It is well set forth in all the various histories of this dismal epoch,
that the cry of blood had gone so vehemently up to heaven from the
graves of the martyred Covenanters, that the Lord moved the heart of
Charles Stuart to more merciful measures, but only for a season. The
apostate James Sharp and the other counsellors, whose weakness or
wickedness fell in with his tyrannical proselytising purposes, were
wised from the rule of power, and the Earls of Tweeddale and Kincardine,
with that learned sage and philosopher, Sir John Murray, men of more
beneficent dispositions, were appointed to sit in their places in the
Privy Council at Edinburgh;--so that all in our condition were heartened
to return to their homes.
As soon as we heard that the ravenous soldiery were withdrawn from the
shire of Ayr, my brother and I, with Mr Witherspoon, after an abode of
more than seven months in yon solitary and rocky islet, returned to
Quharist. But, O courteous reader, I dare not venture to tell of the joy
of the meeting, and the fond intermingling of embraces, that was too
great a reward for all our sufferings;--for now I approach the memorials
of those things, by which the terrible Heavens have manifested that I
was ordained from the beginning to launch the bolt that was chosen from
the quiver in the armoury of the Almighty avenger, to overthrow the
oppressor and oppression of my native land. It is therefore enough to
state that, upon my return home, where I expected to find my lands waste
and my fences broken down, I found all things in better order than they
maybe would have been had the eye of the master been over them; for our
kind neighbours, out of a friendly consideration for my family, had in
the spring tilled the ground and sown the seed by day-and-day-about
labour; and surely it was a pleasant thing, in the midst of such a
general depravity of the human heart, so prevalent at that period, to
hear of such constancy and Christian-mindedness; for it was not towards
my brother and me only that such things were done; the same was common
throughout the country towards the lands and families of the persecuted.
But the lown of that time was as a pet day in winter. In the harvest,
however, when the proposal came out that we should give bonds to keep
the peace, I made no scruple of signing the same, and of getting my
wife's father, who was not out in the raid, to be my cautioner. In the
doing of this I did not renounce the Covenant; but, on the contrary, I
considered that by the bonds the King was as much bound to preserve
things in the state under which I granted the bond as I was to remain in
the quiet condition I was when I signed it.
After the bonds of peace came the indulgence, and the chief heritors of
our parish having something to say with the Lord Tweeddale, leave was
obtained for Mr Swinton to come back, and we had made a paction with
Andrew Dornock, the prelatic curate and incumbent, to let him have his
manse again. But although Mr Swinton did return, and his family were
again gathered around him, he would not, as he said himself to me, so
far bow the knee to Baal as to bring the church of Christ in any measure
or way into Erastian dependence on the civil magistrate. So he neither
would return to the manse nor enter the pulpit, but continued, for the
space of several years, to reside at Quharist, and to preach on the
summer Sundays from the window in the gable.
In the spring, however, of the year 1674, he, after a lingering illness,
closed his life and ministry. For some time he had felt himself going
hence, and the tenour of his prayers and sermons had for several months
been of a high and searching efficacy; and he never failed, Sabbath
after Sabbath, just before pronouncing the blessing, to return public
thanks that the Lord was drawing him so softly away from the world, and
from the storms that were gathering in the black cloud of prelacy which
still overhung and darkened the ministry of the Kirk of Scotland,--a
method of admonition that was awfully awakening to the souls of his
hearers, and treasured by them as a solemn breathing of the inspiration
of prophecy.
When he was laid in the earth, and Mr Witherspoon, by some handling on
my part, was invited to fill the void which his removal had left among
us, the wind again began to fisle, and the signs of a tempest were seen
in the changes of the royal Councils. The gracious-hearted statesmen
before spoken of were removed from their benignant spheres like falling
stars from the firmament, and the Duke of Lauderdale was endowed with
the power to persecute and domineer.
Scarcely was he seated in the Council when the edicts of oppression were
renewed. The prelates became clamorous for his interference, and the
penalties of the bonds of peace presented the means of supplying the
inordinate wants of his rapacious wife. Steps were accordingly soon
taken to appease and pleasure both. The court-contrived crime of hearing
the Gospel preached in the fields, as it was by John in the Wilderness
and Jesus on the Mount, was again prohibited with new rigour; and I for
one soon felt that, in the renewed persecution of those who attended the
conventicles, the King had again as much broken the conditions under
which I gave the bond of peace as he had before broken the vows of the
Solemn League and Covenant; so that when the guilty project was ripened
in his bloody councils, that the West Country should be again
exasperated into rebellion, that a reason might be procured for keeping
up a standing army, in order that the three kingdoms might be ruled by
prerogative instead of parliament, I freely confess that I was one of
those who did refuse to sign the bonds that were devised to provoke the
rebellion,--bonds, the terms whereof sufficiently manifested the purpose
that governed the framers in the framing. We were required by them,
under severe penalties, to undertake that neither our families, nor our
servants, nor our tenants, nor the servants of our tenants, nor any
others residing upon our lands, should withdraw from the churches or
adhere to conventicles, or succour field preachers, or persons who had
incurred the penalties attached to these prelate-devised offences. And
because we refused to sign these bonds, and continued to worship God in
the peacefulness of the Gospel, the whole country was treated by the
Duke of Lauderdale as in a state of revolt.
The English forces came mustering against us on the borders, the Irish
garrisons were drawn to the coast to invade us, and the lawless
Highlanders were tempted, by their need and greed, and a royal promise
of indemnity for whatsoever outrages they might commit, to come down
upon us in all their fury. By these means ten thousand ruthless soldiers
and unreclaimed barbarians were let loose upon us, while we were sitting
in the sun listening, I may say truly, to those gracious counsellings
which breathe nothing but peace and good-will. When, since the burning
days of Dioclesian, the Roman Emperor,--when, since the massacre of the
protestants by orders of the French king on the eve of St Bartholomew,
was so black a crime ever perpetrated by a guilty government on its own
subjects? But I was myself among the greatest of the sufferers; and it
is needful that I should now clothe my thoughts with sobriety, and
restrain the ire of the pen of grief and revenge.--Not revenge! No; let
the word be here--justice.
The Highland host came on us in want, and, but for their license to
destroy, in beggary. Yet when they returned to their wild homes among
the distant hills, they were laden as with the household wealth of a
realm, in so much that they were rendered defenceless by the weight of
their spoil. At the bridge of Glasgow the students of the College and
the other brave youths of that town, looking on them with true Scottish
hearts, and wrathful to see that the barbarians had been such robbers of
their fellow-subjects, stopped above two thousand of them, and took from
them their congregations of goods and wares, wearing apparel, pots,
pans, and gridirons, and other furniture, wherewith they had burdened
themselves like bearers at a flitting. My house was stript to a wastage,
and every thing was taken away; what was too heavy to be easily
transported was, after being carried some distance, left on the road.
The very shoes were taken off my wife's feet, and "ye'll no be a refuse
to gi'e me that," said a red-haired reprobate as he took hold of Sarah
Lochrig's hand and robbed her of her wedding-ring. I was present and saw
the deed; I felt my hands clench, but in my spirit I discovered that it
was then the hour of outrage, and that the Avenger's time was not yet
come.