To Mr William Spang. July 19, 1654.
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As for our church affairs, thus they stand. The parliament of England had given to the English judges and sequestrators a very ample commission to put out and in ministers as they saw cause, to plant and displant our universities. According to this power, they put Mr John Row in Aberdeen, Mr Robert Leighton in Edinburgh, Mr Patrick Gillespie in Glasgow, and Mr Samuel Colvill they offered to the Old College of St Andrew’s. This last is yet held off; but the other three act as Principals. All our colleges are quickly like to be undone. Our churches are in great confusion. No intrant gets any stipend till he have petitioned and subscribed some acknowledgement to the English. When a very few of the remonstrants and Independent party will call a man, he gets the kirk and the stipend; but whom the presbytery, and well near the whole congregation, calls and admits, he must preach in the fields, or in a barn, without stipend. So a sectary is planted in Kilbride, another in Lenzie, [or Kirkintilloch,] and this guyse will grow rife, to the wrack of many a soul.
We thought at the general assembly to have got some course for this; but Colonel Lilburn, the commander in chief, gave orders to soldiers to break our assembly before it was constituted, to the exceeding great grief of all, except the remonstrants, who insulted upon it; the English violence having trysted with their protestation against it. Since that time we have had no meeting for the whole church, not so much as for counsel, though the remonstrants have met oft, and are like to set up a commission and assembly of their own for very ill purposes. They are most bitter against those who adhere to their covenant in the matter of the King and assembly. They are as bent as ever to purge the church. To punish men truly deserving censure, we are as willing as they; but their purging is, for common, a very injurious oppression. Sundry of them fall openly to the English errors, both of church and state, and many more are near to that evil; yet Lord Wariston, Mr James Guthrie, and others, still profess their great aversion to the English way: however, their great aversion of the King, and of the late assemblies, and their zeal to make up the church and army, and places of trust, only of the godly party, (that is, their own confidents,) make them dear and precious men to the English, do or say what they will, and their opposites but rascally malignants. This makes them exceeding bold, knowing of their back; and were it not for a few more moderate men among them, they, before this, would have played strange pranks. However, they are going on pretty fast. Their wracking of the congregation of Lenzie, and dividing of the presbytery of Glasgow, their doing the like in the congregation and presbytery of Linlithgow, you heard long ago; also what they have done in Bathgate, and sundry parts of the south. I will only give some account of their last dealings.
From their meeting in Edinburgh they were instructed to have monthly fasts and communions. They excluded more than the half of these who were ordinarily admitted. Six or seven ministers, leaving their own congregations desolate, were about the action. Numbers of strangers flocked to these meetings. At their fasts, four or five ministers of their best preachers in the bounds exercised from morning to even. The great design of this was evidently but to increase their party; whereof yet in most places they missed. Always the word went, that they purposed to put up committees, for purging and planting everywhere as they thought fit. I was so charitable as not to suspect them of any such purpose, when the land was full of confusion and danger; yet I found myself disappointed; for at our synod, the moderator’s sermon ran on the necessity of taking up the too-long neglected work of purging. The man’s vehemency in this, and in his prayer, a strange kind of sighing, the like whereof I had never heard, as a pythonising out of the belly of a second person, made me amazed. To prevent this foolish and cruel enterprise, we pressed, in the entry of the synod, that in these times of confusion we might be assured of peace till the next synod, as we had been in the three former synods. We intimated our great willingness to cast out of the ministry all whom we conceived either unfit for weakness, or scandalous: but a synod so divided in judgment as we were, we conceived very unfit for any such work. When we found our desire flatly refused, and perceived a clear design to set up presently their tyrannous committees, we, as we had resolved beforehand, and were advised by the ministry of Edinburgh, and others of our mind, required them, that our synod might be rightly constitute; that ministers censured by the general assembly, and elders notoriously opposite to the last three general assemblies, might have no voice. When this was flatly refused, we shewed we were necessitated to sit by ourselves, and leave them in their separation from the general assembly and church of Scotland. When, by all we could say, nothing could be obtained, all of us who adhered to the general assembly went to the Blackfriars, and there kept the synod, leaving our protestation with them. Some brethren travelled all the next day for an union. We offered it gladly, on condition that they would be content for this time of the land’s trouble and danger, to leave all meddling with things controverted, or else to constitute according to the act of the general assembly. When neither could be obtained, (as you may see in the paper of mediation,) we constituted ourselves in a synod by an act; and when we had appointed a fast, we closed, to meet at Irvine the next diet. To our absent brethren we sent a letter, and an information of our proceedings to the neighbouring synods of Lothian, Galloway, Argyle; also Fife, Perth, and the Merse.
