Intent upon forcing his favourite object, the king had ordered his chapel of Holyrood-house to be repaired[[164]] for the use of the royal servants who had embraced the royal religion; and the paraphernalia necessary for conducting its Romish rites with becoming splendour, being openly brought to Leith, this, with the ostentatious celebration of mass in the popish meetings, roused such indignation in the Edinburgh populace, that “a great rabble of prentices” rose, who threatened to pull down the mass-house. They insulted the Chancellor’s lady and her company coming from chapel, assailing them with opprobrious language, and throwing dirt at them, but doing no further damage. For this riot several were apprehended, and one “baxter lad” sentenced to be whipped; but when the hangman was about to perform his duty, the mob rose, rescued their associate out of his hands, and gave himself a sound drubbing. The confusion, however, continuing, the troops in the Castle and Canongate were called out to assist the town-guard, when a woman and an apprentice of one Robert Mein, were killed. Next day, a women and two youths were scourged, guarded by soldiers; and one Moubray, an embroiderer, was indicted for his life. At the place of execution, he told Mr Malcolm, a minister who attended him, that he was offered a pardon if he would accuse the Duke of Queensberry of having excited the tumult; but he would not save his life by so foul a calumny.
[164]. He also erected a seminary in the Abbey—the Royal College; and in order to allure youth and induce Protestant parents to send their children, the scholars were to be taught gratis; and no particular system of religion was to be inculcated by the Jesuits!—crede.
This was not the only ominous circumstance which preceded the meeting of parliament. Another took place at the same time, which bore more immediately upon the grand question that was to come under their consideration, and for which they had especially been called together—the recantation of Sir Robert Sibbald, M.D. This celebrated antiquarian, who lived in a course of philosophical virtue, but in great doubts of revealed religion, had been prevailed upon by the Earl of Perth to turn papist, in order to find that certainty which he could not find upon his own principles. But he was ashamed of his conduct almost as soon as he had made his compliance, went to London, and for some months retired from all company. There, after close application to study, he came to be so convinced of the errors of popery, that he returned to Scotland some weeks before the parliament met, and could not be easy in his own mind till he made a public recantation. The Bishop of Edinburgh was so much a courtier, that, apprehending many might go to hear it, and that it might be offensive to the court, he sent him to do it in a church in the country; but the recantation of so learned a man, after so much studious inquiry, had a powerful effect.
Fining, that lucrative branch of persecution, though still a favourite, began now to descend to the humbler classes of consistent Presbyterians; for the chief gentlemen and heritors among them were either dead, forfeited, or in exile; yet the gleanings were by no means despicable, and far from being so regarded by some of the under-hirelings of government. In the parish of Calder, John Donaldson, portioner, was fined £200 for a prayer-meeting held at his house on a Lord’s day; John Baxter, £40; Walter Donaldson, for his wife being present, £36; with several others in smaller sums, making in all £816. 16s. Scots. William Stirling, bailie-depute of the regality of Glasgow, who imposed these fines, received a gift of them for his zeal and exertions.[[165]]
[165]. While the rulers were plundering the best in the land, solely because they were the best, they were no less anxious to protect those who were at least not the most worthy; but they were their own minions. The universal profligacy of manners which had been introduced at the Restoration, appears to have been followed by its natural consequence, an almost universal bankruptcy; for, when those who had wasted their substance in riotous living could no longer supply their waste by the plunder of the persecuted Presbyterians, they supported themselves for a while by the scarcely less dishonourable shift of living upon their creditors; then failing, and throwing themselves upon the crown. Fountainhall notices some such circumstances as mere matters of course:—“Provost George Drummond,” says he, “turnes bankrupt, as alsoe George Drummond, town-treasurer, [and] Drummond of Carlourie; and the Chancellor gets protections to them all, and to Skene of Hallyards in Louthian, and John Johnstoun of Poltoun;” and he adds, in the same business-like style, “William Seaton, in the life-guards, gets a gift of 5000 merks he had discovered resting to Argyle.”
On the 4th of January, at the criminal court, Sir Duncan Campbell of Auchinbreck and thirty-two more Argyleshire heritors, were forfeited for joining with the Earl, and their estates were gifted chiefly to those of the same family who had joined the royal party during the invasion, although, as usual, the prelates and their relatives came in for a share of the spoil, Campbell of Otter’s estate being gifted to Commissary M’Lean, son to the Bishop of Argyle. Fountainhall adds, “there were sundry apparent heirs amongst the forfeited, whose second brothers were on the king’s side with Atholl. It were but charity to encourage them, to make them donators to their brothers’ forfeitures.” On the same day, the Earl of Lothian, brother-in-law to Argyle, was admitted a privy councillor, with a pension of £300 per annum, given, it was said, in reward of the great courage he displayed in the Dutch war, when fighting under the king, then Duke of York; but rather, as the same author hints, to engage his interest in the ensuing parliament. Protestant heritors who had not taken the test were also ordered by his majesty to be pursued and fined; but within a few days a letter came, postponing the time for taking the test, and shortly after another dispensing with it altogether in their favour during the king’s pleasure.
