and there hung on the gallows; then the heads cut off
and fixed on Westminster Hall.
And Scotland must not be left without examples of severity. The Marquis
of Argyle was the first victim. At the coronation of Charles at Scone,
he was the noble who placed the crown on the king’s head. But Charles
hated him as a leader of the presbyterians, who then held him in irksome
tutelage. After a most unfair trial, nothing tangible being found
against him except some private letters to General Monk, in which he
expressed himself favourable to Cromwell, he was found guilty, and
condemned to death. He met his fate with great firmness, saying that if
he could not brave death like a Roman, he could submit to it like a
Christian.
Other victims followed. Swinburne has said of Mary of Scotland, “A
kinder or more faithful friend, a deadlier or more dangerous enemy, it
would be impossible to dread or to desire.” Mary’s descendants were
noways remarkable for fidelity in friendship, but they were implacable
in their hatreds. When he was in the over-careful hands of the
Covenanters, Charles had treasured up against a day of vengeance, many
affronts, brow-beatings, and intimidations, and now he meant, in his
stubborn way, to demand payment, with heavy interest, of the old debts.
And so Charles, the Covenanted King of Scotland, and in whose cause its
best blood had been shed, had nothing but hatred for the land of his
fathers, and for its presbyterian faith. A packed and subservient
Scottish Parliament proceeded to pass, first a Rescissory Act,
rescinding all statutes, good and bad, which had been passed since the
commencement of the civil wars; and next, an Act of Supremacy, making
the king supreme judge in all matters, both civil and ecclesiastical.
Charles soon made it evident that he meant to establish episcopacy.
James Sharpe, minister of the little Fifeshire town of Crail, was sent
to London to look after presbyterian interests; he was got at on the
selfish side, and made archbishop of St. Andrews. Nine other pliant
Scottish ministers received episcopal ordination in Westminster Abbey.
On the third anniversary of the Restoration, 29th May, 1662, copies of
the Covenants were in Edinburgh publicly torn to pieces by the common
hangman. The ministers were ordered to attend diocesan meetings, and to
acknowledge the authority of their bishops. The majority acquiesced; but
it is pleasing to learn that nearly four hundred resigned their livings,
rather than submit to the prelatic yoke. To take the places of the
_recusants_, a hosts of _curates_, often persons of mean character and
culture, were ordained. The people did not like the men thus thrust upon
them as ministers, and they still sought the services of their old
pastors; hence originated the “conventicles,” a contemptuous title for a
meeting-place of dissenters.
And now began, chiefly in the west and south of Scotland, those field
meetings which afterwards became so notable. At first they were simply
assemblies for worship, no arms were worn; after service a quiet
dispersal. But, as signifying nonconformity to prescribed forms, they
gave great offence. A new Act forbade, under punishment for sedition,
any preaching without the sanction of the bishops; and inflicting pains
and penalties on all persons absenting themselves from their parish
churches. If fines were not paid, soldiers were quartered on the
recusants, and their cattle, furniture, and very clothing were sold. It
was even accounted seditious to give sustenance to the ejected
ministers.
It can be easily asked, why did this Scottish people, with the memory of
their past, submit to these things? There was, as in England, a reaction
to an extreme of loyalty; there was the satisfaction of finding
themselves freed from English domination in its tangible form of
Cromwell’s troops and garrisons; there was the pleasure of once more
seeing a Parliament in Edinburgh, even though it merely registered and
gave legal form to the king’s decrees. They were told that the advantage
of being governed by their own native prince implied as its price the
establishment of that prince’s form of religious faith. Their own nobles
and many of their ministers had conformed; and thus bereft of their
natural leaders, there was weakness and division. Despite of all these
discouragements, they were often goaded into insurrections; which were
cruelly suppressed, and made the excuses for further intolerance, and
still harsher persecutions.
The field conventicles continued. In the solitudes of nature, in lonely
glens, or on pine-shaded hillsides, with sentinels posted on the
heights, arose the solemn psalm, and the preachers prayer and
exhortation. And men now came armed to these gatherings, the women had
to be defended, force was to be met by force. To suppress such meetings,
troops were sent into the insubordinate districts, under a wild
fanatical Royalist, General Dalziel, and had free quarters on the
inhabitants. By 1666, a reign of terror was fully inaugurated; Dalziel
flared like a baleful meteor over the West of Scotland. In November of
this year, without concert or premeditation, an open insurrection broke
out. At Dalry, in Ayrshire, four soldiers were grossly maltreating an
aged man, and common humanity could not stand by and look on with
indifference or mere sympathy. The people rescued the old man, disarmed
the soldiers, and took their officer prisoner to Dumfries. A resolution
was suddenly taken to march on Edinburgh. They gathered in a fortnight’s
march to barely 2000 men, and wearied and worn out, encamped on a
plateau, called Rullion Green, on the Pentland hills, a few miles south
of Edinburgh. Here they were attacked by double their numbers under
Dalziel, and, after a gallant resistance, considering their inferior
arms and discipline, were put to flight. Some fifty were killed on the
field, one hundred and thirty were taken prisoners, thirty-four of whom
were, chiefly at the instigation of Archbishop Sharpe, hanged as rebels,
and the rest banished.
