It has been seen, by what I have told concerning the part my grandfather
had in the great work of the Reformation, that the heads of the house of
Argyle were among the foremost and the firmest friends of the
resuscitated Evangil. The aged Earl of that time was in the very front
of the controversy as one of the Lords of the Congregation; and though
his son, the Lord of Lorn, hovered for a season, like other young men of
his degree, in the purlieus and precincts of the Lady Regent's court,
yet when her papistical counsels broke the paction with the protestants
at Perth, I have rehearsed how he, being then possessed of the
inheritance of his father's dignities, did, with the bravery becoming
his blood and station, remonstrate with her Highness against such
impolitic craft and perfidy, and, along with the Lord James Stuart,
utterly eschew her presence and method of government.
After the return of Queen Mary from France, and while she manifested a
respect for the rights of her covenanted people, that worthy Earl was
among her best friends; and even after the dismal doings that led to her
captivity in Lochleven Castle, and thence to the battle of Langside, he
still acted the part of a true nobleman to a sovereign so fickle and so
faithless. Whether he rued on the field that he had done so, or was
smitten with an infirmity that prevented him from fighting against his
old friend and covenanted brother, the good Regent Murray, belongs not
to this history to inquire; but certain it is, that in him the
protestant principles of his honourable house suffered no dilapidation;
and in the person of his grandson, the first marquis of the name, they
were stoutly asserted and maintained.
When the first Charles, and Laud, that ravenous Arminian Antichrist,
attempted to subvert and abrogate the presbyterian gospel worship, not
only did the Marquis stand forth in the van of the Covenanters to stay
the religious oppression then meditated against his native land, but
laboured with all becoming earnestness to avert the pestilence of civil
war. In that doubtless Argyle offended the false counsellors about the
King; but when the English parliament, with a lawless arrogance, struck
off the head of the miscounselled and bigoted monarch, faithful to his
covenants and the loyalty of his race, the Marquis was amongst the
foremost of the Scottish nobles to proclaim the Prince of Wales king.
With his own hands he placed on Charles the Second's head the ancient
diadem of Scotland. Surely it might therefore have been then supposed
that all previous offence against the royal family was forgotten and
forgiven; yea, when it is considered that General Monk himself, the
boldest in the cause of Cromwell's usurpation, was rewarded with a
dukedom in England for doing no more for the King there than Argyle had
done for him before in greater peril here, it could not have entered
into the imagination of Christian men, that Argyle, for only submitting
like a private subject to the same usurped authority when it had become
supreme, would, after the Restoration, be brought to the block. But it
was so; and though the machinations of political enemies converted that
submission into treasons to excuse their own crime, yet there was not an
honest man in all the realm that did not see in the doom of Argyle a
dismal omen of the cloud and storm which so soon after burst upon our
religious liberties.
Passing, however, by all those afflictions which took the colour of
political animosities, I hasten to speak of the proceedings which, from
the hour of the Restoration, were hatched for the revival of the
prelatic oppression. The tyranny of the Stuarts is indeed of so fell a
nature that, having once tasted of blood in any cause, it will return
again and again, however so often baffled, till it has either devoured
its prey, or been itself mastered; and so it showed in this instance.
For, regardless of those troubles which the attempt of the first Charles
to exercise an authority in spiritual things beyond the rights of all
earthly sovereignty caused to the realm and to himself, the second no
sooner felt the sceptre in his grip than he returned to the same
enormities; and he found a fit instrument in James Sharp, who, in
contempt of the wrath of God, sold himself to Antichrist for the prelacy
of St Andrews.
But it was not among the ambitious and mercenary members of the clergy
that the evidences of a backsliding generation were alone to be seen;
many of the people, nobles and magistrates were infected with the sin of
the same reprobation; and in verity, it might have been said of the
realm that the restoration of King Charles the Second was hailed as an
advent ordained to make men forget all vows, sobriety and solemnities.
