A.D. 1686-1688.
Conduct of the soldiers—A riot—Recantation of Sibbald—Alexander
Peden—Proceedings of the society-men—Synod of
Edinburgh—Parliament—Disputes among the
persecuted—Indulgence—Thanksgiving for the Queen’s pregnancy—Seizure
and death of Mr Renwick—Dr Hardy’s trial and acquittal—Rescue of
David Houston—Murder of George Wood—Arrival of the Prince of Orange.
[A.D. 1686.] The entrance of the new year was signalized by an exploit
worthy of the heroes of the day. A party of their marauders came to the
parish of Stonehouse, in Lanarkshire, and carried off eight men and two
women who had infants at the breast, for alleged hearing an ejected
minister; while another no less heroic band, under Skene of Hallyards,
plundered the house of a widow, in the neighbouring parish of Glassford,
and destroyed what they could not carry off, because they chose to
allege her son had been at Bothwell.
Intent upon forcing his favourite object, the king had ordered his
chapel of Holyrood-house to be repaired[164] for the use of the royal
servants who had embraced the royal religion; and the paraphernalia
necessary for conducting its Romish rites with becoming splendour, being
openly brought to Leith, this, with the ostentatious celebration of mass
in the popish meetings, roused such indignation in the Edinburgh
populace, that “a great rabble of prentices” rose, who threatened to
pull down the mass-house. They insulted the Chancellor’s lady and her
company coming from chapel, assailing them with opprobrious language,
and throwing dirt at them, but doing no further damage. For this riot
several were apprehended, and one “baxter lad” sentenced to be whipped;
but when the hangman was about to perform his duty, the mob rose,
rescued their associate out of his hands, and gave himself a sound
drubbing. The confusion, however, continuing, the troops in the Castle
and Canongate were called out to assist the town-guard, when a woman and
an apprentice of one Robert Mein, were killed. Next day, a women and two
youths were scourged, guarded by soldiers; and one Moubray, an
embroiderer, was indicted for his life. At the place of execution, he
told Mr Malcolm, a minister who attended him, that he was offered a
pardon if he would accuse the Duke of Queensberry of having excited the
tumult; but he would not save his life by so foul a calumny.
Footnote 164:
He also erected a seminary in the Abbey—the Royal College; and in
order to allure youth and induce Protestant parents to send their
children, the scholars were to be taught gratis; and no particular
system of religion was to be inculcated by the Jesuits!—_crede._
This was not the only ominous circumstance which preceded the meeting of
parliament. Another took place at the same time, which bore more
immediately upon the grand question that was to come under their
consideration, and for which they had especially been called
together—the recantation of Sir Robert Sibbald, M.D. This celebrated
antiquarian, who lived in a course of philosophical virtue, but in great
doubts of revealed religion, had been prevailed upon by the Earl of
Perth to turn papist, in order to find that certainty which he could not
find upon his own principles. But he was ashamed of his conduct almost
as soon as he had made his compliance, went to London, and for some
months retired from all company. There, after close application to
study, he came to be so convinced of the errors of popery, that he
returned to Scotland some weeks before the parliament met, and could not
be easy in his own mind till he made a public recantation. The Bishop of
Edinburgh was so much a courtier, that, apprehending many might go to
hear it, and that it might be offensive to the court, he sent him to do
it in a church in the country; but the recantation of so learned a man,
after so much studious inquiry, had a powerful effect.
Fining, that lucrative branch of persecution, though still a favourite,
began now to descend to the humbler classes of consistent Presbyterians;
for the chief gentlemen and heritors among them were either dead,
forfeited, or in exile; yet the gleanings were by no means despicable,
and far from being so regarded by some of the under-hirelings of
government. In the parish of Calder, John Donaldson, portioner, was
fined £200 for a prayer-meeting held at his house on a Lord’s day; John
Baxter, £40; Walter Donaldson, for his wife being present, £36; with
several others in smaller sums, making in all £816. 16s. Scots. William
Stirling, bailie-depute of the regality of Glasgow, who imposed these
fines, received a gift of them for his zeal and exertions.[165]
Footnote 165:
While the rulers were plundering the best in the land, solely because
they were the best, they were no less anxious to protect those who
were at least not the most worthy; but they were their own minions.
The universal profligacy of manners which had been introduced at the
Restoration, appears to have been followed by its natural consequence,
an almost universal bankruptcy; for, when those who had wasted their
substance in riotous living could no longer supply their waste by the
plunder of the persecuted Presbyterians, they supported themselves for
a while by the scarcely less dishonourable shift of living upon their
creditors; then failing, and throwing themselves upon the crown.
Fountainhall notices some such circumstances as mere matters of
course:—“Provost George Drummond,” says he, “turnes bankrupt, as alsoe
George Drummond, town-treasurer, [and] Drummond of Carlourie; and the
Chancellor gets protections to them all, and to Skene of Hallyards in
Louthian, and John Johnstoun of Poltoun;” and he adds, in the same
business-like style, “William Seaton, in the life-guards, gets a gift
of 5000 merks he had discovered resting to Argyle.”
On the 4th of January, at the criminal court, Sir Duncan Campbell of
Auchinbreck and thirty-two more Argyleshire heritors, were forfeited for
joining with the Earl, and their estates were gifted chiefly to those of
the same family who had joined the royal party during the invasion,
although, as usual, the prelates and their relatives came in for a share
of the spoil, Campbell of Otter’s estate being gifted to Commissary
M’Lean, son to the Bishop of Argyle. Fountainhall adds, “there were
sundry apparent heirs amongst the forfeited, whose second brothers were
on the king’s side with Atholl. It were but charity to encourage them,
to make them donators to their brothers’ forfeitures.” On the same day,
the Earl of Lothian, brother-in-law to Argyle, was admitted a privy
councillor, with a pension of £300 per annum, given, it was said, in
reward of the great courage he displayed in the Dutch war, when fighting
under the king, then Duke of York; but rather, as the same author hints,
to engage his interest in the ensuing parliament. Protestant heritors
who had not taken the test were also ordered by his majesty to be
pursued and fined; but within a few days a letter came, postponing the
time for taking the test, and shortly after another dispensing with it
altogether in their favour during the king’s pleasure.
