The wild joy with which the people of England hailed the close of
anarchy and military tyranny in the restoration of Charles II. to
the throne, was fully participated in Scotland by a small loyalist
party. The bulk of the community were also made happy by the event,
for they were pleased to see the monarchy restored, accompanied as
the event was by the revival of their national independence; but the
general happiness was mixed with anxiety regarding the fate of their
favourite church, to which they had long been accustomed to consider
all other institutions as subordinate. In England, almost as a matter
of course, the Episcopal Church was restored with the monarchy, to the
slighting of that Solemn League and Covenant with which the interests
of Presbyterianism had been so long bound up. The temper of the English
people was now strongly against all that had been done during the
troubles by those with whom the Scottish Presbyterians had been in
alliance, and consequently against Scottish Presbyterianism itself. The
joy of the Presbyterian monarchists of Scotland might therefore well be
mixed with fear.
Very naturally, the men of high rank who had done and suffered most
for the cause of monarchy in the late evil days, were appointed
to be at the head of affairs in Scotland. The Earl of Glencairn,
chief of the guerrilla resistance to Cromwell in 1653, was made
Chancellor. Major-general Middleton, who had finally commanded in that
insurrection, and was now promoted to the peerage as Earl of Middleton,
was appointed to be his majesty’s commissioner to parliament. The
Earls of Crawford and Lauderdale, Presbyterian monarchists of 1650-1,
who had since suffered a ten years’ imprisonment in England, were
made respectively Lord Treasurer and Secretary of State. With them
came a host of inferior officials, all more or less under a sense
of suffering through over-zealous Presbyterianism, and mostly eager
to repair their broken fortunes at the expense of their enemies. A
reassemblage in September of the remains of that Committee of Estates
which had been captured at Alyth in 1651, was the first movement made.
It was superseded by the new parliament, which sat down on the 1st of
January 1661 and proceeded to pass many acts for the settlement of
affairs on the new basis. One of these at a single blow annulled all
the acts of the irregular parliaments of the last twenty-three years;
another imposed on men holding offices an oath acknowledging the king
to be ‘supreme governor in all cases, over all persons, ecclesiastical
and civil.’ Finally, in July of that year, the Privy Council was
reconstituted--a judicial as well as political body. At the same time,
the Courts of Session and Justiciary were reconstructed, in place of
the English judicatories which had sat for the last eight years.
The vengeance of the new government fell only on those who had carried
the Presbyterian views to a disloyal extreme, or who had complied with
Cromwell. The chief victim was the Marquis of Argyle--who no doubt
had placed the crown on the king’s head at Scone in 1651, but who had
also been the prime leader in nearly all those movements subsequent to
1638, which had been so destructive to the interests of royalty. His
execution (May 27, 1661) was considered by the royalists as a righteous
retribution for that of Montrose eleven years before. Mr James Guthrie,
minister of Stirling, the leader among the Remonstrators, was hanged.
Sir Archibald Johnston--who had perhaps done more than any other
single man throughout the troubles to promote the pure Presbyterian
cause--escaped to Holland, but after a little time was brought back and
executed (July 1663). Several other ministers of the Remonstrant party,
who failed to make timely submission, were imprisoned, and subsequently
for the most part banished.
The one great subject remaining for consideration was the church--how
was it to be settled? The king, unlike his father, could have
endured the Presbyterian forms, though he is said to have privately
declared Presbyterianism unfit to be the religion of a gentleman. But
Presbyterianism involved something more than forms. As professed by its
more zealous and intelligent adherents, it claimed to have Christ for
its sole head, and therefore to be completely independent of all civil
control. The men in whose hands its fate was now cast--for the reaction
of popular feeling in the entire island made it helpless--had to
consider that this claim had been a source of constant trouble to the
state ever since the minority of King James; they had to judge whether
the Presbyterian Church, holding such a claim as essential to it,
would, if now established, comport with any species of civil government
whatever. Under the light of recent experiences, and led by the general
temper of the time, it was not surprising, though very unfortunate,
that they resolved to restore the so-called moderate Episcopacy of
1638, minus the Book of Canons and Liturgy.
The moderate or Resolutionist party in the church, being the great
majority, had sent Mr James Sharpe, minister of Crail, to represent
their interests in the little body of men surrounding the king at his
return from the continent. Full reliance was placed on Mr Sharpe, for
he was thought to be a conscientious as well as able man: we find
Robert Baillie speaking of him at the time with an affection which
could not have been inspired in so virtuous a bosom without many
merits. But Mr Sharpe proved unable to resist the contagion of feeling
to which he was exposed: he was induced to consent to the restoration
of prelacy, and to take the position of primate. The Presbyterians
considered themselves as betrayed by their own representative. The
bishops of 1638 being all dead but one, and he unable to travel,
Sharpe and three other Presbyterian clergymen received the rite of
consecration in London, and, returning, imparted it to the other
bishops in Holyrood Church. In May 1662, an act of the Estates formally
reconstituted the church on the Episcopal model; the bulk of the people
quietly submitting to what they could not resist, while the more
earnest regarded it as a desertion of Christ’s own standard, calculated
to bring down judgments upon the land.
