4. But here, as in Egypt, the more they were afflicted, the more they grew, the more that the enemies rage was increased, the more were the people inflamed to inquire about the grounds of their suffering, seeing rational men and religious christians die so resolutely upon them; and the more they insisted in this inquisition, the more did the number of witnesses multiply, with a growing increase of undauntedness, so that the then shed blood of the martyrs became the seed of the church, and as by hearing and seeing them so signally countenanced of the Lord, many were reclaimed from their courses of compliance, so others were daily more and more confirmed in the ways of the Lord, and so strengthened by his grace, that they chose rather to endure all torture, and embrace death in its most terrible aspect, than to give the tyrant and his complices any acknowledgment: yea, not so much as to say, God save the king, which was offered as the price of their life, and test of their acknowledgment, but they would not accept deliverance on these terms, that they might obtain a better resurrection. Which so enraged the tygrish truculency of these persecutors, that they spared neither age, sex, nor profession: the tenderness of youth did not move them to any relenting, in murdering very boys upon this head, nor the grey hairs of the aged; neither were women spared, but some were hanged, some drowned, tied to stakes within the sea-mark, to be devoured gradually with the growing waves, and some of them of a very young, some of an old age. Especially after the murder of the never to be forgotten martyr, Mr. Cargil, the multitude of merciless sufferings upon this account cannot be enumerated; which increased far beyond all the former steps, after the Lanark declaration, which was burnt with great solemnity by the magistrates of Edinburgh in their robes, together with the solemn league and covenant, which had been burnt before, but then they would more declaredly give new demonstrations of their rage against it, because they confessed, and were convinced of its being conform unto and founded upon that covenant. And because the incorporation of Lanark did not, because they could not, hinder the publishing of it; therefore they were threatened with the loss of their privileges, and forced to pay 6000 merks. Upon the back of which, the sufferings of poor people that owned the testimony were sadder and sharper, and further extended than ever: some being banished for soldiers to Flanders, &c. some to be sold as slaves in Carolina, and other places in America, to empty the filled prisons, and make room for more, which were daily brought in from all quarters, and either kept languishing in their nasty prisons, or thieves holes, in bolts and irons to make them weary of their life, or dispatched as sacrifices, and led as dumb sheep to the slaughter, without suffering them to speak their dying words, for beating of drums, or disposed of to masters of ships to be transported to slavery.
5. Had they satisfied themselves with murdering them out of hand, it would have been more tolerable, and reckoned some degree of mercy, in comparison of their malice; which, after all their endeavours to murder their souls, by ensnaring offers, enslaving bonds, blasphemous and contradictory oaths, and multiplying captious questions to catch the conscience, or at least vex the spirits of the righteous, whom they could not prevail with to put forth their hands into iniquity, did proceed to invent all exquisite torments more terrible than death. Some at their first apprehending were tortured with fire-matches, burning and for ever thereafter disabling their hands: then laid fast, and locked up in great irons upon their legs, where they lay many months in the cold of winter, without any relaxation. Some were tortured with the boots, squeezing out the marrow of their legs: others with thumbkins, piercing and bruising the bones of their thumbs: and some tormented with both one after another, and besides, kept waking nine nights together by watchful soldiers, who were sworn not to let the afflicted person sleep all that time.