About this time, Mr Alexander Peden died (January 26th), full of
assurance of faith, and was privately interred in the churchyard of
Auchinleck. He was certainly an extraordinary man, whose memory was long
cherished in the south and west of Scotland with fond affection, and
where he had laboured long and faithfully and with much success. A
little before the Restoration, he was settled as minister at New Luce,
in Galloway, where he remained about three years, till he was thrust out
by the tyranny of the times. When about to depart, he lectured upon Acts
xx. from the 7th verse to the end, and preached in the forenoon from
these words—“Therefore, watch and remember, that for the space of three
years I ceased not to warn every man,” &c., asserting that he had
declared unto them the whole counsel of God, and professing he was free
from the blood of all men. In the afternoon, he preached from the 32d
verse; “And, now, brethren, I commend you to the word of his grace,”
&c.—a sermon which occasioned a great weeping in the church. Many times
he requested them to be silent; but they sorrowed most of all when he
told them they should never see his face in that pulpit again. He
continued till night; and when he closed the pulpit door, he knocked
three times on it with his Bible, saying each time—“I arrest thee in my
master’s name, that none ever enter thee but such as come in by the
door, as I have done.” And it is somewhat remarkable that neither curate
nor indulged entered that pulpit, which remained shut till it was opened
by a Presbyterian preacher at the Revolution. Yet it may be doubted
whether he would have thought that any one entering by that settlement,
did so exactly in the manner that he did. Some time before his death,
through the misrepresentations which were brought him, he had been much
alienated from James Renwick, and had spoken bitterly against him; but
when on his deathbed he sent for Mr Renwick, and asked if he was that Mr
Renwick there was so much noise about. “Father,” he replied, “my name is
James Renwick; but I have given the world no ground to make any noise
about me, for I have espoused no new doctrine.” He then gave him such an
account of his conversion and call to the ministry—of his principles and
the grounds of his contending against tyranny and defection—that Mr
Peden was satisfied, and expressed his sorrow for having given credit to
the reports that were spread against him.[166]
Footnote 166:
Ker of Kersland, in his memoirs, speaking of Mr Peden, says—“Abundance
of this good man’s predictions are well known to be already come to
pass. When he was sick unto death in the year 1686, he told his
friends that he should die in a few days; ‘but having,’ said be,
‘foretold many things which will require some time before they be
verified, I will give you a sign which will confirm your expectation,
that they will as surely come to pass as those you have already seen
accomplished before your eyes. I shall be decently buried by you; but
if my body be suffered to rest in the grave where you shall lay it,
then I have been a deceiver, and the Lord hath not spoken by me:
whereas, if the enemy come a little afterwards to take it up and carry
it away to bury it in an ignominious place, then I hope you will
believe that God Almighty hath spoken by me, and consequently there
shall not one word fall to the ground.’ Accordingly, about 40 days
after his interment, a troop of dragoons came, lifted his corpse,
carried them two miles to Cumnock, and buried them under the
gallows.”—Crookshanks, vol. ii. p. 320.—James Nisbet, in his memoirs,
states the same fact, p. 134.
The unflinching confessors of the truth in this day, like those in
primitive times, were often in perils among false brethren, and often
persecuted with the scourge of the tongue, even by some who were
suffering in the same cause. They were accused “of overturning the
Presbyterian government in the church, and substituting a loose kind of
independency, by committing the trial and censure of offences to persons
who were not office-bearers—of usurping the magistrates’ place in the
state, by constituting themselves a convention of estates, and managing
the civil affairs of their community by their edicts—and of disowning,
as silent and unfaithful, all ministers who cannot preach upon their
terms, there being not now, according to them, one minister in Scotland,
England, or Ireland, save one Mr James Renwick, who, by his own
confession in a letter to a friend in Ireland, is not one either.”
To this Mr Renwick, at the desire of the societies, replied—“That they
never committed the trial of ‘scandals’ to the people in a judicial way,
but only allowed them, when there were no church judicatories, to
withdraw privately from associating with those who erred, that they
might not partake of other men’s sins, but by this be a means of
reclaiming offending brethren; which certainly was not overturning
Presbyterian government, any more than their declining the authority of
tyrants was thrusting themselves into the magistrates’ room.” He added,
personally—“As to that, that by my own confession I am not a minister of
the church, I altogether deny. I said I am a minister wherever I have a
call from the people and do embrace it.—O! that all those who shall
agree together in heaven, were agreeing upon earth, I think if my blood
could be a mean to procure that, I could willingly offer it.”
A change having taken place in the cabinet about the end of the year,
the administration was now intrusted only to papists, chiefly to Perth
the chancellor, and his brother Melford, who had gained the king’s
entire confidence by embracing his religion, and the Earl of Murray,
another proselyte, who was appointed Commissioner to open the
parliament, from which was expected a repeal of those penal statutes his
ancestor, “the good regent,” had procured to be enacted against papists.
