A.D. 1680.
Perplexity of the moderate ministers—Murder of Mr Hall—Queensferry
paper—Cargill joins Cameron—Sanquhar declaration—Council’s
proclamation in reply—Reflections—Bond—Fresh plunderings
by Dalziel—Skirmish at Airs-moss—Death of Cameron—of
Rathillet—Cargill—Torwood excommunication—York arrives in
Edinburgh—Spreul tortured—Skene, Stewart, and Potter executed—Effigy
of the Pope burnt.
Never, perhaps, were men placed in more perplexing and trying
circumstances than the conscientious ministers who durst not abstain
from preaching the gospel as they had opportunity, but who could neither
accept of the fettered indulgences offered them by their rulers, nor yet
“had clearness” to disown a government which they thought it their duty
to disobey. They got no credit from their persecutors for their
professions of loyalty, and were shunned by their brethren who more
consistently followed out the constitutional principles they had
covenanted to preserve. The breach now became wider by a transaction
which also added fresh fuel to the fire of persecution.
Mr Henry Hall of Haughead, in the parish of Eckford, in Teviotdale—one
of the proscribed who had fled to Holland—having returned in order to
strengthen the hands of Donald Cargill, at that time assiduously
preaching the gospel on the banks the Forth, in Fife, and Mid-Lothian,
attracted the notice of the curates of Borrowstounness and Carriden, who
informed Middleton, a papist, governor of Blackness Castle, of the
movements of these two distinguished “rebels.” He immediately went in
pursuit, followed by his men in twos and threes to avoid suspicion.
Tracking them to a house in Queensferry, he introduced himself as a
friend, and requested they might take a glass of wine together, to which
they agreed, when he, throwing off his mask, told them they were his
prisoners, and commanded the people of the house, in the king’s name, to
assist. None, however, paid any attention, except one Thomas George, a
waiter, who came in while Mr Hall was struggling with the
governor—Cargill having made his escape, although wounded—and striking
him on the head with the butt end of his carabine, mortally wounded him;
yet, though in this state, did Dalziel, whose house of Binns lies in the
neighbourhood, on coming to the spot, order him to be carried to
Edinburgh. As might have been expected, he died upon the road. For three
days his body lay exposed in the Canongate jail, till at last its
putrescence forced the wretches to allow his friends to carry it away
and bury it under cloud of night.
In this gentleman’s pocket was found an unsubscribed paper, which, from
the place where he was murdered, has usually been called “The
Queensferry Paper.” It was merely notes, or rather a rude draught of a
declaration, in which, after stating their adherence to the doctrine of
the reformed churches, as contained in the covenants, and their
determination to persevere in it to the end, they bound themselves to
endeavour to their utmost the overthrow of the kingdom of darkness, and
whatsoever is contrary to the kingdom of Christ, especially idolatry and
popery, will-worship, prelacy, and erastianism; and, in order to attain
this end, they renounced their allegiance; rejecting those who had
rejected God, altered and destroyed the established religion, overturned
the fundamental laws of the kingdom, and changed the civil government
into a tyranny. Then they proposed to set up governors and a government
according to the word of God, ‘able men, such as fear God; men of truth,
hating covetousness;’ and no more to commit the government to one single
person, or a lineal succession, that kind being liable to most
inconveniences and aptest to degenerate into tyranny; at the same time,
obliging themselves to defend each other in their worshipping of God,
and in their natural, civil, and divine rights and liberties.
Cargill, upon his escape, fled south, and joined Mr Richard Cameron and
the wanderers who followed him, and were outlawed, and declared rebels.
