Unless some special providence prevent, continued persecution must at last drive religion from a land. This was accomplished by the inquisition in Spain, and partially by the horrible St Bartholomew festival in France; and in Scotland, now it must have been driven to skulk in holes and corners, where even some worthy men were glad to meet a few disciples, but for the fearless Christian intrepidity of one pious youth! James Renwick, who, during all these dark and stormy times, when almost every other minister had left the service, continued to carry on the warfare, and when many of the standard-bearers fainted, planted his in the high places of the field; and his ministrations were wonderfully owned of God. He attracted crowds and revived with more than primitive vigour those field-meetings which the tyrants had prematurely imagined were crushed for ever. This added fuel to their fury. Letters of intercommuning were issued against him and his followers, and all loyal subjects were not only forbidden to hold the least intercourse with the wanderers, but ordered to hunt them out of their most retired deserts, and to raise the hue and cry wherever they appeared; in consequence of which, many of the poor persecuted pilgrims were reduced to incredible distress through hunger and cold, while secret informers, and hypocritical professors, were bribed to associate with them, to discover their hiding-places, and give information to the satellites of the prelates and the underlings of government. At the same time, the country was traversed incessantly, night and day, by a bloody and merciless soldiery, composed of the lowest offscourings of society, aided by the sleugh-hound, in ever active pursuit of those under hiding—several of whom they shot, after asking them merely a few questions—while the sea-ports were shut, and flight, the last refuge of the denounced, denied them.
Every rational ground upon which a government can ask, or has a right to ask, obedience from a subject, being thus wantonly trampled under foot by the apostate prelatists of Scotland, nothing was left to a brave and a hardy race, placed beyond the pale of society, but to resign themselves and their children to hopeless slavery, or to resist. Fortunately for succeeding generations, they chose the latter; and, having done so, they resolved at a general meeting, held October 15, in order “to evite their ineluctable ruin, to warn intelligencers and bloody Doegs of the wickedness of their ways, and to threaten them in case of persisting in malicious shedding of their blood, or instigating or assisting therein, that they would not be so slack-handed in time coming to revenge it.” They therefore caused Mr James Renwick, on the 28th October, to draw up a declaration for this purpose, which he did in “The apologetical declaration and admonitory vindication of the true Presbyterians of the church of Scotland, especially anent intelligencers and informers.” In it they testify their constant adherence to their covenants, and also to their declarations, wherein they had disowned the authority of Charles Stuart, and declared war against him and his accomplices. But they utterly detested and abhorred the hellish principle of killing all who differed in judgment from them, and proposed not to injure or offend any, but to stand to the defence of the glorious reformation and of their own lives; yet they declared unto all, that whosoever stretched forth their hands against them by shedding their blood, either by authoritative commanding, as the justiciary; or actual doing, as the military; or searching out and delivering them up to their enemies, as the gentry; or informing against them wickedly and willingly, as the viperous and malicious bishops and curates; or raising the hue and cry, as the common intelligencers—that they should repute them enemies to God and the covenanted work of reformation, and punish them according to their power and the degree of the offence.
This declaration was affixed to several market-crosses, and posted upon a great many church-doors in Nithsdale, Galloway, Ayr, and Lanark shires, and produced considerable effect upon the baser sort of informers, who were deterred for some time from pursuing their infamous vocation, and a few of the most virulent curates in Nithsdale and Galloway, who withdrew for a time to other quarters.
The state of the country, which had been rapidly declining, was now wretched beyond conception. What prosperity it had begun to enjoy under the equitable and liberal dominion of Cromwell, was now blasted in the bud. The little commerce which he encouraged, and the agricultural improvements which the English army are said to have introduced, were interrupted and destroyed by the cultivators being in vast numbers called to attend the autumnal circuits, or forced to wander as fugitives, while the soldiers rioted in the spoliation of their crops, the breakage of their utensils, and the seizure of their horses. A famine threatened, and the bishops had appointed a fast to mourn for the sins of the land; but neither they nor the rulers appear to have had any sympathy for the suffering people.
The persecution continued with unabated or rather increasing violence; and the following are a few instances illustrative of the style in which it was conducted:—William Hanna, in the parish of Turnergarth, in Annandale, had been imprisoned in the year 1667, and fined one hundred pounds for hearing a Presbyterian minister preach. After his liberation, the curate of the parish was exceedingly troublesome, citing him before his session, and threatening him with excommunication. When one of his children died, the curate would not allow it to be buried in consecrated ground, because it had not been “regularly” baptized! and when some friends came to dig a grave in William’s own burying-ground, he came out of the manse in great fury, and carried off the spades and shovels, telling them “if they buried the child there by night or day he would cause trail it out again.” In 1681, he had a horse worth four pounds sterling carried away for not paying thirteen shillings Scots of cess; and after a train of constant harassings he was at last denounced and declared fugitive. He then hoping to find a little repose, went into England; but no sooner had he crossed the border, than he was seized and sent back prisoner to Scotland, which Queensberry no sooner heard of than he ordered him to be laid in irons in Dumfries jail, till he was sent to Edinburgh (October this year) to be immured in a dark hole under the Canongate jail, where he had neither air nor light. Here, being taken ill, he begged only for a little free air; but the soldier who guarded him, told him to “seek mercy from Heaven, for they had none to give.” In this dungeon he lay till sent to Dunotter.