Preparatory to the sitting of parliament, the synod of Edinburgh met,
when its usual tranquil submissiveness was interrupted by a
contrariety of sentiment respecting the test; some contending for it,
and others urging toleration to all who differed in judgment,
insinuating a charitable accommodation with the papists. Paterson,
bishop of Edinburgh, who had lately returned from London, gratified by
a pension of £200 sterling, told them that the king would defend their
religion, and only craved the exercise of his own for those of his
persuasion in private, which he said could not be denied him, because
he might take it by his prerogative of church supremacy, asserted by
parliament 1669. He further told them that the Archbishop of St
Andrews (Ross) and himself had got ample power to suspend and deprive
any that preached sedition, _i. e._ impugned the king’s religion, even
though they should be bishops. Mr George Shiels, minister at
Prestonhaugh, was sharply reproved “for that he declaimed rudely
against popery in the Abbey church on the preceding Sunday, having
said the Pope was as little infallible as the Bishop of the Isles”—who
was one of the silliest in the world—“and that he would believe the
moon to be made of green cheese, and swallow it, as soon as he would
believe in transubstantiation.”
Parliament met, April 29th. In his letter, the king was perfectly
explicit. After hanging out the lure of a free trade with England, and
an indemnity for his greatest enemies themselves, _i. e._ the consistent
Presbyterians, he came to the point:—“Whilst we show these acts of mercy
to the enemies of our person, crown, and royal dignity, WE cannot be
unmindful of others, our innocent subjects, those of the Roman Catholic
religion, who have, with the hazard of their lives and fortunes, been
always assistant to the crown in the worst of rebellions and
usurpations, though they lay under discouragements hardly to be named:
Them we do heartily recommend to your care, that they may have the
protection of our laws, and that security under our government, which
others of our subjects have, not suffering them to lie under obligations
which their religion cannot admit of.”
The Commissioner enforced this communication by what he must have
thought an irresistible argument. He informed the house that he was
instructed to give the royal assent to any acts prohibiting the
importation of Irish cattle, horses, and victual, or any measures which
might prevent smuggling these articles into Scotland to the prejudice of
the landholders of the country! and likewise promised to authorise such
regulations as should secure exact payment to the tenantry from all his
officers and soldiers in their quarters, both local and transient, for
the future. In return, he expected that they would show themselves the
best and most affectionate subjects, to the best, the most incomparable,
and most heroic prince in the world!
The dutiful parliament humbly thanked the king for his care of the trade
of his ancient kingdom, and expressed their astonishment at his
clemency, testified in the offer of an indemnity to these desperate
rebels, who could have expected pardon from no monarch on earth but his
sacred majesty! and sincerely and heartily offered their lives and
fortunes for suppressing all such as should, upon any account or pretext
whatsoever, attempt either by private contrivance or open rebellion, to
disquiet his glorious reign. As to that part of the royal letter
relating to his subjects of the Roman Catholic religion, they promised,
in obedience to his majesty’s commands, to go as great lengths as their
consciences would allow, not doubting that his majesty would be careful
to secure the Protestant religion established by law. “This,” says
honest Wodrow, “is the first time since the Restoration I remember that
the parliament speak of their conscience.”
Their answer, however, was so little satisfactory at court, that
although the custom always had been to print these official documents,
it was not allowed to be printed; and within a few days the royal
displeasure was expressed against such as had opposed the Commissioner
in this affair. Sir George Mackenzie, lord advocate—who with rat-like
sagacity, when he perceived the vessel was sinking, had already shown a
disposition to leave her—was laid aside from an office he might curse
the day he ever was appointed to fill. Lord Pitmedden was removed from
the bench, and the Earl of Glencairn and Sir William Bruce from the
privy council. Glencairn was besides deprived of his pension, as was
also the Bishop of Dunkeld.—“Thir warning shots,” observes Sir John
Lauder, “were to terrify and divert other members of parliament from
their opposition.”
Could any inconsistency or tergiversation in unprincipled politicians
astonish us, we might well be amazed at the shamelessness of the parties
on this occasion. When a bill for repealing the penal statutes was
brought in, the papists—or Roman Catholics, as they were styled by their
foster-brethren the Scottish bishops, in compliment to the king—were now
strong advocates for liberty of conscience, contending that nothing can
bind the conscience as a divine law, which neither directly nor by clear
consequence is founded on the doctrine or practice of Christ or his
apostles, or of the primitive church; that no oath whatsoever can bind
or oblige to that which is sinful or unlawful to be done; and that for a
Christian magistrate to take away the life or estate of a subject who is
not guilty of sedition or rebellion, nor of injuring his neighbour, but
is quiet, and peaceable, and contents himself in the private exercise of
his own religion, merely for difference of opinion, is neither founded
on the doctrine or practice of our Saviour or his apostles, nor of the
church in the following ages, who never urged their kings or emperors,
when the empire became Christian, to take away the lives and fortunes of
open infidels and heathens who did worship stocks and stones, although
these idolatrous heathen, when they had power, did execute all manner of
cruelty against the Christians.
The Episcopalians, taking up the arguments of some of the first
reformers, asserted “that by the doctrine of the New as well as of the
Old Testament, the magistrate beareth not the sword in vain, for he is
the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doth
evil. Idolaters are ranked among the very chief of evil-doers; and John
foretells it as that which God requires of, and approves in, the king’s
of the earth, in times of reformation, that they shall hate the
Babylonish whore, and make her desolate and naked, and shall burn her
with fire—a just punishment upon her who made and cruelly executed laws
for burning to death the innocent saints of God! But the penal laws were
enacted merely for the safety of the religion of the country against
papists, who are not the meek lambs they pretend to be—as witness the
Irish massacre and the murderous conduct at present in France, towards
persons who were guilty of no rebellion, and who only sought to worship
God according to their conscience!”—It is impossible not to pause here
and ask, whether those who urged these reasons for keeping papists out
of power, had no sense of shame, or no memory—whether they did not
recollect, that, for more than twenty-five years, they had been pursuing
exactly the same course towards their own Protestant brethren in
Scotland?
