over the other three provinces of Ireland: in all places death and
slaughter were not uncommon, though the Irish in these other provinces
pretended to act with moderation and humanity—but cruel and barbarous
was their humanity. Not content with expelling the English their
houses, with despoiling them of their goodly manors, with wasting
their cultivated fields, they stripped them of their very clothes, and
turned them out, naked and defenceless, to all the severities of the
season. The heavens themselves, as if conspiring against that unhappy
people, were armed with cold and tempest unusual to the climate, and
executed what the merciless sword had left unfinished. The roads were
covered with crowds of naked English, hastening towards Dublin and
the other cities which yet remained in the hands of their countrymen:
the feeble age of children, the tender sex of women, soon sunk under
the multiplied rigours of cold and hunger. Here, the husband, bidding
a final adieu to his expiring family, envied them that fate which
he himself expected so soon to share: there, the son, having long
supported his aged parent, with reluctance obeyed his last commands;
and, abandoning him in his uttermost distress, reserved himself to the
hopes of avenging that death which all his efforts could not prevent
or delay. The astonishing greatness of the calamity deprived the
sufferers of any relief from the view of companions in affliction: with
silent tears or lamentable cries, they hurried on through the hostile
territories; and found every heart which was not steeled by native
barbarity, guarded by the more implacable furies of mistaken piety and
religion.
“The saving of Dublin preserved in Ireland the remains of the English
name: the gates of that city, though timorously opened, received the
wretched supplicants, and presented to the view a scene of human misery
beyond what any eye had ever before beheld. Compassion seized the
amazed inhabitants, aggravated with the fear of like calamities; while
they observed the numerous foes without and within which everywhere
environed them and reflected on the weak resources by which they were
themselves supported. The more vigorous of the unhappy fugitives,
to the number of 3000, were enlisted into three regiments: the rest
were distributed into the houses; and all care was taken, by diet and
warmth, to recruit their feeble and torpid limbs; diseases of unknown
name and species, derived from these multiplied distresses, seized many
of them, and put a speedy period to their lives: others, having now
leisure to reflect on their mighty loss of friends and fortune, cursed
that being which they had saved. Abandoning themselves to despair,
refusing all succour, they expired; without other consolation than that
of receiving among their countrymen, the honours of a grave, which to
their slaughtered companions had been denied by the inhuman barbarians.
“By some computations, those who perished by all these cruelties, are
supposed to be 150,000, or 200,000; by the most moderate, and probably
the most reasonable account, they are made to amount to 40,000; if
this estimation itself be not, as is usual in such cases, somewhat
exaggerated.”
Such were the calamitous circumstances in which the Kingdoms of Britain
and Ireland were placed at the period to which we now refer, arising,
primarily from the mistaken policy of the King, in attempting to rule
the nations under his sway, (in which the seeds of public liberty had
been planted at the time of the Reformation, and had become widely
disseminated,) solely by virtue of the royal prerogative, suited only
to a very different state of society. The dissolution and entire
disuse of Parliaments in England, the wealthier of his Kingdoms—his
rash attempt to enforce, by mere authority, an equivocal system of
Episcopacy in Scotland—the results of these several unfortunate
measures, which we have already detailed—and the fatal error which
he committed in sacrificing one of his most heroical and devoted
friends, Stratford, to the antipathy of the English Puritans and
Republicans—combined to produce the lamentable state of affairs which
we are now contemplating; and, assuredly, if ever a human being, in the
whole range of history, has claims on our commiseration, that man was
Charles I., when, in the month of November 1641, the tidings of this
horrible carnage in Ireland reached him, at Holyrood, in the palace of
his ancestors, and in the bosom of his fatherland, of which he was now,
indeed, but a nominal sovereign. We pause not to detail the particulars
of those jealousies and jarrings, the “plots” and “incidents,” which at
the moment surrounded him in Scotland, or awaited him in England, on
his return thither, of which ample accounts are elsewhere to be found.
On receiving the news of the Irish massacre, the King immediately went
to the Parliament House and communicated the intelligence, calling on
the Estates to co-operate with the Parliament of England in suppressing
this frightful rebellion. And although he repeatedly urged them to the
dispatch of business, that he might return to England in the exigency
of these complicated national affairs, it was not until the 17th
day thereafter that he was enabled to prorogue the Parliament—the
intermediate time being consumed in an infinite variety of legislative
proceedings, many of them trivial, but others of them eminently
calculated to consolidate the supremacy of the Estates, and to benefit
and strengthen the Presbyterian Church now firmly established. The
first long parliament of Scotland was adjourned on the 17th of November
1641, and continued till the 1st Tuesday of June 1644.[289] The King
entertained all the nobility in the great banquet-hall of the palace,
in the evening—after having previously bestowed honours on the chiefs
among them; and early next morning, he set out on his journey towards
London, never to revisit the home of his fathers, or to look with
patriotic emotion on the hills of his native land.
