In the course of the night, shortly after the third watch had been set,
some of those who had tarried by the way came to the camp with the
tidings that Dalziel and all the royal forces in Glasgow were coming
upon us. This, though foreseen, caused a great panic, and a council of
war, consisting, as usual, of ministers and officers, was held, to
determine what should be done; but it was likewise, as usual, only a
fruitless controversy. I, however, on this occasion, feeling myself
sustained in spirit by the assurances I had received in my meditations
on the rock, ventured to speak my mind freely; which was to the effect
that, taking our dejected condition, the desertion of our friends, and
our disappointments from the city, into consideration, we could do no
better thing than evade the swords of our adversaries by disbanding
ourselves, that each might be free to seek safety for himself.
Many were inclined to this counsel; and I doubt not it would have been
followed; but, while conferring together, an officer came from the
privy-council to propose a cessation of arms till our demands could be
considered. It was manifest that this was a wily stratagem to keep us in
the snare till Dalziel had time to come up, and I did all in my power to
make the council see it in the same light; but there was a blindness of
mind among us, and the greater number thought it augured a speedy
redress of the wrongs for which we had come to seek reparation. Nor did
their obstinacy in this relax till next morning, when, instead of
anything like their improbable hopes, came a proclamation ordering us to
disperse, and containing neither promise of indemnity nor of pardon. But
then it was too late. Dalziel was in sight. His army was coming like a
stream along the foot of the Pentland-hills,--we saw his banners and the
glittering of his arms, and the sound of his musicants came swelling on
the breeze.
It was plain that his purpose was to drive us in towards the town; but
had we dispersed we might even then have frustrated his intent. There
happened, however, besides Learmont and Wallace, to be several officers
among us who had stubborn notions of military honour; and they would not
permit so unsoldier-like a flight. There were also divers heated and
fanatical spirits, whom, because our undertaking had been for religious
ends, nothing could persuade that Providence would not interfere in some
signal manner for their deliverance, yea, even to the overthrow of the
enemy; and Mr Whamle, a minister, one of these, getting upon the top of
the rock where I had sat the night before, began to preach of the mighty
things that the Lord did for the children of Israel in the valley of
Ajalon, where He not only threw down great stones from the heavens, but
enabled Joshua to command the sun and moon to stand still,--which to any
composed mind was melancholious to hear.
In sequence to these divisions and contrarieties which enchanted us to
the spot, Dalziel, considering that we were minded to give him battle,
brought on his force; and it is but due to the renown of the valour of
those present to record that, notwithstanding a fearful odds, our men,
having the vantage ground, so stoutly maintained their station that we
repulsed him thrice.
But the victory, as I have said, was not ordained for us. In the
afternoon Dalziel was reinforced by several score of mounted gentlemen
from the adjacent counties, and with their horse, about sunset, our
phalanx was shattered, our ranks broken,--and then we began to quit the
field. The number of our slain, and of those who fell into the hands of
the enemy, did not in the whole exceed two hundred men. The dead might
have been greater, but for the compassion of the gentlemen, who had
respect to the cause which had provoked us to arms, and who, instead of
doing as Dalziel's men did, without remorse or pity, cried to the
fugitives to flee, and spared many in consideration of the common
wrongs.
When I saw that our host was dashed into pieces, and the fragments
scattered over the fields, I fled with the flying, and gained, with
about some thirty other fugitives, the brow of a steep part of the
Pentland-hills, where the mounted gentlemen, even had they been
inclined, could not easily follow us. There, while we halted to rest a
little, we heard a shout now and then rise startling from the field of
battle below; but night coming on, all was soon silent, and we sat, in
the holiness of our mountain-refuge, in silent rumination till the moon,
rolling slowly from behind Arthur's Seat, looked from her window in the
clouds, as if to admonish us to flee farther from the scene of danger.