During the first month of the session, the Commissioner was incessant in
his attention to the nobles and leading men, and liberal both of his
promises and threatenings, but all he could prevail upon them to consent
to, was a bill for allowing Roman Catholics “the exercise of their
religion in private houses—all public worship being excluded—without the
danger of incurring sanguinary or other punishments contained in any
laws or acts of parliament against the same.” But as such a restricted
liberty would not satisfy the king, it was dropped; and an act in favour
of the heir of Argyle, who had been prevailed upon to profess the royal
religion, closed the session.
Several of the bishops had strenuously opposed the repeal, clearly
perceiving that their craft was in danger, because, had the papists
obtained power, they would not long have retained their livings without
apostatizing from their religion; others were prepared to go every
length to please the king and keep their places. Nor is it perhaps
judging too harshly, to say, that if the alternative of allowing liberty
to Presbyterians, or themselves turning papists, had been offered them,
they would have chosen the latter, such appeared to be their hatred at
what they called the fanatical rigidity of the former.[167]
Footnote 167:
The methods of solicitation to obtain consent to this act were very
strange and extraordinary. The laying aside of men from their places,
who could have no interest but serving their consciences—commanding
Mar, Ross, Kilsyth, Sir John Dalziel, &c. to their charges, but they
offered to give up their commissions—the imprisoning my two servants,
I being a member of parliament—the importunities used by Sir William
Paterson and others in concussing members of parliament—their dealing
with members not clear to stay away or go home, and then prolonging
the meeting to weary out the poorer sort, who had exhausted both their
money and credit—and lastly, the letters were one post all broken up
and searched, to see if any correspondence or intelligence could be
discovered between Scotland and England.—Fountainhall’s Decis. vol. i.
p. 419.—The burrows, because they were obstinate against the court
party, could justly expect no favour. They never were so unanimous in
any parliament as in this, but formerly depending on noblemen: and
therefore some called this an independent parliament.—Ib. p. 418.
Defeated in parliament, contrary to all expectation, James determined to
carry through his favourite project by the power of his prerogative.
First, he re-modelled his privy council, turning out the most stubborn
opponents, as the Earls of Mar, Lothian, and Dumfries, with other
decided Protestants, and introducing the Duke of Gordon, the Earls of
Traquair and Seaforth, and other papists in their room, dispensing, by
his own absolute authority, with their taking the test. To them he most
undisguisedly communicated his royal intentions in the plainest language
of tyrannical assumption:—“It was not any doubt WE had of our power in
putting a stop to the unreasonable severities of the acts of parliament
against those of the Roman Catholic religion, that made us bring in OUR
designs to our parliament, but to give our loyal subjects a new
opportunity of showing their duty to US, in which we promised ourselves
their hearty and dutiful concurrence, as what was founded on that solid
justice we are resolved to distribute to all, and consequently to our
Catholic subjects. And to the end the Catholic worship may, with the
more decency and security, be exercised in Edinburgh, we have thought
fit to establish our chapel within our palace of Holyrood-house, and to
appoint a number of chaplains and others whom we require you to have in
your special protection and care. You are likewise to take care that
there be no preachers nor others suffered to insinuate to the people any
fears or jealousies, as if we intended to make any violent alteration;
and if any shall be so bold, you are to punish them accordingly; for it
is far from our thoughts to use any violence in matters of conscience,
consistent with our authority and the peace of our ancient kingdom.”
Still Mr Renwick was the Mordecai in the gate. He kept the fields, and
continued to pursue his course steadfastly, notwithstanding the
calumnies to which he was exposed, and the opposition he met with from
several of the other persecuted ministers, and the dissensions among
some who attended his ministry. About the end of the year, as he was
preaching through Galloway, a protestation was presented to him by
William M’Hutchison, in the name of all the professors between the
rivers Dee and Cree, lamenting the woful effects of their divisions, and
the adherence of so many to him without the consent and approbation of
the remnant of godly and faithful ministers, and referring and
submitting themselves in all these to an assembly of faithful ministers
and elders. He retorted, “The divisions had arisen from those
Presbyterian ministers who changed their commission and exercised their
ministry under this abjured antichristian prelacy: from others, who took
a new holding of their ministry from an arrogated headship over the
church, by accepting indulgences, warrants, and restrictions from the
usurper of their Master’s crown: from others, who have been unfaithful
in not applying their doctrine against the prevailing sins of our day:
from others, who have satisfied themselves to lie by from the exercise
of their ministry, and desisted from the work of the Lord, and that when
his vineyard stood most in need: and, he adds, from others, who have
carried on or countenanced hotch-potch confederacies with malignants,
and sectaries, and temporizing compilers.”[168] But he was strengthened
and comforted by the accession of two efficient coadjutors in his
work—Mr David Houston from Ireland, and Alexander Shiels, who had
escaped from the Bass, where he had been a considerable time confined.
On the 9th of December, a proclamation was issued, offering a reward of
£100 sterling to any who should bring him in dead or alive. In the end
of the month, David Steil, in the parish of Lesmahago, was surprised in
the fields by Lieutenant Crichton; and after he had surrendered upon
promise of safety, was barbarously shot.
Footnote 168:
This last accusation seems rather strained, as at this time there were
no sectaries visible in Scotland, except Quakers or Gibbites, with
neither of whom did the indulged confederate. In England and upon the
borders, it is true, the good persecuted ministers united together,
without much regard to church government, which the state of the times
did not permit being very strictly observed among the sufferers, who
appear to have practically adopted the general principle of the people
judging of the character and qualifications of the ministers they
heard, and of the consistent conduct of those with whom they held
communion.—_vide_ Memoirs of Veitch and Brysson.
