It will be necessary now to review the condition of Scotland at the time
when Claverhouse began first to be concerned in her affairs, and of the
causes political and religious--if, indeed, in Scottish history it be
ever possible to separate the two--which produced that condition.
Without clearly understanding the state of parties which then distracted
that unhappy country, it will not be possible clearly to understand the
position of Claverhouse; and without a clear understanding of his
position, it will certainly not be possible to form a just estimate of
his character. It is by too readily yielding to the charm of a writer,
who had not then for his purpose the impartial estimate of a human
character so much as the embellishment of a political principle, that
public opinion has been for many years content to accept a savage
caricature in place of a portrait. It would be impertinent to say that
Macaulay did not understand the circumstances into which Claverhouse was
forced, and the train of events which had caused them; but it would not
have suited his purpose so clearly and strictly to have explained them
that others might have traversed the verdict he intended to be
established. He heard, indeed, and he determined to hear, only one side
of the case: indeed, at the time he wrote, there was not much to be
heard on the other; and on the evidence he accepted the verdict was a
foregone conclusion. It is impossible altogether to acquit Claverhouse
of the charges laid to his account, nor will any attempt here be made to
do so; but even the worst that can be proved against him, when
considered impartially with the circumstances of his position and the
spirit of the time, will, I think, be found to take a very different
complexion from that which has been somewhat too confidently given to
them.[7]
When Charles the Second was restored to the throne of his fathers he was
hailed in Scotland with the same tumultuous joy that greeted him in
England. The Scottish nation was indeed weary of the past. It was weary
alike of the yoke of Cromwell and of the yoke of the Covenant. The first
Covenant--the Covenant of 1557--had been a protest against the tyranny
of the Pope: the Covenant of 1643 was a protest against the tyranny of
the Crown. It was the Scottish supplement, framed in the religious
spirit and temperament of the Scottish nation, to the English protest
against ship-money. The voice, first sounded among the rich valleys and
pleasant woods of Buckinghamshire, was echoed in the churchyard of the
Grey Friars at Edinburgh. Six months later the triumph of
Presbyterianism was completed, when in the church of Saint Margaret's at
Westminster the Commons of England ratified the Solemn League and
Covenant of Scotland. Over the wild time which followed it will be
unnecessary for our purpose to linger. The work was done: then followed
the reaction. In both countries the oppressed became in turn the
oppressors. The champions of religious liberty became as bigoted and
intolerant as those whose intolerance and bigotry had first goaded them
into rebellion. The old Presbyterian saw the rise of new modes of
worship with the same horror that he had shown at the ritual of Laud.
Milton protested that the "new Presbyter is but old Priest writ large."
Within only four years of the outbreak of the civil war no less than
sixteen religious sects were found existing in open defiance of the
principles of faith which that war was pledged to uphold. One common
bond, indeed, united these sects in sympathy: one and all repudiated
with equal energy the authority of the Church to prescribe a fixed form
of worship: a national Church was, in their eyes, as odious and
impossible a tyranny as the divine right of kings. But this common
hatred of the interference of a Mother Church could not teach them
tolerance for each other. Cardinal Newman has described the enthusiasm
of Saint Anthony as calm, manly, and magnanimous, full of affectionate
loyalty to the Church and the Truth. "It was not," he says, "vulgar,
bustling, imbecile, unstable, undutiful." The religious enthusiasm of
the two nations at this time, though at heart sincere and just, was
unfortunately in its public aspect the exact opposite of Saint
Anthony's. There was the essential great meaning of the matter, to
borrow Carlyle's words, but there were also the mean, peddling details.
It was the misfortune of many, of three kings of England among the
number, that the latter should seem the most vital of the two.
Presbyterian and Independent, Leveller and Baptist, Brownist and Fifth
Monarchy Man, one and all stood up and made proclamation, crying, "Look
unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth; for I am God, and
there is none else." Well might Cromwell adjure them in that war of
words which followed the sterner conflict on the heights of Dunbar, "I
beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be
mistaken."
Though the number and variety of the dissentients in England were far
greater than in Scotland, where the bulk both of the people and the
clergy stood firmly within the old Presbyterian lines, yet in the latter
country the separation was far more bitter and productive of far more
violent results. In the former the strong hand of Cromwell, himself an
Independent, but keen to detect a useful man under every masquerade of
worship, and prompt to use him, kept the sects from open disruption.