About this time, Mr Alexander Peden died (January 26th), full of assurance of faith, and was privately interred in the churchyard of Auchinleck. He was certainly an extraordinary man, whose memory was long cherished in the south and west of Scotland with fond affection, and where he had laboured long and faithfully and with much success. A little before the Restoration, he was settled as minister at New Luce, in Galloway, where he remained about three years, till he was thrust out by the tyranny of the times. When about to depart, he lectured upon Acts xx. from the 7th verse to the end, and preached in the forenoon from these words—“Therefore, watch and remember, that for the space of three years I ceased not to warn every man,” &c., asserting that he had declared unto them the whole counsel of God, and professing he was free from the blood of all men. In the afternoon, he preached from the 32d verse; “And, now, brethren, I commend you to the word of his grace,” &c.—a sermon which occasioned a great weeping in the church. Many times he requested them to be silent; but they sorrowed most of all when he told them they should never see his face in that pulpit again. He continued till night; and when he closed the pulpit door, he knocked three times on it with his Bible, saying each time—“I arrest thee in my master’s name, that none ever enter thee but such as come in by the door, as I have done.” And it is somewhat remarkable that neither curate nor indulged entered that pulpit, which remained shut till it was opened by a Presbyterian preacher at the Revolution. Yet it may be doubted whether he would have thought that any one entering by that settlement, did so exactly in the manner that he did. Some time before his death, through the misrepresentations which were brought him, he had been much alienated from James Renwick, and had spoken bitterly against him; but when on his deathbed he sent for Mr Renwick, and asked if he was that Mr Renwick there was so much noise about. “Father,” he replied, “my name is James Renwick; but I have given the world no ground to make any noise about me, for I have espoused no new doctrine.” He then gave him such an account of his conversion and call to the ministry—of his principles and the grounds of his contending against tyranny and defection—that Mr Peden was satisfied, and expressed his sorrow for having given credit to the reports that were spread against him.[[166]]
[166]. Ker of Kersland, in his memoirs, speaking of Mr Peden, says—“Abundance of this good man’s predictions are well known to be already come to pass. When he was sick unto death in the year 1686, he told his friends that he should die in a few days; ‘but having,’ said be, ‘foretold many things which will require some time before they be verified, I will give you a sign which will confirm your expectation, that they will as surely come to pass as those you have already seen accomplished before your eyes. I shall be decently buried by you; but if my body be suffered to rest in the grave where you shall lay it, then I have been a deceiver, and the Lord hath not spoken by me: whereas, if the enemy come a little afterwards to take it up and carry it away to bury it in an ignominious place, then I hope you will believe that God Almighty hath spoken by me, and consequently there shall not one word fall to the ground.’ Accordingly, about 40 days after his interment, a troop of dragoons came, lifted his corpse, carried them two miles to Cumnock, and buried them under the gallows.”—Crookshanks, vol. ii. p. 320.—James Nisbet, in his memoirs, states the same fact, p. 134.
The unflinching confessors of the truth in this day, like those in primitive times, were often in perils among false brethren, and often persecuted with the scourge of the tongue, even by some who were suffering in the same cause. They were accused “of overturning the Presbyterian government in the church, and substituting a loose kind of independency, by committing the trial and censure of offences to persons who were not office-bearers—of usurping the magistrates’ place in the state, by constituting themselves a convention of estates, and managing the civil affairs of their community by their edicts—and of disowning, as silent and unfaithful, all ministers who cannot preach upon their terms, there being not now, according to them, one minister in Scotland, England, or Ireland, save one Mr James Renwick, who, by his own confession in a letter to a friend in Ireland, is not one either.”
To this Mr Renwick, at the desire of the societies, replied—“That they never committed the trial of ‘scandals’ to the people in a judicial way, but only allowed them, when there were no church judicatories, to withdraw privately from associating with those who erred, that they might not partake of other men’s sins, but by this be a means of reclaiming offending brethren; which certainly was not overturning Presbyterian government, any more than their declining the authority of tyrants was thrusting themselves into the magistrates’ room.” He added, personally—“As to that, that by my own confession I am not a minister of the church, I altogether deny. I said I am a minister wherever I have a call from the people and do embrace it.—O! that all those who shall agree together in heaven, were agreeing upon earth, I think if my blood could be a mean to procure that, I could willingly offer it.”