[1687.] James’s precipitation in forcing popery upon his people appeared
so impolitic, that even a jesuit missionary thought he made too great
haste; but he told him he would either convert England or die a martyr;
and, when one of his popish lords gently remonstrated with him,
replied—“I am growing old, and must take large steps, else, if I should
happen to die, I might perhaps leave you in a worse condition than I
found you.” Yet with a strange inconsistency, he allowed both his
daughters to be educated in the Protestant faith; and when he was asked
why he was so little concerned about their conversion, replied—“God will
take care of that!” But he had introduced shoals of seminary priests and
jesuits for the instruction of his other subjects; and, while he
interdicted the Presbyterian ministers from preaching or publishing any
thing against his religion, under pain of treason, he employed these
emissaries of Rome in every quarter; and having appointed Watson, a
papist, his printer, assiduously caused publications in favour of popery
to be widely disseminated. His most powerful argument, however, was,
bestowing the chief places upon papists, especially converts, which
induced many of the nobility and gentry to apostatize; and, like all
apostates, they became the bitterest persecutors of the faith they had
forsaken.
Mr Renwick and his hearers continued to be the objects of unmitigated
hatred, in proportion as they continued to hold fast their integrity and
preach the gospel. Two persons returning from hearing him, James
Cunningham, merchant, and John Buchanan, cooper in Glasgow, were seized,
sent prisoners to Edinburgh, and banished to Barbadoes;[169] and, on the
17th of February, the council received a letter from the king, in which
he expressed his highest indignation against these enemies of
Christianity, as well as government and human society, the
field-conventiclers, whom he recommended to the council to root out with
all the severity of the laws, and the most vigorous prosecution of the
forces, it being equally his and his people’s concern to be rid of them.
At the same time, he sent a royal proclamation, allowing, “by OUR
sovereign authority, prerogative, royal and absolute power,” moderate
Presbyterians and quakers to meet in their private houses, but to hear
such ministers only as have accepted or are willing to accept the
toleration without explanation; and in like manner, by the same absolute
power, he suspended all laws and acts of parliament, and other
proceedings, against Roman Catholics, so that they should in all time
coming, not only be as free as Protestants to exercise their religion,
but to enjoy all offices, benefices, &c., which he should think proper
to bestow, upon their taking an oath acknowledging him as rightful king
and supreme governor of Scotland, England, France, and Ireland, and over
all persons therein, and that they would never resist his power or
authority; at the same time, he declared he would never suffer violence
to be offered to any man’s conscience, nor use force or invincible
necessity against any man on account of his persuasion. This, which was
termed the first indulgence, did not pass the council unanimously. The
Duke of Hamilton, and the Earls of Panmure and Dundonald, refused to
sanction it; for which the Duke was reprimanded and the two Earls
dismissed the board; and as a practical exposition of its real meaning,
sixteen men and five women were shortly after, in the month of April,
banished to America, because they would not own the present authority to
be according to the word of God, nor engage never to hear Mr Renwick
preach.
Footnote 169:
Perhaps it does not belong exactly to _religious_ persecution, but as
it is a curious trait of the times, I quote the following:—“Reid the
mountebank pursues Scot of Harden and his lady for stealing away from
him a little girl, called the tumblin-lassie, that danced upon his
stage; and he claimed damages and produced a contract, whereby he
bought her from her mother for £30 Scots. But we have no slaves in
Scotland, and mothers cannot sell their bairns; and physicians
attested the employment of tumblin would kill her; and her joints were
now grown stiff, and she declined to return; though she was at least a
prentice, and so could not run away from her master: yet some cited
Moses’ law, that if a servant shelter himself with thee against his
master’s cruelty, thou shalt surely not deliver him up. The lords
_renitente cancellario_, in opposition to the Chancellor, assoilzied
Harden.”—Fountainhall’s Decis. vol. i. p. 440. A few days after, his
lordship adds, “Reid the mountebank is received into the popish
church, and one of his blackamores was persuaded to accept of baptism
from the popish priests, and to turn christian papist, which was a
great trophy. He was called James, after the king, the chancellor, and
the Apostle James.”—Ibid. p. 441.
None of these indulgences satisfied fully the Presbyterian ministers,
while they were decidedly testified against by the denounced wanderers.
Another was therefore issued, July 5th, to palliate the former, giving
them leave to meet and serve God after their own way, be it in private
houses, chapels, or places purposely built or set apart for that use;
while it again denounced the full vigour of the law and of the army
against such as should be guilty of field-conventicles; “for which,
after this our royal grace and favour—which surpasses the hopes and
equals the very wishes of the most zealously concerned—there is not the
least shadow of excuse left!”
On the 20th, the Presbyterian ministers from various parts of the
country met at Edinburgh, and agreed to accept the benefit of the new
toleration; but an address of thanks to the king, “for granting them the
liberty of the public and peaceable exercise of their ministerial
functions without any hazard,” was not carried without considerable
opposition. Upon this, many of the exiles returned from Holland, and
among them Mr Patrick Warner, to whom the Prince of Orange, at parting,
gave the following significant advice:—“I understand you are called home
upon the liberty granted there; but I can assure you that liberty is not
granted from any favour or kindness to you or your party, but from
favour to papists and to divide you among yourselves; yet I think you
may be so wise as to take the good of it and prevent the evil designed,
and, instead of dividing, come to a better harmony among yourselves,
when you have liberty to see one another and meet freely together.”
The wanderers, as they were excepted, so they disregarded the
toleration. Persecution had made them cling closer to their principles.
They refused to accept as a favour what they believed themselves
entitled to claim as a right—the liberty of worshipping God according to
their conscience—and they published their reasons:—They could not have
any transactions with a person whose principles bound him to keep no
faith with heretics, and whose dissimulation they had already detected.