Quarrel as they might among themselves, there was one stronger than them
all, and they knew it. The old Committee of Estates, originally
appointed by the Parliament as a permanent body in 1640, was not strong
enough to control the spirit it had helped to raise: it was not even
strong enough to keep order within its own house. The new Committee was
but a tool in the hands of Argyle. The old Presbyterian viewed with
equal dislike the sectaries of Cromwell, the men of the Engagement which
had cost Hamilton his head, and the Malignants who had gathered to the
standard of Montrose. The Resolutioner, who wished to repeal the Act of
Classes, was too lukewarm: the Remonstrant was too violent. It was by
this last body that the troubles we have now to examine came upon
Scotland.
After the collapse of Hamilton's army at Uttoxeter in August 1648, a
body of Covenanters assembled at Mauchline, in Ayrshire, to protest
against the leniency with which the Engagement had been treated in the
Estates, where, indeed, a considerable minority had been inclined openly
to countenance it. Their leader was at first the Earl of Eglinton, a
staunch Covenanting lord; but as they gathered strength Argyle joined
them with his Highlanders, and the command soon passed into his hands.
The Protesters marched upon Edinburgh. In an attempt to take Stirling
Castle they were defeated by Sir George Monro with a division of
Hamilton's army which had not crossed the border; but Argyle had better
tools to work with than the claymores of his Highlanders. He opened
negotiations with Cromwell, who led an army in person into Scotland,
renewed the Covenant, laid before the Estates (the new Estates of Argyle
and his party) certain considerations, as he diplomatically called them,
demanding, among other things, that no person accessory to the
Engagement should be hereafter employed in any public place or trust.
The Committee were only too willing to have the support of Cromwell to
what they themselves so vehemently desired. Two Acts were quickly
passed: one reversing many of the acts of its predecessors and
confirming the considerations: the other, known in history as the Act of
Classes, defining the various misdemeanours which were to exclude men
from sitting in Parliament or holding any public office, for a period
measured by their offences, and practically to be determined by the
judicatories of the Kirk.
This Mauchline Convention was popularly known at the time as the
Whiggamores' Raid, a name memorable as the first introduction into
history of a word soon to become only too familiar, and still a part of
our political vocabulary.[8] Its immediate result was to throw the
direction of affairs still more exclusively into the hands of the
clergy: indirectly, but no less surely, it was the cause of the Pentland
Rising and the savage persecution which followed, of the murder of
Archbishop Sharp, of the battles of Drumclog and Bothwell Bridge, and of
those terrible years still spoken of in Scotland as the "killing-time."
It was, in short, like the wrath of Achilles, the spring of unnumbered
woes.
Then followed the execution of Charles. Against this the whole body of
Presbyterians joined in protesting. The hereditary right of kings was,
indeed, as much a principle of the Covenant as their divine right was
opposed to it; and the execution at Whitehall on January 30th, 1649, was
regarded with as much horror by the Presbyterians of England as by the
Presbyterians of Scotland.
The first act of the Estates was to proclaim the Prince of Wales king of
Great Britain, their next to send a deputation to Holland to invite him
to take possession of his kingdom. It had been better both for Charles
and for Scotland that the invitation had never been accepted. The terms
on which alone the Scots would see the son of Charles Stuart back among
them as crowned king were such as only the direst necessity could have
induced him to accept: they were such as it seems now amazing that even
the most bigoted and inexperienced could really have believed that the
son of his father, or, indeed, any man in his position, would keep one
moment longer than circumstances compelled him. But his advisers, led on
by Wilmot and Buckingham, bid him sign--sign everything, or all would be
lost. He signed everything. First he put his hand to the Solemn League
and Covenant: then to a second declaration promising to do his utmost to
extirpate both Popery and Prelacy from all parts of his kingdom:
finally, he consented to figure as the hero of a day of public fasting
and humiliation for the tyranny of his father and the idolatry of his
mother. And while he was acquiescing to each fresh demand with a shrug
of his shoulders and a whispered jest to Buckingham, and in his heart as
much hatred for his humiliators as he was capable of feeling for
anybody, he was all the while urging on Montrose to strike that wild
blow for his crown which was to lead the brave marquis to the scaffold.
The deaths of Hamilton and Huntly had preceded the death of Montrose by
a few weeks: a few more weeks and Charles was in Scotland, a crowned
king in name, virtually a prisoner. Within little more than a year the
fight at Dunbar, and the "crowning mercy" of Worcester, had bitterly
taught him how futile was all the humiliation he had undergone.
It will be enough to briefly recall the main incidents of the years
which intervened between the battle of Worcester and the Restoration.
After the establishment of the Protectorate an Act of Indemnity was
passed for the Scottish people. From this certain classes were excepted.