After much deliberation, they finally agreed upon a declaration and
testimony, suitable to the melancholy appearance of the times and the
distressed state of the church, which Michael Cameron, accompanied by
about twenty persons armed, carried to the small burgh of Sanquhar,
read, and afterwards affixed to the cross, on the 22d of June 1680. This
declaration, which was in substance the same as “The Queensferry Paper,”
after stating that they considered “it as not among the smallest of the
Lord’s mercies to this poor land, that there had always been some who
had given their testimony against every course of defection, which they
reckoned a token for good that he did not intend to cast them off
altogether, but to leave a remnant in whom he would be glorious, if they
through his grace kept themselves clean and walked in his ways, carrying
on the noble work of reformation in the several steps thereof, both from
popery and prelacy, and also from erastian supremacy, so much usurped by
him, who,” they add, “it is true, so far as we know, is descended from
the race of our kings; yet he hath so far deborded from what he ought to
have been by his perjury and usurping in church matters, and tyranny in
matters civil, that although we be for government and governors such as
the word of God and our covenants allow, yet we for ourselves, and all
that will adhere to us, the representatives of the true Presbyterian
church and covenanted nation of Scotland, considering the great hazard
of lying under sin any longer, do by these presents disown Charles
Stuart, who hath been reigning, or rather we may say tyrannizing, on the
throne of Britain, forfeited several years since by his perjury and his
breach of covenant with God and his church. As also, under the banner of
our Lord Jesus Christ, the Captain of our salvation, we do declare war
with such a tyrant and usurper.” “As also, we disown and resent the
reception of the Duke of York, a professed papist, as repugnant to our
principles and vows to the most High God, and as that which is the
great, though, alas! the just reproach of our church. We also protest
against his succeeding to the crown, as against whatever hath been done,
or any are assaying to do, in this land given to the Lord, in prejudice
to our work of reformation.”
A proclamation was issued on the last day of June, in reply, stating in
exaggerated terms what the council chose to call the sentiments of Mr
Richard Cameron and his brother, and Mr Cargill and others, their
accomplices,—sacrilegiously engaging themselves by a solemn oath “to
murder such as are in any trust or employment under us, declaring us an
usurper, and that none should obey them who are in authority under us,
but such as would obey the devil and his vicegerents.”
Although Cameron and Cargill did think, and I believe justly, that
Charles and the vile turn-coat crew who composed his government were—if
perjury, cruelty, tyranny, profligacy, and every species of open
undisguised licentiousness embodied, constitute such beings—the
representatives of the devil in human shape, yet it does not appear that
they used the expressions which they in justice did apply to their
persecutors, till they themselves were unconstitutionally and unjustly
placed without the pale of the law, denied the rights which had been
parliamentarily insured to them, and denounced as the vilest of
malefactors for—preaching the gospel. Several of the excellent followers
of these noble men have been at no little labour to extenuate or excuse
their conduct. It ought never to have been mentioned, but in accents of
praise—it needed no justification. The government had broken all
faith:—and society is based in its public as well as its private
associations on the bonds of mutual reciprocal obligation and the
righteous performance of these relative duties. When either party
violate them, they deserve punishment for their crime. That popular
insurrection should be put down, is allowed; that aristocratical
domination was to be equally checked, these denounced Cameronians
asserted; and this was in fact the grand crime for which they were
hunted like wild beasts upon the mountains.
But they were not the people to be scared from their principles by any
prospect of danger. While the fields were traversed by the blood-hounds
of their persecutors, the same indomitable bands united more closely
together, and entered into a new bond, obliging themselves to be
faithful to God and true to one another in the prosecution of their
grand design, as assertors of their civil and religious rights, which
they believed could only be secured by driving from the throne that
“perfidious covenant-breaking race, untrue both to the most High God and
the people over whom for their sins they were set.”
These mutual defiances were followed by petty exasperating individual
encounters between the soldiers and the exasperated people, for the
former did not confine their pillaging to the covenanters, though they
were the chief objects of their vengeance; but now, when it was a
finable offence to resett or harbour any of the fugitives, the soldiers
roamed up and down the country in quest of the wanderers, or in quest of
whatever might afford them a pretext for plunder.
Dalziel, the favourite of the council, whose education in the Muscovite
service peculiarly fitted him for such employment, was anew invested
with enlarged powers to disperse all conventicles, and punish, without
the ceremony of sending them to Edinburgh for trial, all who were caught
in the “horrible act” of preaching the word of God or hearing it
preached; and the council, in a letter to Lauderdale, expressed “the
hope we justly have that such just severity against some of these rebels
will preserve peace to his majesty’s good subjects,” and disappoint “the
vanity of bearing a testimony at Edinburgh, which cherished the foolish
humours of numbers, and made the processes and punishments inflicted
there less effectual than elsewhere.” All such persons who were
understood to be the king’s enemies were to be attacked by the king’s
forces wherever they could be found, and imprisoned till brought to
justice, or killed in case of resistance.