They considered accepting toleration from him as bargaining with an
apostate, excommunicated, bigoted papist, and as such under the
Mediator’s malediction, “yea, heir to his own grandfather’s [James VI.]
imprecations, who wished the curse of God to fall upon such of his
posterity as should at any time turn papists. They renounced him as a
magistrate, because he had not taken the oath constitutionally required;
and to accept this toleration flowing from his absolute power, would be
acknowledging a power inconsistent with the law of God and the liberties
of mankind; for, though nothing can be more desirable than when true
liberty is established by the government, nothing can be more vile than
when true religion is tolerated under the notion of a crime, and its
exercise only allowed under certain restrictions.” As to the address of
thanks by the ministers, they considered it “a train of fulsome
flatteries, dishonourable to God, the reproach of his cause, the
betraying of the church, the detriment of the nation, and the exposing
of themselves to contempt.”
The conduct of the government, amid all their professions of toleration,
fully warranted the worst suspicions of the persecuted. On the 25th
July, John Anderson, younger of Wastertown, was indicted before the
court of justiciary, for having in a tavern, over a glass of wine,
argued in favour of using defensive arms against tyrants, and, by an
execrable majority of that degraded tribunal, condemned to die. He was
not executed, but the stain of the sentence remains upon the memories of
the servile senators who pronounced it. And this was followed on the 5th
October by a proclamation, not only forbidding all field-conventicles,
under the usual penalty, but even indulged ministers, from preaching in
houses, unless they observed the prescribed directions; that is, unless
they abstained from exposing or in any way reflecting upon the king’s
religion, _i. e._ the errors of popery; and on the 18th, by another, all
officers, civil and military, were ordered to apprehend James Renwick,
and assured of the sum of £100 sterling for taking him dead or alive—a
high price! but so cautious had he been, that he had eluded fifteen
desperate searches made after him within five months since the first
toleration, which exasperated the rulers beyond measure.
The year ONE THOUSAND SIX HUNDRED AND EIGHTY-EIGHT—a year greatly to be
remembered as the last in the annals of the persecution in Scotland—was
ushered in by a circumstance which threatened to rivet their chains upon
the Presbyterians, but which in the good providence of God was the means
of accelerating their deliverance. On the 2d of January, the Queen’s
pregnancy was announced; and the 29th was ordered to be observed as a
day of thanksgiving in the diocese of Edinburgh, where the clergy were
commanded to pray, after this form, for “Our gracious Queen Mary:—Good
Lord, strengthen her, we beseech thee, and perfect what thou hast begun.
Command thy holy angels to watch over her continually, and defend her
from all dangers and evil accidents, that what she has conceived may be
happily brought forth to the joy of our sovereign lord the king, the
further establishment of his crown, the happiness and welfare of the
whole kingdom, and the glory of thy great name!” The papists, who
pronounced the conception miraculous in answer to a vow the Queen had
made to the lady of Loretto, prophecied that the promised birth would be
a son. The Protestants sighed in secret, and began to whisper their
suspicions of a fraud.
On the 17th, Mr Renwick published a testimony against the toleration and
in vindication of field-meetings, the convening of which he contended
was a testimony for the headship, honour, and princely prerogative of
Jesus—“Since in these meetings there is a particular declaration of our
holding our ministry and the exercise thereof from Christ alone, without
any dependence on, subordination to, or license from, his usurping
enemies;” and this testimony he was shortly after called upon to seal
with his blood. From Edinburgh he went to Fife and preached several
Sabbaths, then re-crossed the Firth, and upon the 29th of January,
preached his last sermon at Borrowstounness; thence he returned to the
capital, where he arrived on the 31st, under cloud of night. Having gone
to a friend’s house on the Castle-hill, who dealt in English wares, a
custom-house officer, Thomas Justice, was informed by one of his spies
that a stranger had arrived; and early next morning he came with some
others on pretence of searching for prohibited goods. Mr Renwick hearing
the noise, came out of his room, when the officer standing at the door
exclaimed—“My life for it, this is Mr Renwick!” on which Mr Renwick went
to another door, and finding it also beset, fired a pistol to terrify
his pursuers, and was attempting his escape, when he received a severe
blow on the breast, that stunned him; and he fell several times as he
was running, and was taken. He was carried directly to the guard-house,
and from thence to a committee of the privy council, who ordered him
immediately to be laid in irons.
Previously to his being indicted, he was examined in Viscount Tarbet’s
chamber, when he undauntedly maintained his principles, disclaiming the
idea that lineal descent alone gave a right to the crown, and disowning
especially the authority of James as a papist, who had never taken the
Scottish coronation oath, and therefore could not legally reign;
justifying the non-payment of cess, as it was an impost levied for
suppressing the gospel; and asserting the right of carrying arms at
field-meetings as necessary self-defence. On every point about which he
was questioned, he answered with an openness which greatly softened his
inquisitors, and saved him the torture. He received his indictment on
the 3d of February, charging him with having cast off the fear of God
and all regard to his majesty’s laws; of having entered into the society
of rebels of most damnable and pernicious principles, and become so
desperate a villain, as openly to preach in the fields these his
treasonable doctrines. On the 8th he was brought to the bar of the
justiciary.[170] When asked whether he pled guilty or not guilty to his
libel, he answered that he acknowledged all “except where it is said, I
have cast off all fear of God; that I deny: for it is because I fear to
offend God, and violate his law, that I am here standing ready to be
condemned.” Being asked if he had any objections to the jury, he made
none, but protested “that none might sit on his assize that professed
Protestant or Presbyterian principles, or an adherence to the covenanted
work of reformation.” He was found guilty on his own confession, and
sentenced to be executed on the 10th. Lord Linlithgow, justice-general,
asked if he desired longer time. He answered, it was all one to him; if
it was protracted, it was welcome; if it was shortened, it was welcome:
his master’s time was the best.
Footnote 170:
The following note is appended to his life in the last edition of the
Scots Worthies, Glas. 1827. p. 541:—“It is to be remarked, that many
of the jury were professors and eminent in the tolerated meetings;
while others, even of the malignants, chose rather to run the hazard
of the penalty;—as the Laird of Torrance, who compeared not, and
Sommerville, chamberlain of Douglas, who, though he appeared, yet when
he saw Mr Renwick turn about and direct his speech to them, ran away,
saying—‘He trembled to think to take away the life of such a
pious-like man, though they should take his whole estate.’”
