Bygone Scotland: Historical and Social

by David Maxwell

And Lauderdale who had begun his rule leniently, now afraid of being represented to the King as lukewarm in his service, blossomed out into a cruel persecutor, forcibly suppressing field meetings, and enforcing extreme penalties on nonconformists. It has been estimated that up to this date seventeen thousand persons had suffered in fine, imprisonment, and death. It was said that fines extorted for non-attendance at the parish churches, were applied to supply the extravagance of Lady Lauderdale,—a rapacious, bad, clever woman. Landowners were required under penalties to become bound for their tenants, that they would attend their parish churches, take no part in conventicles, and not relieve outlawed persons.

The gentry generally refused to enter into such bonds; and Lauderdale wrote to the King that the country was in a state of incipient rebellion, and required reduction by force of arms. He treated the whole of the west country as if in open revolt. Not only did he send ordinary troops with field artillery into the devoted districts, but he brought down from the hills a Highland host of 9000 men to live upon, and with every encouragement to plunder and oppress, the poor people. Speaking an unknown tongue, strange in manners and attire, they were to the lowlanders a veritable plague of human locusts. When, after a few months of free quarterage, they went back to their hills, themselves and a number of horses were loaded with booty, as if from the sack of a rich town. But so far as we can learn they were not guilty of personal violence upon those they were sent to despoil; perhaps in this respect hardly coming up to the wishes and expectations of their employers.

In May, 1679, occurred a deed of blood which widened the gulf between the Covenanters and the government, and gave legal colouring to harshness and persecution. In Fifeshire, one Carmichael had become especially obnoxious as a cruel persecutor, and an active commissioner for receiving the fines laid upon the malcontents. On 3rd May, a party of twelve men, chiefly small farmers in the district, with David Hackston of Rathillet and John Balfour of Burley as the leaders, lay in wait for Carmichael, with full purpose to slay him. It appears he had received some warning, and kept out of the way. After waiting long, the band were, in sullen disappointment, preparing to separate, when the carriage of Sharpe, the Archbishop, appeared unexpectedly, conveying him and his daughter home to St. Andrews. To these superstitious men, nursed under persecution by old biblical texts into religious fanaticism, it appeared as if an act of necessary vengeance was here thrust upon them, that instead of an inferior agent, a foremost persecutor, who had hounded to the death many of their brethren, was now delivered into their hands. They took him from his carriage, and there on Magus Muir—suing upon his knees for mercy, his grey hairs, and his daughter’s anguished cries, also pleading for his life—they slew him with many sword thrusts.

A general cry of horror and repudiation rang through the land. It was a savage murder; but so had been the deaths of hundreds of persons more innocent than he of offences against justice and common right. More severe measures of repression were taken; new troops were raised, and the officers instructed to act with the utmost rigour. And the Covenanters grew desperate; they assembled in greater numbers, were more fully armed, and more defiant in their language. On 29th May, the anniversary of the Restoration, a mounted party entered the village of Rutherglen, about two miles from Glasgow. They extinguished the festive bonfire, held a service of denunciatory psalms, prayers, and exhortations in the market place, and burned the Acts which had been issued against the Covenant. In quest of the insurgents, and to avenge the affront on the government, a body of cavalry rode out of Glasgow barracks, on the 1st of June. Their leader was a distinguished soldier—a man of courage and gallant bearing, John Graham of Claverhouse—afterwards, for his services in the royal cause, created Viscount Dundee.

In the annals of Scotland there is no name amongst the unworthiest of her sons,—Monteith the betrayer of Wallace, Cardinal Beaton, the ruthless persecutor, Dalziel, with a monomania for murder and oppression,—so utterly detestable as that of the dashing cavalier, Claverhouse. His portrait is that of a haughty, self-centred man; one would think too proud for the meanly savage work he was set to do, but which, with fell intensity, he seemed to revel in doing. In the conflict, he appeared to have a charmed life, and in these superstitious times he was believed to have made a paction with Satan:—for doing the fiend’s work he was to have so many years immunity from death: neither lead nor steel could harm him. It was said that his mortal wound, received in the moment of victory at Killiecrankie, was from being shot by a silver bullet.

Claverhouse, in quest of the demonstrators at Rutherglen, came, at Drumclog, about twenty miles south of Glasgow, on the body of insurgents; about fifty horsemen fairly well appointed, as many infantry with fire-arms, and a number armed with pikes, scythes, and pitch-forks. The Covenanters had skilfully posted themselves; a morass and broad ditch in front, the infantry in the centre, a troop of horse on each flank. Claverhouse’s call to surrender was answered by the singing of a verse of a warlike psalm. The troops gave a loud cheer, and rode into the morass; they found it impassable and themselves under a steady fire from the Covenanters. Claverhouse sent flanking parties to right and left. These were boldly met before they had time to form after crossing the ditch, and nearly cut to pieces. And then the Covenanters made a sudden rush, and after a desperate defence by Claverhouse, they utterly routed him,—the only battle he ever lost.

This victory of the Covenanters over regular troops, ably commanded, was a general surprise, and it found the victors ill-prepared to follow it up to advantage. They next day occupied Hamilton, and, reinforced by numbers, proceeded to attack Glasgow. They were at first beaten back by Claverhouse, but he thought it advisable to retreat to Edinburgh; and then the insurgents occupied Glasgow. The King meanwhile had sent the Duke of Monmouth—a courteous and courageous gentleman,—albeit the bar sinister ran through his escutcheon—to collect an army to quell the rebellion. On 21st June the Covenanters—who had now their headquarters near Hamilton, on the south-western bank of the Clyde, learned that the Duke, at the head of a powerful army, was advancing towards Bothwell Bridge—crossing which he would be upon them.

In the face of the common enemy, polemical disputes between the different presbyterian parties brought confusion into their councils. The moderate party drew up a supplication to the Duke, describing their many grievances, and asking that they be submitted to a free parliament. The Duke sent a courteous reply, expressing sympathy, and offering to intercede for them with the King,—but they must first lay down their arms. This condition the extreme party would not listen to, and at this most unsuitable moment, they nominated fresh officers—men indisposed to acknowledge any allegiance to the King, or, in matters appertaining to religion, to submit to the civil power. Under Rathillet, Burley and other irreconcilables, 300 men were posted to hold the bridge; they made a stout defence; but it was forced at the point of the bayonet. Bishop Burnet says,—“The main body of the insurgents had not the grace to submit, the courage to fight, nor the sense to run away.” But when the cannon began to make havoc in their ranks, and they saw the deadly array of horsemen, and the serried ranks of disciplined infantry preparing to charge—they threw down their arms, and became a mob of fugitives.

And now Claverhouse had to avenge Drumclog. His war-cry on that day had been “No Quarter,” and this was his intention at Bothwell Bridge. Four hundred were killed on the field and in the flight, but the strict orders of the Duke were “Give quarter to all who surrender—make prisoners, but spare life;” and thus the relentless swords of Claverhouse and Dalziel were stayed. With the indignation of a true soldier, Monmouth rejected a proposal to burn Hamilton and to devastate the surrounding country; and he issued a proclamation promising pardon to all who made their submission by a certain day.

But the milder spirit of Monmouth found no place in the treatment of the prisoners taken at Bothwell. They were marched to Edinburgh, suffering much on the way; there, 1200 men were huddled together without shelter in the Greyfriars churchyard—sleeping amongst the tombs upon the bare ground. Several supposed leaders were executed, some escaped further misery by death from exposure, others were set free on signing a declaration never to take arms against the King, and 257 were sent as slaves to Barbadoes.