The General followed out his commission to the letter. He quartered his
soldiers upon suspected families, where they lodged during pleasure,
and, when leaving, carried off what sheep and cattle they pleased
without paying any thing; the pasture and growing corn they eat up or
trode down, without allowing the smallest compensation; and, as the
whole district was liable to these ravages, the mischief they did was
incalculable. While thus ravaging the country, a party, consisting of
upwards of one hundred and twenty dragoons, well mounted, under the
command of Bruce of Earlshall, were sent to disperse the company of
wanderers who usually attended the ministrations of Richard Cameron.
They surprised an assemblage at a place called Airs-moss, in the
district of Kyle, amounting to about twenty-six horse and forty foot,
headed by Hackston of Rathillet, indifferently armed; who, knowing that
they had no mercy to expect, determined to face the enemy, and drew up
at the entry to the moss. The horse charged with intrepidity, but could
not stand against the superior number of their enemies, and were quickly
broken; and the foot unable to support them, they were surrounded, and
the whole killed or taken. The foot retiring into the morass, could not
be pursued. Cameron, who previously to the skirmish had engaged in
prayer with the wanderers, used these remarkable expressions—“Lord, take
the ripe, but spare the green!” He fell with his brother, back to back,
gallantly defending themselves against their assailants. Hackston was
severely wounded and taken prisoner.[129]
Footnote 129:
It is mentioned in the Scots Worthies, p. 372, that Sir John Cochrane
of Ochiltree gave the information to Earlshall, and got 10,000 merks
as a reward, but that some time after, about two o’clock afternoon,
his castle took fire, and was with the charters, plate, and all,
burned down to the ground. The son said to his father while it was
burning—“This is the vengeance of Cameron’s blood.” The house was
never rebuilt by any of that family.
Cameron’s head and hands were cut off and carried to Edinburgh to be
exposed, but with wanton barbarity they were first taken to his father,
who was in prison; and he was unfeelingly asked by some heartless wretch
if he knew them? The old man took them, and kissing them, replied—“I
know them! I know them! they are my son’s—my own dear son’s! It is the
Lord; good is the will of the Lord, who cannot wrong me nor mine, but
has made goodness and mercy to follow us all our days.”
Rathillet next morning was brought to Lanark, where the head-quarters
were, and examined before Dalziel, Lord Ross, and some others; but his
answers not being deemed satisfactory, Dalziel, with his accustomed
brutality, threatened to roast him, then sent him to the tolbooth and
caused bind him most barbarously and cast him down on the floor, where
he lay till the morning after, without any person being admitted to see
him, or administer in any manner to his comfort. On the following
morning (Sabbath) he was marched, with three others, two miles on foot,
without shoes, and wounded as he was, to be delivered up to the escort
under Earlshall, who was to take them to Edinburgh. He used them civilly
by the way, and carried them round about the north side of the town to
the foot of the Canongate, where they were received by the magistrates
of the city,[130] who set Mr Hackston on a horse with his head bare and
his face to the tail, the hangman, covered, carrying Mr Cameron’s head
on an halbert before him; also another head in a sack, was carried on a
lad’s back. His companions came after on foot, with their hands tied to
an iron goad; and thus they were marched to the Parliament Close.
Footnote 130:
Mr Laing says Captain Creighton, whose memoirs were compiled and
published by Swift, commanded the military at Airs-moss, Hist. vol.
iv. p. 113, note. Rathillet says in his account, “The party that had
broken us at first, were commanded by Earlshall, Wodrow, vol. ii. app.
p. 60.