6. All this tyranny had been the more tolerable, if they had kept within any bounds of colourable or pretended shadow of legality, or in any consonancy to their own wicked laws, or exemplars of any former persecutions. But in an ambition to outdo all the Neros, Domitians, Dioclesians, duke d'Alvas, or Lewis le Grands, they scorned all forms, as well as justice of law, and set up monstrous monuments of unprecedented illegality and inhumanity. For when, after all their hornings, harassings, huntings, searchings, chafings, catchings, imprisonments, torturings, banishments, and effusions of blood, yet they could not get the meetings crushed, either in public or private, or the zeal of the poor wanderers quenched, with whom they had interdicted all harbour, supply, comfort, refreshment, converse or correspondence, and whom they had driven out of their own and all other habitations, in towns, villages, or cottages, to the deserts, mountains, muirs, and mosses, in whose hags and holes they were forced to make dens and caves to hide themselves, but that they would still meet for the worship of God, either in public (though mostly in the cold winter nights) or in their private fellowships for prayer and conference; and to rescue their brethren, and prevent their murder in these extremities, would surprize and take advantages of the soldiers now and then: they then raged beyond all bounds, and not only apprehending many innocent persons (against whom they had nothing to accuse them of, but because they could not satisfy them in their answers) sentenced, and executed them, all in one day, and made an act to do so with all; but allowed the bloody soldiers to murder them, without either trial or sentence. Especially after the apologetical declaration, affixed on the church doors, they acted with an unheard of arbitrariness. For not only did they frame an oath of abjuration, renouncing the same, but pressed it universally upon pain of death, upon all men and women in city and country, and went from house to house, forcing young and old to give their judgment of that declaration, and of the king's authority, &c. to ridicule and reproach, and make a mocking stock of all government: yea impowered soldiers, and common varlets, to impannel juries, condemn, and cause to be put to death, innocent recusants, and having stopt all travel and commerce without a pass, signifying they had taken that oath, they gave power to all hostlers and inn-keepers to impose oaths upon all passengers, travellers, gentlemen and countrymen, who were to swear, that their pass was not forged. And prisoners that would not take the oath were, according to the foresaid act, condemned, sentenced and execute, all in one day, and early in the morning, that the people might not be affected with the spectacles of their bloody severities. Yea spectators also, that gathered to see the execution, were imposed upon, and commanded to give their judgment, whether these men were justly put to death or not. And not only so, but after that, they gave orders and commands to the soldiers to pursue the chase after these wanderers more violently, and shoot, or otherwise put them to death wherever they could apprehend them; whereby many were taken and instantly most inhumanly murdered.
XI. In the beginning of this killing time, as the country calls it; the first author or authorizer of all these mischiefs, Charles II. was removed by death. Then one would have thought the severity would have stopped: and the duke of York succeeding, in his late proclamation would make the world believe, that it never was his principle, nor will he ever suffer violence to be offered to any man's conscience, nor use force or invincible necessity against any man on the account of his persuasion: smooth words, to cover the mischiefs of his former destructions, and the wickedness of his future designs. To which his former celebrated saying, that it would never be well till all the south side of Forth were made a hunting field; and his acts and actings designed to verify it, since his unhappy succession, do give the lie. For immediately, upon his mounting the throne, the executions and acts, prosecuting the persecution of the poor wanderers, were more cruel than ever.
1. There were more butchered and slaughtered in the fields, without all shadow of law, or trial, or sentence, than all the former tyrant's reign; who were murdered without time given to deliberate upon death, or space to conclude their prayers, but either in the instant, when they were praying, shooting them to death, or surprizing them in their caves, and murdering them there, without any grant of prayer at all; yea many of them murdered without taking notice of any thing to be laid against them, according to the worst of their own laws, but slain and cut off without any pity, when they were found at their labour in the field, or travelling upon the road. And such as were prisoners, were condemned for refusing to take the oath of abjuration, and to own the authority, and surprized with their execution, not knowing certainly the time when it should be, yea left in suspense whether it should be or not, as if it had been on design to destroy both their souls and bodies. Yea Queensberry had the impudence to express his desire of it, when some went to solicit him, being then commissioner, for a reprieval in favours of some of them, he told them, they should not have time to prepare for heaven, hell was too good for them.
