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RINGAN GILHAIZE
Their constancy in torture and in death--
These on Tradition's tongue still live, these shall
On History's honest page be pictured bright
To latest times.
GRAHAME'S SABBATH.
Ringan
Gilhaize
OR
_THE COVENANTERS_
BY
JOHN GALT
AUTHOR OF
"_Annals of the Parish_," "_Sir Andrew Wylie_," "_The Entail_," _Etc._
EDITED, WITH AN INTRODUCTION, BY
Sir GEORGE DOUGLAS, Bart.
London
GREENING & CO., LTD.
20 Cecil Court, Charing Cross Road
1899
INTRODUCTION
A NEGLECTED MASTERPIECE
There have, of course, been many men of genius who have united with
great laxity and waywardness in their lives a high and perfect respect
for their art; but instances of the directly contrary practice are much
rarer, and among these there is probably none more prominent than that
of the author of _Ringan Gilhaize_. Gifted by nature with a faculty
which was at once brilliant, powerful and genial, he led an industrious
life, the upright and generally exemplary character of which has never
for a moment been called in question. But, in the sphere of his art, it
is as undeniable as unaccountable that he cared little or nothing to do
his best. The haps or whims of the moment seem, indeed, to have governed
his production with an influence as of stars malign or fortunate.
Furthermore, we know that the profession of authorship--that most
distinguished of all professions, as, speaking in sober sadness without
arrogance, we cannot but be bold to call it--that profession from which
he was himself so well equipt to derive honour--was held by him in low
esteem. So that, speaking of the time of his residence in Upper Canada,
he thinks no shame to observe that he did _then_ consider himself
qualified to do something more useful than "stringing blethers[1] into
rhyme," or "writing 'clishmaclavers' in a closet." And again says he,
"to tell the truth, I have sometimes felt a little shamefaced in
thinking myself so much an author, in consequence of the estimation in
which I view the profession of book-making in general. A mere literary
man--an author by profession--stands low in my opinion." Such remarks as
these from a man of commanding literary talent are the reverse of
pleasant reading. But let us deal with the speaker, as we would
ourselves be dealt by--mercifully, and regard these petulant utterances
as a mere expression of bitterness or perversity in one much tried and
sorely disappointed. Even so, the fact remains that the sum of Galt's
immense and varied production exhibits inequalities of execution for
which only carelessness or contempt in the worker for his task can
adequately account. We shall presently have occasion to speak of him in
his relation to the great contemporary writer to whose life and work his
own work and life present so many interesting points of similarity and
diversity; but we may here note that, in the glaringly disparate
character of his output, the author of _The Provost_ is in absolute
contrast to the author of _The Antiquary_. For, if Scott's work viewed
as a whole be rarely of the very finest literary quality, its evenness
within its own limits is on the other hand very striking indeed. For, of
his twenty-seven novels, there are perhaps but three which fall
perceptibly below the general level of excellence; whilst probably any
one of at least as many as six or eight might by a quorum of competent
judges be selected as the best of all. And hence, where in the case of
other authors we are called on to read this masterpiece or those
specimens, and, having done so, are held to have acquitted ourselves,
in the case of Scott we cannot feel that we have done our duty till we
have read through the Waverley Novels. How entirely different is it with
Galt--where we find _The Omen_ occupying one shelf with _The Radical_,
_The Annals of the Parish_ catalogued with _Lawrie Todd_, and _The
Spaewife_ side by side with _The Covenanters_! And obviously it is in
this inequality in its author's work--in the magnitude, that is, of the
rubbish-heap in which he chose to secrete his jewels--that the
explanation of the neglect, if not rather oblivion, into which the work
last-named has fallen can alone be sought and found. For, once in the
threescore years of his busy life, Galt did his best, consistently and
on a large scale, with the pen; and that once was in the novel of
_Ringan Gilhaize, or the Covenanters_. What is more--however lamentably
he may appear in general to lack the faculty of self-criticism--he knew
when he had done his best, and among all his books this one remained his
favourite. But a man has to pay for artistic as he has for moral
delinquencies, and it would seem that the penalty of many a careless
tome has been exacted in the obscuration of one of the finest and truest
of historical romances in our language.[2] A word or two as to the
genesis and character of the book which we have ventured thus to
describe may not be out of place as preface to our endeavour to obtain
for it a second hearing.