The remonstrants chose Mr William Guthrie for their moderator, and one James Porter, a devoted servant of their party, for clerk; named a committee of their most forward men to go immediately to Lanerk, to purge and plant as they found cause; sent two of their gentlemen, Sir George Maxwell and Walkingshaw, with the help of their good friend Bogs, and Commissary Lockhart. Mr Somerville, and Mr Jack, and, when they prevailed not, two of their ministers, Mr William Somerville, and Mr William Jack, went to the Governor of Glasgow, Col. Couper, for a troop of horse to guard them at Lanerk and Douglas. Some of them, to their power, fomented a very injurious scandal on Mr Robert Hume, whom we had made minister at Crawfordjohn contrary to their mind; their committee laboured to their power to try that their own invention, but failed therein. There is an old man, Mr John Veitch, minister of Roberton, they sent two or three ministers of their number to hear him preach. On their report, they pronounced a sentence of deposition on him as insufficient. But their chief work was at Douglas. The noblemen, gentlemen, whole heritors, people, and session, unanimously had called Mr Archibald Inglis, a very good and able youth, to his father’s place. They stirred up some of the elders, who subscribed a call to the young man, to desire his trials might be before the united presbytery, and not before our part of it, from which the remonstrants had separated. This motion they so fomented, that these few elders, with a very few of the people, were moved by them, contrary to all the congregation, to give a call to a silly young man, a mere stranger, from Fife, one Mr Francis Kidd, who had never been heard nor seen in the bounds. This man they bring to the kirk on the Sunday. When the people refused to let him or them enter, he preached on a brae side to some strangers and a few of the people of Douglas, and even these run away from hearing of him, except a very few of them. Sermon ended, they sent one to read an edict at the church door, who refused to give a copy of what he read. Without more ado, on Monday morning, they passed all his trials in one hour, and came to the church of Douglas in the afternoon to give him imposition of hands. The body of the people and heritors hindered their coming into the church and churchyard; whereupon they sent once and again for their English guard. By all their importunity they could get none of the troop to countenance them, except twelve, with the lieutenant. By the power of their sword, as was avowed on all hands, on a brae side, without preaching, they admitted him minister of Douglas: An abominable example, generally much abhorred, which shews what we may expect from that party. Our Synod appointed some to join with the true presbytery of Lanerk, which met the week thereafter; tried, with all accuracy possible, what could be found in the scandal of Mr Hume; found nothing but malice of some parties, fomented by ministers; with the unanimous consent of the people of Roberton, strengthened the minister, and appointed a helper to be settled there in an orderly way; admitted to the church of Douglas Mr Archibald Inglis, after all trials duly performed, with the blessings and tears of the congregation. Possibly they will procure an order from the English, that the stipend and church shall go to Mr Kidd and his twelve or sixteen followers, and Mr Inglis shall be tolerated, with much ado, to preach to the whole congregation, Marquis of Douglas, Earl of Angus, whole heritors and people, in the fields, or a barn, without a sixpence of stipend.