The Reverend Mr Witherspoon being among us, was the first to feel the
gracious admonition, and, rising from the ground, he said,--
"Friends, we must not tarry here, the hunters are forth, and we are the
prey they pursue. They will track us long, and the hounds are not of a
nature to lose scent, especially when they have tasted, as they have
done this day, the rich blood of the faithful and the true. Therefore
let us depart; but where, O where shall we find a home to receive
us?--Where a place of rest for our weary limbs, or a safe stone for a
pillow to our aching heads? But why do I doubt? Blameless as we are,
even before man, of all offence, save that of seeking leave to worship
God according to our conscience, it cannot be that we shall be left
without succour. No, my friends! though our bed be the damp grass and
our coverlet the cloudy sky, our food the haws of the hedge, and our
drink the drumly burn, we have made for our hearts the down-beds of
religious faith, and have found a banquet for our spirits in the
ambrosial truths of the Gospel--luxuries that neither a James Sharp nor
a Charles Stuart can ever enjoy, nor all the rents and revenues, fines
and forfeitures, which princes may exact and prelates yearn to partake
of, can buy."
He then offered up a thanksgiving that we had been spared from the sword
in the battle; after which we shook hands in silence together, and each
pursued his own way.
Mr Witherspoon lingered by my side as we descended the hill, and I
discerned that he was inclined to be my companion; so we continued
together, stretching towards the north-west, in order to fall into the
Lithgow road, being mindet to pass along the skirts of Stirlingshire,
thence into Lennox, in the hope of reaching Argyle's country by the way
of the ferry of Balloch. But we had owre soon a cruel cause to change
the course of our flight.
In coming down towards the Amond-water, we saw a man running before us
in the glimpse of the moonshine, and it was natural to conclude, from
his gestures and the solitude of the place, that no one could be so
far-a-field at such a time, but some poor fellow-fugitive from
Rullion-green where the battle was fought; so we called to him to stop,
and to fear no ill, for we were friends. Still, however he fled on, and
heeded not our entreaty, which made us both marvel and resolve to
overtake him. We thought it was not safe to follow long an unknown
person who was so evidently afraid, and flying, as we supposed, to his
home. Accordingly we hastened our speed, and I, being the nimblest
reached him at a place where he was stopped by a cleft in the rocks on
the river's woody brink.
"Why do you fly so fast from us?" said I; "we're frae the Pentland-hills
too."
At these words he looked wildly round, and his face was as ghastly as a
ghost's in the moonlight; but, distorted as he was by his fears, I
discovered in him my neighbour, Nahum Chapelrig, and I spoke to him by
name.
"O, Ringan Gilhaize!" said he, and he took hold of me with his right
hand, while he raised his left and shook it in a fearful and frantic
manner, "I am a dead man, my hours are numbered, and the sand-glass of
my days is amaist a' run out. I had been saved from the sword, spared
from the spear, and, flying from the field, I went to a farm-house
yonder; I sought admission and shelter for a forlorn Christian man; but
the edicts of the persecutors are more obeyed here than the laws of God.
The farmer opened his casement, and speering if I had been at the raid
of the Covenanters, which, for the sake of truth and the glory of God, I
couldna deny, he shot me dead on the spot; for his bullet gaed in my
breast, and is fast in my--"
He could say no more; for in that juncture he gave as it were a gurgle
in the throat, and swirling round, fell down a bleeding corpse on the
ground where he stood, before Mr Witherspoon had time to come up.
We both looked at poor guiltless Nahum as he lay on the grass, and,
after some sorrowful communion, we lifted the body, and carrying it down
aneath the bank of the river, laid stones and turfs upon it by the
moonlight, that the unclean birds might not be able to molest his
martyred remains. We then consulted together; and having communed
concerning the manner of Nahum's death, we resolved not to trust
ourselves in the power of strangers in those parts of the country, where
the submission to the prelatic enormity had been followed with such
woful evidence of depravity of heart. So, instead of continuing our
journey to the northward, we changed our course, and, for the remainder
of the night, sought our way due west, by the skirts of the moors and
other untrodden ways.