Before proceeding farther at this present time with the doleful tale of
my own sufferings, it is required of me, as an impartial historian, to
note here a very singular example of the spirit of piety which reigned
in the hearts of the Covenanters, especially as I shall have to show
that such was the cruel and implacable nature of the Persecution, that
time had not its wonted influence to soften in any degree its rigour.
Thirteen years had passed from the time of the Pentland raid; and surely
the manner in which the country had suffered for that rising might, in
so long a course of years, have subdued the animosity with which we were
pursued; especially, as during the Earl of Tweeddale's administration
the bonds of peace had been accepted. But Lauderdale, now at the head of
the councils, was rapacious for money; and therefore all offences, if I
may employ that courtly term, by which our endeavours to taste of the
truth were designated,--all old offences, as I was saying, were renewed
against us as recent crimes, and an innocent charity to the remains of
those who had suffered for the Pentland raid was made a reason, after
the battle of Bothwell-brigg, to revive the persecution of those who had
been out in that affair.
The matter particularly referred to arose out of the following
circumstances:
The number of honest and pious men who were executed in different
places, and who had their heads and their right hands with which they
signed the Covenant at Lanerk cut off, and placed on the gates of towns
and over the doors of tolbooths, had been very great. And it was very
grievous, and a sore thing to the friends and acquaintances of those
martyrs, when they went to Glasgow, or Kilmarnock, or Irvine, or Ayr, on
their farm business, to tryst or market, to see the remains of persons,
whom they so loved and respected in life, bleaching in the winds and the
rains of Heaven. It was, indeed, a matter of great heart-sadness, to
behold such animosity carried beyond the grave; and few they were who
could withstand the sight of the orphans that came thither, pointing out
to one another their fathers' bones, and weeping as they did so, and
vowing, with an innocent indignation, that they would avenge their
martyrdom.
Well do I remember the great sorrow that arose one market-day in Irvine,
some five or six years after the Pentland raid, when Mrs M'Coul came,
with her four weans and her aged gudemother, to look at the relics of
her husband, who was martyred for his part in that rising. The bones
were standing, with those of another martyr of that time, on a shelf
which had been put up for the purpose, below the first wicket-hole in
the steeple, just above the door. The two women were very decent in
their apparel, rather more so than the common country wives. The
gudemother, in particular, had a cast of gentility both in her look and
garments; and I have heard the cause of it expounded, from her having
been the daughter of one of the Reformation preachers in the
Gospel-spreading epoch of John Knox. She had a crimson satin plaid over
her head, and she wore a black silk apron and a grey camlet gown. With
the one hand she held the plaid close to her neck, and the youngest
child, a lassie of seven years or so, had hold of her by the fore-finger
of the other.
Mrs M'Coul was more of a robust fabric, and she was without any plaid,
soberly dressed in the weeds of a widow, with a clean cambric
handkerchief very snodly prined over her breast. The children were
likewise beinly apparelled, and the two sons were buirdly and brave
laddies, the one about nine, and the other maybe eleven years old.
It would seem that this had been the first of their pilgrimages of
sorrow; for they stood some time in a row at the foot of the tolbooth
stair, looking up at the remains, and wondering, with tears in their
eyes, which were those they had come to see.
Their appearance drew around them many onlookers, both of the country
folk about the Cross and inhabitants of the town; but every one
respected their sorrow, and none ventured to disturb them with any
questions; for all saw that they were kith or kin to the godly men who
had testified to the truth and the Covenant in death.
It happened, however, that I had occasion to pass by, and some of the
town's folk who recollected me, said whisperingly to one another, but
loud enough to be heard, that I was one of the persecuted; whereupon Mrs
M'Coul turned round and said to me, with a constrained composure,--
"Can ye tell me whilk o' yon's the head and hand o' John M'Coul, that
was executed for the covenanting at Lanerk?"
I knew the remains well, for they had been pointed out to me and I had
seen them very often, but really the sight of the two women and the
fatherless bairns so overcame me that I was unable to answer.
"It's the head and the hand beside it, that has but twa fingers left, on
the Kirkgate end o' the shelf!" replied a person in the crowd, whom I
knew at once by his voice to be Willy Sutherland the hangman, although I
had not seen him from the night of my evasion. And here let me not
forget to set down the Christian worth and constancy of that simple and
godly creature, who, rather than be instrumental in the guilty judgment
by which John M'Coul and his fellow-sufferer were doomed to die, did
himself almost endure martyrdom, and yet never swerved in his purpose,
nor was abated in his integrity, in so much, that when questioned
thereafter anent the same by the Earl of Eglinton, and his Lordship,
being moved by the simplicity of his piety, said, "Poor man, you did
well in not doing what they would have had you to do."
"My Lord," replied Willy, "you are speaking treason! and yet you
persecute to the uttermost, which shows that you go against the light of
your conscience."
"Do you say so to me, after I kept you from being hanged?" said his
Lordship.
"Keep me from being drowned, and I will still tell you the verity." The
which honesty in that poor man begat for him a compassionate regard that
the dignities of many great and many noble in that time could never
command.
When the sorrowful M'Couls had indulged themselves in their melancholy
contemplation, they went away, followed by the multitude with silence
and sympathy, till they had mounted upon the cart which they had brought
with them into the town. But from that time every one began to speak of
the impiety of leaving the bones so wofully exposed; and after the
skirmish at Drumclog, where Robin M'Coul, the eldest of the two
striplings above spoken of, happened to be, when Mr John Welsh, with
the Carrick men that went to Bothwell-brigg, was sent into Glasgow to
bury the heads and hands of the martyrs there, Robin M'Coul came with a
party of his friends to Irvine to bury his father's bones. I was not
myself present at the interment, being, as I have narrated, confined to
my bed by reason of my wound. But I was told by the neighbours, that it
was a very solemn and affecting scene. The grieved lad carried the
relics of his father in a small box in his hands, covered with a white
towel; and the godly inhabitants of the town, young and old, and of all
denominations, to the number of several hundreds, followed him to the
grave where the body was lying; and Willy Sutherland, moved by a simple
sorrow, was the last of all; and he walked, as I was told, alone,
behind, with his bonnet in his hand; for, from his calling, he counted
himself not on an equality with other men. But it is time that I should
return from this digression to the main account of my narrative.