"But, O my country! how shall memory trace
"Thy glories, lost in either Charles's days,
"When through thy fields destructive rapine spread,
"Nor sparing infants' tears, nor hoary head!
"In those dread days, the unprotected swain
"Mourn'd, in the mountains, o'er his wasted plain;
"Nor longer vocal, with the shepherd's lay,
"Were Yarrow's banks, or groves of Endermay."
LANGHORN--_Genius and Valour_.
Such are the verses, in which a modern bard has painted the desolate
state of Scotland, during a period highly unfavourable to poetical
composition. Yet the civil and religious wars of the seventeenth century
have afforded some subjects for traditionary poetry, and the reader is
here presented with the ballads of that disastrous aera. Some prefatory
history may not be unacceptable.
That the Reformation was a good and a glorious work, few will be such
slavish bigots as to deny. But the enemy came, by night, and sowed tares
among the wheat; or rather; the foul and rank soil, upon which the seed
was thrown, pushed forth, together with the rising crop, a plentiful
proportion of pestilential weeds. The morals of the reformed clergy were
severe; their learning was usually respectable, sometimes profound;
and their eloquence, though often coarse, was vehement, animated, and
popular. But they never could forget, that their rise had been achieved
by the degradation, if not the fall, of the crown; and hence, a body of
men, who, in most countries, have been attached to monarchy, were in
Scotland, for nearly two centuries, sometimes the avowed enemies, always
the ambitious rivals, of their prince. The disciples of Calvin could
scarcely avoid a tendency to democracy, and the republican form of
church government was sometimes hinted at, as no unfit model for the
state; at least, the kirkmen laboured to impress, upon their followers
and hearers, the fundamental principle, that the church should be solely
governed by those, unto whom God had given the spiritual sceptre. The
elder Melvine, in a conference with James VI., seized the monarch by the
sleeve, and, addressing him as _God's sillie vassal_, told him, "There
are two kings, and two kingdomes. There is Christ, and his kingdome, the
kirke; whose subject King James the sixth is, and of whose kingdome he
is not a king, nor a head, nor a lord, but a member; and they, whom
Christ hath called and commanded to watch ower his kirke, and govern his
spiritual kingdome, have sufficient authorise and power from him so to
do; which no christian king, no prince, should controul or discharge,
but fortifie and assist: otherwise they are not faithful subjects to
Christ."--_Calderwood_, p. 329. The delegated theocracy, thus sternly
claimed, was exercised with equal rigour. The offences in the king's
household fell under their unceremonious jurisdiction, and he was
formally reminded of his occasional neglect to say grace before and
after meat--his repairing to hear the word more rarely than was
fitting--his profane banning and swearing, and keeping of evil
company--and finally, of his queen's carding, dancing, night-walking,
and such like profane pastimes.--_Calderwood_, p. 313. A curse, direct
or implied, was formally denounced against every man, horse, and spear,
who should assist the king in his quarrel with the Earl of Gowrie; and
from the pulpit, the favourites of the listening sovereign were likened
to Haman, his wife to Herodias, and he himself to Ahab, to Herod, and
to Jeroboam. These effusions of zeal could not be very agreeable to the
temper of James: and accordingly, by a course of slow, and often crooked
and cunning policy, he laboured to arrange the church-government upon
a less turbulent and menacing footing. His eyes were naturally turned
towards the English hierarchy, which had been modelled, by the despotic
Henry VIII., into such a form, as to connect indissolubly the interest
of the church with that of the regal power.[A] The Reformation, in
England, had originated in the arbitrary will of the prince; in
Scotland, and in all other countries of Europe, it had commenced among
insurgents of the lower ranks. Hence, the deep and essential
difference which separated the Huguenots, the Lutherans, the Scottish
presbyterians, and, in fine, all the other reformed churches, from that
of England. But James, with a timidity which sometimes supplies the
place of prudence, contented himself with gradually imposing upon the
Scottish nation a limited and moderate system of episcopacy, which,
while it gave to a proportion of the churchmen a seat in the council of
the nation, induced them to look up to the sovereign, as the power to
whose influence they owed their elevation. But, in other respects, James
spared the prejudices of his subjects; no ceremonial ritual was imposed
upon their consciences; the pastors were reconciled by the prospect of
preferment,[B] the dress and train of the bishops were plain and decent;
the system of tythes was placed upon a moderate and unoppressive
footing;[C] and, perhaps, on the whole, the Scottish hierarchy contained
as few objectionable points as any system of church-government in
Europe. Had it subsisted to the present day, although its doctrines
could not have been more pure, nor its morals more exemplary, than those
of the present kirk of Scotland, yet its degrees of promotion might have
afforded greater encouragement to learning, and objects of laudable
ambition to those, who might dedicate themselves to its service. But
the precipitate bigotry of the unfortunate Charles I. was a blow to
episcopacy in Scotland, from which it never perfectly recovered.
