V. After all these tender mercies and clemencies, or cruelties, which his gracious majesty was pleased to confer or commit upon these poor contenders for religion and liberty, he and his cabal the council thought it not enough to suppress them with oppressions and force, distrusting the authority of his law (that he knew the people would no more observe, than he would observe a promise or oath) and diffiding also the authority of his sword, which he had above their heads, he proposes terms of bargaining with them, whereupon he would suffer them to live, and to which he would have them bound to live according to his prescript; therefore, besides the old oaths of allegiance and supremacy, that were still going among hands, he caused coin new ones to keep the peace, and to live orderly, meaning to conform themselves to the disorders of the times! whereby, after he had wrought such destruction to their bodies and estates, and almost nothing was left them but a bit of a conscience, he would rob them of that too, verifying the constant character of the wicked, they only consult to cast a man down from his excellency. What is a man's excellency but a good conscience? But these men, having feared consciences of their own, not capable of any impression, they presume to impose upon all others, and cannot endure so much as to hear of the name of conscience in the country, except it be when it is baffled in the belchings of beastly mouths; as one, that was well acquaint with the council's humour in this point, told a gentleman that was going before them, to have one of these oaths imposed upon him, who was beforehand signifying his scruples, that he could not do such things in conscience. Conscience (said he) I beseech you whatever you do, speak nothing of conscience before the lords, for they cannot abide to hear that word. Therefore it is, that since this last revolution, there have been more conscience-debauching and ensnaring oaths invented and imposed, and some repugnant and contradictory to others, than ever was in any nation in the world in so short a time: and hereby they have had woful success in their designs, involving the generality of the land in the sin of perjury and false swearing with themselves. And it hath been observed, that scarcely have they let one year pass, without imposing some oaths or bonds upon presbyterians; such always as are unlawful to take, yea and impossible to keep, sometimes more obviously gross, sometimes more seemingly smooth, sometimes tendered more generally through the kingdom, sometimes imposed upon particular shires; and these carried on by craft and cunning, sometimes by force and cruelty. Doubtless it is not the least part of their design, hereby to make oaths and bonds become a trivial and common thing, and by making all men of as capacious consciences as themselves.
VI. Further, they never ceased to express their fear of another rising, (their guilty consciences dictating that they deserved greater opposition.) Hence, to secure themselves, and incapacitate the people from further attempts of that nature, they order all withdrawers from churches, all who did not join to suppress the Lord's people, to deliver up their arms betwixt and such a day, and not keep a horse above such a very mean price, unfit for service.
VII. When force could not do the business, then they try flatteries; and hence contrive that wicked indulgence to divide and destroy the ministers that remained, and to suppress meetings. But when this bait, so well busked, could not catch all, but still there were meetings for administring the ordinances; their flattery turns to fury, and the acceptance of that indulgence by some, and despising of it by others, did both animate and instigate them unto a following forth of their design, by all the cruel acts and bloody executions. And hereby the residue of the faithful of the land were exposed unto their rage, while the indulged became interpretatively guilty of, and accessory to all the cruelties used and executed upon ministers and professors, for adhering unto that way. Hence it was common at private and peaceable meetings, when, without arms of defence, they were disturbed by soldiers, and exposed to all manner of villanous violence, some being dragged to prisons, some banished and sold to French captains to be transported with rascals, many intercommuned and driven from their dwellings and relations, great sums of money were proffered to any that would bring in several of the most eminent ministers, either dead or alive; yea several at several times were killed, and others cruelly handled: all which, for several years, they patiently endured without resistance. But especially, when not only they were driven to the fields to keep their meetings in all weathers, summer and winter, but necessitate to meet with arms, then they raised more troops of horse and dragoons to pursue them with all rage, as traitors and rebels. Hence what pursuings, hornings, huntings, hidings, wanderings through mountains and muirs, and all kinds of afflictions, the people of God then met with, because of their following that necessary and signally blessed duty; all the lands inhabitants know, the jailors can witness to this day, and the barbarous soldiers, bloody executioners of the commands of their enraged masters, having orders to wound and kill, and apprehend all they could take at these meetings, or on the way suspected to be going to or coming from them, having encouragement to apprehend some ministers, and bring them dead or alive, by the promise of 2000 merks, others valued at 1000, and several professors also with prices put upon their heads. Hence others that were taken of them were sent into the Bass, a dry and cold rock in the sea, where they had no fresh water, nor any provision but what they had brought many miles from the country; and when they got it, it would not keep unspoiled. And others, both ministers and many hundreds of professors, were outlawed; whereby all the subjects were prohibited to reset, supply, intercommune with any of them, or to correspond with them by word, writ, or message, or furnish them with meat, drink, house, harbour, victual, or any other thing useful, under the highest pains. Hence also prisons were filled, and the wives and children of the outed ministers, that were come to Edinburgh for shelter, were commanded to dislodge, within a short day prefixed, under the pain of being forcibly shut up or dragged out. For which and other such uses, to apprehend and seize, on meetings, a major was appointed in Edinburgh, with command over the town guards, and a good salary for that end. Then prisons being filled, they were emptied to make room for others in ships, to be taken away to be sold for slaves, in one of which were sent to Virginia above 60 men, some ministers; who, through the kindness and sympathy of some English godly people, were relieved at London. A greater barbarity not to be found in the reigns of Caligula or Nero.