All of the House of Hamilton, for instance, and some other persons of
note, including Lauderdale: all who had joined the Engagement, or who
had not joined in the protestation against it: all who had sat in
Parliament or on the Committee of Estates after the coronation of
Charles at Scone: all who had borne arms at the battle of Worcester.
From this proscribed list, however, Argyle managed to extricate
himself. He had fortified himself at Inverary, and summoned a meeting of
the Estates to which the chiefs of the Royalist party had been bidden.
To conquer him in his own stronghold would have been difficult, perhaps
impossible, to English soldiers unused to such warfare. Cromwell wisely
preferred to negotiate, and Argyle was not hard to bring to terms. He
bound himself to live at peace with the Government, and to use his best
endeavours to persuade others to do so. In return he was to be left
unmolested in the free enjoyment of his estates, and in the exercise of
religion according to his conscience.
The politicians were now silenced; but a noisier and more troublesome
body had still to be reckoned with. In July, 1653, the General Assembly
was closed, and Resolutioners and Remonstrants were sent to the right
about together. Some measures, however, had to be taken to prevent them,
not from cutting each other's throats, which would have suited the
Government well enough, but from stirring up a religious war, which they
would inevitably have done if left to the free enjoyment of their own
humours. It was necessary so to strengthen the hands of one of the two
parties that the other should be compelled to refrain at least from open
hostilities. The Resolutioners, as the most tolerant and the
mildest-mannered, would have been those Cromwell would have preferred to
see in the ascendency. But the Resolutioners had acknowledged Charles,
and were, after their own fashion, in favour of the royal title. The
Remonstrants were accordingly preferred. They, indeed, denied the
authority of the Commonwealth over spiritual matters, but they also
denied the authority of Charles; and it was felt that at such a crisis
the civil allegiance was of more value than the religious. A law was
accordingly established dividing Scotland into five districts, in each
of which certain members of the Remonstrant clergy were empowered to
ordain ministers, as it were, to the exercise of their functions. At the
same time it was not the object of Cromwell to exalt one party at the
expense of the other so much as to strike a balance between the two; and
in doing this he was much served by the tact and good sense of James
Sharp, whose name now first begins to be heard in Scottish history. He
was on the side of the Resolutioners, but he so managed matters as to be
favourably regarded by the Government as a person likely to be of
service to them in the event of any open disruption between the two
bodies, without losing the confidence of his own party. The Court of
Session was the next to go, and in its place rose the Commission of
Justice, of which James Dalrymple, afterwards Lord Stair, the first
Scottish lawyer of his day, was the most conspicuous member. In 1654 the
Act for incorporating the Union between England and Scotland was passed
by the Commonwealth. With that Commonwealth disappeared the Union, but
the few years of its existence were fruitful of at least one great boon
to Scotland. In those years was established free-trade between the two
countries: a boon for Scotland which she never properly appreciated till
she lost it by the Navigation Act of the Restoration: an alleged
grievance to England which had its share in bringing that Restoration to
pass; for it was then, and for long after, a fixed principle in the
philosophy of English commerce that free-trade between the two
countries meant pillaging Englishmen to enrich Scotchmen. A regular
postal service was also established. The abortive rising known as
Glencairn's Expedition was the only act of open hostility that broke
those few years of comparative tranquillity; and the lenient terms
granted by Monk to the Highland leader tended more than anything to show
how weary of the long rule of disorder and bloodshed all the best of the
two nations were growing. On September 3rd, 1658, Oliver Cromwell died,
and in November of the following year Monk began his famous march to
London. On May 25th, 1660, Charles the Second landed at Dover.
Though the Remonstrants had won the upper hand for a time, the bulk of
the Scottish nation had been all along on the side of the Resolutioners.
Much as the character and religious views of Charles were to their
distaste, the principle of the Covenant was for a king, and it was by
the principle of the Covenant that the Scottish nation stood. The stern
and narrow bigotry of the Remonstrants, whom their short taste of power
had made of course more fanatical and more quarrelsome than ever, had
almost succeeded in forcing the more moderate Presbyterians into the
arms of the Royalists. A little tolerance, a little tact on the English
side would probably have cemented the alliance. But it was not to be.
It is important to remember this. The extreme party with which
Claverhouse had to deal no more represented the Scottish nation than the
Irishmen who follow Mr. Parnell's call in the House of Commons represent
their nation now, or than men like Napper Tandy and Wolfe Tone
represented it a century ago. It seems still a common belief that
Claverhouse and his troopers were sent to force upon a sober, patient,
God-fearing nation a religion and a king that they abhorred. Nothing
could be farther from the truth. The large majority of the Scottish
nation was as eager to welcome Charles as the old squires who had lost
their fortunes for his father, or the young bloods who hoped to find
fortunes under the son. The narrow and blatant form of religion
professed by the extreme party was as repulsive to the bulk of their
countrymen as to the King himself.