Without enumerating all the public Statutes of this Parliament, it is
important to notice some of them, and the acts of grace and favour
bestowed by the King, during his residence, on that occasion.
Among the honours conferred, the Earl of Argyle was created a Marquis;
the Lords Loudoun and Lindsay, and General Leslie, were promoted to
the rank of Earls; and, to grace the elevation of the man who had
twice been the leader in baffling his King in the field, four of his
attendants were knighted. Balmerino was overlooked in this distribution
of titles, and Rothes was cut off by death, from reaping, in a higher
title, the first fruits of his exertions to shear the crown of its
beams; thus eluding, too, the unpopularity which was impending over
him, as a backslider in the cause of the Covenant. In this particular
he was not singular; for Dunfermline and the Lairds of Waughton,
Cavers, Riccarton, and others, besides Montrose and his “banders,”
fell into discredit, on account of their “cauldrifeness” in the cause;
whilst Hamilton, Traquair, and others were destined to suffer all the
varieties of fortune, which political revolutions and popular favour,
alternately and invariably exhibit.
But these were not the only boons which were bestowed by Charles on his
Scottish subjects, and which called forth from the Lord Chancellor,
Loudoun, and Sir Thomas Hope, in the face and name of Parliament, at
its close, the grateful declaration, that his Majesty had given his
Estates satisfaction in all things concerning religion and liberty,
and that he was about to depart “a contented king from a contented
country.” Among the more substantial largesses on this occasion,
General Leslie, now Earl of Leven, obtained 100,000 merks out of
the “brotherly assistance;” Alexander Henderson received a gift of
the revenues belonging to the dean of the chapel royal; while other
leading men, cities and universities, cast lots for the garments which
had previously clothed the Episcopal establishment. The bishopricks
and deanery of Edinburgh and Orkney, were bestowed on the university
of Edinburgh. That of St Andrew’s obtained £1000 sterling per annum,
out of the bishoprick and priory of St Andrew’s. The bishoprick of
Galloway, and spirituality of Glasgow were given to its college, while
the temporalities of the latter were bestowed on the Duke of Lennox.
The old college of Aberdeen got its bishoprick revenues. The town of
Perth got a moiety of the revenues of Dunkeld, to build a bridge over
the Tay; the Hammermen of Edinburgh (doubtless for services in their
own department) receiving the remainder. Argyle secured the revenues
of that see and of the Isles, whilst Ross, Moray, and Caithness, were
distributed amongst other zealous friends of the cause. These vulgar
facts go far to explain some of the public phenomena of “the Second
Reformation,” and to account for the zeal which had been manifested
under the banner, with “Christ’s Crown and Covenant, in letters of
gold,” inscribed upon its foldings. For the working clergy—for the
Church, in its ordinary acceptation, nothing was done in this scramble
for a share of the plunder; but the discontent thus excited, was
partially allayed by the appointment of a Commission to value the
teinds, and grant augmentations to the parish ministers—a barren and
unfruitful gift, which left many of the Presbyterian clergy, for a long
period, in a state approaching to pauperism, until within the last
thirty years, that a decent provision was made for the maintenance of
the Scottish Church, by an act of the British Parliament.[290]
The only other act of the King and Estates of Scotland in 1641, to
which our attention is more especially called at present, is that
by which a commission of that body was appointed as Conservators of
the late treaty of peace with England, and under this guise invested
with all the executive powers of the Crown, and the functions of
Parliament. It consisted of fifty-six members, of whom seventeen were
peers, twenty-one barons, and eighteen burgesses, any twelve of them a
quorum; and on this junto was devolved, for the space of three years,
with all the formalities of law, the supreme authority of the state,
enabling them to levy men and taxes, and exercise uncontrolled sway
over the land as they listed. Henceforward the Scottish monarchy was
in abeyance, and the kingly authority and prerogatives extinguished,
and the government vested in a motley oligarchy, to whose unlimited
sway, no constitutional check was provided, save the remote contingency
of rendering an account of their conduct to a full Parliament, to be
held at the distance of three years thereafter. This extraordinary
arrangement has been lauded by some historians, as a wise and safe
measure; but we take leave to dissent from the theory, and to think
that, had the royal prerogative of calling parliaments, not been thus
practically abrogated for a time, many of the calamities which ensued
in both kingdoms, might have been averted or greatly softened in their
character.