It was in the year 1822 or 1823 that Galt, aged then about forty-three,
and having already seen much of life in various countries and
capacities, settled at Esk Grove, Musselburgh, to apply himself to
writing historical fiction. He was for the moment elated--carried away,
perhaps, for his temper was enthusiastic even to a fault--by the recent
and deserved success of his novels of Scottish manners, _Sir Andrew
Wylie_ and _The Entail_; and the soaring idea appears to have entered
his head of deliberately attempting to rival Scott in the very field
which "the Wizard" had made peculiarly his own. From the point of view
of prudence, though not from that of art or of sport, this enterprise
was a mistake. For an author, serving as he does the public, shows no
more than common sense if he endeavour to study, in the proper degree,
the idiosyncrasies of that employer on whose favour his reputation, nay,
perhaps the payment of his butcher's bill, depends. And it has long been
observed that when the public has once made up its mind that one man is
supreme in his own line, it has generally little attention to spare for
those who seek to have it reconsider its decision. (This, by the way,
was amply illustrated in the sequel of the very case now under
discussion.) But the names of Galt and Prudence do not naturally go
together: indeed, the two were never well or for any length of time
acquainted. At Esk Grove, either in earnest, or, as seems more likely,
in banter of the architectural incongruities of Abbotsford, Galt
announced his intention of building a "veritable fortress," exactly in
the fashion of the oldest times of rude warfare. _En attendant_, he
worked hard with his pen, the first fruits of his industry appearing in
the novel which is here reprinted after some six-and-seventy years.
What of the merits of this first attempt in a line that was new to him?
In the first place, he had at least been guided in his choice of subject
by an unerring historical instinct. For, surpassingly rich as is
Scottish history in the elements both of picturesque and romantic
incident and of wild and fascinating character, it is none the less a
fact that there is but one period during which that history rises to the
dignity of a really wide and permanent interest. And that period is of
course the century, or century and a half, of the national struggle for
religious liberty. It is not necessary to remind the reader that upon
that struggle, and on those who maintained it, much has been written as
well in the terms of undiscriminating eulogy as in those of
uncomprehending condemnation. Nor is it more to the purpose to add that
the truth lies neither entirely on one side nor the other. For--as in
the earlier struggle for political independence, and, indeed, more or
less in all other great national movements--the motives of most of those
who took part were mixed, and varied with the individual. Thus it is
undeniable that in the breast of many a reforming Scottish laird of the
sixteenth century, mistrust of Rome was a subordinate feeling to the
covetousness excited by the sight of extensive and well-cultivated
Church lands; whilst, again, there are, on the other hand, probably few
persons now in existence who would be prepared to justify the
intolerance embodied even by the martyr Guthrie in his celebrated
Remonstrance--to say nothing of that which made the mere hearing of the
mass, under certain circumstances, a capital offence. These things are,
however, more or less accidental, and supply no criterion by which the
true character of the reforming movement may be tested; for during the
Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, the very nature of tolerance, if
understood by one here and there, was beyond the comprehension of the
masses of the people. And yet we believe that, notwithstanding the
intolerant and implacable spirit too often manifested by the
Covenanters, no candid reader will read this book to the end without
acknowledging (what is, indeed, the truth) that the soul of the
Covenanting movement was a great and noble one. And that soul we here
find personified in the younger Gilhaize--a type, if there be one in
literature, of the Covenanter of the best kind.
For, whatever may have been the temper of his associates in the
aggregate, the hero of the book holds the scales between the rival
parties with admirable evenness--and this notwithstanding the strong
bias of his temper and upbringing. Indeed, until the time when he has
become, not metaphorically, but literally maddened by the wrongs and
outrages to which he has been subjected, the book, in so far as it
constitutes an expression of his personal sentiments, is a perfect
homily on fairness. And how much such fairness has to do with the
winning and retaining of sympathy, perhaps only a modern reader is
qualified to say. Gifted with the saving graces of humour and of
fellow-feeling, the supposed annalist of our chronicle is no less
prepared to make allowance for the faults of the other side than to
acknowledge the shortcomings of his own. In fact he is the pattern of a
spirit at once upright, humble, and self-respecting, whose ruling
passion is an earnest piety, and who asks no more of those set over him
than freedom to worship God according to the dictates of his conscience.