[Illustration:
THUMBIKINS.
(_From the Scottish Antiquarian Museum._)
]
And tortures—such as have had no place in modern history since the palmy
days of the Spanish Inquisition were inflicted to extort confessions of
complicity in a rising, which was really the offspring of momentary
excitement. _Thumbikins_ squeezed the fingers by iron screws. These
tortures were generally borne with heroic patience and resolution. One
young minister, Hugh McKail, comely in person, well educated, an
enthusiast in his covenanting faith, was subjected to the torture of the
_boot_. His leg was crushed, but he uttered no cry, only moving his lips
in silent prayer. He had taken very little part in the insurrection, but
was condemned to death. On the gallows-ladder his last words were:—
“Farewell father, mother, and all my friends in life, farewell earth and
all its delights, farewell sun, moon, and stars, welcome death, glory,
and eternal life.” Seeing what impressions such words made on the
listeners, in after executions drums were beaten to drown the voices of
the sufferers.
A weary ten years ensued of alternate “indulgence,” and renewed
intolerance. In 1667, the Duke of Lauderdale was placed at the head of
Scottish affairs. He had subscribed to the covenant, and had been a
Presbyterian representative at the Westminster Assembly. He was now a
subservient courtier, but did not at first assume the role of a
persecutor. He disbanded the army, and proclaimed an indemnity to those
who had fought at Rullion Green, on their signing a bond of peace. The
ministers ousted from their parishes were permitted to return, but on
conditions which the strict consciences of many could not accept; and
those who did accept were placed under close surveillance, and under
severe penalties forbidden to take part in any field meetings. Some of
the bishops were good men, striving earnestly to make peace within the
church. One of these, Leighton, Bishop of Dunblane, made an attempt to
reconcile Presbyterianism with a modified episcopacy. The bishops were
merely to sit as chairmen, or moderators, in the diocesan convocations,
and to have no veto on the proceedings, but the Covenanters thought this
a snare for entrapping them into an acknowledgment of prelacy, and the
idea was abandoned.
And Lauderdale who had begun his rule leniently, now afraid of being
represented to the King as lukewarm in his service, blossomed out into a
cruel persecutor, forcibly suppressing field meetings, and enforcing
extreme penalties on nonconformists. It has been estimated that up to
this date seventeen thousand persons had suffered in fine, imprisonment,
and death. It was said that fines extorted for non-attendance at the
parish churches, were applied to supply the extravagance of Lady
Lauderdale,—a rapacious, bad, clever woman. Landowners were required
under penalties to become bound for their tenants, that they would
attend their parish churches, take no part in conventicles, and not
relieve outlawed persons.
The gentry generally refused to enter into such bonds; and Lauderdale
wrote to the King that the country was in a state of incipient
rebellion, and required reduction by force of arms. He treated the whole
of the west country as if in open revolt. Not only did he send ordinary
troops with field artillery into the devoted districts, but he brought
down from the hills a Highland host of 9000 men to live upon, and with
every encouragement to plunder and oppress, the poor people. Speaking an
unknown tongue, strange in manners and attire, they were to the
lowlanders a veritable plague of human locusts. When, after a few months
of free quarterage, they went back to their hills, themselves and a
number of horses were loaded with booty, as if from the sack of a rich
town. But so far as we can learn they were not guilty of personal
violence upon those they were sent to despoil; perhaps in this respect
hardly coming up to the wishes and expectations of their employers.
In May, 1679, occurred a deed of blood which widened the gulf between
the Covenanters and the government, and gave legal colouring to
harshness and persecution. In Fifeshire, one Carmichael had become
especially obnoxious as a cruel persecutor, and an active commissioner
for receiving the fines laid upon the malcontents. On 3rd May, a party
of twelve men, chiefly small farmers in the district, with David
Hackston of Rathillet and John Balfour of Burley as the leaders, lay in
wait for Carmichael, with full purpose to slay him. It appears he had
received some warning, and kept out of the way. After waiting long, the
band were, in sullen disappointment, preparing to separate, when the
carriage of Sharpe, the Archbishop, appeared unexpectedly, conveying him
and his daughter home to St. Andrews. To these superstitious men, nursed
under persecution by old biblical texts into religious fanaticism, it
appeared as if an act of necessary vengeance was here thrust upon them,
that instead of an inferior agent, a foremost persecutor, who had
hounded to the death many of their brethren, was now delivered into
their hands. They took him from his carriage, and there on Magus Muir—
suing upon his knees for mercy, his grey hairs, and his daughter’s
anguished cries, also pleading for his life—they slew him with many
sword thrusts.