About the end of July, a few of the wanderers having rescued, at Enterkin-path, among the hills near Moffat, seven of their friends, whom a party of soldiers were carrying prisoners from Dumfries to Edinburgh, the privy council, on the 1st of August, passed a most barbarous act, ordering the execution of rebels to follow their conviction, within six hours in Edinburgh, and three hours in the west country. Meanwhile the murders went on in the fields. William Shirinlaw, a youth of eighteen, was met by a party at Woodhead, in the parish of Tarbolton, who, after asking him a few of the ordinary questions, and finding or alleging that his answers were unsatisfactory, immediately shot him. The subaltern, one Lewis Lauder, who commanded this party, seized other three, and would have proceeded in an equally summary manner with them, but his men positively refused to obey, remarking, one in one day was sufficient.
About the same time, five of the wanderers were found by a party under Claverhouse, sleeping in the fields. When awoke, on attempting to escape, they were fired at, and some of them wounded and carried off. When they were halted at a house for the purpose of plundering, a poor woman, for offering to dress their wounds, was also made prisoner. They were marched bleeding to the capital; and, on their arrival, tried and executed the same day. In a joint testimony which they hurriedly wrote, they expressed their willingness to die:—“We bless the Lord we are not a whit discouraged, but content to lay down our lives with cheerfulness, and boldness, and courage; and if we had an hundred lives, we would willingly quit with them for the truth of Christ. Good news! Christ is no worse than he promised. Him that overcometh will he make a pillar in his temple. Our time is short, and we have little to spare, having got our sentence at one o’clock, and to die at five in the afternoon this day. So we will say no more; but farewell all friends and relations, and welcome heaven, and Christ, and the cross for Christ’s sake.”
James Nichol, a merchant in Peebles, being accidentally present at the execution, exclaimed, in the bitterness of his heart—“These kine of Bashan have pushed these good men to death at one push, contrary to their own base laws, in a most inhuman manner.” For this speech he was instantly seized, and within a few days sent after them to the gallows.[[156]] Along with him was executed William Young from Evandale, a good man, but “distempered and crazed in his judgment,” which certainly any rational person would have imagined ought to have exempted him from suffering on account of his opinions; yet was he solemnly tried and condemned by the horrible justiciary, after being most barbarously used. Having attempted to escape from the Canongate tolbooth, he was re-taken and bound so firmly with cords that his whole body was racked. “A pain this,” said he, “which would be intolerable, if eternal; but now I am near the crown, and rejoice in the full assurance of it.” It was observed of him by his fellow prisoners, that when engaged in serious conversation, reading, or prayer, he was always very composed, although exceedingly restless at other times.
[156]. On this most infamous judicial assassination, Sir Walter Scott remarks—“It is strange how the ferocity of persecution begets in those who are exposed to it a corresponding obstinacy and pertinacity. In the present case, one may say with the jailer in Cymbeline, that ‘unless a man would marry a gallows and beget young gibbets, I never saw one so prone.’” The fact was, he was on horseback riding home, when he was stopped by the crowd in the Grassmarket, and remained till the three were turned over, when, unable to repress his honest indignation, he expressed himself in the words for which he suffered.
It has been remarked, that during the period of the first ten Christian persecutions, the Roman world formed then one wide prison-house, from which there was no escape. The prelatical persecutors in Scotland appeared anxious to imitate their heathen predecessors; and in order to secure their victims, a proclamation was issued, 15th September, requiring all masters of vessels to present to the magistrates lists upon oath of all their passengers, whether leaving or returning to the kingdom; and on the 16th, another was published, forbidding all persons to travel from one shire to another without a government-pass, under the penalty of being punished as disaffected!—restrictions, of which it is difficult to say whether any could have been contrived more detrimental to the trade of the country and the liberty of the subject, as it would be difficult to conceive any act more tyrannical than one passed by them the same day, ordering such as would not declare the rising at Bothwell rebellion, the primate’s death murder, or owned the covenants, or who only hesitated respecting them—to be prosecuted criminally, i.e., in other words, to be put to death!