These men were a remnant of the old Remonstrants of the Mauchline
Convention. They had originally, as we have seen, looked to Argyle as
their leader; but when Argyle ranged himself on the side of the young
King there were some among them who would not follow him. These
maintained, and so far they were unquestionably right, that the "young
man Charles Stuart" was, for all his protestations and oaths, as much at
heart a Malignant as his father; and that those who pretended to believe
him were playing the Kirk and the Covenant false. When Cromwell marched
into Scotland to win the battle of Dunbar these men had formed
themselves into a separate party under Colonel Archibald Strachan, an
able soldier who commanded that division of Leslie's army which had
defeated Montrose in Rossshire. Strachan's design seems to have been to
stand aloof for the present from either side; but from some not very
intelligible cause he fell into disgrace with his party, and this is
said to have so preyed upon his mind as to have caused his death. From
that time the Wild Westland Whigs, as they began now to be called, had
no ostensible leader. They withdrew sullenly to their own homes,
contenting themselves during the remaining years of the Commonwealth
with protesting against everybody and everything outside their own
narrow circle. They must not be confounded with the general body of the
Remonstrants, between whom and the Resolutioners Cromwell had to keep
the balance. They were a people apart. Throughout the wild
hill-districts of the Western Lowlands they preached their fierce
crusade against all who were not prepared to stand by the spirit of the
Covenant as they chose to interpret it. The toleration they demanded
they would not give. No man should be free to worship God as he pleased:
every man must worship Him in the way which seemed good to them, and in
that way only. The moderate Presbyterians were as hateful to them as
Charles himself and all his bishops; and they in their turn were as
obnoxious to the majority of the Scottish nation as to the English
Government. Cleric and layman alike was weary of the unending squabbles
that had distracted the Church of Scotland since the days of Knox. They
wished for peace; and no peace was possible so long as an ignorant and
noisy minority would suffer it only at their own price.
One other point should also be remembered. It has been the custom to
excuse the cruelties of the Covenanters, when they could not be denied,
as the acts of men goaded into madness by years of persecution. This
excuse will hardly serve. It might, indeed, serve to explain the murder
of Sharp and the savage deeds of such men as Hamilton and Burley; but
long before that time the Scottish fanatic had proved himself a match
in ferocity for the bloodiest Malignant of them all. After Philiphaugh
one hundred Irish prisoners were shot in cold blood, while a minister of
the Covenanting Church stood by, reiterating in savage glee, "The wark
goes bonnily on." About the same time eighty women and children were in
one day flung over the bridge at Linlithgow for the crime of having been
followers of the camp of Montrose. In 1647 three hundred of the
Macdonalds who held a fortified post on a hill in Kintire surrendered at
discretion to David Leslie. It is said that Leslie would have let them
go but for his chaplain, John Nave. Borrowing the words of Samuel, "What
meaneth then this bleating of the sheep in mine ears, and the lowing of
the oxen which I hear?" in a long and fiery harangue this man of God
exhorted the conquerors to finish their work, and threatened their
captain with the curse of Saul who spared the Amalekites. The prisoners
were butchered to a man.[9]
If, then, it be but a delusion of later times that Scotland could at the
Restoration have been conciliated into accepting a moderate form of
Episcopacy, it is at least clear that there was at that time a strong
party in the country anxious for a compromise between the two Churches,
and willing to make all reasonable advances towards one. Unfortunately
the first move on both sides was of a nature to make all chances of a
compromise impossible.
Charles had conceived a violent dislike to Presbyterianism, and with
his experiences of it the dislike was not unnatural. It was not, he told
Burnet, a religion for gentlemen, and he found few among his court to
contradict him. Scarcely had he settled himself in his capital when the
Presbyterians were upon him. Sharp had already been some months in
London as ambassador of the moderate party, the party of the old
Resolutioners. But an easy way of reconciling Sharp's conscience was
soon found. It is not precisely clear when the bargain was struck which
was to convert the chosen champion of the Presbyterian Church into an
archbishop, but struck it was, and in no long time. He had by Monk's
advice visited Charles at Breda, and some suppose that the first
interview completed the transformation. If so, he managed to delude his
party very skilfully. His letters to the Assembly, though the light of
subsequent events enables us to translate them more clearly than was
possible at the time, were full of wise counsel, of apparently honest
confessions of the many difficulties he foresaw in the way, and of
protestations of fidelity and firmness which were no less implicitly
believed. "I told him," said his colleague Robert Douglas, a man of very
different stamp, when Sharp went up to London later for his ordination,
"I told him the curse of God would be on him for his treacherous
dealing; and that I may speak my heart of this man, I profess I did no
more suspect him in reference to Prelacy than I did myself."[10]
Meanwhile the extreme party had not been idle. It will be perhaps most
convenient henceforth to distinguish them as Covenanters: to call them
Whigs, as Burnet and other historians of the time call them, would not
convey to modern ears the significance it had for their contemporaries.
