The church was now in the highest power--every vestige of episcopacy
banished, popery treated as a crime, the doctrine of the headship
of Christ in full paramountcy, and enabling the clergy to exercise
an unlimited authority over the external religious practice and
professions of the community. It was ruled that each head of a family
should conduct worship and reading of the Scriptures daily in his
house, catechise, reprove, and exhort amongst his children, servants,
and dependents. On Sunday, after private devotions by the several
members of the family, and a general service in the parlour, the
master was to take care that all within his charge repaired to public
worship. This being finished--in those days it lasted many hours--he
was to exercise the family on what they had heard, and the remainder of
the day was to be spent in ‘reading, meditation, and secret prayer.’
Diligence and ‘sincerity’ in these duties were strongly enjoined, and
individuals were encouraged to confer with and prompt one another on
religious subjects. But it was forbidden that families should meet
together for religious exercises, as it had been found that such
practices tended to schism.[135]
It may be remarked, that the ministrations of the parochial ministers
were not then confined to two services on Sunday. In Edinburgh, after
March 1650, there was ‘a lectorie’ every afternoon in the week at four
o’clock, the ministers of the city taking the duty by turns. ‘Which did
much good to the soul and body, the soul being edified and fed by the
Word, and the body withhalden from unnecessar _bebbing_ [drinking],
whilk at that hour of the day was in use and custom.’--_Nic._
[Sidenote: 1650.]
The morals of the flock were superintended with something beyond
pastoral care. Promiscuous dancing was strictly prohibited. For ‘the
downbearing of sin,’ women were not allowed to act as waiters in
taverns, ‘but allenarly men-servands and boys.’[136] An elder had a
certain little district assigned to him, which he carefully inspected
once a month. Any scandalous sin which he discovered, or even the
existence of any stranger without a certificate of character, he had
to report to the kirk-session. The being drunk, or the utterance of
a profane word, inferred kirk-discipline. The inspecting elder was
also to take cognizance of how everybody spent his time on Sunday. For
acts of a licentious character, both sexes were alike punished in the
manner most likely to mortify persons of a sensitive nature. Whatever
their quality, they had to stand three Sundays in sackcloth before
the congregation. A second fault brought the same punishment for six
Sundays; a third kept the delinquent on the seat of shame for half a
year. That all this was done in honour and sincerity, and not primarily
from the love of power, is shewn by the impartial severity which the
clergy exercised upon each other; regarding not only moral aberrations,
but such faults as that of conversing with ‘malignants’ (persons
inclined to be loyal to the king without regard to the terms of the
Solemn League and Covenant), and any shortcoming in efficiency either
as preachers or as disciplinarians.
‘None of the clergy in those days,’ says one of their successors in
the next age, ‘durst be scandalous in their conversation, or negligent
in their office.... In many places the spirit seemed to be poured out
with the word.... There were no fewer than sixty aged people, men and
women, who went to school, that even then they might be able to read
the Scripture with their own eyes. I have lived many years in a parish
where I never heard an oath, and you might have rid many miles before
you heard any.... You could not have lodged in a family where the Lord
was not worshipped by reading, singing, and public prayer. Nobody
complained more of our church-government than our taverners, whose
ordinary lamentation was, their trade was broke, people were become so
sober.’[137]
It is to be feared that Mr Kirkton wrote under the influence of that
palliative spirit with which we are apt to look back upon a past age or
upon the days of our youth, for, undoubtedly, strong evidences exist
that the period now under review was not free from great vices and
criminalities of a very deep shade. The diarist John Nicoll mentions,
under February 1650, that ‘Much falset and cheating was detected at
this time by the Lords of Session; for the whilk there was daily
hanging, scourging, nailing of lugs [ears] and binding of people to the
Tron [the public weighing-machine in Edinburgh], and boring of tongues;
so that it was ane fatal year for false notars and witnesses, as daily
experience did witness.’
[Sidenote: 1650.]
Nicoll enumerates many of the offenders. One was John Lawson, of Leith,
who had taken a leading part in causing a house, left by one who died
of the plague, to come by a false service to one who had no claim
for it. ‘He was brought to the Tron betwixt eleven and twelve before
noon, and fast bund thereto, with ane paper on his head declaring his
fault.... His tongue was drawn out with ane turkes [pincers] by the
common hangman, and laid on ane little buird, ... and run through
with ane het iron or bodkin.’ Another delinquent was Thomas Hunter,
a writer, guilty of perjury; for which he was declared incapable of
‘agenting ony business within the house and college of justice.’
William Blair, ‘messer,’ was hanged ‘for sundry falsets committed by
him in his calling.’
[Sidenote: 1650.]
At the same time, gross offences connected with the affections never
abounded more, if we can believe Nicoll, than they did at this time.