The burst of loyal feeling at the Restoration had probably led the
government to believe that the settlement of Episcopacy would be an
easy, if not popular act. If they had truly known the antipathy still
entertained for the prelatic model, they might have hesitated to take
such a step, for it might then have appeared more hopeful that the
claim of independence for presbytery would be practically overcome
or made innocuous--as it afterwards was at the Revolution--than that
bishops could be maintained in peace amongst a hostile people. But
here we must remember how force was universally looked to in that
age as a proper and legitimate means of inducing conformity. Under
the recent rule of the Presbyterian Church, there had been heavy
fines, depositions, banishings, excommunications, and confiscations,
for Episcopalian and popish non-conformists; hangings and beheadings
for those who proceeded to an active opposition. And the apparent
conformity which such means can produce had really been attained. The
authors of the new episcopate, having no light beyond their age on
the subject of toleration, might very naturally think that what had
succeeded in 1650 would succeed in 1662: they would compel the people
to be Episcopalians. There was a difference in the two cases which
it would have been well for them to observe. The severe measures of
1650 were the measures of a majority of really religious men--or at
least men of very earnest religious convictions--against a minority
of dissenters or indifferents. The measures now called for were to
be carried out by a minority, chiefly animated by secular maxims,
against a mass of people generally earnest in their peculiar religious
views, and who were liable to become the more so, and consequently the
more troublesome, under persecution. In the one case, the dominant
church was a great Reality, solidly founded in the affections of the
mass of the people; in the other, it was little more than a piece
of statecraft, with the affections of the majority of the people
against it. The _right_ of enforcing conformity we may allow to have
been the same in both cases; but the _consequences_, we can easily
see, were likely to be very different. The new church had scarcely
been constituted, when the unwiseness of the step might have easily
been seen. The clergy generally, but especially in the south-western
counties, shewed their unwillingness to give up their collective powers
into the hands of the bishops. On a precipitate edict of the Archbishop
of Glasgow, calling on the ministers of his province who had been
inducted since 1649 to take out new presentations from the patrons, and
receive collation from their bishops, three hundred and fifty, being a
third of the entire church, resigned their cures. This was a startling
blow to the new system, for, under that incapacity of judging of the
influence of religious feelings which is to be marked in worldly men,
it had been supposed that not more than _ten_ would resign. Of course
these men became troublesome dissenters, notwithstanding all that could
be done to disperse or silence them. In reality, the substitution of a
new bishop-approved minister for one who would not submit to bishops,
was a matter not very immediately affecting congregations, for, under
the late alteration in the church, the forms of worship and professed
Christian doctrine remained the same as before. But the Scotch, during
the last twenty-five years, had been generally instructed regarding
the Presbyterian polity, and trained up to regard it with veneration;
insomuch that the parity of ministers in the church-courts and the
headship of Christ, as exclusive of all supremacy of king or human
law, were points for which they were as much disposed to martyr
themselves as for the most essential points of faith contained in the
catechism. They therefore began to desert the parish churches, and
hold private meetings for worship under the displaced clergy. In our
time, no statesman would think of opposing the people in such a course.
They would be allowed quietly to raise dissenting meeting-houses for
themselves and favourite clergymen, and the peace of the country would
not be disturbed. But the reader must have been prepared to see that
no such course could then be adopted. The Presbyterian establishment
itself had only a few years before sternly put down all external
expression of dissent. It had even forbidden private meetings of little
groups of its own members for worship, lest these should lead to or
give shelter to schism. If they, with their deep religious feelings,
were thus intolerant of dissent, what might we expect from the worldly
statesmen and prelates now at the head of affairs? What but the most
vigorous measures for preserving an outward conformity? The extruded
ministers were forbidden to live within or near their former parishes,
lest their people should attend their ministrations. The people of
those parishes were commanded under heavy pains to attend the regular
church, however odious the new minister might be to them. Even to go
to the church of some neighbouring parish where there was still one of
the old clergy officiating, was forbidden under the like penalties.
Finally, bodies of soldiery were sent to raise the fines, or to
exact free quarters till the fines were paid. These soldiers would
enter the churches of the old Presbyterian clergy yet in possession
of their pulpits, noting such of the congregation as could not swear
that they belonged to the parish, taking the money from their pockets,
or stripping them of articles of wearing apparel, as a punishment for
their breach of law. In some districts, where a very earnest feeling
of religion prevailed, the people were harassed and impoverished to a
degree that made them anxious to leave their native country.