Even those stern and unbending Tories of whom Mr. Gladstone was once the
spokesman have long ceased to regard the men who are still sometimes
called Whigs as the most fanatical members of the body politic. It would
be no mere fanciful application of modern terms to distinguish the two
parties of the Scottish Church as Liberals and Radicals; but it will for
many reasons be best henceforth to write of them as Presbyterians and
Covenanters.
The Covenanters, then, had not been idle. Shortly after the Restoration
they had, through a deputation of their elders and ministers, called
upon their brethren of the Church to unite with them in an address to
the King, praying him, as a member of the Covenant with themselves, to
remember his obligations to that sacred institution and zealously to
prosecute its blessed work in all his three kingdoms. Toleration in
things religious was especially denounced as a vast mischief disguised
under the specious pretence of liberty for tender consciences.
Schismatics were to be stamped out as sternly as Papists and Prelatists;
and by Schismatics were meant all men, members of their own Church no
less than of others, who ventured to differ from them on any point of
doctrine whatsoever.
The Committee of Estates, which had resumed its sittings, did not like
the job. They called the deputation a private meeting of some protesting
ministers, and clapped the leaders into prison.
A government had now been formed for Scotland. Middleton was Lord High
Commissioner, a soldier of fortune who had been raised to the peerage
for the occasion. He was also named commander-in-chief of the forces and
governor of Edinburgh Castle. With him were associated Glencairn as Lord
Chancellor, Lauderdale as Secretary of State, Rothes as President of the
Council, and Crawford as Lord Treasurer. The first proceeding of this
Parliament, known in the gossip of the time as the Drunken Parliament
from the too frequent condition of its chiefs, was to pass a Rescissory
Act, repealing all measures that had become law since the year 1633,
including even those passed by the Parliament professing the authority
of Charles himself. This was followed by an Act "concerning religion and
Church government," in which, after some pious but vague protestations
of the royal design to "encourage the exercise of religion both public
and private, and to suppress all profaneness and disorderly walking," it
was promised that the administration by sessions, presbyteries, and
synods would not for the present be interfered with. That present,
however, soon passed. On May 27th, two days before the anniversary of
the Restoration of the Monarchy, the Act for the Restoration of
Episcopacy was made law. A previous Act had ordained May 29th to be kept
holy; and the opposition taken to this by those who objected to all
holidays as idolatrous had in turn produced a measure which practically
marks the beginning of that system of vague bullying, as Dr. Burton has
happily called it, which was in no long time to pass into a persecution
anything but vague. On December 15th, in Westminster Abbey, Sharp was
consecrated Primate of Scotland, and at the same time Fairfoul was
raised to the see of Glasgow, Hamilton to the see of Galloway, and the
good and gentle Leighton to the see of Dunblane.
Meanwhile the English Parliament had by its Navigation Act crushed for
the time the short-lived hopes of Scottish commerce, and was now busy
with an Act of Indemnity. This had been practically one of the
conditions of the Restoration, but Scotland had not been included in the
bargain. Argyle was the first to suffer from the omission. He had gone
up to London to pay his court to the new King, but had been refused an
audience. He was arrested, and, after a short sojourn in the Tower, sent
back to Edinburgh to stand his trial for high treason before the
Estates. He was found guilty and beheaded in the High Street on May
27th, 1661, two days after the anniversary of the more shameful death
which he had helped to bring upon Montrose. As he had been expressly
pardoned during the King's short reign in Scotland for all acts
committed by him against the Crown up to the year 1657, and as his
accusers could find no evidence of communications with the Parliament
after that time, he must have been acquitted had it not been for Monk,
who at the last moment produced certain letters written by Argyle to him
when acting for Cromwell. Johnstone of Warriston was another victim,
whom, like Argyle, it was no hard matter for judges who had a mind that
way to bring within the compass of the law of treason. He, however,
managed to get across to the Continent before he could be arrested. He
was tried and condemned in his absence. After two years of painful
shifts and wanderings he was tracked down in France by a man known as
Crooked-back Murray, and sent back to his fate. A third victim was James
Guthrie, the most vehement and active of the Covenanters, the framer of
the original Remonstrance and author of a seditious pamphlet called "The
Causes of the Lord's Wrath." With him would probably have suffered
Samuel Rutherford, a minister as zealous as Guthrie, but of more
education and manners. Fortunately for him, he died before the reign of
punishment began; and the Government was forced to content itself with
ordering his book "Lex, Rex," to be burned by the hangman at the Cross
of Edinburgh and at the gate of the University of Saint Andrews, where
he had been Professor of Divinity. In 1662, an Act of Indemnity was made
law, by which future punishment for the past was adjusted by a scale of
fines.