In this glass see our condition. It is so in sundry congregations already, and like to be so in many more; not so much through the violence of the English, as the unreasonable headiness of the remonstrants, which for the time is remediless; and we, for fear of worse from their very evil humour, give way to permit them to plant divers churches as they like best. This formed schism is very bitter to us, but remediless, except on intolerable conditions, which no wise orthodox divine will advise us to accept: We must embrace without contradiction, and let grow, the principles of the remonstrants, which all Reformed divines, and all states in the whole world abhor; we must permit a few heady men to waste our church with our consent or connivance; we must let them frame our people to the Sectarian model; a few more forward ones joined among themselves by privy meetings to be the godly party, and the congregation, the rest, to be the rascally malignant multitude: so that the body of our people are to be cast out of all churches; and the few who are countenanced, are fitted, as sundry of them already have done, to embrace the errors of the time for their destruction. Against these abominations we strive so much, and so wisely, as we can. Mr R. Douglas, Mr Dickson, and others, have yet got Edinburgh right. The faction which Mr Robert Traill and Mr John Stirling have there is inconsiderable. Mr R. Blair and Mr J. Wood keep St Andrew’s and Fife pretty right. Mr Rutherford, to the uttermost of his power, advances the other party. Mr John Robertson and Mr William Rate get Angus and Dundee right: but the naturally heady men of Aberdeen are come to the full design too soon; yet the body of the people and country are right. In this Mr J. Guthrie in Stirling comes but small speed: albeit his confident, Sir William Bruce of Stenhouse, be made the English sheriff in Linlithgowshire, they have used great violence, imprisoned their chief opposite Mr John Waugh, forced a silly man into the ministry of Linlithgow, and another on Bathgate, contrary to all the synod of Lothian could do; yet the body of the people there is flat against them. Their greatest prevalency is with us in Glasgow, which comes much more by Mr James Durham’s professed neutrality, but real joining with most of the other’s designs, and Mr John Carstair’s zeal, than any thing that Mr Patrick Gillespie had done, or could do, by himself. This is the pitiful condition of our church, which is but going on from evil to worse till the Lord remeid it.
As for our state, this is its case. Our nobility are well near all wrecked. Dukes Hamilton, the one executed, the other slain; their estate forfeited; one part of it gifted to English soldiers; the rest will not pay the debt; little left to the heretrix; almost the whole name undone with debt. Huntly executed; his sons all dead but the youngest; there is more debt on the House than the land can pay. Lennox is living as a man buried in his house of Cobham. Douglas and his son Angus are quiet men, of no respect. Argyle, almost drowned in debt, in friendship with the English, but in hatred with the country. He courts the remonstrants, who were and are averse from him. Chancellor Loudon lives like an outlaw about Athol; his lands comprised for debt, under a general very great disgrace. Marischal, Rothes, Eglinton and his three sons, Crawford, Lauderdale, and others, prisoners in England; and their lands all either sequestrated or forefaulted, and gifted to English soldiers. Balmerino suddenly dead, and his son, for publick debt, comprisings, and captions, keeps not the causey. Wariston, having refunded much of what he got for places, lives privily in a hard enough condition, much hated by the most, and neglected by all, except the remonstrants, to whom he is guide. Our criminal judicatories are all in the hands of the English; our civil courts also; only some of the remonstrants are adjoined with them. In the session are Craighall, and his brother Hopeton, Mr A. Pearson, Southall, Col. Lockhart, and Swinton. The only clerks to the session are Mr John Spreul and William Downie. The commissariot and sheriff courts are all in the hands of English soldiers, with the adjunction in some places of some few remonstrants. Strong garrisons in Leith, Edinburgh town and castle, Glasgow, Air, and Dumbarton, Stirling, Linlithgow, Perth, Dundee, Burntisland, Dunnotter, Aberdeen, Inverness, Inverary, Dunstaffnage, &c.
