In the general joy attendant upon the restoration of Charles, the Parliament thought that the people would submit to almost any indignity or inconvenience. By a single sweeping resolution they annulled and rescinded every statute and ordinance which had been made by those holding supreme authority in Scotland since the commencement of the civil wars; the whole Presbyterian Church government was destroyed, and the Episcopal institutions, to which the nation had shown itself averse, were rashly and precipitately established. Thousands of ministers, who, for conscience sake, could not sign the Act of Conformity, were driven from their pulpits. Mere boys and dissolute young men were hastily summoned from schools and colleges to administer spiritual comfort to an indignant people. The solemn league and covenant, which had been solemnly sworn to by nobility, clergy and people, with weeping eyes and uplifted hands, ay, sworn to by the King himself, was burned at the cross of Edinburgh by an edict of Parliament. The Episcopal court severely punished all who left their own parish church to attend private meetings known as conventicles. A persecution like that of the early Christians at Rome was brought home to the descendants of Knox and of Calvin. As the earlier Christians were compelled to hold their meetings in caves and catacombs, so a persecuted people, in the bright dawn of the Reformation, were compelled to fly to the hills and heaths for a refuge, to lift up their banner in solitary and mountain places in order to foil
“A tyrant’s and a bigot’s laws.”
Such was the state of the country at the opening of our story in May, 1679. The west of Scotland is aroused. Archbishop Sharpe is murdered in his carriage, by a party of men, of whom Balfour of Burley is the leader. The battle of Loudon Hill is won by the Covenanters, who increase daily in power until a force of six thousand men are assembled at Bothwell Bridge. Engaged in discussing church polemics, they entirely neglect the discipline necessary for success. Without leaders or guidance they are routed by the Duke of Monmouth. Four hundred men are killed. Twelve hundred prisoners are marched to Edinburgh, and imprisoned “like cattle in a fold” in the Greyfriar’s churchyard. Several ministers are tortured and executed, and many prisoners sent as slaves to the plantations. Henry Morton, one of their leaders, as seen in the story, is exiled. Edith Bellenden, one of the royal party, remains true to him. He returns, after long years of absence and military honor, and readers of fiction can readily guess how the story terminates without reading the postscript by the author.
Such is the rude draft of this great romance, which Coleridge pronounces the grandest of Scott’s novels. It is, in fact, a novel that can not be well analyzed. We could speak of Lady Margaret Bellenden, who never forgot that Charles the Second took breakfast with her on his way to meet Cromwell at the field of Worcester; we could speak of the good natured Major, brave, noble, and generous; of Cuddie and his mother; ay, of Guse Gibbie, unfortunate in all fitting regimentals; of the miserly uncle of Henry Morton; of the cannie waiting-maid of Edith, who felt safe in the triumph of either side, as she had a lover in both armies. The reader will laugh and weep at these characters as he meets them in the pages of “Old Mortality.” But it is for us to refer merely to the historical features about which these characters are grouped; to note the ruggedness of Scotch character, destined to triumph at last, and bring victory out of defeat; a character which, perhaps, “shows most to advantage in adversity, when it seems akin to the native sycamore of their hills, which scorns to be biased in its mode of growth, even by the influence of the prevailing wind, but, shooting its branches with equal boldness in every direction, shows no weather side to the storm, and may be broken, but can never be bended.”
In considering the motives, the ambition, the enthusiasm, or fanaticism of these men, we might stir up controversy. We know it was their lofty purpose to convert all England to the Presbyterian faith; and, whenever they were lifted to power, they were quite as arbitrary as the Episcopacy. It was true of both parties that they suffered persecution without learning mercy. Each side felt that, in pushing its own creed, it was doing the Lord’s work; but in this we all delight to-day, that both sides produced brave men, tenacious of their own rights, who struggled on until in our own generation the opposing forces have been adjusted, and out of chaos and confusion the different systems of faith or theology move serenely and calmly in their own spheres around one central and enduring light—the Creator and Father of all.
The Covenanters were indeed the connecting link between the two great revolutions, which beheaded Charles the First and exiled James the Second; and, whatever our prejudices, or “whatever may be thought of the extravagance or narrow-minded bigotry of many of their tenets, it is impossible to deny the praise of devoted courage to a few hundred peasants, who, without leaders, without money, without any fixed plan of action, and almost without arms, borne out only by their innate zeal, and a detestation of the oppression of their rulers, ventured to declare open war against an established government, supported by a regular army and the whole force of three kingdoms.”
It is sometimes claimed that Scott is over partial to Claverhouse—that he paints the man as a hero. If so he has poorly succeeded, for I have yet to meet a reader of “Old Mortality” who is fascinated with the portraiture of that cruel man. Scott makes him what history declares him to be, a cool and calculating soldier, bitter and unrelenting, a man without faith, and with no ambition save worldly glory. It rather seems to me on the contrary, that Scott for the time lays aside his own traditional sentiments as he reports the burning words of these Covenant preachers, as they paint the desolation of the Church, describing her “like Hagar watching the waning life of her infant amid the fountainless desert.” His poetic nature seems moved by brave men repairing “to worship the God of nature amid the fortresses of nature’s own construction.”
There are two dramatic scenes in the volume, which can not be overlooked or forgotten: Burley in the cave, with his clasped Bible in one hand, and his drawn sword in the other. “His figure, dimly ruddied by the light of the red charcoal seems that of a fiend in the lurid atmosphere of Pandemonium striving with an imaginary demon.” The other scene reveals Henry Morton, overpowered, disarmed, bound hand and foot, facing a clock which, at the hour of twelve, was to strike his doom. “Among pale-eyed and ferocious zealots, whose hardened brows were soon to be bent, not merely with indifference, but with triumph upon his execution—without a friend to speak a kindly word, or give a look of either sympathy or encouragement—awaiting till the sword destined to slay him crept out of the scabbard gradually, as it were by straw-breadths, and condemned to drink the bitterness of death drop by drop. His executioners, as he gazed around him, seemed to alter their forms and features, like specters in a feverish dream their figures became larger, and their faces more disturbed; the walls seemed to drop with blood, and the light tick of the clock thrilled on his ear with such loud, painful distinctness, as if each sound were the prick of a bodkin inflicted on the naked nerve of the organ.” The maniac preacher, in an attitude of frenzy, springs upon a chair to push forward the fatal index; the party make ready their weapons for immediate execution, when a noise like the rushing of a brook over the pebbles, or the soughing of wind among the branches stays the executioners; it was the galloping of horse, the door is burst open, and Henry Morton is saved.
Men seem neither to understand their riches nor their strength—of the former they believe much more than they should; of the latter much less. Self-reliance and self-denial will teach a man to drink out of his own cistern, and eat his own sweet bread, and to learn and labor truly to get his living, and carefully to expend the good things committed to his trust.—Bacon.