Close on the heels of the Act of Indemnity followed one demanding from
all persons holding any office of public trust a public abjuration of
the Covenant, and another requiring all clergymen who had been appointed
since 1649 to receive collation from the bishop of their diocese. Those
who did not obey were, after a short respite, expelled from their
parishes. Those who obeyed were regarded by their congregations as
backsliders and self-seekers. Three hundred and fifty ministers were
driven with their families from their homes in the depth of winter; and
to supply their places new ministers were appointed, popularly known as
the King's Curates. Another Act required attendance at the parish church
on penalty of a fine graduated according to the rank of the absentee.
Finally, to crown all, the Solemn League and Covenant was publicly
burned at the market-cross of Edinburgh; and an aggravated copy of the
English Five-mile Act against Non-jurors, known as the Mile Act, was
passed, prohibiting all recusant clergymen from residing within twenty
miles of their old parishes, within six miles of Edinburgh or any
cathedral town, and within three miles of any royal burgh. The
punishment for transgressing this law was to be the same as that for
sedition.
Enough has now been said to show the nature of the bullying adopted by
the Government. Over the years which still lie between us and the entry
of Claverhouse on the stage I must pass more rapidly.
In 1663 Rothes succeeded Middleton as commissioner. The latter had been
rash enough to measure his strength with Lauderdale, and had been
signally worsted. To complete the legislative machinery a Conventicle
Act was passed this year, declaring all assemblies of more than five
persons, besides members of the family, unlawful and seditious. As most
of their congregations had followed the expelled ministers into the
wilderness, this new law so mightily increased the labours of the
authorities that it was found necessary to institute a new tribunal of
justice for the especial treatment of ecclesiastical offences. This was
no less than a renewal of that old Court of High Commission which had
been abolished by the Long Parliament twenty years before to the joy of
the whole nation. To strengthen its hands a body of troops was sent down
into the western shires, now the stronghold of the Covenant, to impose
and exact the fines ordained by the Commission. Their leader was Sir
James Turner, a man of some education, but rough and brutal. He had
served on the Continent under Gustavus Adolphus, had fought under Leslie
in the Presbyterian ranks, and had accompanied Hamilton with the
Engagers into England. Turner, in his own memoirs, declares that he not
only did not exceed his orders, but was even lenient beyond his
commission. When, a few years later, in a momentary fit of indulgence,
his acts were called in question by the Privy Council, the evidence
hardly served to establish his assertion.
At length the West rose. On November 13th, 1666, four countrymen came
into the little village of Dalry, in Galloway, in search of refreshment.
There they found a few soldiers, driving before them a body of peasants
to thresh out the corn of an old man who would not pay his fines. There
was an argument and a scuffle: a pistol was fired and a soldier fell:
the rest yielded. It was now too late to go back. Turner was posted at
Dumfries with a considerable sum of money in his charge. It was
determined to seize him. The four champions had now been joined by some
fifty horsemen and a large body of unmounted peasants. Turner was made
prisoner; and the money restored to the service of those from whose
pockets it had been originally drawn.
The number of the insurgents had now risen to three thousand. They
determined to march on Edinburgh, thinking to gather recruits on the
way; but when they came within five miles of the city their hearts
failed them. The weather was bitterly cold: provisions and arms were
scarce: the peasantry of the more cultivated districts had proved either
lukewarm to the cause or openly hostile: no recruits had come in, and
their own ranks were growing daily thinner. At length they turned on
their tracks and made once more for their western fastnesses. But they
had now to reckon with a more dangerous foe than Turner.
The garrison in Edinburgh was commanded by Thomas Dalziel, a ferocious
old soldier who had learned his trade in the Russian wars. His dress was
as uncouth as his manners, and he wore a long white bushy beard that no
steel had been suffered to touch since the death of the first
Charles.[11] With all the regulars he could muster Dalziel was quickly
after the fugitives. He came up with them on Rullion Green, a ridge of
the Pentland Hills. Though now numbering scarce a thousand men, the
Covenanters were strongly posted, and defended themselves bravely. The
royal troops were twice driven back before they could carry the ridge,
and night had fallen before the insurgents were fairly broken. The
slaughter was not great; and it is significant of the unpopularity of
their cause that the fugitives suffered more from the Lothian peasantry
than from the victorious soldiers.