VIII. But all this is nothing to what followed; when, thinking these blood-hounds were too favourable, they brought down from the wild Highlands an host of savages upon the western shires, more terrible than Turks or Tartars, men who feared not God nor regarded man; and being also poor pitiful Skybalds, they thought they had come to a brave world, to waste and destroy a plentiful country, which they resolved, before they left it, to make as bare as their own. This hellish crew was adduced to work a reformation, like the French conversions, to press a band of conformity, wherein every subscriber was bound for himself and all under him, wife, children, servants, tenants, to frequent their parish churches, and never to go to these meetings, nor reset, nor entertain any that went, but to inform against, pursue, and deliver up all vagrant preachers, as they called them, to trial and judgment. Which they prosecuted with that rigour and restless, boundless rage, that the children then unborn, and their pitiful mothers do lament the memory of that day, for the loss of their fathers and husbands. Many houses and families then were left desolate in a winter flight, many lost their cattle and horses, and some, in seeking to recover them, lost their lives, by the sword of these Burrios. So that it was too evident, both by what orders was given, the severity of prosecuting, and the expressions of some great ones since, that nothing less than the utter ruin and desolation of these shires was consulted and concluded, and that expedition, at that time, calculated for that end; for what else can be imagined could induce to the raising 10 or 11,000 barbarous savages, the joining them to the standing forces, and with such cruel orders the directing them all to the west, where there was not one person moving the finger against them: neither could they pretend any quarrel, if it was not the faithfulness of the people there in their covenanted religion, and their hopelessness of complying to their popish and tyrannical designs, and therefore no course so feasible as to destroy them; so for dispatching thereof, order is given forth, that whosoever refuseth to subscribe that hell-hatched bond, must instantly have 10, 20, 30, 40, more or fewer according to his condition as he is poorer or richer, of these new reformers sent to him, to ly not only upon free quarters to eat up and destroy what they pleased, but also (for the more speedy expedition) ordered to take a sixpence for each common soldier a-day, and the officers more, according to their degrees, and so to remain till either the bond was subscribed, or all destroyed; nor was these trustees deficient to further their purposes in prosecuting their orders, who, coming to their quarters, used ordinarily to produce a billgate for near to as many more as came, and for these absents they must have double money, because their landlord was not burdened with their maintenance, and, where that was refused, would take the readiest goods, and if any thing remained not destroyed and plundered at their removing, which was not transportable, rather than the owner should get any good of it, they would in some places set fire to it, as they did with the cornstacks. It would require several great volumes to record the many instances of horrid barbarities, bloods and villanies of that wicked expedition; so that what by free quarterings, exactions, robberies, thefts, plunderings, and other acts of violence and cruelty, many places were ruined almost to desolation, all which the faithful choosed rather to suffer, than to sin in complying: and albeit their oppression was exceeding lamentable, and their loss great, yet that of the compliers was greater and sadder, who losed a good conscience in yielding to them, and compounding with them.