All this studied ignominy, which was to recoil with tenfold bitterness
upon their own base characters, was minutely prescribed by the council
before the prisoner arrived in the capital. As the manner of his
execution was determined before he was tried, it still stands in the
record thus:—“That his body be drawn backward on a hurdle to the cross
of Edinburgh; that there be an high scaffold erected a little above the
cross, where, in the first place, his right hand is to be struck off,
and after some time his left hand: then he is to be hanged up, and cut
down alive; his bowels to be taken out and his heart shown to the people
by the hangman: then his heart and his bowels to be burnt in a fire
prepared for that purpose on the scaffold; that afterwards his head be
cut off, and his body divided into four quarters—his head to be fixed on
the Netherbow, one of his quarters with both his hands to be affixed at
St Andrews, another quarter at Glasgow, a third at Leith, a fourth at
Burntisland; that none presume to be in mourning for him, or any coffin
brought; that no persons be suffered to be on the scaffold with him,
save the two bailies, the executioner, and his servants; that he be
allowed to pray to God Almighty, but not to speak to the people; that
Hackston and Cameron’s heads be fixed on higher poles than the rest.”
On July 30, he was brought before the justiciary, but declined their
authority, because they had usurped supremacy over the church belonging
alone to Jesus Christ, and had established idolatry, perjury, and other
iniquity in the land; and in prosecuting their design, and in confirming
themselves in their usurped right, had shed much innocent blood. The
proof of his being at Airs-moss was clear; and one of the late
archbishop’s servants swore “that he saw the panel on a light-coloured
horse at some distance from the coach, and that he took the same horse
in Mortounhouse—where Rathillet had been—and hoped to have taken
himself, but he escaped.” The jury brought him in guilty, and the court
sentenced him to be executed that same day with all the revolting
particularity of barbaric savagism they had previously appointed. It was
even increased by the unskilfulness of the hangman, who was a long while
mangling the wrist of the right arm before he succeeded in separating
the hand; which being done, the patient sufferer calmly requested him to
strike in the joint of the left; then he was drawn up a considerable way
with a pulley and suffered to fall a considerable way with a jerk. This
was repeated thrice, yet was not life extinguished; for, when the heart
was torn from his bosom, it fell from the hands of the executioner, and
moved after it fell!
Hackston was a gentleman allied to the first families in the land, of
good talents, well educated, and who in early life had associated with
the commissioner in the wild gaieties of the day; and perhaps the
severest test his integrity was subjected to was, the commissioner
personally came to him in prison, and, with many protestations of
kindness, alluding to their former intimacy, urged him to
compliance.[131] The mean tool of power, the advocate, who with his
usual insolence endeavoured to insult him at his first examination,
received a spirited retort. He asked where he was on the third day of
May was a year? To whom he answered, “I am not bound to keep a memorial
where I am or what I do every day.” The advocate said, “Sir, you must be
a great liar to say you remember not where you was that day, it being so
remarkable a day;” to which he answered, “Sir, you must be a far greater
liar to say I answered such a thing;” and the Chancellor supported him.
Footnote 131:
Having in vain tried flattery, the Chancellor, in the council, said—“I
was a vicious man.” I answered, “that while I was so, I had been
acceptable to him; but now when otherwise it was not so.” In reply to
another question, he said, “Ye know that youth is a folly, and in my
younger days I was too much carried down with the speat of it: but
that inexhaustible fountain of the goodness and grace of God, which is
free and great, hath reclaimed me, and, as a firebrand, plucked me out
of the claws of satan.”—Rathillet’s confession, Cloud of Witnesses.
A few days after, August 4th, several others were tried and condemned
for having been with Cameron; and a general search was ordered to
discover the outlawed attenders on field-preaching. It was conducted
under the direction of Robert Cannon of Mardrogat, one of those
miscreants who, having made a flaming profession, had become acquainted
with their places of meeting, but afterwards apostatizing, now
discovered the secret recesses of his former friends, and was usually
consulted respecting the character of such persons as the soldiers
seized, who were dismissed or detained as he directed.
Intensity of persecution had now almost extinguished field-preaching.