Many efforts were made to induce the youthful suffer to comply. He was
reprieved to the 17th. Paterson, bishop of Edinburgh, appears to have
interested himself much on his behalf. He often visited him, and applied
for another reprieve, which would have been readily granted, provided Mr
Renwick would only have petitioned. “Will you kill yourself with your
own hands?” asked the bishop, “when you may have your life upon so easy
terms.” He replied, he acted not rashly but deliberately, and was fully
convinced that the truths for which he suffered were sufficient points
to suffer for. The bishop took his leave, expressing his sorrow for his
being so tenacious, and afterwards offered to serve him to the utmost of
his power. Mr Renwick thanked him for his civility, but knew nothing he
could do, or that he could desire. Mr Macnaught, a curate, visited him,
robed in his canonicals—an insult which Mr Renwick appeared to feel, but
took it calmly. When asked his opinion respecting the toleration and
those that accepted it, he declared he was against it; but as for those
that embraced it, he judged them godly men. He was also visited by some
popish priests who essayed his conversion, but he peremptorily ordered
them to be gone.
On the morning of his execution, the goodman of the tolbooth, _i. e._
head jailer, begged that on the scaffold he would not mention the cause
of his death, and forbear all reflections. Mr Renwick told him that what
God gave him to speak, that he would speak, and nothing else, and
nothing less. The jailer said he might still have his life, if he would
but sign that petition which he offered him. Mr Renwick replied, that he
had never read in Scripture or history of martyrs petitioning for their
lives when called to suffer for the truth; and in present circumstances,
he judged it would be found a receding from the truth and declining a
testimony for Christ. His mother and sisters, who had been kept away, at
length obtained liberty to see him. He exhorted them much to prepare for
death, expressing his own joyful assurance of endless glory. Observing
his mother weep, he exhorted her to remember that they who loved any
thing better than Christ were not worthy of him. If ye love me, rejoice
that I am going to my Father, to obtain the enjoyment of what eye hath
not seen, ear hath not heard, nor hath it entered into the mind of man
to conceive. When the signal drum beat, he joyfully exclaimed—“Yonder
the welcome warning to my marriage; the Bridegroom is coming—I am
ready—I am ready.”
Then, after taking an affectionate leave of his mother and sisters, he
was carried to the low council-house. Here he was offered any minister
he chose to be with him, but he preferred being attended by a friend
then in company, and proceeded cheerfully to the Grassmarket, surrounded
by an immense multitude, which was the greater, that executions had not
been so frequent of late. On the scaffold, he sang the 103d Psalm and
read Revelations, chap. xix. Then he prayed, commending his soul to the
Lord through the Redeemer, and his cause to be vindicated in his own
good time. He blessed the Lord for the honour of the crown of
martyrdom—an honour the angels are not capable of! Being disturbed in
his devotions, he regretted the circumstance, but continued with
ennobling anticipation. “By and by I shall be above these clouds, and
enjoy, and worship, and glorify thee without interruption or
intermission for ever.” After he had finished, he addressed the people,
and stated the heads of his testimony, in terms similar to what he had
used before the council, adding—“Ye that are the people of God, do not
weary in maintaining the testimony of the day in your stations and
places; and whatever you do, make sure an interest in Christ, for there
is a storm coming which will try your foundations. And you that are
strangers to God, break off your sins by repentance, else I will be a
sad witness against you in the day of the Lord.” Here he was ordered to
stop and go up the ladder. There he prayed again, and was heard to
say—“Lord, I die in the faith that thou wilt not leave Scotland, but
that thou wilt make the blood of thy witnesses to be the seed of thy
church, and return again and be glorious in this land.” When the napkin
was tying over his head, he said to his friend—“Farewell, be diligent in
duty, make your peace with God through Christ. There is a great trial
coming to the remnant I leave. I have committed them to God. Tell them
from me not to weary nor be discouraged in maintaining the testimony.
Let them not quit nor forego one of these despised truths. Keep your
ground, and the Lord will provide you teachers and ministers; and when
he comes he will make all these despised truths glorious upon the
earth.” He was turned over the ladder with these words upon his
lips—“Lord, into thy hands I commit my spirit; for thou hast redeemed
me, O God of truth!”
Thus fell a standard-bearer in the Scottish Zion, at the early age of
twenty-six—the last legal murder during this black period. Cut off in
the prime of life and in the midst of usefulness, the death of this
faithful witness appeared a dark dispensation; but as he himself had
anticipated, it did more service to the good cause than his preaching
might have done, even had his life been prolonged many years; because,
being perpetrated by a government which made strong professions of
liberality, the question naturally arose, How far can we trust specious
profession in political men, without not only legal but _bona fide_
security for our rights? The principles for which he died were the
principles which the Revolution sanctioned and settled; and wo to the
country should they ever be despised or forgotten; and those principles
which by the “conform ministers” were deemed “heights,” have since been
declared the only bases upon which the best and the most thoroughly
tried practical system of national and personal freedom can stand:—the
obligation of the original compact [_i. e._ the coronation vow] between
a king and a people, and the accountability of both the contracting
parties. The less, however, such subjects are theoretically agitated the
better—nor will they ever be violently urged, except when they are
practically forgotten—but it was to the unshaken assertion of these
principles, invigorated and chastened by principles of religion, that we
owe the liberty we now enjoy—a liberty far beyond what any of the famed
republics of old ever possessed, and which will only perish when these
foundations are destroyed.
