The Rev. John Hardy, M.D., minister at Gordon,[[171]] had in a sermon, last year, used some such expression as the following:—“They thanked his majesty for the toleration; but if they behoved to take away the laws against popery, sectarianism, &c., it were better to want it, and that any that consented to it, Zechariah’s flying roll of curses would enter the house and eat the stones and timber.” He was dealt with, says Fountainhall, to retract, which not finding liberty to do, he was continued [i. e. his case was delayed] with a reprimand. But, on the 22d November, a letter came from the king “ordaining him to be panelled criminally before the justices for his preaching,” on which he was imprisoned, as “he would not fly, though he had leisure and advertisement.” On February 13, this year, an indictment was raised against him, for using seditious expressions and leasing-making, endeavouring to alienate the affections of the people from the king. He replied, “that upon Presbyterian principles, idolatry, even under the gospel, is punishable by death, and that popery is such. That the expressions had no sedition in them, seeing that he might regret that Socinians and others had liberty to vent their doctrine against Christ’s deity, &c.;” and the criminal lords, who appear to have had some prognostications of the coming change, “took the courage to find the expressions libelled not relevant to infer sedition,” therefore assoilzied him from the crimes libelled, and liberated him from prison. One Bold was indicted for having acted as precentor to Mr Renwick, and condemned to be hanged, but was reprieved; and Gilbert Elliot, who had been forfeited for engaging with Argyle, was not only pardoned, but admitted as an advocate.

[171]. Several of the young men who intended the ministry, went over to Holland and studied medicine, and took degrees, and thus got their education without taking tests; but they had contracted a liberality (or, as it was termed, a looseness) of sentiment with regard to the rigid principles held by the wanderers, which occasioned a separation between them when they returned. The wanderers were naturally more wedded to the principles for which they had suffered so much, and which they had seen so many seal with their blood. The others had met with a variety of sects in Holland living in harmony, and were not over zealous for the uniform profession even of their beloved Presbytery:—on this they split at the Revolution.

On the 17th, Sir George Mackenzie was restored to his lord-advocateship; but no criminal informations were lodged during the short time that intervened between his appointment “and the glorious Revolution,” though several petty vexatious harassments showed that the tiger was only asleep, not dead. The Rev. Thomas Cobham, a native of Dundee, was, on the 23d May, imprisoned for having performed family-worship at his cousin Mr Smith’s, in that town, and both were committed to jail for the offence. About the same time, the council issued a proclamation, forbidding booksellers to disseminate any treatises tending to alienate the people from his majesty, or vend any translations of “Buchanan de Jure Regni,” “Lex Rex,” “Jus Populi,” “Naphtali,” “The Apologetical Relation,” “The Hind let Loose,” and the treasonable proclamations published at Sanquhar, or those issued by the late Monmouth or Argyle. At Edinburgh, one of the councillors went into the shop of Mr Glen, a firm Presbyterian, to search for the proscribed books, but having found none, when retiring, asked the bookseller if he had any books against the king’s religion. Mr Glen said he had a great many. The councillor asked to see them, and was immediately carried to where a goodly stock of Bibles were lying. “O! these are Bibles!” quoth the councillor. “True,” replied the other, “and they are all against popery from the beginning to the end.” For this the bookseller was summoned before the council, where he appeared the same afternoon, and was, we are told, brought to some trouble.

In nothing, however, did the ruling powers relax with regard to the wanderers. Having learned that a Mr David Houston had been proposed by the societies to succeed Mr Renwick in his perilous labours in the fields, he was apprehended in Ireland and brought prisoner to Scotland. Being ordered to Edinburgh, a general meeting which had convened at Lother’s, heard of his seizure, and fearing he would be murdered as Renwick had been, determined “to relieve him from these bloody murderers;” and immediately a few friends, armed, attacked the party escorting him at Carbelpath, and, after a sharp skirmish, in which some soldiers were killed, succeeded in rescuing him; but he having his feet bound under the horse’s belly, was knocked over in the scuffle, and his head trailed some time on the ground before he could be unloosed, by which he lost his teeth, and was otherwise so much wounded about the head, that his elocution was rendered very indistinct. So he returned to Ireland, and there died. The last whose blood was shed, was George Wood, a youth about sixteen years of age, who was wantonly shot, without any questions being asked, by one John Reid, a trooper, whose only excuse when challenged for it, was—“He knew him to be a Whig, and these ought to be shot wherever they were found!”

Shortly after, the news of William Prince of Orange’s landing in England reached Scotland; and to the honour of the persecuted, be it recorded, the Revolution was accomplished without bloodshed, or any one act of retaliation being inflicted by them, notwithstanding all they had suffered.

THE END.

EDINBURGH: PRINTED BY HUGH PATON, ADAM SQUARE.