Some of an indescribable kind appeared in an unheard-of frequency, and
continued indeed to do so all through the time of the Interregnum.
In Lamont’s _Diary_, the number of gentlemen in Fife who are stated
as having broken the seventh commandment during the time of the
Commonwealth, is surprisingly great. Even the sanctimonious Chancellor
Loudon himself had to give satisfaction to the kirk in 1651. The
writer of the Statistical Account of Melrose remarks the surprising
number of penitents which he finds in the session-books during the
seventeenth century--‘far exceeding the average of the present day,
when the population is nearly trebled.’ The churchmen of that period
themselves not merely admit, but loudly proclaim the extreme immorality
of their people, the following being cited, for example, among the
causes for a solemn fast in 1653: ‘the growth of sin of all sorts,
particularly pride, uncleanness, contempt of ordinances, oppression,
violence, fraudulent dealing--_maist part of the people growing worse
and worse_.’ We might set this down in great measure as the effect
of entertaining a high view of human duty, were it not for the many
facts which have been reported by diarists and others. In short, it
fully appears that human nature was not effectually restrained by
the rigorous discipline now temporarily reigning, but only shewed a
tendency to go into moral aberrations of an abnormal and horrible kind.
At the same time, the land was full of persecution on account of merely
sentimental offences--Catholic gentlemen forced to leave their native
country; moderate Presbyterians obliged to do penance, or else thrust
from their offices, for being concerned in the Duke of Hamilton’s final
expedition in behalf of the late king; corpses denied Christian burial
if their owners had not subscribed or adhered to the Covenant.[138]
‘There was ane honest man in Glasgow, called John Bryson, who, being
at the Mercat Cross of that city, and hearing a proclamation there,
and a declaration against the Marquis of Montrose, wherein he was
styled traitor and excommunicate rebel, did cry out and called him as
honest ane nobleman as was in this kingdom. The magistrates of that
town, being informed of his speeches, was forced to take and apprehend
him, and carried him to Edinburgh by ane guard of the town’s officers,
presented him to the Committee of State then sitting there; wha, by
their order, was casten into the Thieves’ Hole, wherein he lay in great
misery by the space of many weeks.’--_Nic._
* * * * *
[Sidenote: MAR.]
Throughout this and the ensuing two months, there ‘fell out much
unseasonable weather, the like whereof was not usual, for weets, cold,
frosts, and tempests.’--_Nic._
The same writer informs us that on the 28th of May, ‘there rained blood
the space of three miles in the Earl of Buccleuch’s bounds, near the
English Border; whilk was verified in presence of the Committee of
State.’
In the ensuing month there was an epidemic called the _Irish Ague_,
‘which was a terrible sore pain in the head, some saying that their
heads did open. The ordinary remedy was the hard tying up of their
head. A disease not before this known to the inhabitants of this
kingdom.’
Gerard Boate, physician to the parliamentary forces in Ireland, who
wrote about this time his _Natural History of Ireland_, specifies agues
among the _Endemii Morbi_ of that country, evidently alluding, in the
opinion of a living medical authority,[139] to the well-known Irish
typhoid fevers. This ailment, the flux, and plague, had prevailed to a
deplorable extent in Ireland during the time of the civil war.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: MAY 15.]
[Sidenote: 1650.]
‘The new Psalm-books were read and ordained to be sung through all the
kingdom.’--_Nic._ This was the translation of the Psalms which is still
used by the Church of Scotland and all Presbyterian congregations in
the kingdom. It was based on a homely version produced originally in
1643, by Francis Rous, a member of the Long Parliament, who ultimately
became provost of Eton, and died in 1658. What was rather odd, Rous was
at this time joined to the sectaries, against whom the Scotch church
entertained so bitter a feeling. It must be admitted that his version
underwent great improvements in the hands of the committees of the
General Assembly appointed for its revision. As now finally set forth,
it was in many respects most felicitous. The general strain and metre
is that of the old homely native ballad. It is occasionally harsh and
obscure, has a few Scottish idioms, and sometimes requires an obsolete
pronunciation to make out the prosody; yet, with all these obvious
faults, it perhaps comes nearer to the simple archaic beauty of the
original than any other metrical translation.[140]
* * * * *
[Sidenote: MAY 21.]
[Sidenote: 1650.]
The Marquis of Montrose, taken in an unsuccessful attempt to restore
the king without the ceremony of the Covenant, was hanged in Edinburgh
on a gibbet thirty feet high. The heroic firmness displayed at his
death harmonised well with the gallantry exhibited in his short but
brilliant career. It affords a striking idea of the taste of men of
the highest rank in that age, that the Marquis of Argyle appeared on a
balcony to see him driven on the hangman’s hurdle to the prison from
which he was two days after to walk to the gallows, and that Lord
Lorn took post at a window near the scaffold, to see the body cut to
pieces after death. The head being stuck on the Tolbooth of Edinburgh,
and the limbs sent for exhibition over the ports of Glasgow, Perth,
Stirling, and Aberdeen, Charles II. was compelled to behold those
ghastly relics of the most loyal of his subjects, when, less than a
month after, he progressed through the country. If Montrose had died
free of excommunication, his body would have been given to his friends;
as matters stood, it was inhumed beneath a gibbet at the Burgh-moor.