The Government could now assume the virtue of those who are summoned to
quell an open rebellion. Dalziel was put in command of the insurgent
districts, and his little finger was indeed found thicker than Turner's
loins. Twenty men were hanged on one gibbet in Edinburgh and many others
in various parts of the country: crowds were shipped off to the
plantations: torture was freely applied, and the ingenious devices of
the boot and the thumbkin were in daily requisition.[12] Dalziel was in
his element. A prisoner reviled him at the council board for "a Muscovy
beast who roasted men." The old savage struck the man with the hilt of
his sword so fiercely in the mouth that the blood gushed out.
At length there came a lull. Weary of the useless butchery, which,
hitherto, they had not perhaps fully realised, the English Government
determined to see if indulgence could persuade where persecution was
powerless to force. Orders to that effect were sent up to Edinburgh. The
soldiers were withdrawn from the western shires. Sharp was bidden to
retire to his see. Lauderdale took the place of Rothes as commissioner.
The character of Lauderdale is one of the most curious problems of the
time. In his youth he had been as zealous for the Covenant as he now
appeared to be zealous for Episcopacy. Hence some have supposed that his
real design was by favouring the intolerance of the bishops to bring
them to discomfiture, and to re-establish on their ruin the old
Presbyterian Church, for which, despite the profligacy of his life and
conversation, he was still believed to entertain as much veneration as
he was capable of feeling for any form of religion. But whatever may
have been his regard for the old Covenant of his youth, he was set as a
rock against the men who were now as much opposed to any moderate
observance of Presbyterian worship as the most inveterate Malignant at
Whitehall.
The first Indulgence was passed in 1669, in favour of the ministers whom
the Act of 1662 had driven from their parishes. Such as had since that
time kept from open violation of the law were now to be reinstated in
their livings where vacant. The manse and the glebe were to be theirs as
formerly, but the stipend was not to be renewed. These terms were
accepted by some forty or fifty clergymen. By the advice of the gentle
Leighton, who almost alone among his brethren seems at this time to have
dared, or to have been even willing, to counsel tolerance, a deputation,
nicknamed "the Bishop's Evangelists," was sent into the West to preach
the doctrine of this Indulgence. The pious crusade was in vain. The
failure of the Pentland rising and its terrible sequel had turned those
stubborn hearts to madness. Their weaker brethren were now classed with
the apostate Sharp and the butcher Dalziel; and the Indulgence was
declared a snare for the soul far more deadly than any torture the
Government could devise for the body. Nor, if time could have
strengthened Leighton's hands, was time allowed him. Following close
upon the Indulgence came a fresh Act, now making not only all
field-preaching a capital offence, but even laying heavy penalties on
any exercise of the Presbyterian worship except under an Indulged
minister. This again was soon followed by a fresh law against
Intercommuning--that is to say, against all who should offer even the
simplest act of common charity to a Covenanter--and promising large
rewards to all who should give information against them or their
protectors. By this law it is said that thousands of both sexes,
including many persons of rank, suffered severely; and from it sprang a
curious incident in the miserable history of this time.