Middleton’s administration came to a sudden close in 1663, in
consequence of an intrigue against Lauderdale; and the latter noble
then succeeded to the chief power. Although he had been a Presbyterian,
and was not originally in favour of setting up the Episcopal Church,
his rule brought no relief. Still, there was a certain leniency in
high quarters, till Sharpe, in order to secure unfaltering severity,
obtained the erection of a court of commission, in which the prelates
should have chief sway. Then came a mercilessness greater than before.
The doings of the soldiery were such as to produce an approach to
desolation in certain districts. Ministers, for merely performing
worship in their own houses, were thrown into vile prisons, or
banished to half-desert islands. Even to give charity to any of the
proscribed clergy was declared to be a crime. When the war with Holland
commenced in the spring of 1665, it was feared that there would be
an insurrection in the west of Scotland, and the whole district was
consequently disarmed. Nevertheless, in November of the ensuing year,
the extreme severity of the soldiery under Sir James Turner occasioned
a partial resistance at Dalry, in the stewartry of Kirkcudbright, and
in a little time a small body of insurgents was collected. Marching
through Ayrshire, their numbers increased to about two thousand, and
they then turned towards Edinburgh, where they expected considerable
accessions. It was a hasty and ill-considered affair, springing merely
from the sense of intolerable suffering. The government, having a
small standing army at its disposal, was at no moment in the least
danger. About nine hundred poor half-armed peasants made a final stand
at Rullion Green, on the eastern skirts of the Pentland Hills, where
they were attacked by a strong body of dragoons under Sir Thomas
Dalyell, routed, and dispersed (November 28, 1666). Many were killed
on the field and in the pursuit, and eighteen were afterwards executed
in Edinburgh. Several of these were previously tortured to extort
confession, the instrument used being a loose frame of wood called the
_Boot_, into which wedges were driven so as to crush the limb of the
prisoner. Thirty-five more were executed in the country, not without
some difficulty to the authorities, as the executioners generally
refused to exercise their profession against such culprits.
Soon after this time, the extreme severity of the government in
Scotland made itself heard of and felt at court, and orders were sent
down for the adoption of gentler measures. In 1668, a milder rule
was established under the Earl of Tweeddale, who would at once have
proceeded to grant some ‘indulgence’ to the Presbyterians, but for
an attempt being made to shoot Archbishop Sharpe, as he was about to
step into his carriage in Edinburgh. As it was, the Indulgence was
granted next year, and consisted in permitting such of the extruded
clergy as had lived peaceably to return to their parishes when a
vacancy occurred, receiving the whole temporalities if they should take
collation from the bishops; and where they did not, to be allowed the
use of the manse and glebe; further, allowing four hundred merks per
annum to all _outed_ ministers, while unpresented to charges, provided
they had lived peaceably, and would agree to do so in future. This
was in reality a measure of greater generosity than the Presbyterian
Church had ever extended to dissenters; yet it was not attended with
much good. It was denounced by all the more zealous sort of people
as _Erastianism_, and consequently the indulged ministers were not
popular. The government, moreover, professing to consider the holding
of irregular meetings for worship as less excusable than before,
became more threatening against them, and thus caused the people to
hold conventicles in the open fields in remote places, attending, in
some instances, with arms in their hands. Hence resulted the fining
of a vast number of respectable people of the middle classes, women
as well as men, and the imprisonment of a considerable number. The
parliament also passed an express act against conventicles, whereby an
ejected or unlicensed minister who should perform worship anywhere but
in his own family, or who should be present at worship in any other
family, became liable to a fine of five thousand merks; the people
being also forbidden to be present at such meetings under pain of fines
proportioned to their circumstances. By this act, the performance of
worship in the fields inferred death, and attendance was to be punished
with double fines. The king is said to have disapproved of the act,
remarking truly that bloody laws did no good; it was detested even by
those who in parliament gave it their votes. In spite of its severity,
the people continued in some districts to meet in the fields for
worship, feeling that there was a great show of the ‘divine presence’
on these occasions. It seemed as if every attempt to enforce conformity
only sent a certain portion of them into a stronger dissent. Although
nearly every one of the measures of the government had its prototype
in those of the Presbyterian régime, and no one thought of demanding
liberty of conscience upon principle, yet such was the effect of the
large scale on which these severities were conducted, that the Scottish
mind was generally impressed with an abhorrence of prelacy and all
its belongings, a feeling which no lapse of time has yet been able to
efface.
The years 1671 and 1672 were distinguished by few events of note
besides the acts of severity against troublesome ministers. During
this time, there was going on a conspiracy on the part of the king
and his ministers to establish absolute monarchy in England, the Earl
of Lauderdale undertaking to secure Scotland, while the French king
was engaged to give his assistance; and to favour the object, a new
war was commenced against Holland. In 1673, the spirit of the English
nation was roused against the ministry, and the contagion was in some
measure communicated to Scotland, where the Duke of Hamilton gave such
a resistance to Lauderdale (now created a duke) that he was obliged to
dissolve the parliament. But no marked improvement in the government
resulted.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: 1660.