2. There have been more banished to foreign plantations in this man's time, than in the other's. Within these two years, several shipfuls of honest and conscientious sufferers have been sent to Jamaica, (to which before they were sent, some had their ears cut) New Jersey, and Barbadoes, in such crouds and numbers, that many have died in transportation; as many also died before in their pinching prisons, so thronged that they had neither room to ly nor sit. Particularly the barbarous usage of a great multitude of them that were sent to Dunotter castle, when there was no room for them in Edinburgh, is never to be forgotten; which the wildest and rudest of savages would have thought shame of. They were all that long way made to travel on foot, men and women, and some of both sexes, very infirm and decrepit through age; and several sick, guarded by bands of soldiers, and then put into an old ruinous and rusty house, and shut up under vaults above 80 in a room, men and women, without air, without ease, without place, either to ly or walk, and without any comfort save what they had from heaven, and so straitned for want of refreshment, which they could not have but at exorbitant prices inconsistent with their poor empty purses, and so suffocated with the smell of the place, and of their own excrements, that as several of them died; so it was a wonder of mercy that any of them could outlive that misery, yet there they remained some months, at a distance from all their friends, being sent thither to that northern corner out of the south and west borders of the country; and some out of London. Whose transportation hither, if it were not a part of this tragical story, would seem a merry and ridiculous passage to strangers, discovering the ridiculous folly as well as the outrageous fury of their persecutors. For at a private meeting in London, among others, some Scotsmen, of very mean figure, some taylors, a shoemaker, a chapman, &c. were taken, and being found to be Scotsmen, were not only examined at the common courts there, but by Sir Andrew Foster, by express commission from the late king a little before his death; who threatened them under a strange sort of certification, (considering what fell out immediately thereafter) that assuredly they should be sent to Scotland very shortly, if there were not a revolution of the government. But this revolution, following within a few days, retarded it a little: yet not long thereafter they were sent in a yacht, with a guard of soldiers, and a charge of high treason. But, when brought before the council of Scotland, the amount of all that bustle was, a question posed to them under pain of death, whether the king should be king or no? that is, whether they owned his authority or not. Yet though some of the poor men did own it, they were sent to Dunotter castle: and thence among the rest banished and transported to New Jersey; in which passage, by reason of their crude and bad provision, the most part in the ship were cast into a fever, and upwards of sixty died, yea even since the former proclamation for this pretended liberty, there are twenty-one men and five women sent to Barbadoes, against whom nothing could be alledged but matters of mere religion and conscience: which, as it proclaims the notoriousness of these impudent lies, wherewith the proclamations for this liberty are stuffed; so it puts an indelible brand of infamy upon some London merchants, that are said to pretend to some profession of religion, who sent the ship to transport them, thereby to make gain of the merchandise of the Lord's captives.
3. There have been more cruel acts of parliament enacted in this tyrant's time, than the former made all his reign. For in his first parliament held by Queensberry, commissioner, not only was there an act for making it treason to refuse the oath of abjuration, confirming all the illegalities of their procedure hereupon before; but an act making it criminal to own the covenant, and another act making it criminal for any to be present at a field-meeting, which was only so to preachers before. Yet neither these acts, and all the executions following upon them, have daunted, nor I hope shall drive them, nor the indemnity and toleration (so generally now applauded) draw them from the duty of owning both these, that are so much the more publicly to be avouched, that they are so openly interdicted by wicked and blasphemous tyranny, though for the same they expect from the Scottish inquisition all the murdering violence, that hell and Rome and malignant rage can exert.