But leaving Scotland, for the present, under the sway of its
Parliamentary Commission, our attention is unavoidably called to the
state of matters in England, after the King returned thither on the
25th of November. On that occasion he was warmly welcomed by the
citizens of London, and sumptuously banqueted by the corporation,
which His Majesty requited by bestowing honours on the chief
functionaries. The amicable termination of the Scottish Parliament,
and the prostration of royal authority which had there taken place,
inspired the English malcontents at once with jealousy, lest their
own schemes might eventually be thwarted by a good understanding
betwixt Charles and his Scottish subjects—and with hopes that, by
intimidation and coercion, they might constrain him into a similar
subjection to their own designs. For this purpose, and in striking
contrast with the professions of loyalty which had greeted the King’s
return to Whitehall, the Commons appointed a committee to draw up a
catalogue of grievances, which, when finally concocted in the shape of
a “Remonstrance,” contained no fewer than 206 articles of accusation,
enumerating almost every act of the King since his accession, as
infringements of the liberties of the people. This remonstrance,
or rather impeachment, was presented to the King, calling on him,
amongst other unconstitutional propositions, to concur in ejecting the
bishops from the House of Peers; and, without consulting the other
branch of the legislature on the subject, the Commons, in violation
of all the usages of Parliament, printed and dispersed it over the
country, thereby exciting an agitation, and spreading this firebrand
of sedition throughout the whole land. Proceedings of a most violent
nature were also instituted against the bishops who had recently
absented themselves from Parliament under protest, being deterred from
attendance by the violence of the mob, which had been incited by the
usual methods to insult and assail them personally. And the collision
betwixt the King and the Commons was brought to a crisis by His Majesty
going to the house in person, to arrest with an armed force, five of
its members, as guilty of high treason, by reason of the part which
they had acted in various matters. In this he failed—the objects of his
resentment having escaped from the effects of his immediate and natural
resentment. Failing in his object, the irritation of the Commons was
unbounded, and the populace was so much excited by the alarm, real
or affected, of the Commons, lest their personal safety and their
privileges were endangered, that the King, to avoid indignity and
outrage to himself and his family, (on January 10,) left Whitehall and
retired to Hampton Court—a removal which afforded to the Commons and
their supporters, the populace of London, a great advantage over him.
The Commons had impeached the Bishops, and the King had impeached Lord
Kimbolton, Hampden, Pym, and others of the Commons, as guilty of high
treason; one chief ground of the latter being an accusation against
them, that the Scots invasion had been mainly occasioned by their
invitation and encouragement, of which it has been said that Montrose
furnished the King with information.
During the progress of these agitations in England, the spirit which
guided them extended to Scotland; and the multitude, who, once
excited by popular movements, are ever liable to sudden impulses from
incendiary excitement elsewhere, joined in the clamours of the English
malcontents, threatening to carry another crusade into England, and to
aid in the subversion of its Church, and against the King—a project
in which they were countenanced by too many of the Scotch clergy and
politicians of the day. Even Henderson, the best, and, perhaps, the
brightest man of which Scotland could then boast, incurred unpopularity
for opposing this piece of extravagance. Balmerino, Lothian, Lindsay,
Archibald Johnston, and Hope the younger, having been sent up by the
Scotch Committee of Estates, to negotiate with the English Parliament
about sending troops to Ireland, were not contented to restrict
themselves within the limits of their commission, but renewed their
intrigues (as during the progress of the treaty of peace,) with the
wildest of the English incendiaries; and, on the 15th of January,
1642, had the audacity, under a pretext of mediating betwixt the King
and his English Parliament, to make written communications to both,
embodying the sentiments which they cherished, for the destruction of
Episcopacy in England and the planting of Presbytery in its stead.