[Footnote A: Of this the Covenanters were so sensible, as to trace
(what they called) the Antichristian hierarchy, with its idolatry,
superstition, and human inventions, "to the prelacy of England, the
fountain whence all these Babylonish streams issue unto us."--See their
manifesto on entering England, in 1640.]
[Footnote B: Many of the preachers, who had been loudest in the cause of
presbytery, were induced to accept of bishoprics. Such was, for example,
William Cooper, who was created bishop of Galloway. This recreant Mass
John was a hypochondriac, and conceived his lower extremities to be
composed of glass; hence, on his court advancement, the following
epigram was composed:
_"Aureus heu! frugilem confregit malleus urnam."_]
[Footnote C: This part of the system was perfected in the reign of
Charles I.]
It has frequently happened, that the virtues of the individual, at least
their excess (if, indeed, there can be an excess in virtue), have been
fatal to the prince. Never was this more fully exemplified than in the
history of Charles I. His zeal for religion, his family affection, the
spirit with which he defended his supposed rights, while they do honour
to the man, were the fatal shelves upon which the monarchy was wrecked.
Impatient to accomplish the total revolution, which his father's
cautious timidity had left incomplete, Charles endeavoured at once to
introduce into Scotland the church-government, and to renew, in England,
the temporal domination, of his predecessor, Henry VIII. The furious
temper of the Scottish nation first took fire; and the brandished
footstool of a prostitute[A] gave the signal for civil dissension,
which ceased not till the church was buried under the ruins of the
constitution; till the nation had stooped to a military despotism; and
the monarch to the block of the executioner.
[Footnote A: "_Out, false loon! wilt thou say the mass at my lug
(ear)_," was the well known exclamation of Margaret Geddes, as she
discharged her missile tripod against the bishop of Edinburgh, who,
in obedience to the orders of the privy-council, was endeavouring to
rehearse the common prayer. Upon a seat more elevated, the said Margaret
had shortly before done penance, before the congregation, for the sin of
fornication: such, at least, is the tory tradition.]
The consequence of Charles' hasty and arbitrary measures were soon
evident. The united nobility, gentry, and clergy of Scotland, entered
into the SOLEMN LEAGUE AND COVENANT, by which memorable deed, they
subscribed and swore a national renunciation of the hierarchy. The walls
of the prelatic Jericho (to use the language of the times) were thus
levelled with the ground, and the curse of Hiel, the Bethelite,
denounced against those who should rebuild them. While the clergy
thundered, from the pulpits, against the prelatists and malignants (by
which names were distinguished the scattered and heartless adherents of
Charles), the nobility and gentry, in arms, hurried to oppose the march
of the English army, which now advanced towards their borders. At the
head of their defensive forces they placed Alexander Lesley, who, with
many of his best officers, had been trained to war under the great
Gustavus Adolphus. They soon assembled an army of 26,000 men, whose
camp, upon Dunse-law, is thus described by an eye-witness.