Donald Cargill alone fearlessly preserved his station, and, in defiance
of the sanguinary storm which swept over the moors and glens of his
country, continued to proclaim with unfettered freedom the principles of
the church of his fathers, and to assert the spiritual independence of
her ministers, while almost all others had yielded to the tempest or
deserted the land of their nativity. While hunted himself as a hart or a
roe upon the mountains, he resolved upon the extraordinary measure of
excommunicating those rulers of a covenanted land who had themselves
sworn that sacred obligation, and professed themselves members of the
church of Christ in Scotland.
Accordingly, in the month of September, at the Torwood, Stirlingshire,
he lectured upon Ezekiel xxi. 25-27. “And thou, profane wicked prince of
Israel, whose day is come,” &c., and preached from 1 Cor. v. 13.
“Therefore, put away from among yourselves that wicked person.” He first
explained the nature and ends of excommunication, affirming that he was
not influenced by any private motive in this action, but constrained by
conscience of duty and zeal to God, to stigmatize these his enemies that
had so apostatized, rebelled against, mocked, despised, and defied the
Lord, and to declare them, as they are none of his, to be none of ours.
He then with great solemnity proceeded—“I being a minister of Jesus
Christ, and having authority and power from him, do, in his name, and by
his spirit, excommunicate, cast out of the true church, and deliver up
to satan, Charles the Second, king, &c. upon these grounds:—1st, For his
high mocking of God, in that after he had acknowledged his own sins, his
father’s sins, his mother’s idolatry, yet had gone on more avowedly in
the same than all before him. 2d, For his great perjury in breaking and
burning the covenant. 3d, For his rescinding of laws for establishing
the Reformation, and enacting laws contrary thereunto. 4th, For
commanding of armies to destroy the Lord’s people. 5th, For his being an
enemy to true protestants and helper of the papists, and hindering the
execution of just laws against them. 6th, For his granting remission and
pardon for murderers, which is in the power of no king to do, being
expressly contrary to the law of God. 7th, For his adulteries, and
dissembling with God and man.”
Next, by the same authority, and in the same name, he excommunicated
James Duke of York, for his idolatry, and setting it up in Scotland, to
defile the land, and encouraging others to do so; not mentioning any
other sins but what he scandalously persisted in in Scotland. He
pronounced a similar sentence against Lauderdale for his dreadful
blasphemy, in saying to the late prelate of St Andrews, “Sit thou at my
right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool;” his apostacy from
the covenant and reformation, and his persecuting thereof after he had
been a professor, pleader for, and presser thereof; for his adulteries,
his gaming on the Lord’s day, his ordinary cursing; and for his
counselling and assisting the king in all his tyrannies, overturning and
plotting against the true religion: and also included in the same
censure, Rothes, Dalziel, and the Lord Advocate.
These proceedings have been condemned as plainly disagreeable to the
rules of the church of Scotland. In ordinary times they might be so, but
extraordinary times require extraordinary measures; and Mr Cargill was
placed in a situation altogether unparalleled in the history of the
church of Scotland. That he was persuaded in his own mind that he had
acted with propriety, we know; for next Lord’s day, when preaching at
Fallow-hill, in the parish of Livingstone, in the preface to his sermon,
he thus defended his conduct:—“I know I am and will be condemned by many
for excommunicating these wicked men; but condemn me who will, I know I
am approved by God, and am persuaded that what I have done on earth is
ratified in heaven; for if ever I knew the mind of God, and was clear in
my call to any piece of my work, it was that. And I shall give you two
signs that you may know I am in no delusion:—1st, If some of these men
do not find that sentence binding upon them ere they go off the stage,
and be obliged to confess it; and, 2dly, If they die the ordinary death
of men;—then the Lord hath not spoken by me.”[132]
Footnote 132:
Whatever opinion may be entertained with regard to the prophetical
spirit of the denunciation, yet it deserves to be remarked, that
Rothes when dying, under great terror of mind, sent for two
Presbyterian clergymen, Mr John Carstairs and Mr George Johnstone, to
administer consolation to him in his last hours. Charles II. died
under very suspicious circumstances in the arms of an harlot.