A theory was then prevalent, which has been revived even in more
recent times, that Presbytery is clothed with a _jus divinum_—that
it alone and exclusively is the form of church-government sanctioned
by Scripture—and that it was the bounden duty of its professors,
like the Propaganda of Rome, to exert themselves in its extension
to all the nations of the earth. This phantasy was evidently not
merely inconsistent, but irreconcilable with the maxims on which they
themselves had avowedly acted in resisting the imposition of the
Service Book and Episcopal Canons on Scotland: but no incongruity of
principle or conduct is too gross for fanatics of any sort; and, as
remarked by Dr Cook, “their vehement complaints against the Church
of England are entitled to as little attention as the contemptuous
aspersions which the zealots for prelacy, even at the present day, cast
upon every form of ecclesiastical polity different from their own.” The
King indignantly prohibited such officious interferences, and, on the
26th of the same month, wrote to the Chancellor of Scotland, requesting
that the Council would prohibit these mischievous meddlers from
indulging in such practices.[291] The Parliament, however, received
this intervention most graciously, encouraged their sympathizing
testimonies, and opened correspondence with the most bustling
Covenanters in Scotland, to secure co-operation and support in their
destructive projects.[292]
The differences betwixt the King and his English Parliament had now
assumed a very decisive character; and for some time, it had been
evident that no accommodation could be effected otherwise than by
the _ultima ratio_—the sword. The King proceeded to York on the
10th of March; and, on the 23d day of April, went to Hull, with an
attendance of 300 cavalry, his usual guard; but Sir John Hotham, the
Governor, refused him admission within its walls with more than twelve
attendants, assigning as his warrant an order from the Parliament.[293]
The King pronounced him a traitor; and thus the civil war in England
may be said to have commenced.
A very unprofitable question has often been agitated with regard to
who began the civil war. In this particular stage of it, however,
there seems to be no room for doubt: by the pretensions of the
Parliament, or rather of the House of Commons, to the entire control
over the militia and army, which the King refused to concede, but more
especially by this mandate to the governor of Hull, to refuse admission
to their sovereign, with such a military attendance as he might deem
fitting—that body usurped a prerogative inherent in the crown from
the earliest times of the monarchy, and inseparable from the supreme
executive authority in every country.
Whatever may be said by partisan advocates as to the King’s
intentions—of his procuring military munitions, pledging the crown
jewels for these and such like pretexts—all these apologies for the
Commons are utterly irrelevant; and the logic by which they are
enforced, is akin to that by which the same faction, in a decree of
constructive treason, converted a cluster of insufficient facts into an
offence, for which they shed Stratford’s blood. That the command of the
army—that military occupation of every place within his dominions—are
essential elements in the prerogatives of a British monarch, (subject
only to the constitutional control of the Commons, in withholding
supplies for its maintenance, if they see cause,)—is a proposition
that cannot be soundly questioned. And, independently of every other
consideration, this single overt act of usurpation of supreme executive
functions, was unconstitutional, and an undeniable act of rebellion on
the part of the English Parliament.
While these high points of controversy were in dependence betwixt the
King and the Commons, (for from the commencement of the troubles, the
House of Lords unfortunately relinquished its independent jurisdiction,
instead of operating as a check on the two other conflicting branches
of the legislature,) the King was intent on raising forces not merely
for the maintenance of his authority at home, but for the suppression
of the Irish rebellion, and he purposed heading the forces to be
supplied from England and Scotland for this latter purpose. The
republicans of that day, however, in both kingdoms, were averse to
this, fearing lest the King might win the attachment of the army, and
thereby quash their projects. In Scotland, Loudoun the chancellor, by
his Majesty’s command, convened the Council; and the work of agitation
having preceded its meeting, multitudes thronged to Edinburgh, and
petitioned the Council that nothing should be done “prejudicial to the
work of reformation, and the treaty of union betwixt the kingdoms.” The
most malign surmises as to the King’s intentions, were propagated and
believed by the vulgar, while the real incendiaries in both kingdoms
were scattering their firebrands far and wide, and by the most approved
modes of open and clandestine excitement.
While the political affairs of the three kingdoms were in this
unsettled and perilous state, and all the elements of social
disorganization let loose in every quarter of these islands, the
General Assembly of the church convened at St Andrews on the 27th
of July 1642. We now proceed to record its Acts, and give in our
supplement of documents, a detailed account of its proceedings by
Baillie, which presents a very lively picture of the feverish state of
the public mind at the period now referred to.
THE PRINCIPALL ACTS
OF THE GENERALL ASSEMBLY, CONVEENED AT
ST ANDREWS, JULY 27, 1642.
Act, Sess. I. 27 July, 1642.
_The Kings Letter to the Generall Assembly, presented by His Majesties
Commissioner, the Earle of Dumfermling, July 27, 1642._
CHARLES R.