His son William, a youth not sixteen years of age, was denounced for not keeping the church—How many youths in Scotland would be denounced if that were now a crime?—and forced to flee to England a year after his father, where he abode some time. Venturing to return home in September 1682, he fell sick of an ague, and, while labouring under this disorder, was captured by some of the straggling soldiery, and forced to accompany them on foot for several days, in their ranging through the neighbourhood. At one time, coming to a martyr’s grave, who had been shot in the fields, they placed him upon it, and covering his face, threatened him if he would not promise regularity and ecclesiastical obedience, they would shoot him. The intrepid youth told them, “God had sent him to the world and appointed his time to go out of it; but he was determined to swear nothing he thought sinful.” Instead of respecting this courage in one so young, they sent the boy to Edinburgh, where he was first tortured with the thumbkins, then laid him in irons so strait that his flesh swelled out above them, after having been robbed of all the money sent him by his friends. This year he was banished to Barbadoes, and sold for a slave.
Age or sex was no protection. A respectable woman, seventy-three years old, who dwelt in Carsphairn, had a son cited to appear before one of these courts, 1680, for hearing Mr Cameron preach. Not, however, making his appearance, he was intercommuned—his mother’s house was searched for him, when not finding him, the soldiers spulzied the furniture. This year the military ruffians came again, and again missing the son, and finding nothing worth plundering, carried the mother to Dumfries. Here she was offered the test, and was about to comply, when the monsters in human shape, seeing her likely to yield, added a clause to the oath, that she would never speak to or harbour her son. This her maternal feelings refused; and for this was publicly scourged through Dumfries on the next market day. Nor was she even after her punishment liberated till she paid two hundred merks.
Enraged at the Apologetical Declaration, the council were still more infuriated by what seemed a practical following up of its principles, in the putting to death of two soldiers, Thomas Kennoway [vide p. 420] and Duncan Stuart. Kennoway was returning from Edinburgh, whither he had been for instructions with a list of one hundred and fifty persons he was required, it was said, upon his own information, to apprehend. Meeting Stuart at Livingstone, they both went into a public-house, when Kennoway produced his commission, and boasted over his cups that he hoped in a short time he would be as good a laird as many in that country, only he regretted he was turning old, and would not have long to enjoy his good fortune. They thence adjourned to Swine-Abbey, where they were both murdered, but by whom was never discovered. The authors of the declaration were, however, immediately suspected; and the council resolving upon an indiscriminate revenge, consulted the session as to whether avowing or refusing to disavow the declaration constituted treason? That prostituted court replied in the affirmative. But the forms of law were too dilatory for the sanguinary council. On the same day they voted “that any person who owns or who will not disown the late treasonable declaration upon oath, whether they have arms or not, shall immediately be put to death;” and on the day following, gave a commission with justiciary powers to Lords Livingstone, Ross, Torphichen, and a number of other officers of the army, five to be a quorum, with instructions to assemble the inhabitants of Livingstone and the five adjacent parishes, and to murder upon the spot, after a mock trial, all who would not disown the late traitorous declaration or assassination of the soldiers; and if any be absent, their houses to be burned and their goods seized; and as to the families of those who were condemned or executed, every person above the age of twelve years, were to be made prisoners in order to transportation. They also approved of an oath (known by the name of the abjuration-oath) to be offered to all persons whom they or their commissioners should think fit, renouncing the pretended declaration of war and disowning the villanous authors thereof.
The extortions were tremendous. In the month of December, six gentlemen of Renfrew were fined in nearly twenty thousand pounds sterling, and although some abatement was made, yet had Sir John Maxwell of Pollock to pay five thousand; the Cunninghams of Craigends, elder and younger, four thousand; Porterfield of Fulwood, upwards of sixteen hundred; and Mr James Pollock of Balgray, five hundred pounds sterling; besides various other gentlemen in the same districts, who were robbed of upwards of twenty thousand pounds sterling, by the council and the sheriffs. The pretexts under which such impositions were levied were, the dreadful negative treason of not attending ordinances in their own parish churches, and the more positive delinquencies of hearing Presbyterian ministers preach the gospel, or holding converse with the proscribed—men of whom the world was not worthy.
The real cause will be found in the grants which the debased and thievish councillors received of the spoils.[[157]] To accomplish their laudable designs, they despatched Lieut.-General Drummond to the south and west, to pursue and bring the rebels and their abettors to trial, and pass sentence upon them as he should see cause; and likewise ordered him to plant garrisons where he should think it expedient, especially in Lanarkshire; and besides gave commission to William Hamilton, laird of Orbiston, to levy two hundred Highlandmen of the shire of Dumbarton, not only “to apprehend the denounced rebels and fugitives in that quarter, and in case of their refusing, to be taken, to kill, wound, and destroy them,” but “to employ spies and intelligencers to go in company with the said rebels and fugitives, as if they were of their party, the better to discover where they haunt and are reset.”