There was, however, a female heart that secretly wept for the untimely
end of the great marquis. His niece, Lady Napier, sent men by night who
dug up the body, and stole away the heart; and this relic she consigned
to a steel case made out of the hero’s sword, which again she enclosed
in a gold filagree box, which had been presented by a doge of Venice to
her husband’s grandfather, the inventor of the logarithms. It will be
found that, after the Restoration, when it became the fate of Argyle
and others to atone by their blood for the severities inflicted on
Montrose, the remains of the culprit of 1650 were gathered together
and treated with a funeral that might have been honourable to a king.
The heart and its case were, however, retained in the possession of
the Napier family for several generations, and only were lost sight of
amidst the confusions of the French Revolution.[141]
* * * * *
[Sidenote: JULY.]
Cromwell having crossed the Tweed with his army on the 22d of this
month, a large body of troops assembled on Leith Links to oppose him,
all animated with a good spirit in behalf of their king and country,
but unluckily not all equally sound in the faith of the Solemn League
and Covenant. Thousands were sent back, ‘to the discontentment of much
people.’ The leaders thought it safer to meet Cromwell with twenty
thousand who were of right principles, than with thirty thousand of
whom a third were merely patriotic and loyal. While the army, as honest
John Nicoll remarks, ‘stood daily in purging upon the Links,’ the young
king came to review them, and doubtless was right sorry to see so many
hearty soldiers turned away from his banners.
[Sidenote: 1650.]
A Glasgow citizen, full of zeal against the English army, as a type of
the abomination of toleration, came to this singular leaguer, but even
after all its purgation, did not find the service satisfactory. ‘While
Oliver Cromwell,’ he says, ‘is reported to be come over the Border with
his army, at my first hearing of it, I was so stirred in my spirit at
the evil of toleration, that I never remember that I attained to the
like again; and while I am pouring out my heart before the Lord on that
account, there is a thought darted in upon my heart, that I should be
healed of an impurity in my stomach which I had been under for several
years ... and it really proved so, as since that time I was never
troubled therewith.... That same morning, while I am casting up the
Bible, that place came first to my hand and eye which saith, “Though
Noah, Job, and Daniel would pray, yet would I not hear them.” Whereupon
I was exceedingly confounded in reference to our present case, and some
weeks thereafter, having gone to Leith to join myself to the forces
there, I dried up in my prayers so as I would pray none at all, and
was glad to take the first opportunity that offered to retire.... When
Dunbar was foughten, and the news thereof came to Glasgow within a
day or two thereafter, while I am thinking thereupon, it is borne in
upon my mind, that our way in that business was not what it ought to
have been; and after some getting it laid to heart, I was challenged
for my implicit engaging therein; whilk came to that height that I
resolved never more to follow any course upon the opinion of any person
whatsomever, which accordingly the Lord has helped me to mind in some
weak measure....’--_Spreull._
* * * * *
[Sidenote: AUG.]
While the two hostile armies lay about Edinburgh, ‘there was such great
scarcity, that all sorts of vivres, meat and drink, could hardly be
had for money, and such as was gotten was fuisted [musty], and sald at
a double price. The haill inhabitants were forced to contribute and
provide for the [Scottish] army, notwithstanding of this scarcity; as
also to furnish feather beds, bowsters, cods, blankets, sheets ... for
the hurt soldiers to lie upon, with pots and pans for making ready
their meat; and to collect money for providing honest entertainment
to the hurt soldiers that lay in the [Heriot’s] Hospital and Paul’s
Wark.’--_Nic._
* * * * *
[Sidenote: SEP.]
The bellman was accustomed to intimate the death of a citizen through
the streets, and in the same way give invitations to the funeral.
At this time the Edinburgh official was ordered to give up the
phrase, ‘faithful brother or sister,’ and retain brother or sister
only.[142]--_Nic._
* * * * *
[Sidenote: OCT.]
[Sidenote: 1650.]
