[4] The Scottish Parliament granted what was called the "Indulgence" to Presbyterian ministers who held moderate views. The extreme Covenanters regarded these "indulged Presbyterians" as deserters and traitors who were both weak and wicked. For this reason they hated them worse than they did the Episcopalians. See Burton's "Scotland," VII, 457-468.
Claverhouse, who figures as the "Bonny Dundee" of Sir Walter Scott, hunted the Covenanters with bugle and bloodhound, like so many deer; and his men hanged and drowned those who gathered secretly in glens and caves to worship God.[1] The father of a family would be dragged from his cottage by the soldiers, asked if he would take the test of conformity to the Church of England and the oath of allegiance to King Charles II; if he refused, the officer in command gave the order, "Make ready—take aim—fire!"—and there lay the corpse of the rebel.
[1] See the historical poem of the "Maiden Martyr of Scotland," in the collection of "Heroic Ballads," Ginn and Company.
Among the multitudes who suffered in England for religion's sake was a poor tinker and day laborer named John Bunyan. He had served against the King in the civil wars, and later had become converted to Puritanism, and turned exhorter and itinerant preacher. He was arrested, while preaching in a farmhouse, and convicted of having "devilishly and perniciously abstained from coming to church."
The judge sentenced him to the Bedford county jail, where he remained a prisoner for twelve years (1660-1672). Later on, he was again arrested (1675) and sent to the town jail on Bedford Bridge. It was, he says, a squalid "Denn."[2] But in his marvelous dream of "A Pilgrimage from this World to the Next," which he wrote while shut up within the narrow limits of that filthy prison house, he forgot the misery of his surroundings. Like Milton in his blindness, loneliness, and poverty, he looked within and found that
"The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a heaven of hell."[3]
[2] "As I walk'd through the wilderness of this world, I lighted on a certain place where there was a Denn, and I laid me down in that place to sleep: and as I slept I dreamed a dream."—"The Pilgrim's Progress," 1678. [3] "Paradise Lost," Book I, 253.
473. Seizure of a Dutch Colony in America (1664).
While these things were going on in England, a strange event took place abroad. The Dutch had established a colony on the Hudson River. It was on territory which the English claimed (S335), but which they had never explored or settled. The Dutch had built a town at the mouth of the Hudson, which they called New Amsterdam. They held the place undisturbed for fifty years, and if "Possession is nine points of the law," they seem to have acquired it. Furthermore, during the period of Cromwell's Protectorate (S455), England had made a treaty with Holland and had recognized the claims of the Dutch in the New World.
Charles had found shelter and generous treatment in Holland when he needed it most. But he now cooly repudiated the treaty, and, though the two nations were at peace, he treacherously sent out a secret expedition to capture the Dutch colony for his brother James, Duke of York, to whom he had granted it.