And for this little boon, so harshly and unjustly withheld, we see him
called upon to sacrifice home, kindred and estate, to know his wife and
daughters given over to death and worse than death, and finally to
surrender his liberty and his last remaining child. Unless pity and
terror in a master's hand have lost their power, surely this spectacle
is a moving one! Nor must we forget that, even in the culminating scene
of the tragedy--where Ringan makes his bold and inspired oration at the
meeting of the Cameronian leaders with Renwick in a dell near
Lasswade--the hero, for all his wrongs, remains unembittered, and
retains unimpaired the gentleness and the manliness which are his
characteristics. That there were such men as this among the Covenanters,
or that they constituted the salt which gave its savour to the movement,
we are forbidden to doubt. But, saving in the pages which follow, we
know not where to seek for the ideal presentment of one such. This is
what we mean by saying, as we have said above, that Galt has in this
romance laid bare the soul of the Covenanting movement. And this, we may
add, is what Scott in _Old Mortality_ most signally failed to do. For in
that novel--in place of Galt's subtle and penetrating analysis of the
motives which animated the Covenanters nobly to dare and nobly to
endure--we find the author content himself with using the
characteristics and the disturbances of the time for the mere purpose of
providing incident and adventure, and a strong local colour for his
puppets--in a word, for the most ordinary and conventional purposes of
the romantic novelist. Nor is this the only instance of such
psychological obtuseness in his work. That, in spite of this initial and
damning defect, he does succeed in producing a fine novel, is but one
more proof of the amazing fecundity of his genius. None the less does
the fact remain that it is a novel, so to speak, without a soul--that,
so far from being of the essence of the Covenant, the Burleys,
Mucklewraths, Mauses and Macbrairs are but so many of its accidents, and
that thus the main issues of the historical drama are not involved in
the romance. In other words, it is as though the tragedy of _Hamlet_
had been performed with great skill and _eclat_, only without the
appearance of the Prince of Denmark upon the stage. And thus, if the
historical novel is to play a part of any dignity in our literature, we
may safely predict that it is upon the stock here supplied by Galt,
rather than upon that supplied by Scott in _Old Mortality_, that it will
have to be grafted.
Having now assigned to our author the credit due to him for his choice
and general treatment of a fine subject, it remains to touch briefly
upon the technical skill which he has brought to bear upon the handling
of its details. By resorting, then, to an ingenious and yet perfectly
natural and legitimate device, he has contrived to extend his "household
memorial" (for it is thus that he describes the story) so as to make it
embrace the entire period of the religious struggle--from its inception
under the regency of Marie of Lorraine to its close, or practical close,
under the rule of the enlightened and tolerant William of Orange,--a
period in all of full one hundred and thirty years. For the narrative,
opening with the martyrdom of Walter Mill at St Andrews in 1558, is
continued to the death of Claverhouse at Killiecrankie in 1689. And by
this means the varying phases of the struggle are traced almost step by
step, through the preachings of John Knox and the early image-breaking
outrages, to the comparative lull of the reign of James the First of
England, and thence again from the renewed exasperating of opposition by
the shifty and infatuated Martyr King to the climax of the "Killing
Time" under the younger of his sons. Few incidents of really primary or
representative importance are omitted, and the skill shown by the Author
in stringing the pearls of history upon the thread of his narrative is
not the least of the merits he displays. But, as should be in a novel,
the historical never overweights the human or fictitious interest, but
is always properly subordinated to it.
We have spoken elsewhere[3] of Galt the novelist as being "in advance of
his time"--a facile phrase which it is expedient to use with due reserve
and after due consideration. But the fact that the author with whose
work we are instinctively impelled to compare the novel of _Ringan
Gilhaize_ is the great chief of the French "Naturalistic" School would
appear, at least so far, to support that characterisation. It is, of
course, undeniable that, at the outset, there confront us several
striking points of contrast or divergence between the two authors. For
example, of that _triste amour du laid_, which, with its concomitants,
was for so long, and perhaps is even yet, regarded by the general public
as Zola's one prominent characteristic--of this, Galt has absolutely
nothing, his preoccupation being uniformly with beauty in one form or
another, whether of matter or of spirit. With him, a gloom which, did we
not fear to be less than just to Galt we might denominate Byronic, fills
perhaps the place of Zola's pessimism. Next, of that misbegotten passion
for the painter's brush which has vitiated so much of modern French
writing, and of which Zola in inferior works has even more than his due
share, the novel of _Ringan Gilhaize_ shows equally no trace. On the
contrary, its brief descriptive passages, of which it is noticeable how
many are nocturnal or crepuscular, or paint effects of mist or
rain-cloud--these might serve as models, at once in their breadth of
execution, their aptness and their pregnancy, or quality of
moral suggestiveness, of what descriptions in literature
should be. How different from those laboured outlines, laboriously
filled in, of such a piece of writing as _La Curee_!