Lauderdale, after being despoiled of his property, and abused in his
dotage by his Duchess, departed almost in a state of idiocy, in
consequence, it was alleged, of her ill treatment during his
imbecility. York died a discrowned exile in a strange country. Dalziel
dropped down with a glass of wine at his lips, and entered the eternal
state without a moment’s warning. “Sir George Mackenzie died at
London—all the passages of his body running blood.”—Walker’s Remarks,
p. 10.
However much the persecutors affected to despise this procedure, they
showed by their conduct that they did not deem it so ridiculous an
affair. That it had touched their souls, scared as they were by
unrestrained indulgence in the lowest hardening and profligate
licentiousness, was evident from the rage they exhibited and the
increased fierceness of their persecution.
Ancient episcopacy, as established by Constantine, has always been
considered the genuine parent of the papacy. Modern episcopacy, as
established by law, was always considered by the reformers of Scotland,
and their descendants in the Presbyterian church, as the legitimate
daughter of the man of sin. Nor did the deeds of this period disgrace
the relationship. The Duke of York, who had professed himself a papist,
and for this reason was obliged to leave England, was hailed by the
Episcopalians of Scotland, where he arrived to resume the government
this year. On the 29th, he came to the Abbey of Holyrood-house, and was
welcomed by the Bishop of Edinburgh, with the orthodox clergy, as their
great protector.
On the 2d of November, a council was held, at which the Earl of Moray
produced his commission as sole secretary of state, Lauderdale, on
account of his increased corpulence and mental decay, being forced
unwillingly to resign a trust he had so awfully abused. The same day
they returned a letter of thanks to his majesty—an admirable specimen of
courtly congratulation, which might teach despots what reliance is to be
placed on the profession of interested sycophants, especially when we
recollect that many of those who signed it, in less than eight years
conspired to hurl the object of their adulation from the throne. “The
only thing,” say they, “which is forced upon the worst of your
subjects—_viz._ the covenanters—is, that they must unavoidably confess
that nothing can lessen their happiness, except their being insensible
of it and unthankful for it.” Next comes their gratitude for a standing
army and their own salaries:—“Your majesty by dispensing for our
protection all the revenue which is raised in this your majesty’s
ancient kingdom, lets us see that all you crave of us is, that we would
be true to our own interest; and all that you get by us is, the care of
governing us to our own satisfaction.” Then the loyal professions so
easily lavished and so easily forgotten—“That profound respect and
sincere kindness, sir, which we observe in your majesty’s subjects here
to your royal brother, the Duke of Albany and York, assure us that we
want nothing but occasion to hazard for the royal family those lives and
fortunes which you have made so sweet and secure to us!”
One of the first tastes they had of the sweetness of the new
administration, was in the care the Duke showed to prevent the public
mind from being contaminated by seditious publications. The committee
for public affairs were desired to consider what books imported from
Holland should be condemned by authority; and the clerks of council were
ordered to search the shop of John Calderwood, stationer, and secure
such prohibited books as should be found therein. Accordingly, he having
confessed that he had “Naphtali; Jus Regni apud Scotos,” in English;
“Jus Populi Vindicatum;” “The Reformed Bishop;” and “Calderwood’s Church
History,” he was committed to prison and his shop shut; and all
stationers were ordered in future to show their invoices to one of the
officers of state or the Bishop of Edinburgh, for their approbation,
under pain of forfeiting the books, and being fined if they should fail.
A ship belonging to Borrowstounness, which had been seized on suspicion
of having some of the dangerous works on board, though none were got,
was not released till the owners found surety to the council for their
good behaviour in time to come.
Whenever any unprincipled set of men, who have obtained and abused
power, become conscious that they are hated, and deserve to be hurled
from their eminence, they commonly pretend to discover some plot for
overturning their government. Accordingly, a plot against the Duke’s
life was fabricated; and John Spreul, apothecary in Glasgow, and Robert
Hamilton, were accused of being accessary to it. The council ordered
them to be examined by torture, and appointed a committee to conduct the
examination, among whom it is painful to observe the name of the Earl of
Argyle. Of Hamilton’s examination I have seen no account, but Spreul was
put to the question; and the Duke of York chose to be a spectator,
viewing it “with the calmness of a person looking upon a curious
experiment,” or perhaps more truly, as has been observed, “with all the
infernal gratification of a popish inquisitor.”
