[152]. “August 25, 1682. Died the great minister of state, the Duke of Lauderdale, at the wells in England, near London. Before this time he was paraletic, and was disenabled from council and advice giving. The king’s council in Scotland advised the king to call in all his pensions he had given to any person, hereby to reach him, and to dispose of them of new, which was done; thus Lauderdale’s pension of £4000 sterling was taken from him, which he complains of to the king, and entreats his majesty to consider him, that his old and faithful servant might not die in poverty, yet was not granted. He disheartens at this, and being advised by some of the chief physicians in England to go to the wells (some of them going with him), after some days’ drinking, he swells; then being advised to take water with salt, it purges him, and so purged him as that he died of it.”—Law’s Memorials, p. 234.
BOOK XIX.
A.D. 1682-1683.
Persecution instigated by the curates in the South and West—Noble conduct of a boy—Rapacity of the military—Instructions of the council—Exploits of Claverhouse, Meldrum, &c.—Retributive justice—Justiciary court—Lawrie of Blackwood—Circuit courts—Rye-house plot—Scottishmen implicated—Various instances of oppression.
While the justiciary and the commissioners were carrying on their dreadful work, the lower menials of tyranny were not idle. Cornet Graham followed closely the footsteps of his friend Claverhouse. In the parish of Twynholm, Kirkcudbrightshire, several cottars’ wives, with children at the breast, were sent to jail, because they would not oblige themselves to keep their kirk and hear the curate. In a neighbouring parish, the incumbent being informed of some persons who dared meet together for prayer, procured soldiers to quarter upon them for this dreadful irregularity; and one poor old woman, nearly blind, and lame in both her arms, eminently pious, and therefore peculiarly obnoxious, being cast out of her cottage, which was razed to the ground, sought hiding in a neighbour’s house; but the implacable curate brought a party of soldiers, whom he ordered to seize her and carry her out of the parish, saying, “Jean, you shall crook no more in Moss-side,” and added, “she was a scabbed hog, and would infect all the flock.” Her brother, however, prevailed upon them by a little money to allow her to go with him to his house, where she lingered a few days, till she reached a better home. At Perth, Mrs Minniman, a minister’s widow, was torn from her only son, a child, lying dangerously ill:—-the child died crying for his mother, and the mother soon after died of grief for her child. Parents were punished for their children, and children for their parents, even when the parties themselves were regular. But this was the case over the whole country, of which I shall give a few instances.
In the parish of St Mungo, Annandale, a father had a party quartered on him, because his son, a youth about sixteen, was in fault; for the curate said it was but fit the father should be punished for the child, whom he ought to have made regular by a bridle. In Rutherglen, the provost sent his officers to a widow’s house to apprehend her son for non-attendance at church. The lad fled, but his sister was taken, fined, and sent to prison, for aiding his escape. The poor girl could not pay the fine, and her mother fell sick; yet, though bail was offered, she could not be permitted to attend her. Shortly after, supposing perhaps that the son might have supplied his sister’s place, the provost came in the night-time, searched the house for him, and, failing to find him, obliged the afflicted woman to pay twenty merks, probably her all. Mr Blair, the incumbent, for not waiting on whose ministrations all this suffering was inflicted, was at the very time living in whoredom with his own servant wench.
At East Monkland, in Lanarkshire, an incident occurred, respecting which it is difficult to say whether it exhibits the barbarity of the mercenary soldiers, or the noble hardihood of a thoroughly trained youth, in the most conspicuous point of view. Archibald Inglis, an officer under John Skene of Hallyards, while hunting out a pious farmer in Arnbuckles who had been denounced by the profligate curate of the parish, missing him, laid hold on a boy, hardly fifteen years of age, and ordered him to swear when he saw his master, and to tell them if he knew where he was. The youth refusing, the soldiers beat him with their swords till he was wholly covered with blood; then dragging him by the hair of the head to the fire, they wrung his nose till it gushed—they held his face to the flame “till his eyes were like to leap out of his head.” The woman in the house, unable to help him, entreated him with tears to tell all he knew before he was burned to death; but the intrepid little fellow refused to say a word. The soldiers, holding their drawn swords to his breast, swore they would send him to eternity, if he did not tell. Still he kept mute. Then they struck him furiously upon the head, but not a word would he utter. At last he fell senseless among their hands, and they left him for dead! He afterwards recovered. I regret I cannot record his name. This same Inglis, in the parish of Kilbride, because three conscientious peasants refused to take the inquisitorial oath, to answer every question that should be put to them, ordered fiery matches to be placed between their fingers to extort compliance; but in this case, as in the other, he appears only to have had the diabolical satisfaction of inflicting exquisite torture without attaining his object.
The thirst after money was insatiable among these wretches. Covetousness, in its meanest, crudest, and most revolting shape, appears to have been their master passion. Their gross, expensive sensuality cried—“Give! give!” and what they squandered upon their harlots, they unmercifully wrung from their more excellent neighbours. Such was the high-spirited gallantry of these extolled cavaliers! Claverhouse distinguished himself in this way. Nor was that still more despicable character, Mackenzie, the king’s advocate, less assiduous in the same low vocation; indeed, he appears upon every occasion to have stimulated the spoilers.
The council’s instructions to the military brigands early this year, which were undoubtedly his production, were framed upon the principle by which the greatest sums of money could be extorted from the people. When petty heritors, who were also tenants, were guilty of any disorder, they were to be fined in that capacity, which would bear the greatest fines. Upon information that noblemen or gentlemen entertained in their families unlicensed chaplains or pedagogues, their names were to be sent to the chancellor, the archbishop of St Andrews, or the bishop of Edinburgh, that the pecuniary penalties, which were exorbitant, might be exacted. They were to call for the public records of their districts, and if any fines had been abated, they were to be exacted in full; and the magistrates were to be reported, that they might be brought to account for their negligence or collusion.