But to conclude this tragical deduction: as these hints we have heaped together of the kinds and several sorts (the particulars being impossible to be reckoned) of barbarities and arbitrary methods, used in carrying on this persecution, demonstrating the reign, or rather rage of these two dominators, under which we have howled these twenty-seven years, to be a complete and habitual tyranny, to discover the inhumanity and illegality of their proceedings, having no other precedent save that of the French conversions, or Spanish inquisition, out-done by many stages, in respect of illegality, by the Scottish inquisition, and the practices of the council of Scotland, and judiciary court; so I shall shut up all in a summary relation of the common practices and forms of procedure in these courts: which will be useful to understand a little more distinctly, to the end the innocency of sufferers may more clearly appear. 1. They can accuse whom they will, of what they please; and if by summar citation, he will not, may be, because he cannot, compear; if once his name be in their Porteons' rolls, that is sufficient to render him convict. 2. They used also to seize some, and shut them up in prison year and day, without any signification of the cause of their imprisonment. 3. They can pick any man off the street; and if he do not answer their captious questions, proceed against him to the utmost of severity; as they have taken some among the croud at executions, and imposed upon them the questions. 4. They can also go through all the houses of the city, as well as the prisons, and examine all families upon the questions of the council's catechism, upon the hazard of their life, if they do not answer to their satisfaction, as has been done in Edinburgh. 5. When any are brought in by seizures, sometimes (as is said before) they let them lie along without any hearing, if they expect they cannot reach them; but if they think they can win at them any way, then they hurry them in such haste, that they can have no time to deliberate upon, and oftentimes have no knowledge or conjecture of the matter of their prosecution: yea, if they be never so insignificant, they will take diversion from their weightiest affairs, to examine and take cognizance of poor things, if they understand they dare vent or avow any respect to the cause of Christ: and the silliest body will not escape their catechization about affairs of state, what they think of the authority, &c. 6. If they be kept in prison any space, they take all ways to pump and discover what can be brought in against them: yea, sometimes they have exactly observed that device of the Spanish inquisition, in suborning and sending spies among them, under the disguise and shew of prisoners, to search and find out their minds, who will outstrip all in an hypocritical zeal, thereby to extort and draw forth words from the most wary, which may be brought in judgment against them the next day. 7. When prisoners are brought in before them, they have neither libel nor accuser, but must answer concerning things that are to be enquired after, to all questions they are pleased to ask. 8. If at any time they form a sort of libel, they will not restrict themselves to the charges thereof, but examine the person about other things altogether extraneous to the libel. 9. They have frequently suborned witnesses, and have sustained them as witnesses, who either were sent out by themselves as spies and intelligencers, or who palpably were known to delate those against whom they witnessed, out of a pick and prejudice, and yet would not suffer them to be cast for partial counsel. 10. If they suppose a man to be wary and circumspect, and more prudent than forward in the testimony; then they multiply questions, and at first many impertinent interrogations, having no connexion with the cause, to try his humour and freedom, that they may know how to deal with him: and renew and reiterate several criminal examinations, that they may know whereof, and find matter wherein, to indict him, by endeavouring to confound, or intrap, or involve him in confessions or contradictions, by wresting his words. 11. They will admit no time for advice, nor any lawful defence for a delay, but will have them to answer presently, except they have some hopes of their compliance, and find them beginning to stagger and succumb in the testimony; in that case, when a man seeks time to advise, they are animated to a keenness to impose, and encouraged to an expectation of catching by their snares, which then they contrive and prepare with greater cunning. 12. If a man should answer all their questions, and clear himself of all things they can alledge against him, yet they used to impose some of the oaths, that they concluded he would not take; and according to the measure of the tenderness they discovered in any man, so they apportioned the oaths to trap them, to the stricter the smoother oaths, to the laxer, the more odious, that all natural consciences did fear at. 13. They will not only have their laws obeyed, but subscribed, and they reckon not their subjects obedience secured by the lawmaker's sanction, but the people's hand-writing; and think it not sufficient that people transgress no laws, but they must also own the justness of them, and the authority that enacts them, and swear to maintain it: and yet when some have done all this, and cleared themselves by all compliances, they will not discharge them, but under a bond to answer again when called. 14. They will have their laws to reach not only actions, but thoughts; and therefore they require what people think of the bishop's death, and of Bothwel insurrection; and whether they own the authority, when they can neither prpve their disowning of it, nor any way offending it. 15. They will have them to declare their thoughts, and hold them convict, if they do not answer positively all their captious questions; and if they will not tell what they think of this or that, then they must go as guilty. 