This was a sore time for the southern counties of Scotland. Owing to
the futile opposition presented to Cromwell by the ultra-Presbyterians
in the west, a large detachment of the English army had to parade
through the country. ‘Much corns destroyed by them and their horses ...
the kirks and kirk-yards made stables and sentries for their guards
and horses.... The corns of the field were not only destroyed by this
foreign enemy, and by the Scots armies at home, wha rampit and raged
through the land, eating and destroying wherever they went, but also
the Lord from the heavens destroyed much of the rest by storms and
tempests of weet and wind. The seas also were closed up by the enemy,
whase ships enclosed us on every side, so that no man was able to
travel by sea, neither yet by land without a pass.’--_Nic._
‘Cromwell and his army of cavalry domineered in all parts where they
came,’ and in especial about Edinburgh, and in East Lothian. The good
Earl of Winton, to whose well-furnished table all the noblemen and
gentlemen had ever been welcome, was pitifully abused by them; his fair
house of Seaton made a common inn; himself threatened to be killed, if
they had not whatsoever they called for; his rich furniture and stuff
plundered, and all the enormities that could be offered by Jews or
Turks to Christians, he suffered daily; and when he complained to those
of our nobility who now rule all, he got no redress, but [was] ordered
with patience to give them whatsoever they called for. Their general,
Cromwell, stayed in Edinburgh, a stately lodging being appointed for
him.[143] He went not to their churches, but it is constantly reported
that every day he had sermons in his own lodgings, himself being the
preacher, whensoever the spirit came upon him; which took him like the
fits of an ague, sometimes twice, sometimes thrice in a day.
[Sidenote: 1650.]
‘One of his commanders being quartered with one of the magistrates
of the city, that he might be used with the more reverence, and
entertained with the more graceful respect, the master of the house
brought the preacher of the parish, a discreet and modest man, to
accompany him, whose conversation, he hoped, would be pleasing to him.
The preacher, after he had blessed the table, according to our Scottish
custom, prayed for the continuance and prosperous success of the
Covenant, which did so offend the English captain and those gentlemen
who attended upon him, as the preacher was threatened and abused most
beastly, for presuming in their presence to extol their rotten Covenant
(as he termed it); and with many reproachful terms told the preacher,
that they had in England trodden his Covenant under their feet, and
they hoped, before it was long, to consume it in Scotland with fire,
and with disgrace to extinguish the memory thereof. The preacher would
have answered, but he durst not....
‘In the time that the English stayed, there were daily and continual
complaints given in; the people being unable to endure their insolent
carriage, so that there were many brawls, fighting, and killing in
private corners, where the Scots might be their masters. And one day
in Edinburgh, upon the High Street, and before the general’s lodgings,
where the English were always going forth in at the gate, one of their
officers was coming forth and going to his horse in great chafe,
because he had complained of a great injury done to some of the troop
by the Scots, where they were quartered, and not being justly satisfied
with the general’s answer, when he had mounted his horse, he spake
aloud these words: “With my own hands I killed that Scot which ought
this horse and this ease of pistols, and who dare say that in this I
wronged him?” “I dare say it,” said one standing by; “and thus shall
revenge it;” and with the word pulling forth his sword, thrust him
quite through the body, and with a prompt celerity, as if he had been
all in motion, just as he struck him--who was already falling to the
ground--and mounting his horse, rides the way with a fierce gallop, and
winning the port, goes to the fields, and by an honourable flight frees
himself from all danger.’[144]
* * * * *
[Sidenote: NOV. 13.]
[Sidenote: 1650.]
At this distressing time, when the best part of the country was in
the hands of foreign invaders, and the ancient monarchy of Scotland
threatened with destruction, there occurred a calamitous event which
must have been peculiarly bewailed. The palace of Holyrood, being
then in the occupation of a party of the English troops, took fire,
and was in great part destroyed. The most interesting portion of the
building--the north-west tower, containing the apartments of Queen
Mary--was fortunately preserved; but the principal _façade_ was laid
in ruins, so that the general appearance was, on a restoration, much
changed. About the same time, the English soldiery, for the sake
of fuel, broke down the furniture of the University buildings, the
High School, and of three churches--College, Greyfriars, and Lady
Yester’s--besides the plenishing of many houses in town and country.
[Illustration: Holyrood Palace, as before the Fire of 1650.]
‘In all parts of the land, where the English army come, the ministers
fled, and the Lord’s houses were closed and laid waste; so that the
word of the Lord became very precious to many.’ ‘The land [was]
mourning, languishing, left desolate, every part thereof shut up, and
no safe going out nor coming in ... the Lord hiding his face all this
time for the sins of Scotland.’--_Nic._
* * * * *
[Sidenote: DEC.]
‘I thought it good to remember here how that the names of Protestant
and Papist were not now in use ... in place thereof raise up the
name of Covenanters, Anti-Covenanters, Cross-Covenanters, Puritans,
Babarteris, Roundheads, Auld Horns, New Horns, Cross-petitioners,
Brownists, Separatists, Malignants, Sectaries, Royalists, Quakers,
Anabaptists.’--_Nic._
* * * * *
[Sidenote: 1651.