These were preparations for the circuit courts, which set out for the south and west in the beginning of October. On the 2d, the division of which Queensberry, his son Drumlanrick, and Claverhouse, were the judges, sat down at Dumfries. As money was the everlasting cry of all these political cormorants, Queensberry procured an offer of five months’ cess for eight years from the county; but when he proposed a similar vote at Ayr, Lord Dumfries opposed it, desiring to know when there would be an end of taxes, and then he would offer as cheerfully as any. To make up for this disappointment, the heritors were all required to take the test, and the recusants were fined. They were besides required to swear whether they had held any communication with the rebels, for this most cogent reason, “that no man can complain when judged by his own oath, by which he is in less danger than by any probation of any witness whatsomever;” and they were finally to swear that, upon hearing or seeing any who were or should be denounced, they should raise the hue and cry, or give notice to the nearest garrison, in order to their apprehension. There does not appear to have been any murders committed at this time by the court of Dumfries; but one case of extortion deserves to be mentioned. A young man, William Martin, a son of Martin of Dullarg, having been lately married, when at Edinburgh Queensberry sent for him and offered to purchase the property he held in right of his wife, the heiress of Carse. Martin refused to part with it for the sum Queensferry offered, when the latter told him he would make him repent it, and threatened to pursue him for his life, to escape which Martin let him have the estate upon his own terms. Yet, notwithstanding, he was at this time fined in seven hundred pounds, Scots, and his wife forced to give bond for another hundred pounds, having had a child baptised by a Presbyterian minister.
The court of which Mar, Livingstone, and General Drummond, afterwards Lord Strathallan, were the commissioners, sat down at Ayr in the beginning of October; and the heritors, being assembled in various sections, were told that they would display their loyalty to great advantage were they to petition to have the test administered to them, when those who agreed were dismissed, and those who refused were sent to prison, and had indictments for crimes which many of them were incapable of committing. Some young men who lived with their parents were charged with irregular marriages, and others who had no children with irregular baptisms; but none were set at liberty even after the absurdities of the charges were evident, till they found exorbitant bail to appear at Edinburgh when called. Almost all the indulged ministers were silenced by this vile junto, and those who would not oblige themselves to exercise no part of their ministry were sent to the Bass or other prisons; while, to terrify some young gentlemen recusants into compliance, a gibbet was erected at the cross, and pointed out as a most convincing argument. Quintin Dick, when urged to take the oath of allegiance, declared “he was ready to take it in things civil, but as to supremacy in matters ecclesiastical, he was too much the king’s friend to wish him such an usurpation upon Christ’s kingdom, being persuaded that the church of Christ hath a government in ecclesiastical matters independent upon any monarchy in the world, and that there are several cases which in no way come under the king’s cognizance.” For this saying, he was fined in one thousand pounds sterling, and ordered to be banished to the plantations.
The western circuit court, of which the Duke of Hamilton, with Lords Lundin (afterwards Earl of Melford) and Collington, were the judges, met at Glasgow on the 14th, when they commenced their proceedings by issuing a proclamation for disarming the counties of Clydesdale, Renfrew, and Dumbarton. They then imprisoned Schaw of Greenock, Sir James Montgomery of Skelmorly, Sir John Maxwell of Pollock, Cunningham of Craigends, and Porterfield of Douchal, all of whom they served with indictments for resetting rebels, which having no proof they referred to their oath, declaring their confession of guilt should not infer life or limb, but with a design to fine them in sums nearly equivalent to their estates. Next, they declared the parishes of the indulged ministers vacant to the number of thirty-six, whom they also imprisoned for some alleged breach of the council’s instructions. They likewise prevailed with the gentry and freeholders to become bound for the conformity of themselves, their families, and tenantry, to the whole of the present ecclesiastical constitution; and further, to offer voluntarily to the king three months’ cess more than was voted by parliament for the maintenance of an additional troop of horse for two years. They finished their proceedings in this quarter by fining Mr Archibald Hamilton, advocate, in five hundred merks, for not attending them, though he was burying his servant, who was accidentally drowned in Irvine water.
The heritors of Stirlingshire voluntarily came forward with a bond similar to the above, accompanied by a loyal address, expressing their abhorrence of all rebellious principles and practices, declaring their dutiful and absolute submission to his majesty’s authority and government, and offering their lives and fortunes to support the same.
The Merse circuit, of which Lord Balcarras, Lord Yester, and Hay of Drumellzier, were the commissioners, appear to have interested themselves to afford some relief or redress to the sufferers. They fined Pringle of Rigg, sheriff-depute, in five hundred merks, for oppressing the people, besides “modifying and discerning the restitution of the parties’ damage,” and fined one Alexander Martine, in Dunse, £1000 sterling, and deprived him of his place as clerk. The shire of Berwick being urged either to vote four months’ cess or maintain a troop, agreed to give two, which was opposed by Home of Wedderburn and some others, when the Earl of Home struck in “and out-bad a month more.”