So much, then, for the divergence of the two authors; and now as to
their relationship. It is, perhaps, in their power of putting their
sense of a multitude before the reader, of exhibiting the passions by
which that multitude is animated, and of tracing the phases and
fluctuations of that passion, that the Frenchman or Italian and the Scot
come first and most strikingly together. Witness in this book the scene
of the advance of the congregations to the trial of the Ministers, or
that of the return of the Reformer, Knox, to Scotland. This of itself,
however, is not much; nor should we have felt justified in drawing
special attention to it, but for the fact that it seems to us to be an
outward and visible sign of what is a vital, perhaps _the_ vital
characteristic of either writer--or, at least, that of Galt in this
book, and of Zola in his masterwork. It is associated, then, as we read
it, with a desire to rise in art above the limitation of the merely
individual, and the springs of this desire we take to lie in that noble
and abounding pity which is the dominant passion of either author, or of
either book. In either case it is an "objective" or artistic pity,
called into being by the spectacle of human suffering as specific as it
is intolerable to contemplate. Only that with Galt it is felt for a
particular historical group of men, with Zola for a particular section
of his contemporaries. And from this characteristic there naturally
results a gain of the quality of artistic grandeur in the books. For it
is less the fortunes of the individual colliers than the Rights of
Labour and their chances of recognition which form the true theme of
_Germinal_; whilst in _Ringan Gilhaize_ we are called to gaze upon
nothing less than the grandiose spectacle of a nation in death-grips
with a race of mansworn sovereigns. Hence, in either case, the
individual characters, measured by the greatness of the issues at stake,
sink into comparative insignificance. But this very insignificance
serves to illustrate a fundamental truth. For, to quote the words of a
great modern thinker, "This is the law which governs humanity: an
immense prodigality in regard to the mere individual, a contemptuous
heaping together of the unit of human life." He continues, "I can
picture to myself the artificer letting great quantities of his material
go to waste--undisturbed, indeed, although three parts of it fall
useless to the ground. For it is the fate of the vast majority of the
human race to serve as a mere floor-cloth on which Destiny may celebrate
her revel, or, rather, to contribute towards the making up of one of
those numerous persons who were known to the classical drama as the
Chorus."[4] Impressively to exhibit this truth in art is of itself to
accomplish much; but in the infinite pathos of the individual lot there
is a converse side to every great drama too, and to this neither of our
writers is insensible. Hence it is that, against the shadowy curtain or
background formed by the crowded and suffering masses of humanity, are
relieved and detached such tragic silhouettes as those of Ringan and of
La Maheude. In the nature of the long-drawn unrelenting ordeal to which
each of these is subjected they are identical; for both of them are rich
only in human affection, and of this both live to see themselves
entirely denuded. Gilhaize, who is raised above the struggle for mere
daily bread, is animated by a spiritual and intellectual passion which
would have been altogether beyond the comprehension of the miner's wife
of Montsou; but that he is on that account the nobler or more
interesting figure of the two, we do not take upon us to say. Neither,
of course, must we be understood to insist unduly on the few points of
resemblance in two books which, after all, are in so many respects
radically unlike.
There is a lighter side to Galt's book, too, and this is seen
principally, ere the stress of the action has become intense, in the
adventures of the astute Michael Gilhaize. At this point in his
narrative it is probably with Stevenson that Galt suggests comparison,
nor is it any disparagement to the delightful author of _Kidnapped_ and
_Catriona_ to say that the best of his work is to the best of Galt's as
a clever boy's to that of a clever man. For whilst Galt presents
incident with all, or nearly all, the charm of Stevenson, he is master,
besides, of an adult psychology to which the other, in his short life,
never attained.
GEORGE DOUGLAS.
SPRINGWOOD PARK, _August_ 1899.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 1: Scots expletives, signifying different varieties of
nonsense.]
[Footnote 2: Dismissed in the _Dictionary of National Biography_, _sub
voce_ Galt, as one of "three forgotten novels."]
[Footnote 3: In "The _Blackwood_ Group": Famous Scots' Series; Essay on
Galt.]