This excellent man, early initiated in suffering, was the son of a
merchant in Paisley, who had been ruined and forced to abscond (1667)
merely for hearing the gospel preached in the open air. When he was
seized, he was examined by Dalziel, who according to custom, threatened
to roast him alive if he would not discover his father’s retreat; but
finding he could make nothing of the boy, he was let go upon a short
confinement. Ten years after, just when he had settled in life, he was
intercommuned merely for non-conformity, and forced to travel as a
merchant through Holland, France, and Ireland, occasionally and by
stealth visiting his wife who had retained the shop; but after Bothwell,
although he was not there, he was again denounced, his shop seized, and
wife and children turned to the door. He then came back to Scotland to
carry them with him to Holland, but was apprehended in bed by the
notorious Major Johnstoun at Edinburgh, his goods seized, and himself
sent to prison.
His examination shows the spirit of the times; and a short quotation
will exhibit better than any remarks, the nature of popish
unconstitutional interference in the management of a protestant country.
“Were you at the killing of the archbishop? I was in Ireland at that
time. Was it a murder? I know not but by hearsay that he is dead, and
cannot judge other men’s actions upon hearsay. I am no judge; but in my
discretive judgment I would not have done it, and cannot approve it.” He
was again urged:—“But do you not think it was a murder?” His answer
exhibits the principles of the majority of the sufferers. “Excuse me
from going any farther, I scruple to condemn what I cannot approve;
there may be a righteous judgment of God when there is a sinful hand of
man; and I may admire and adore the one, when I tremble at the other.”
As he was personally engaged in none of the risings, he was asked
whether resisting Claverhouse at Drumclog was rebellion? He answered, “I
think not; for I own the freedom of preaching the gospel, and I hear
what they did was only in self-defence.” “Was the rising at Bothwell
rebellion?” “I will not call it rebellion; I think it was a providential
necessity put on them for their own safety after Drumclog.” Twice was he
put to the torture; and at the second time, the old ruffian Dalziel said
the hangman did not strike strongly enough. The fellow replied, that he
had struck with all his strength, and offered the General the maul to
try it himself.
Our common nature recoils from such scenes. The votaries of a false
religion delight in the torment of those they deem heretics; and had we
no other proof of relationship, this would be sufficient to establish
the identity of the then Scottish Episcopalian church and the church of
Rome, the same cruelty being used by both towards those who differed
from the state religion. The intrepid victim was carried back to prison,
but denied either the assistance of a surgeon, or the attendance of his
wife!
The Duke of York showed the reality of his religion by being voluntarily
present during the double infliction. No information was obtained by the
tyrant. The sufferer knew nothing about any plot to blow up his Grace,
nor did he know where Mr Cargill was to be found.
Mr James Skene, brother to the Laird of Skene was the next. This
gentleman’s case deserves peculiar notice. He was guilty of no treason.
His only accusation was his having heard Mr Cargill preach. He had been
a youth of irregular habits, and had associated, as from his birth and
rank he had a right to do, with the first people of the country; but
while wandering among the mountains, he unwittingly came where this
minister of the gospel was tending his small flock in the wilderness,
and was himself caught in the gospel net. Henceforth, instead of
indulging in every youthful folly, he became sober and exemplary in his
conduct—sins of no common magnitude in the estimation of the rulers of
the day; and immediately he came under the cognizance of the government;
and being apprehended, was brought to trial for treason.
