Being wounded, as I have rehearsed, at Drumclog, and carried to my own
house, Sarah Lochrig, while she grieved with a mother's grief for the
loss of our first-born and the mournful fate of my honest brother,
advanced my cure more by her loving ministrations to my aching mind,
than by the medicaments that were applied to the bodily wound, in so
much that something like a dawn of comfort was vouchsafed to me.
Our parish was singularly allowed to remain unmolested when, after the
woful day of Bothwell-brigg, Claverhouse came to ravage the shire of
Ayr, and to take revenge for the discomfiture which he had suffered, in
his endeavour to disturb the worship and sacrament at Loudon-hill.
Still, however, at times clouds overcame my spirit; and one night my
daughter Margaret had a remarkable dream, which taught us to expect some
particular visitation.
It was surely a mysterious reservation for the greater calamity which
ensued, that while the vial of wrath was pouring out around us, my house
should have been allowed to remain so unmolested. Often indeed when in
our nightly worship I returned thanks for a blessing so wonderful in
that time of general woe, has a strange fear fallen upon me and I have
trembled in thought, as if the thing for which I sent up the incense of
my thanks to heaven, was a device of the Enemy of man, to make me think
myself more deserving of favour than the thousands of covenanted
brethren who then, in Scotland, were drinking of the bitterness of the
suffering. But in proportion as I was then spared, the heavier
afterwards was my trial.
Among the prisoners taken at Bothwell-brigg were many persons from our
parish and neighbourhood, who, after their unheard-of sufferings among
the tombs and graves of the Greyfriars church-yard at Edinburgh, were
allowed to return home. Though in this there was a show of clemency, it
was yet but a more subtle method of the tyranny to reach new victims.
For those honest men were not long home till grievous circuit-courts
were set agoing, to bring to trial not only all those who were at
Bothwell, or approved of that rising, but likewise those who had been at
the Pentland raid; and the better to ensure condemnation and punishment,
sixteen persons were cited from every parish to bear witness as to who,
among their neighbours, had been out at Bothwell, or had harboured any
of those who were there. The wicked curates made themselves, in this
grievous matter, engines of espionage, by giving in the names of those,
their parishioners, whom they knew could bear the best testimony.
Thus it was, that many who had escaped from the slaughter--from the
horrors of the Greyfriars church-yard--and from the drowning in the
Orkneys,--and, like myself, had resumed their quiet country labour, were
marked out for destruction. For the witnesses cited to Ayr against us
were persons who had been released from the Greyfriars church-yard, as I
have said, and who, being honest men, could not, when put to their
oaths, but bear witness to the truth of the matters charged against us.
And nothing surely could better show the devilish spirit with which
those in authority were at that time actuated, nor the unchristian
nature of the prelacy, than that the prisoners should thus have been set
free to be made the accusers of their neighbours; and that the curates,
men professing to be ministers of the Gospel, should have been such fit
instruments for such unheard-of machinations. But to hasten forward to
the fate and issue of this self-consuming tyranny, I shall leave all
generalities, and proceed with the events of my own case; and, in doing
so, I shall endeavour what is in me to inscribe the particulars with a
steady hand; for I dare no longer now trust myself with looking to the
right or to the left of the field of my matter. I shall, however, try to
narrate things just as they happened, leaving the courteous reader to
judge what passed at the time in the suffocating throbs wherewith my
heart was then affected.
It was the last day of February, of the year following Bothwell-brigg,
that, in consequence of these subtle and wicked devices, I was taken up.
I had, from my wound, been in an ailing state for many months, and could
then do little in the field; but the weather for the season was mild,
and I had walked out in the tranquillity of a sunny afternoon to give my
son Joseph some instructions in the method of ploughing; for, though he
was then but in his thirteenth year, he was a by-common stripling in
capacity and sense. He was indeed a goodly plant; and I had hoped, in my
old age, to have sat beneath the shelter of his branches; but the axe of
the feller was untimely laid to the root, and it was too soon, with all
the blossoms of the fairest promise, cast down into the dust. But my
task now is of vengeance and justice, not of sorrowing, and I must more
sternly grasp the iron pen.
A party of soldiers, who had been that afternoon sent out to bring in
certain persons (among whom I was one) in a list malignantly transmitted
to the Archbishop of Glasgow, by Andrew Dornoch, the prelatic usurper of
our minister's place, as I was leaving the field where my son was
ploughing, saw me from the road, and ordered me to halt till they came
up, or they would fire at me.
It would have been unavailing of me, in the state I then was, to have
attempted to flee, so I halted; and, after some entreaty with the
soldiers, got permission from them to have my horse and cart yoket, as I
was not very well, and so to be carried to Ayr. And here I should note
down that, although there was in general a coarse spirit among the
King's forces, yet in these men there was a touch of common humanity.
This was no doubt partly owing to their having been some months
quartered in Irvine, where they became naturally softened by the
friendly spirit of the place. It was not, however, ordained that men so
merciful should be permitted to remain long there.
As it was an understood thing that the object of the trials to which the
Covenanters were in this manner subjected was chiefly to raise money and
forfeitures for the rapacious Duke of Lauderdale, then in the rule and
power of the council at Edinburgh, my being carried away prisoner to Ayr
awakened less grief and consternation in my family than might have been
expected from the event. Through the humane permission of my guard,
having a little time to confer with Sarah Lochrig before going away, it
was settled between us that she should gather together what money she
could procure, either by loan or by selling our corn and cattle, in
order to provide for the payment of the fine that we counted would be
laid upon us. I was then taken to the tolbooth of Ayr, where many other
covenanted brethren were lying to await the proceedings of the
circuit-court, which was to be opened by the Lord Kelburne from Glasgow,
on the second day after I had been carried thither.
Among the prisoners were several who knew me well, and who condoled as
Christians with me for the loss I had sustained at Bothwell; so, but for
the denial of the fresh and heavenly air, and the freedom of the fields,
the time of our captivity might have been a season of much solace: for
they were all devout men, and the tolbooth, instead of resounding with
the imprecations of malefactors, became melodious with the voice of
psalms and of holy communion, and the sweet intercourse of spirits that
delighted in one another for the constancy with which they had borne
their testimony.
When the Lord Kelburne arrived, on the first day that the court opened,
I was summoned to respond to the offences laid to my charge, if any
charge of offence it may be called, wherein the purpose of the court was
seemingly to search out opinions that might serve as matter to justify
the infliction of the fines,--the whole end and intent of those circuits
not being to award justice, but to find the means of extorting money. In
some respects, however, I was more mercifully dealt by than many of my
fellow-sufferers; but in order to show how, even in my case, the laws
were perverted, I will here set down a brief record of my examination or
trial, as it was called.