Of a long time no man in the whole isle did mute. All were lulled up in a lethargic fear and despair; only the other year, Glencairn and Balcarras, understanding of an order to apprehend them as corresponding with the King, retired to the hills of Athol. Kenmure having escaped from England, when his house was burnt and his rents seized upon, got to the Lennox with a few horse. Lorn being but coarsely used by his father, joined with Kenmure. To these sundry did associate, Glengary, Athol, Seaforth, not so much to do any thing against the English, as to make some noise of a party, to encourage the King’s friends abroad to send him supplies of men, arms, and money. At once a great animosity did rise in every shire of the land. Very many young gentlemen made bold with all the serviceable horses they could find about them, and notwithstanding of all the diligence the English could use to prevent, great numbers came safe to the hills. The war with Holland, and rumour of great help from over seas, did increase daily both the number and courage of this party.
But behold inward division doth hazard all at the very beginning. The irreconcileable discord betwixt Argyle and Hamilton had undone the isle, and almost both the families. Glencairn, Hamilton’s cousin, did much mistrust and slight Lorn. Ralston, and the remonstrant gentlemen of Kintyre, seemed ready to arm for the English, against the King’s party. Lorn and Kenmure, with the men they had raised, went to Kintyre to suppress these. They, on hope of the English assistance from Ayr, fortified the castle of Lochead. But when neither Argyle nor the English appear in their defence, they render the house to Lorn’s discretion. Kenmure thinking the besieged better used by Lorn than they deserved, fell in a miscontent, and went from Lorn to Glencairn with many complaints. Balcarras also unwilling to have Glencairn above him, and conceiving it was best for the advancing of the King’s affairs, that till the King himself, or one of the authority from him, should come, the party should be ruled by a committee without any supreme officer, and that all admitted to councils and command in the army should declare for the Solemn League and Covenant. For these ends he dealt with Lorn, Seaforth, and Athol, till Glencairn produced a commission under the King’s hand to be general, till himself or some from him should come to take the command. This unexpected commission put all to a submissive silence, but increased heartburnings. Lorn professing all firmness to the King and cause, was not willing to take orders from Glencairn, till he knew more particularly the King’s pleasure. For this end, he Balcarras, and others, wrote to the King their discontent with Glencairn’s command. These letters were intercepted, and brought to Glencairn; whereupon he gave order to Glengary to apprehend Lorn to answer for his sedition. Lorn hardly enough escaped Glengary’s pursuit. Balcarras retired; and, a little after, with his lady, went disguised through England to the King. Notwithstanding of all these pitiful and shameful debates, Glencairn’s party still increased, and his conduct became considerable. The whole highlands, isles, and much of the north, and numbers from the lowlands, were come unto him; so it was thought, at Middleton’s coming, he had here and there 8000 or 9000 foot, and 2000 or 3000 horse, of very stout and resolute men as ever we had on the fields, the most of them old soldiers. But at Middleton’s coming, when neither the King, nor his brother, nor any foreign forces did appear, the hearts of many began to doubt; and when, after his coming, some months, notwithstanding of all the reiterated promises, no foreign assistance at all did come; but on the contrary, the Holland peace was proclaimed; the treaty of the Protector with Sweden went on; the French ambassador at London was solemnly received, as the Spanish and Portugal had been; all human hope began much to fail, especially after Monk’s coming down as general, the proclamation of the Protector, the act of union, and the ordinance of grace, which forfeited and deeply fined so many, and subjected the whole privileges of the nation to the Protector and his council’s pleasure, with the abolition of royalty, the whole branches of the family-royal, and all Scots parliaments and conventions of estates; the taking of Kinnoul, Lieutenant-Colonels Heriot, Wishart, Forsyth, and sundry more of our Scotsmen, unhappily: all these were so hard presages, that the most gave all the King’s affairs for gone, and many thought that the King, whether through their weakness, or the treachery of the few counsellors about him, or the cross aspect of all Europe towards him, had so far disappointed the expectation of his friends, that while he lived he was not like to get such a party for his service in Scotland.