Saving the innocent alarm of the drum in the mist, our march to Lanerk
was without hinderance or molestation; and when we arrived there, it was
agreed and set forth, on the exhortation of the ministers who were with
us, that the Solemn League and Covenant should be publicly renewed; and,
to the end that no one might misreport the spirituality of our zeal and
intents, a Protestation was likewise published, wherein we declared our
adherence and allegiance to the King undiminished in all temporalities;
that we had been driven to seek redress by the sword for oppressions so
grievous, that they could be no longer endured; and that all we asked
and sought for was the re-establishment of the presbyterian liberty of
worship, and the restoration of our godly pastors to their Gospel rights
and privileges.
The morrow after was appointed for the covenanting, and to be held as a
day of fasting and humiliation for our own sins, which had provoked the
Lord to bring us into such state of peril and suffering; and it was a
sacred consolation, as Mr Semple showed in his discourse on the
occasion, that, in all our long and painful travels from Dumfries, we
had been guided from the commission of any offence, even towards those
whose hearts were not with us, and had been brought so far on our way as
blameless as a peaceable congregation going in the lown of a Sabbath
morning to worship their Maker in the house of prayer.
But neither the sobriety of our demeanour, nor the honest protestation
of our cause, had any effect on the obdurate heart of the apostate James
Sharp, who happened, by reason of the Lord Rothes going to London, to be
then in the chief chair of the privy-council at Edinburgh. He knew the
deserts of his own guilt, and he hated us, even unto death, for the woes
he had made us suffer. The sough, therefore, of our approach was to the
consternation of his conscience as the sound of the wheels of an
avenging God, groaning heavily in their coming with the weight of the
engines of wrath and doom. Some said that he sat in the midst of the
counsellors like a demented man; and others, that he was seen flying to
and fro, wringing his hands, and weeping, and wailing, and gnashing his
teeth. But though all power of forethought and policy was taken from
him, there were others of the council who, being less guilty, were more
governed, and they took measures to defend the capital against us. They
commanded the gates to be fenced with cannon, and working on the terrors
of the inhabitants with fearful falsehoods of crimes that were never
committed, thereby caused them to band themselves for the protection of
their lives and property, while they interdicted them from all egress,
in so much that many who were friendly to us were frustrated in their
desire to come with the aid of their helps and means.
The tidings of the preparations for the security of Edinburgh, with the
unhappy divisions and continual controversies in our councils, between
the captains and the ministers, anent the methods of conducting the
raid, had, even before we left Lanerk, bred much sedition among us, and
an ominous dubiety of success. Nevertheless, our numbers continued to
increase, and we went forward in such a commendable order of battle,
that, had the Lord been pleased with our undertaking, there was no
reason to think the human means insufficient for the end. But in the
mysteries of the depths of His wisdom He had judged, and for the great
purposes of His providence He saw that it was meet we should yet suffer.
Accordingly, even while we were issuing forth from the port of the town,
the face of the heavens became overcast, and a swift carry and a rising
wind were solemn intimations to my troubled spirit that the heartening
of His countenance went no farther with us at that time.
Nor indeed could less than a miracle in our behalf have availed; for the
year was old in November, the corn was stacked, the leaf fallen, and
Nature, in outcast nakedness, sat, like the widows of the martyrs,
forlorn on the hills: her head was bound with the cloud, and she mourned
over the desolation that had sent sadness and silence into all her
pleasant places.
As we advanced the skies lowered, and the blast raved in the leafless
boughs; sometimes a passing shower, as it travelled in the storm,
trailed its watery skirts over our disheartened host, quenching the zeal
of many,--and ever and anon the angry riddlings of the cruel hail still
more and more exasperated our discontent. I observed that the men began
to turn their backs to the wind, and to look wistfully behind, and to
mutter and murmur to one another. But still we all advanced, gradually,
however, falling into separate bands and companies, like the ice of the
river's stream breaking asunder in a thaw.
In the afternoon the fits of the wind became less vehement; the clouds
were gathered more compactly together, and the hail had ceased, but the
rain was lavished without measure. The roads became sloughs,--our feet
were drawn heavily out of the clay,--the burns and brooks raged from
bank to brae,--and the horses swithered at the fords, in so much, that
towards the gloaming, when we were come to Bathgate, several of our
broken legions were seen far behind; and when we halted for the night,
scarcely more than half the number with whom we had that morning left
Lanerk could be mustered, and few of those who had fallen behind came
up. But still Captain Learmont thought, that as soon as the men had
taken some repose after that toilsome march, we should advance outright
to Edinburgh. Wallace, however, objected, and that night was spent
between them and the ministers in thriftless debate; moreover, our
hardships were increased; for, by the prohibition of the privy-council
against the egress of the inhabitants of the city, we were, as I have
said, disappointed of the provisions and succour we had trusted to
receive from them, and there was no hope in our camp, but only
bitterness of spirit and the breathings of despair.
Seeing, what no man could hide from his reason, our cause abandoned of
the Lord, I retired from the main body of the host, and sat alone on a
rock, musing with a sore heart on all that had come so rashly to pass.
It was then the last hour of the gloaming, and every thing around was
dismayed and dishevelled. The storm had abated, and the rain was over,
but the darkness of the night was closing fast in, and we were environed
with perils. A cloud, like the blackness of a mort-cloth, hung over our
camp; the stars withheld their light, and the windows of the castle
shone with the candles of our enemies, who, safe in their stronghold,
were fresh in strength and ready for battle.
I thought of my home, of the partner of my anxieties and cares, of the
children of our love, and of the dangers of their defencelessness, and I
marvelled with a weeping spirit at the manner in which I had been
snatched up, and brought, as it were in a whirlwind, to be an actor in a
scene of such inevitable woe. Sometimes, in the passion of that grief, I
was tempted to rise, and moved to seek my way back to the nest of my
affections. But as often as the thought came over my heart, with its
soft and fond enticements, some rustle in the camp of the weary men who
had borne in the march all that I had borne, and many of them in the
cause far more, yea, even to the martyrdom of dear friends, I bowed my
head and prayed for constancy of purpose and fortitude of mind, if the
arm of flesh was ordained to be the means of rescuing the Gospel, and
delivering poor Scotland from prelatic tyranny, and the thraldom of an
anti-Christian usurpation in the kingly power.
While I was thus sitting in this sad and solitary state, none doubting
that before another night our covenanted army would be, as the hail that
smote so sorely on our march, seen no more, and only known to have been
by the track of its course on the fields over which we had passed, a
light broke in upon the darkness of my soul, and amidst high and holy
experiences of consolation, mingled with awe and solemn wonder, I beheld
as it were a bright and shining hand draw aside the curtain of time, and
disclose the blessings of truth and liberty that were ordained to rise
from the fate of the oppressors, who, in the pride and panoply of
arbitrary power, had so thrown down the temple of God, and laid waste
His vineyard.
I saw that from our hasty enterprise they would be drawn to commit still
more grievous aggressions, and thereby incur some fearful forfeiture of
the honours and predominancy of which they had for so many years shown
themselves so unworthy; and I had a foretaste in that hour of the
fulfilment of my grandfather's prophecy concerning the tasks that were
in store for myself in the deliverance of my native land. So that,
although I rose from the rock whereon I was sitting, in the clear
conviction that our array would be scattered like chaff before the wind,
I yet had a blessed persuasion that the event would prove in the end a
link in the chain, or a cog in the wheel, of the hidden enginery with
which Providence works good out of evil.