Some time before the news of King Charles' execution reached us in the
West, the day had been set for my marriage with Sarah Lochrig; but the
fear and consternation which the tidings bred in all minds, many
dreading that the event would be followed by a total breaking up of the
union and frame of society, made us consent to defer our happiness till
we saw what was ordained to come to pass.
When, however, it was seen and felt that the dreadful beheading of an
anointed monarch as a malefactor, had scarcely more effect upon the
tides of the time than the death of a sparrow,--and that men were called
as usual to their daily tasks and toils,--and that all things moved
onward in their accustomed courses,--and that laws and jurisdictions,
and all the wonted pacts and processes of community between man and man,
suffered neither molestation nor hindrance, godly Mr Swinton bestowed
his blessing on our marriage, and our friends their joyous countenance
at the wedding feast.
My lot was then full of felicity, and I had no wish to wander beyond the
green valley where we established our peaceful dwelling. It was in a
lown holm of the Garnock, on the lands of Quharist, a portion of which
my father gave me in tack; and Sarah's father likewise bestowed on us
seven rigs, and a cow's grass of his own mailing, for her tocher, as
the beginning of a plenishment to our young fortunes. Still, like all
the neighbours, I was deeply concerned about what was going on in the
far-off world of conflicts and negotiations; and this was not out of an
idle thirst of curiosity, but from an interest mingled with sorrows and
affections; for, after the campaign in England, my three brothers,
Michael, William and Alexander, never domiciled themselves at any civil
calling. Having caught the roving spirit of camps, they remained in the
skirts of the array which the covenanted Lords at Edinburgh continued to
maintain; and here, poor lads! I may digress a little, to record the
brief memorials of their several unhappy fates.
When King Charles the Second, after accepting and being sworn to abide
by the Covenant, was brought home, and the crown of his ancient
progenitors placed upon his head at Scoone, by the hands of the Marquis
of Argyle, in the presence of the great and the godly Covenanters, my
brothers went in the army that he took with him into England. Michael
was slain at the battle of Worcester, by the side of Sir John Shaw of
Greenock, who carried that day the royal banner. Alexander was wounded
in the same fight, and left upon the field, where he was found next
morning by the charitable inhabitants of the city, and carried to the
house of a loyal gentlewoman, one Mrs Deerhurst, that treated him with
much tenderness; but after languishing in agony, as she herself wrote to
my father, he departed this life on the third day.
Of William I have sometimes wished that I had never heard more; for
after the adversity of that day, it would seem he forgot the Covenant
and his father's house. Ritchie Minigaff, an old servant of the Lord
Eglinton's, when the Earl his master was Cromwell's prisoner in the
Tower of London, saw him there among the guard, and some years after the
Restoration he met him again among the King's yeomen at Westminster,
about the time of the beginning of the persecution. But Willy then
begged Ritchie, with the tear in his eye, no to tell his father; nor was
ever the old man's heart pierced with the anguish which the thought of
such backsliding would have caused, though he often wondered to us at
home, with the anxiety of a parent's wonder, what could have become of
blithe light-hearted Willy. No doubt he died in the servitude of the
faithless tyrant; but the storm that fell among us, soon after Ritchie
had told me of his unfortunate condition, left us neither time nor
opportunity to inquire about any distant friend. But to return to my own
story.
From my marriage till the persecution began, I took no part in the
agitations of the times. It is true, after the discovery of Charles
Stuart's perfidious policy, so like his father's, in corresponding with
the Marquis of Montrose for the subjection of Scotland by the tyranny of
the sword, at the very time he was covenanting with the commissioners
sent from the Lords at Edinburgh with the offer of the throne of his
ancestors, that with my father and my brother Robin, together with many
of our neighbours, I did sign the Remonstrance against making a prince
of such a treacherous and unprincipled nature king. But in that we only
delivered reasons and opinions on a matter of temporal expediency; for
it was an instrument that neither contained nor implied obligation to
arm; indeed our deportment bore testimony to this explanation of the
spirit in which it was conceived and understood. For when the prince had
received the crown and accepted the Covenant, we submitted ourselves as
good subjects. Fearing God, we were content to honour in all rights and
prerogatives, not contrary to Scripture, him whom, by His grace in the
mysteries of His wisdom, He had, for our manifold sins as a nation and a
people, been pleased to ordain and set over us for king. And verily no
better test of our sincerity could be, than the distrust with which our
whole country-side was respected by Oliver Cromwell, when he thought it
necessary to build that stronghold at Ayr, by which his Englishers were
enabled to hold the men of Carrick, Kyle and Cunningham in awe,--a race
that, from the days of Sir William Wallace and King Robert the Bruce,
have ever been found honest in principle, brave in affection, and
dauntless and doure in battle. But it is not necessary to say more on
this head; for full of griefs and grudges as were the hearts of all true
Scots, with the thought of their country in southern thraldom, while
Cromwell's Englishers held the upper hand amongst us, the season of
their dominion was to me and my house as a lown and pleasant spring. All
around me was bud, and blossom, and juvenility, and gladness, and hope.
My lot was as the lot of the blessed man. I ate of the labour of my
hands, I was happy, and it was well with me; my wife, as the fruitful
vine that spreads its clusters on the wall, made my lowly dwelling more
beautiful to the eye of the heart than the golden palaces of crowned
kings, and our pretty bairns were like olive plants round about my
table;--but they are all gone. The flood and the flame have passed over
them;--yet be still, my heart; a little while endure in silence; for I
have not taken up the avenging pen of history, and dipped it in the
blood of martyrs, to record only my own particular woes and wrongs.