IX. Then the country behoved to pay the soldiers for all this service, and hire them to do more, by paying the imposed cess; whereby they were sharpened into a greater keenness in cruel executions of their orders, returning to those places of the country whither they had chased the persecuted people, who still kept their meetings wherever they were, though they could not attend them, but upon the hazard of being killed, either in the place (where some had their blood mingled with their sacrifice) or fleeing, or be exposed to their dreadful cruelties, more bitter than death. For then it was counted a greater crime, and punished with greater severity, for persons to hear a faithful minister preach, than to commit murder, incest, adultery, or to be guilty of witchcraft, or idolatry, or the grossest abominations: for these have passed unpunished, when some, for their simple presence at a meeting, have been executed unto the death. Then also, when some were forced to flee into the English border for shelter, there also were parties ordered to pursue these poor hunted partridges, who could not find a hole to hide their head in. There we lost a valiant champion for truth, and truly zealous contender for the interest of Christ, that universally accomplished gentleman and Christian, Thomas Ker of Heyhope, who was cruelly murdered in a rencounter with a party of the English side.
Thereafter followed that lamentable stroke at Bothwel, where about 300 were killed on the field, and about 10 or 1100 taken prisoners, and stript, and brought into Edinburgh in a merciless manner. After which, first two faithful and painful ministers and witnesses of Christ, Mr. John Kid and Mr. John King, received the crown of martyrdom, sealing that testimony with their blood, and many others after them for the same cause. Then the enemy, after the manner used before, first to wound our head, and then put on a hood upon it, (as they have done always after a mischief, and intending a greater), offered their bond of peace, on terms that clearly condemned the cause, never to rise in arms against the king, &c. by which bond, many of the prisoners, after they had lien several weeks in a church-yard, without the shadow of a house to cover them night and day, were liberate: and many of the rest, by the persuasion of some ministers, at whose door their blood lies as well as at the enemy's, took that bond; and yet were sent away with others that did not take it, in a ship bound for America between 2 and 300 in all, who were all murdered in the ship, being shut up under the hatches, when it split upon a rock in the north of Scotland, except about 50 persons; whereof many to this are living witnesses of such a cruelty.
X. Hitherto only the common rules and rudiments of the art of persecution were put in practice, exactly quadrating with the rules of Adam Contzen the Jesuit for introducing of popery, in his polit. lib. 2. cap. 18. which are, (1.) To proceed as musicians do, in tuning their instruments gradually. (2.) To press the examples of some eminent men to draw on the rest. (3.) To banish all arch-heretics at once (that is the most zealous witnesses of Christ) or at least with all expedition by degrees. (4.) To put them out of all power and trust, and put in friends to the catholic interest. (5.) To load the protestant opinions, as are most obnoxious, with all odious contions. (6.) To discharge all private conventicles. (7.) To make and execute rigorous laws against the most dangerous. (8.) To foment all quarrels among protestants, and strengthen the party that is ready to comply. But these, and many other of a deeper projection, and greater perfection, were fallen upon afterwards, equalling the most mischievous machines of Spanish inquisition, or the methods that effectuated the desolation of the church of Bohemia; that were exactly followed, as they are related in Clark's Martyrology. Especially the last of Contzen's rules were industriously observed, in the device of the indulgence both before and after Bothwel, which contributed more to the rending and ruining the remnant, and to expose the faithful to rage and cruelty, than any thing; for when, by these ensnaring favours, many were drawn away from their duty, the rest that maintained it, and kept up the testimony, were both the more easily preyed upon, and more cruelly insulted over. Hence the field-meetings that were kept, were more fiercely pursued after Bothwel than the many before, and more cruel laws were made against them, and more bloody executions, than I can find words to express in short. But, in a word, no party of Tartars invading the land, or crew of cut-throats destroying the inhabitants, or the most capital malefactors, could have been more violently opposed, or more vigorously fought to be suppressed, than these poor meeters were. But I must make some more special hints.