After the death of Mr Renwick, Mr Alexander Shiels, author of “The Hind
let Loose,” continued to preach in the fields to the indomitable
wanderers, who, immoveably attached to the covenanted work of
reformation, refused to be ensnared by any precarious liberty which they
rightly judged was only intended to pave the way for the introduction of
popery; or receive any favour from a papistical usurper, who, by the
fundamental laws of the country, was constitutionally excluded from the
throne; and their conduct was more than justified by the treatment their
compliant brethren received. There now, however, began to appear some
streaks in the sky—some dawnings of the coming day.
The Rev. John Hardy, M.D., minister at Gordon,[171] had in a sermon,
last year, used some such expression as the following:—“They thanked his
majesty for the toleration; but if they behoved to take away the laws
against popery, sectarianism, &c., it were better to want it, and that
any that consented to it, Zechariah’s flying roll of curses would enter
the house and eat the stones and timber.” He was dealt with, says
Fountainhall, to retract, which not finding liberty to do, he was
continued [_i. e._ his case was delayed] with a reprimand. But, on the
22d November, a letter came from the king “ordaining him to be panelled
criminally before the justices for his preaching,” on which he was
imprisoned, as “he would not fly, though he had leisure and
advertisement.” On February 13, this year, an indictment was raised
against him, for using seditious expressions and leasing-making,
endeavouring to alienate the affections of the people from the king. He
replied, “that upon Presbyterian principles, idolatry, even under the
gospel, is punishable by death, and that popery is such. That the
expressions had no sedition in them, seeing that he might regret that
Socinians and others had liberty to vent their doctrine against Christ’s
deity, &c.;” and the criminal lords, who appear to have had some
prognostications of the coming change, “took the courage to find the
expressions libelled not relevant to infer sedition,” therefore
assoilzied him from the crimes libelled, and liberated him from prison.
One Bold was indicted for having acted as precentor to Mr Renwick, and
condemned to be hanged, but was reprieved; and Gilbert Elliot, who had
been forfeited for engaging with Argyle, was not only pardoned, but
admitted as an advocate.
Footnote 171:
Several of the young men who intended the ministry, went over to
Holland and studied medicine, and took degrees, and thus got their
education without taking tests; but they had contracted a liberality
(or, as it was termed, a looseness) of sentiment with regard to the
rigid principles held by the wanderers, which occasioned a separation
between them when they returned. The wanderers were naturally more
wedded to the principles for which they had suffered so much, and
which they had seen so many seal with their blood. The others had met
with a variety of sects in Holland living in harmony, and were not
over zealous for the uniform profession even of their beloved
Presbytery:—on this they split at the Revolution.
On the 17th, Sir George Mackenzie was restored to his lord-advocateship;
but no criminal informations were lodged during the short time that
intervened between his appointment “and the glorious Revolution,” though
several petty vexatious harassments showed that the tiger was only
asleep, not dead. The Rev. Thomas Cobham, a native of Dundee, was, on
the 23d May, imprisoned for having performed family-worship at his
cousin Mr Smith’s, in that town, and both were committed to jail for the
offence. About the same time, the council issued a proclamation,
forbidding booksellers to disseminate any treatises tending to alienate
the people from his majesty, or vend any translations of “Buchanan de
Jure Regni,” “Lex Rex,” “Jus Populi,” “Naphtali,” “The Apologetical
Relation,” “The Hind let Loose,” and the treasonable proclamations
published at Sanquhar, or those issued by the late Monmouth or Argyle.
At Edinburgh, one of the councillors went into the shop of Mr Glen, a
firm Presbyterian, to search for the proscribed books, but having found
none, when retiring, asked the bookseller if he had any books against
the king’s religion. Mr Glen said he had a great many. The councillor
asked to see them, and was immediately carried to where a goodly stock
of Bibles were lying. “O! these are Bibles!” quoth the councillor.
“True,” replied the other, “and they are all against popery from the
beginning to the end.” For this the bookseller was summoned before the
council, where he appeared the same afternoon, and was, we are told,
brought to some trouble.
In nothing, however, did the ruling powers relax with regard to the
wanderers. Having learned that a Mr David Houston had been proposed by
the societies to succeed Mr Renwick in his perilous labours in the
fields, he was apprehended in Ireland and brought prisoner to Scotland.
Being ordered to Edinburgh, a general meeting which had convened at
Lother’s, heard of his seizure, and fearing he would be murdered as
Renwick had been, determined “to relieve him from these bloody
murderers;” and immediately a few friends, armed, attacked the party
escorting him at Carbelpath, and, after a sharp skirmish, in which some
soldiers were killed, succeeded in rescuing him; but he having his feet
bound under the horse’s belly, was knocked over in the scuffle, and his
head trailed some time on the ground before he could be unloosed, by
which he lost his teeth, and was otherwise so much wounded about the
head, that his elocution was rendered very indistinct. So he returned to
Ireland, and there died. The last whose blood was shed, was George Wood,
a youth about sixteen years of age, who was wantonly shot, without any
questions being asked, by one John Reid, a trooper, whose only excuse
when challenged for it, was—“He knew him to be a Whig, and these ought
to be shot wherever they were found!”
Shortly after, the news of William Prince of Orange’s landing in England
reached Scotland; and to the honour of the persecuted, be it recorded,
the Revolution was accomplished without bloodshed, or any one act of
retaliation being inflicted by them, notwithstanding all they had
suffered.
THE END.
----------------------------
EDINBURGH: PRINTED BY HUGH PATON, ADAM SQUARE.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
● Transcriber’s Notes:
○ New original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the
public domain.
○ Missing or obscured punctuation was silently corrected.
○ Typographical errors were silently corrected.
○ Unbalanced quote marks were fixed when the location of missing
close quote was clear.
○ Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation were made consistent only
when a predominant form was found in this book.
○ Text that:
was in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_).
○ The use of a caret (^) before a letter, or letters, shows that the
following letter or letters was intended to be a superscript, as
in S^t Bartholomew or 10^{th} Century.