16. If they insist in waving, and will not give categorical answers, then they can extort all, and prove what they please by torture: and when they have extorted their thoughts of things, though they be innocent as to all actions their law can charge them with, then they used to hang them when they had done. 17. They have wheedled men sometimes into confession either of practices or principles, by promising to favour their ingenuity, and upbraiding them for dissemblers if they would not, and by mock expostulations, why were they ashamed to give a testimony? and then make them sign their confessions at the council, to bring them in as a witness against them at the criminal court. 18. Yea, not only extrajudicial confession will sustain in their law: but when they have given the public faith, the king's security the act and oath of council, that their confession shall not militate against them, they have brought it in as witness against them, and given it upon oath, when their former oath and act was produced in open court, in demonstration of their perjury. 19. When the matter comes to an assize or cognizance of a jury, they use to pack them for their purpose, and pick out such as they listed, who they think will not be bloody enough. 20. Sometimes when the jury hath brought their verdict in favours of the pannel, they have made them sit down, and resume the cognition of the case again, and threatened them with an assize of error, if they did not bring him in guilty. 21. Yea, most frequently the king's advocate used to command them to condemn, and bring in the pannel guilty, under most peremptory certifications of punishment if they should not; so that they needed no juries, but only for the fashion. 22. Sometimes they have sentenced innocent persons twice, once to have their ears cut and be banished, and after the lopping of their ears, some have been re-examined, and sentenced to death, and execute. 23. They have sentenced some and hanged them both in one day; others early in the morning, both to surprize the persons that were to die, and to prevent spectators of the sight of their cruelty; others have been kept in suspence, till the very day and hour of their execution. 24. Not only have they murdered, serious and zealous followers of Christ in taking away their lives, but endeavoured to murder their names, and to murder the cause for which they suffered; loading it with all reproaches, as sedition, rebellion, &c. which was their peculiar policy, to bring the heads of sufferings to points that are most obnoxious to men's censure, and accounted most extrinsic to religion, whereby they levelled their designs against religion, not directly under that notion, but obliquely in the destruction of its professors, under the odium and reproach of enemies to government. 25. But chiefly they labour to murder the soul, defile the conscience, and only consult to cast a man down from his excellency, which is his integrity; that is a christian's crown, and that they would rather rob him of as any thing, either by hectoring or flattering him from the testimony: which they endeavour, by proposing many offers, with many threatnings in subtile terms; and pretend a great deal of tenderness, protesting they will be as tender of their blood as of their own soul (which in some sense is true, for they have none at all of their own souls) and purging themselves as Pilate did, and charging it upon their own heads. 26. They will be very easy in their accommodations, where they find the poor man beginning to faint, and hearken to their overtures, wherein they will grant him his life, yielding to him as cunning anglers do with fishes: and to persuade him to complying, they will offer conference sometimes or reasoning upon the point, to satisfy and inform his conscience, as they pretend, but really to catch him with their busked hook. 27. Sometimes they used to stage several together, whereof they knew some would comply, to tantalize the rest with the sight of the others liberty, and make them bite the more eagerly at their bait, to catch the conscience. But when they had done all they could, Christ had many witnesses, who did retain the crown of their testimony in the smallest points, till they obtained the crown of martyrdom, and attained boldly to them without fear or shame, and disdaining their flattering proposals, but looking on them under a right notion, as stated there in opposition to Christ; whereby they found this advantage, that hence they were restrained from all sinful tampering with them, or entertaining any discourse with them, but what was suitable to speak to Christ's enemies, or doing any thing to save their life, but what became Christ's witnesses, who loved not their lives unto the death. Of whom universally this was observed, that to the admiration of all, the conviction of many enemies, the confirmation of many friends, the establishment of the cause, and the glory of their Redeemer, they went off the stage with so much of the Lord's countenance, so much assurance of pardon and eternal peace, so much hope of the Lord's returning to revive his work, and plead his cause again in these lands, that never any suffered with more meekness humility and composure of spirit, and with more faithfulness, stedfastness and resolution, than these worthies did for these despised and reproached truths; for which their surviving brethren are now contending and suffering, while others are at ease.
PART III.
The Present testimony stated and vindicated in its principal heads.