1. They not only raised more forces to exhaust the strength and substance of the already wasted country, and laid on and continued from one term to another that wicked exaction and cruel oppression of the cess, for the same declared ends of suppressing and banishing what remained of the gospel, and imposed localities for maintaining the soldiers employed in those designs; for refusing which many families were pillaged, plundered, and quite impoverished, besides the beating and abusing them: but also they went on unweariedly with their courts of inquisition, pressing the bonds of peace, and dragging them like dogs to prisons that would not subscribe them, and for taking up in their Porteous' rolls the names of all that were suspected to have been at Bothwel insurrection: which they gathered by the information of sycophants, and reputed them convict, if being summoned they did not appear, and forced others to swear concerning things that are to be enquired after, and delate upon oath whom they did either see or heard that they were in arms, or went to meetings; and such as refused, suffered bonds or banishment. Yea, having made it criminal to reset, harbour, correspond, or converse with these whom they declared rebels, they thereupon imprisoned, fined, and ruined vast numbers, for having seen or spoken with some of them, or because they did not discover or apprehend them when they fancied they might, and even when they were not obliged, and could not know whether they were obnoxious persons or not: for which many gentlemen and others were indicted and imprisoned, and some arraigned and condemned to death. For these causes, the country was harrassed and destroyed by four extraordinary circuit courts, successively going about with their numerous train, whereby many were grievously oppressed, and with their oppressions tempted with many impositions of conscience-debauching oaths, and bonds to compear when called, and to keep the church, and to refrain from going to meetings, &c. and by these temptations involved in compliances and defections.
2. To enrich themselves, by these means, with the spoil of the country, did not satisfy these destroyers; but they must glut themselves with the blood of the saints, upon every pretext that they could catch, under any colour of law. As upon the account of Bothwel insurrection, many were cruelly executed to the death, some gentlemen, and some common country men, without any legal conviction, by packing bloody juries and assizes most partially for their murdering ends, besides more than can be reckoned that were kept to perish in their imprisonments. And not only for being actually in arms, or any ouvert act of transgressing their wicked laws, but even for their extorted opinion of things, or because they could not condemn these necessitated risings in arms to be rebellion, and a sin against God, which they were forced to declare by terrible menacings of death and torture, they have been condemned to death; making their arbitrary laws to reach the heart, thoughts, and inward sentiments of the mind, as well as outward actions. Whereupon this became a criminal question robbing many of their lives, Was the rising at Bothwel-bridge rebellion, and a sin against God? And this another, Was the killing of the bishop of St. Andrew's horrid murder? Which if any answered negatively, or did not answer affirmatively, they were cruelly condemned to death; for which, first, five innocent Christians were execute upon the spot, where that murderer fell. Though they declared, and it was known, they were as free as the child unborn, and that some of them had never seen a bishop that they knew from another man, and were never in that place of the country where he was killed. And afterwards this was the constant question that all brought before them were troubled with, which some avouching to be duty, were dismembered alive, their hands struck off, and then hanged, and their heads cut off when dead.
3. After Sanquhar declaration, they observed the jesuits rules more exactly, especially that mentioned above, to load the opinions that are most obnoxious with all odious constructions, and to make it both criminal to declare them, and also criminal to conceal and wave their intrapping questions thereupon. For after Mr. Hall was killed at the Queensferry, and Mr. Cameron with several worthies were slain at Airsmoss, and after Mr. Hackston for declining the authority of his murderers, head and tail, and for being accessory to executing judgment upon the arch traitor, or arch bishop of St. Andrew's (though he laid not his hands on him himself, nor was present at the action, but at a distance when it was done) was tortured alive, with the cutting off of his hands, and then hanged, and before he was dead, ripped up, his heart taken out, and carried about on the point of a knife, and thrown into a fire, and afterwards his body quartered. Then, not only such as were with that little handful at Airsmoss were cruelly murdered, but others against whom they could charge no matter of fact, were questioned if they owned the king's authority? which if any did not answer affirmatively and positively, he was to look for nothing but exquisite torments by terrible kinds of tortures, and death besides. And if any declared their judgment, that they could not, in conscience, own such authority as was then exercised; or if they declined to give their thoughts of it, as judging thoughts to be under no human jurisdiction; or if they answered with such innocent specifications as these, that they owned all authority in the Lord, or for the Lord: or according to the word of God, or all just and lawful authority, these underwent and suffered the capital punishment of treason. And yet both for declining and declaring their extorted answers about this, they were condemned as unsufferable maintainers of principles inconsistent with government.