Being a young convert, and animated with all the warmth of a new zeal,
he unfortunately, by his unguarded answers, gave currency to the reports
so assiduously circulated against the wanderers, of their pleading for
or extenuating the practice of private assassination, and a contempt for
all constituted authority, or indeed any authority but their own. He
thus detailed it in a letter to his brother:—“Rothes asked, did I own
the king’s authority? I said, in so far as it was against the covenant
and interest of Christ, I disowned it. He asked me if I thought it was
not a sinful murder the killing of the arch-prelate? I said I thought it
was their duty to kill him when God gave them opportunity, for he had
been the author of much bloodshed. They asked me why I carried arms? I
told them it was for self-defence, and the defence of the gospel. They
asked me why I poisoned my ball? I told them I wished none of them to
recover whom I shot. They asked, would I kill the soldiers, being the
king’s? I said it was my duty if I could, when they persecuted God’s
people. They asked if I would kill any of _them_? I said they were all
stated enemies of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by the declaration at
Sanquhar, I counted them _my_ enemies. They asked if I would think it my
duty to kill the king? I said he had stated himself an enemy to God’s
interest, and there was war declared against him. I said the covenant
made with God was the glory of Scotland, though they had unthankfully
counted it their shame; and in direct terms, I said to the Chancellor, I
have a parchment at home wherein your father’s name is, and you are
bound by that as well as I. A little after, the Chancellor said, why did
I not call him lord? I told him, were he for Christ’s interest I would
honour him. Then he said he cared not for my honour; but he would have
me to know he was Chancellor. I said I knew that. He said I was not a
Scots man, but a Scots beast.” The above is a specimen of the treatment
that even prisoners of rank experienced at the hands of the privy
council. The process before the justiciary was more brief. His
declaration was the only evidence brought against him; and he having
acknowledged it, he was sent to the scaffold to atone for his
sentiments.
[Illustration:
_The Students of Edin.^r burning the Pope in effigy, Anno. 1680_
_Vide page 473_
Edin^r. Hugh Paton. Carver & Gilder to the Queen 1842.
]
Along with Skene were executed Archibald Stewart, who belonged to
Borrowstounness, and John Potter, a farmer in the parish of Uphall. The
former had been a follower of Cameron, and present at the skirmish at
Airs-moss, though not apprehended till some time after, when, being
examined by torture, he acknowledged the fact, as a necessary piece of
self-defence when following the gospel preached in the fields—the only
crime of which he could be accused; but he denied that either he or any
of those with whom he associated had ever declared that they would have
killed the king or any of the council, which he affirmed was “an untruth
and forged calumny, to reproach the way of God, more like themselves and
their own principles, who have killed so many of the people of God both
on the fields and upon scaffolds.” The latter also had been equally
guilty of attending the reproached preachings of Cameron and Cargill;
and he exhorted his fellow-christians not to be troubled because of
their death, but to “keep the word of his patience, and he would keep
them in the hour of temptation which shall come upon all the world, to
try them that dwell upon the face of the earth.” “O dear friends and
followers of Christ, hold on your way; weary not; faint not; and you
shall receive the crown of life. It is they that overcome by the blood
of the Lamb, and the word of their testimony, that shall stand, being
clothed in white robes before the throne; for these are they that have
come out of great tribulation. Remember there is a book of remembrance
written; and the names are written in it that speak often one to
another. O! my friends, let it be your study to keep up private
fellowship meetings, wherein so much of the power and life of religion
is to be found.” They do not appear to have been attended by any
minister. They sung the second Psalm and read the third chapter of
Malachi; but when Stewart began to pray, and alluded to the bloody
Charles Stuart, immediately the drums were beat.
These acts of severity, however, by no means produced the effects
intended; and, as the youth of a country often announce prematurely the
feelings of the maturer part of a community, the students at Edinburgh
College, on Christmas-day, celebrated the highest festival of the Romish
church by burning the Pope in effigy, arrayed in his pontifical
paraphernalia—his triple crown, keys, and scarlet robes—after having
paraded him through the streets in procession, and formally
excommunicated him. Those at the College of Glasgow in a less
tumultuous, but more lasting and impressive manner, testified their
sentiments by reviving the blue riband—the badge of the covenant. When
called before the archbishop for their offence, the young Marquis of
Annandale showed his contempt for his authority by only styling him Sir,
and, when reproved by his tutor for not respecting his superior,
replied, “I know the king has been pleased to make him a spiritual lord;
but I know likewise the piper’s son of Arbroath and my father’s son are
not to be compared.”
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