It is, however, something to be said in commendation of the constancy of
mind and principle of our West Country folk that the immorality of that
drunken loyalty was less outrageous and offensive to God and man among
them, and that although we did submit and were commanded to commemorate
the anniversary of the King's restoration, it was nevertheless done with
humiliation and anxiety of spirit. But a vain thing it would be of me to
attempt to tell the heartburning with which we heard of the manner that
the Covenant, and of all things which had been hallowed and honourable
to religious Scotland, were treated in the town of Lithgow on that
occasion, although all of my grandfather's stock knew that from of old
it was a seat and sink of sycophancy, alien to holiness, and prone to
lick the dust aneath the feet of whomsoever ministered to the corruption
abiding there.
Had the general inebriation of the kingdom been confined only to such
mockers as the papistical progeny of the unregenerate town of Lithgow,
we might perhaps have only grieved at the wantonness of the world; but
they were soon followed by more palpable enormities. Middleton, the
King's commissioner, coming on a progress to Glasgow, held a council of
state there, at which was present the apostate Fairfoul, who had been
shortly before nominated Archbishop of that city; and at his wicked
incitement, Middleton, in a fit of actual intoxication from strong
drink, let loose the bloodhounds of persecution by that memorable act
of council which bears the date of the 1st of October, 1662,--an
anniversary that ought ever to be held as a solemn fast in Scotland, if
such things might be, for by it all the ministers that had received
Gospel ordination from and after the year forty-nine, and who still
refused to bend the knee to Baal, were banished, with their families,
from their kirks and manses.
But to understand in what way that wicked act, and the blood-causing
proclamation which ensued, came to take effect, it is needful, before
proceeding to the recital, to bid the courteous reader remember the
preaching of the doctrine of passive obedience by our time-serving
pastor, Mr Sundrum, and how the kirk was deserted on that occasion;
because, after his death, which happened in the forty-nine, godly Mr
Swinton became our chosen pastor, and being placed and inducted
according to the apostolic ordination of Presbytery, fell, of course,
like many of his Gospel brethren, under the ban of the aforesaid
proclamation, of which some imperfect sough and rumour reached us on the
Friday after it was framed.
At first the particulars were not known, for it was described as the
muttering of unclean spirits against the purity of the Truth; but the
tidings startled us like the growl of some unknown and dreadful thing,
and I dreamt that night of my grandfather, with his white hair and the
comely venerableness of his great age, appearing pale and sorrowful in a
field before me, and pointing with a hand of streaming light to
horsemen, and chariots, and armies with banners, warring together on the
distant hills.
Saturday was then the market-day at Irvine; and though I had but little
business there, I yet went in with my brother Robin, chiefly to hear the
talk of the town. In this I but partook of the common sympathy of the
whole country-side; for, on entering the town-end port, we found the
concourse of people there assembled little short of the crowd at Marymas
Fair, and all eager to learn what the council held at Glasgow had done;
but no one could tell. Only it was known that the Earl of Eglinton, who
had been present at the council, was returned home to the castle, and
that he had sent for the provost that morning on very urgent business.
While we were thus all speaking and marvelling one with another, a cry
got up that a band of soldiers was coming into the town from Ayr, the
report of which, for the space of several minutes, struck every one with
awe and apprehension. And scarcely had the sough of this passed over us,
when it was told that the provost had privately returned from Eglinton
Castle by the Gallows-knowes to the backsides, and that he had sent for
the minister and the bailies, with others of the council, to meet him in
the clerk's chamber.
No one wist what the meaning of such movements and mysteries could be;
but all boded danger to the fold and flock, none doubting that the
wolves of episcopalian covetousness were hungering and thirsting for the
blood of the covenanted lambs. Nor were we long left to our guesses;
for, soon after the magistrates and the minister had met, a copy of the
proclamation of the council held at Glasgow was put upon the Tolbooth
door, by which it was manifested to every eye that the fences of the
vineyard were indeed broken down, and that the boar was let in and
wrathfully trampling down and laying waste.