[Footnote 4: Ernest Renan in _L'Avenir de la Science_.]
RINGAN GILHAIZE
CHAPTER I
It is a thing past all contesting, that, in the Reformation, there was a
spirit of far greater carnality among the champions of the cause than
among those who in later times so courageously, under the Lord, upheld
the unspotted banners of the Covenant. This I speak of from the
remembrance of many aged persons, who either themselves bore a part in
that war with the worshippers of the Beast and his Image, or who had
heard their fathers tell of the heart and mind wherewith it was carried
on, and could thence, with the helps of their own knowledge, discern the
spiritual and hallowed difference. But, as I intend mainly to bear
witness to those passages of the late bloody persecution in which I was
myself both a soldier and a sufferer, it will not become me to brag of
our motives and intents, as higher and holier than those of the great
elder Worthies of "the Congregation." At the same time it is needful
that I should rehearse as much of what happened in the troubles of the
Reformation as, in its effects and influences, worked upon the issues of
my own life. For my father's father was out in the raids of that
tempestuous season, and it was by him, and from the stories he was wont
to tell of what the Government did when drunken with the sorceries of
the gorgeous Roman harlot, and rampaging with the wrath of Moloch and of
Belial, it trampled on the hearts and thought to devour the souls of the
subjects, that I first was taught to feel, know and understand the divine
right of resistance.
He was come of a stock of bein burghers in Lithgow; but his father
having a profitable traffic in saddle-irons and bridle-rings among the
gallants of the court, and being moreover a man who took little heed of
the truths of religion, he continued with his wife in the delusions of
the papistical idolatry till the last, by which my grandfather's young
soul was put in great jeopardy. For the monks of that time were eager to
get into their clutches such men-children as appeared to be gifted with
any peculiar gift, in order to rear them for stoops and posts to sustain
their Babylon, in the tower and structure whereof many rents and cracks
were daily kithing.
The Dominican friars, who had a rich howf in the town, seeing that my
grandfather was a shrewd and sharp child, of a comely complexion, and
possessing a studious observance, were fain to wile him into their
power; but he was happily preserved from all their snares and devices in
a manner that shows how wonderfully the Lord worketh out the purposes of
His will, by ways and means of which no man can fathom the depth of the
mysteries.
Besides his traffic in the polished garniture of horse-gear, my
grandfather's father was also a ferrier, and enjoyed a far-spread repute
for his skill in the maladies of horses; by which, and as he dwelt near
the palace-yett, on the south side of the street, fornent the grand
fountain-well, his smiddy was the common haunt of the serving-men
belonging to the nobles frequenting the court, and as often as any
newcomers to the palace were observed in the town, some of the monks and
friars belonging to the different convents were sure to come to the
smiddy to converse with their grooms and to hear the news, which were
all of the controversies raging between the priesthood and the people.
My grandfather was then a little boy, but he thirsted to hear their
conversations, and many a time, as he was wont to tell, has his very
heart been raspet to the quick by the cruel comments in which those
cormorants of idolatry indulged themselves with respect to the brave
spirit of the reformers; and he rejoiced when any retainers of the
protestant lords quarrelled with them, and dealt back to them as hard
names as the odious epithets with which the hot-fed friars reviled the
pious challengers of the papal iniquities. Thus it was, in the green
years of his childhood, that the same sanctified spirit was poured out
upon him, which roused so many of the true and faithful to resist and
repel the attempt to quench the relighted lamps of the Gospel, preparing
his young courage to engage in those great first trials and strong tasks
of the Lord.
The tidings and the bickerings to which he was a hearkener in the
smiddy, he was in the practice of relating to his companions, by which
it came to pass that, it might in a manner be said, all the boys in the
town were leagued in spirit with the reformers, and the consequences
were not long of ripening.
In those days there was a popish saint, one St Michael, that was held in
wonderful love and adoration by all the ranks and hierarchies of the
ecclesiastical locust then in Lithgow; indeed, for that matter, they
ascribed to him power and dominion over the whole town, lauding and
worshipping him as their special god and protector. And upon a certain
day of the year they were wont to make a great pageant and revel in
honour of this supposed saint, and to come forth from their cloisters
with banners, and with censers burning incense, shouting and singing
paternosters in praise of this their Dagon, walking in procession from
kirk to kirk, as if they were celebrating the triumph of some mighty
conqueror.