"Mr Baillie acknowledges, that it was an agreeable feast to his eyes,
to survey the place: it is a round hill, about a Scots mile in circle,
rising, with very little declivity, to the height of a bow-shot, and the
head somewhat plain, and near a quarter of a mile in length and breadth;
on the top it was garnished with near forty field pieces, pointed
towards the east and south. The colonels, who were mostly noblemen, as
Rothes, Cassilis, Eglinton, Dalhousie, Lindsay, Lowdon, Boyd, Sinclair,
Balcarras, Flemyng, Kirkcudbright, Erskine, Montgomery, Yester, &c.
lay in large tents at the head of their respective regiments; their
captains, who generally were barons, or chief gentlemen, lay around
them: next to these were the lieutenants, who were generally old
veterans, and had served in that, or a higher station, over sea; and the
common soldiers lay outmost, all in huts of timber, covered with divot,
or straw. Every company, which, according to the first plan, did consist
of two hundred men, had their colours flying at the captain's tent door,
with the Scots arms upon them, and this motto, in golden letters, "FOR
CHRIST'S CROWN AND COVENANT." Against this army, so well arrayed and
disciplined, and whose natural hardihood was edged and exalted by a high
opinion of their sacred cause, Charles marched at the head of a large
force, but divided, by the emulation of the commanders, and enervated,
by disuse of arms. A faintness of spirit pervaded the royal army, and
the king stooped to a treaty with his Scottish subjects. The treaty was
soon broken; and, in the following year, Dunse-law again presented the
same edifying spectacle of a presbyterian army. But the Scots were not
contented with remaining there. They passed the Tweed; and the English
troops, in a skirmish at Newburn, shewed either more disaffection,
or cowardice, than had at any former period disgraced their national
character. This war was concluded by the treaty of Rippon; in
consequence of which, and of Charles's concessions, made during his
subsequent visit to his native country, the Scottish parliament
congratulated him on departing "a contented king, from a contented
people." If such content ever existed, it was of short duration.
The storm, which had been soothed to temporary rest in Scotland, burst
forth in England with treble violence. The popular clamour accused
Charles, or his ministers, of fetching into Britain the religion of
Rome, and the policy of Constantinople. The Scots felt most keenly the
first, and the English the second, of these aggressions. Accordingly,
when the civil war of England broke forth, the Scots nation, for a time,
regarded it in neutrality, though not with indifference. But, when the
successes of a prelatic monarch, against a presbyterian parliament, were
paving the way for rebuilding the system of hierarchy, they could no
longer remain inactive. Bribed by the delusive promise of Sir Henry
Vane, and Marshall, the parliamentary commissioners, that the church of
England should be reformed, _according to the word of God_, which, they
fondly believed, amounted to an adoption of presbytery, they agreed to
send succours to their brethren of England. Alexander Lesly, who ought
to have ranked among the _contented_ subjects, having been raised by the
king to the honours of Earl of Leven, was, nevertheless, readily induced
to accept the command of this second army. Doubtless, where insurrection
is not only pardoned, but rewarded, a monarch has little right to expect
gratitude for benefits, which all the world, as well as the receiver,
must attribute to fear. Yet something is due to decency; and the best
apology for Lesly, is his zeal for propagating presbyterianism in
England, the bait which had caught the whole parliament of Scotland.
But, although the Earl of Leven was commander in chief, David Lesly, a
yet more renowned and active soldier than himself, was major-general of
the cavalry, and, in truth, bore away the laurels of the expedition.
The words of the following march, which was played in the van of this
presbyterian crusade, were first published by Allan Ramsay, in his
_Evergreen_; and they breathe the very spirit we might expect. Mr
Ritson, in his collection of Scottish songs, has favoured the public
with the music, which seems to have been adapted to the bagpipes.
The hatred of the old presbyterians to the organ was, apparently,
invincible. It is here vilified with the name of a "_chest-full of
whistles_," as the episcopal chapel at Glasgow was, by the vulgar,
opprobriously termed the _Whistling Kirk_. Yet, such is the revolution
of sentiment upon this, as upon more important points, that reports have
lately been current, of a plan to introduce this noble instrument into
presbyterian congregations.
The share, which Lesly's army bore in the action of Marston Moor, has
been exalted, or depressed, as writers were attached to the English or
Scottish nations, to the presbyterian or independent factions. Mr Laing
concludes, with laudable impartiality, that the victory was equally due
to "Cromwell's iron brigade of disciplined independents, and to three
regiments of Lesly's horse."--Vol I. p. 244.