From the day of the desolation of his daughter, my brother seldom held
any communion with me; but I observed that with Michael he had much
business, and though I asked no questions, I needed not to be told that
there was a judgment and a doom in what they did. I was therefore
fearful that some rash step would be taken at the burial of Bell; for it
was understood that all the neighbours, far and near, intended to be
present to testify their pity for her fate. So I spoke to Mr Witherspoon
concerning my fears, and by his exhortations the body was borne to the
kirk-yard in a solemn and peaceable manner.
But just as the coffin was laid in the grave, and before a spadeful of
earth was thrown, a boy came running crying, "Sharp's kill't!--the
apostate's dead!" which made every one turn round and pause; and while
we were thus standing, a horseman came riding by, who confirmed the
tidings, that a band of men whom his persecutions had made desperate,
had executed justice on the apostate as he was travelling in his
carriage with his daughter on Magus-moor. While the stranger was telling
the news, the corpse lay in the grave unburied; and dreadful to tell!
when he had made an end of his tale, there was a shout of joy and
exultation set up by all present, except by Michael and my brother. They
stood unmoved, and I thought--do I them any wrong?--that they looked
disconsolate and disappointed.
But though the judgment on James Sharp was a cause of satisfaction to
all covenanted hearts, many were not yet so torn by the persecution as
entirely to applaud the deed. I shall not therefore enter upon the
particulars of what was done anent those who dealt his doom, for they
were not of our neighbourhood.
The crime, however, of listening peacefully in the fields to the truths
of the Gospel became, in the sight of the persecutors, every day more
and more heinous, and they gave themselves up to the conscience-soothing
tyranny of legal ordinances, as if the enactment and execution of bloody
laws, contrary to those of God, and against the unoffending privileges
of our nature, were not wickedness of as dark a stain as the murderer's
use of his secret knife. Edict and proclamation against field-preachings
and conventicles came following each other, and the latest was the
fiercest and fellest of all which had preceded. But the cause of truth,
and the right of communion with the Lord, was not to be given up: "It is
not for glory," we said in the words of those brave Scottish barons that
redeemed, with King Robert the Bruce, their native land from the
thraldom of the English Edward, "nor is it for riches, neither is it for
honour, but it is for liberty alone we contend, which no true man will
lose but with his life;" and therefore it was that we would not yield
obedience to the tyranny, which was revived with new strength by the
death of James Sharp, in revenge for his doom, but sought, in despite of
decrees and statutes, to hear THE WORD where we believed it was best
spoken.
The laws of God, which are above all human authority, require that we
should worship him in truth and in holiness, and we resolved to do so to
the uttermost, and prepared ourselves with arms to resist whoever might
be sent to molest us in the performance of that the greatest duty. But
in so exercising the divine right of resistance, we were not called upon
to harm those whom we knew to be our adversaries. Belting ourselves for
defence, not for war, we went singly to our places of secret meeting in
the glens and on the moors, and when the holy exercise was done, we
returned to our homes as peacefully as we went thither.
Many a time I have since thought, that surely in no other age or land
was ever such a solemn celebration of the Sabbath as in those days. The
very dangers with which we were environed exalted the devout heart;
verily it was a grand sight to see the fearless religious man moving
from his house in the grey of the morning, with the Bible in his hand,
and his sword for a staff, walking towards the hills for many a weary
mile, hoping the preacher would be there, and praying as he went that
there might be no molestation.
Often and often on those occasions has the Lord been pleased to shelter
his worshippers from their persecutors by covering them with the mantle
of His tempest; and many a time at the dead of night, when the winds
were soughing around, and the moon was bowling through the clouds, we
have stood on the heath of the hills and the sound of our psalms has
been mingled with the roaring of the gathering waters.
The calamities which drove us thus to worship in the wilderness, and
amidst the storm, rose to their full tide on the back of the death of
the arch-apostate James Sharp; for all the religious people in the realm
were in a manner regarded by the government as participators in the
method of his punishment. And Claverhouse, whom I have now to speak of,
got that special commission on which he rode so wickedly, to put to the
sword whomsoever he found with arms at any preaching in the fields; so
that we had no choice in seeking to obtain the consolations of religion,
which we then stood so much in need of, but to congregate in such
numbers as would deter the soldiers from venturing to attack us. This it
was which caused the second rising, and led to the fatal day of
Bothwell-brigg, whereof it is needful that I should particularly speak,
not only on account of the great stress that was thereon laid by the
persecutors, in making out of it a method of fiery ordeal to afflict the
covenanted, but also because it was the overflowing fountain-head of the
deluge that made me desolate. And herein, courteous reader, should aught
of a fiercer feeling than belongs to the sacred sternness of truth and
justice escape from my historical pen, thou wilt surely pardon the same,
if there be any of the gracious ruth of Christian gentleness in thy
bosom; for now I have to tell of things that have made the annals of the
land as red as crimson and filled my house with the blackness of ashes
and universal death.
For a long period there had been, from the causes and circumstances
premised, sore difficulties in the assembling of congregations, and the
sacrament of the Supper had not been dispensed in many parts of the
shire of Ayr from the time of the Highland host; so that there was a
great longing in the hearts of the covenanted to partake once again of
that holy refreshment; and shortly after the seed-time it began to be
concerted, that early in the summer a day should be set apart, and a
place fixed for the celebration of the same. About the time of the
interment of my brother's desolated daughter, and the judgment of the
death executed on James Sharp, it was settled that the moors of
Loudon-hill should be the place of meeting, and that the first Sabbath
of June should be the day. But what ministers would be there was not
settled; for who could tell which, in those times, would be spared from
prison?
It was, however, forethought and foreseen, that the assemblage of
communicants would be very considerable; for, in order that there might
be the less risk of molestation, a wish that it should be so was put
forth among us, to the end that the King's forces might swither to
disperse us. Accordingly, with my disconsolate brother and son, I went
to be present at that congregation, and we carried our arms with us, as
we were then in the habit of doing on all occasions of public testimony
by worship.
In the meantime a rent had been made in the Covenant, partly by the
over-zeal of certain young preachers, who, not feeling, as we did, that
the duty of presbyterians went no farther than defence and resistance,
strove, with all the pith of an effectual eloquence, to exasperate the
minds of their hearers into hostility against those in authority; and it
happened that several of those who had executed the judgment on James
Sharp, seeing no hope of pardon for what they had done, leagued
themselves with this party, in the hope of thereby making head against
their pursuers.
I have been the more strict in setting down these circumstantials,
because in the bloody afterings of that meeting they were altogether
lost sight of; and also because the implacable rage with which
Claverhouse persecuted the Covenanters has been extenuated by some
discreet historians, on the plea of his being an honourable officer,
deduced from his soldierly worth elsewhere; whereas the truth is, that
his cruelties in the shire of Ayr, and other of our western parts, were
less the fruit of his instructions, wide and severe as they were, than
of his own mortified vanity and malignant revenge.