This annual abomination happening to take place shortly after the
martyrdom of that true saint and gospel preacher Mr George Wishart, and
while kirk and quire were resounding, to the great indignation of all
Christians, with lamentations for the well-earned death of the cruel
Cardinal Beaton, his ravenous persecutor, the monks and friars received
but little homage as they passed along triumphing, though the streets
were, as usual, filled with the multitude to see their fine show. They
suffered, however, no molestation nor contempt till they were passing
the Earl of Angus' house, on the outside stair of which my grandfather,
with some two or three score of other innocent children, was standing;
and even there they might, perhaps, have been suffered to go by
scaithless, but for an accident that befel the bearer of a banner, on
which was depicted a blasphemous type of the Holy Ghost in the shape and
lineaments of a cushy-doo.
It chanced that the bearer of this blazon of iniquity was a particular
fat monk, of an arrogant nature, with the crimson complexion of surfeit
and constipation, who for many causes and reasons was held in greater
aversion than all the rest, especially by the boys, that never lost an
opportunity of making him a scoff and a scorn; and it so fell out, as he
was coming proudly along, turning his Babylonish banner to pleasure the
women at the windows, to whom he kept nodding and winking as he passed,
that his foot slipped and down he fell as it were with a gludder, at
which all the thoughtless innocents on the Earl of Angus' stair set up a
loud shout of triumphant laughter, and from less to more began to hoot
and yell at the whole pageant, and to pelt some of the performers with
unsavoury missiles.
This, by those inordinate ministers of oppression, was deemed a horrible
sacrilege, and the parents of all the poor children were obligated to
give them up to punishment, of which none suffered more than did my
grandfather, who was not only persecuted with stripes till his loins
were black and blue, but cast into a dungeon in the Blackfriars' den,
where for three days and three nights he was allowed no sustenance but
gnawed crusts and foul water. The stripes and terrors of the oppressor
are, however, the seeds which Providence sows in its mercy to grow into
the means that shall work his own overthrow.
The persecutions which from that day the monks waged, in their conclaves
of sloth and sosherie, against the children of the town, denouncing them
to their parents as worms of the great serpent and heirs of perdition,
only served to make their young spirits burn fiercer. As their joints
hardened and their sinews were knit, their hearts grew manful, and
yearned, as my grandfather said, with the zealous longings of a
righteous revenge, to sweep them away from the land as with a whirlwind.
After enduring for several years great affliction in his father's house
from his mother, a termagant woman, who was entirely under the dominion
of her confessor, my grandfather entered into a paction with two other
young lads to quit their homes for ever, and to enter the service of
some of those pious noblemen who were then active in procuring adherents
to the protestant cause, as set forth in the first covenant.
Accordingly, one morning in the spring of 1558, they bade adieu to their
fathers' doors, and set forward on foot towards Edinburgh.
"We had light hearts," said my grandfather, "for our trust was in
Heaven; we had girded ourselves for a holy enterprise, and the
confidence of our souls broke forth into songs of battle, the melodious
breathings of that unison of spirit which is alone known to the soldiers
of the great Captain of Salvation."
About noon they arrived at the Cross of Edinburgh, where they found a
crowd assembled round the Luckenbooths, waiting for the breaking up of
the States, which were then deliberating anent the proposal from the
French king that the Prince Dolphin, his son, should marry our young
queen, the fair and faulty Mary, whose doleful captivity and woful end
scarcely expiated the sins and sorrows that she caused to her ill-used
and poor misgoverned native realm of Scotland.
While they were standing in this crowd, my grandfather happened to see
one Icener Cunningham, a servant in the household of the Earl of
Glencairn, and having some acquaintance of the man before at Lithgow, he
went towards him, and after some common talk, told on what errand he and
his two companions had come to Edinburgh. It was in consequence agreed
between them that this Icener should speak to his master concerning
them, the which he did as soon as my Lord came out from the Parliament;
and the Earl was so well pleased with the looks of the three young men
that he retained them for his service on the spot, and they were
conducted by Icener Cunningham home to his Lordship's lodgings in St
Mary's Wynd.
Thus was my grandfather enlisted into the cause of the Lords of the
Congregation, and in the service of that great champion of the
Reformation, the renowned, valiant and pious Earl of Glencairn, he saw
many of those things, the recital of which kindled my young mind to
flame up with no less ardour than his against the cruel attempt that was
made, in our own day and generation, to load the neck of Scotland with
the grievous chains of prelatic tyranny.