An order was issued to the landed gentry of Renfrew and Ayr, the shires
where the disaffection was strongest, requiring them to give bail that
their servants and tenants should not only abstain from personal
attendance at conventicles, but also from all intercourse with
intercommuned persons. The gentry answered that such assurance was
impossible. It was not, they said, within the compass of their power to
do this thing. The reply from Edinburgh was short and conclusive: if the
landlords could not keep order in their districts, order must be kept
for them. A body of English troops had already been moved up to the
border and an Irish force collected at Belfast; but a more ingenious
mode of punishment was now devised. Since the barbarous excesses of the
Highland clans under Montrose, it had become an acknowledged breach of
the rules of civilised warfare to employ men who, like the Red Indians
used in our own American wars, were amenable to no discipline and
recognised no principles of humanity. Eight thousand of these savages
were now let loose on the disobedient Lowlanders. The result was,
indeed, not all that had been anticipated at Edinburgh. The Council had
naturally enough expected that the descent of these plaided barbarians
would be the signal for a general insurrection, which would relieve them
of their troubles as certainly and much more conveniently than Dalziel's
dragoons and Perth's thumbkins. While Highlander and Lowlander were
cutting each other's throats, Lauderdale and his colleagues would have
ample leisure to decide on the apportionment of the booty.[13] In this,
however, they were disappointed. No armed resistance was offered. During
the two months these marauders lived at free quarters, without any
distinction between friend and foe, on a land which, compared with their
own barren moors and mountains, was a paradise flowing with milk and
honey, only one life was lost, and that the life of a Highlander. At
length the scandal became too great even for Lauderdale. Hamilton, who,
like his brother before him, had always stood by the Crown, went up to
London with several gentlemen of rank to protest against a tyranny which
they vowed was that of Turks rather than Christians. According to one
account, the King would not see them: according to another, he admitted
Hamilton to an interview, and, after hearing his protest, owned that
many bad things had been done in Scotland, but none, so far as he could
see, contrary to his interests. It was clear, however, that in this
matter Lauderdale had gone too far. The Highlanders were ordered to
return to their homes. They returned accordingly, laden with spoil such
as they had never dreamed of, and of the use of a large part of which
they were as ignorant as a Red Indian or a negro.[14]
The departure of the Highland host leaves the stage free for
Claverhouse. It was at this crisis he returned to Scotland, and here
this summary of one of the most miserable chapters in British history
may fitly end.
FOOTNOTES:
[7] This is, perhaps, the best place to disclaim all intention of
scoffing at this great writer and historian. It is a common impertinence
of the day in which I have no wish to join. It is not, I hope, an
impertinence to say that only those who have, for their own purposes,
been forced to follow closely in his tracks can have any just idea of
the unwearying patience and acuteness with which he has examined the
confused and so often conflicting records of that time, or of the
incomparable skill with which he has brought them into a clear
continuous narrative. To glean after Macaulay is indeed a barren task.
So far, then, from affecting to cavil at his work, I must acknowledge
that without his help this little book would have been still less. Yet I
do think he has been hard upon Claverhouse. Perhaps the scheme of his
history did not require, or even allow him, to examine the man's
character and circumstances so closely as a biographer must examine
them. It is still more important to remember that the letters discovered
by Napier in the Queensberry Archives were not known to him. Had he seen
them, I am persuaded that he would have found reason to think less
harshly of their writer.
[8] "The south-west counties of Scotland have seldom corn enough to
serve them round the year; and the northern parts producing more than
they need, those in the west come in the summer to buy at Leith the
stores that come from the north; and from a word 'whiggam,' used in
driving their horses, all that drove were called the 'whiggamores,' and
shorter, the 'whiggs.' Now in that year, after the news came down of
Duke Hamilton's defeat, the ministers animated the people to rise and
march to Edinburgh; and they came up, marching on the head of their
parishes, with an unheard-of fury, praying and preaching all the way as
they came. The Marquis of Argyle and his party came and headed them,
they being about 6,000. This was called the Whiggamores' Inroad: and
even after that all that opposed the Court came in contempt to be called
Whiggs: and from Scotland the word was brought into England, where it is
now one of our unhappy terms of distinction."--Burnet, i. 58. See also
Scott's "Tales of a Grandfather," ch. xii. Mr. Green, however, thought
the word _whig_ might be the same as our _whey_, implying a taunt
against the "sour-milk faces" of the fanatical Ayrshiremen.--"History of
the English People," iii. 258.
[9] Sharpe's notes to Kirkton's "History of the Church of Scotland," pp.
48-9. See also Wishart's "Memoirs of Montrose."
[10] "The Lauderdale Papers." The most important passages in Sharp's
letters will be found in Burton's history, vii. pp. 129-146.
[11] "Memoirs of Captain John Creichton," pp. 57-9.
[12] The torture of the thumbkin is said to have been introduced into
Scotland by Lord Perth, who had seen it practised in Russia. But,
according to Fountainhall, something very like it had been previously
known under the homely name of "Pilliwincks," or "Pilniewinks."
[13] "Duke Lauderdale's party depended so much on this that they began
to divide, in their hopes, the confiscated estates among them, so that
on Valentine's Day, instead of drawing mistresses they drew
estates."--Burnet, ii. 26.
[14] "When the Highlanders went back one would have thought they had
been at the sacking of some besieged town, by their baggage and luggage.
They were loaded with spoil. They carried away a great many horses and
no small quantity of goods out of merchants' shops, whole webs of linen
and woollen cloth, some silver plate bearing the names and arms of
gentlemen. You would have seen them with loads of bedclothes, carpets,
men and women's wearing clothes, pots, pans, gridirons, shoes and other
furniture whereof they had pillaged the country."--Wodrow, ii. 413.