Last year a complaint had been made to parliament of the losses sustained by the Earl of Queensberry from the forces under Colonels Strachan and Kerr in 1650, estimated at two thousand pounds sterling, when a committee, consisting of the Earl of Eglinton, Lord Cochrane, the Sheriff-depute of Nithsdale, and some others, was appointed to meet at Cumnock, to inquire who had served in that army, and to proportion the same upon such of the guilty as were able to pay, which was accordingly done; and a number of gentlemen who were opposed to the measures of the present government, were assessed to make good the damage alleged to have been suffered by his lordship. This easy but arbitrary method of rewarding his supporters, and punishing or silencing his opponents, having excited no murmurs among the pusillanimous legislators, the plan was now followed out by the Commissioner, and a secret committee appointed to inquire who had been the most eminent compliers under the usurpers, in order that their estates might be taxed to raise a sum sufficient to compensate the king’s friends for what they had suffered as malignants during the time of the late troubles. Their report included nearly nine hundred noblemen, gentlemen, and tenants; and the money to be produced from their fines amounted to about eighty-five thousand pounds sterling—an enormous sum at that time, to be arbitrarily and vexatiously levied by political adversaries without any check, there being neither accusation nor trial, nor any crime alleged, of which those who now assumed the name of the king’s friends, had not, in general, been far more guilty than they.
The act of fines, iniquitous and unjust in principle, was rendered still more so by the manner in which the list was made up. It included the names of many who were dead, absent from the country, or infants at the breast at the time! They were represented as favouring the usurpers. Others were inserted from private revenge; and several were named who were living upon the parish. But the chief weight of the imposition was intended to fall upon such as had been distinguished for eminent piety and a consistent Christian walk in their different stations, who were deemed singular in a time of general profession, when religion was the fashion, but who were destined to show the power of the gospel in a day of general apostacy, when religion was persecuted and a profession ridiculed.
Lauderdale, who saw that the produce of these fines was intended to strengthen the Commissioner’s party, strenuously, though ineffectually, endeavoured to thwart the measure; and Middleton, justly supposing that such conduct would cool the king’s affection for his secretary, dispatched Tarbet to London to complete his ruin. The ostensible purpose of his mission was to submit the act of indemnity to the king, and to obtain his sanction to a clause for excepting twelve persons, to be named by the parliament, from the benefit of the act, as incapable of holding any place of public trust. Lauderdale knew that he was aimed at, and exerted his every art and influence to prevent the exception as unjust, but the Duke of York and the English Chancellor, who were jealous of his influence, supported the clause; and the king gave his consent to the proposed exception.
An incident which he could not have foreseen—so capricious is the fate of royal favourites—prevented his fall, and gave him the ascendancy his enemies were seeking to destroy. Middleton, who wished to procure for himself Argyle’s estates, when disappointed by their gift to his son, harassed the young Earl by every means in his power, and procured that they should be burdened with an immense debt, which so irritated his lordship, that he expressed himself very freely in a confidential letter to Lord Duffus, saying, “he hoped that he would procure the friendship of Clarendon,” and, in reference to the proceedings in parliament, used these words—“then the king will see their tricks.” This letter being intercepted at the post-office, a capital charge of lying between the king and parliament was founded upon it, and a letter written to the king, requesting that Argyle might be sent down prisoner to stand trial. At Lauderdale’s earnest entreaty, he was sent down not a prisoner, and with express instructions that no sentence should be executed till his majesty saw and approved it. Lorn, when brought to trial, convinced that any defence before such a tribunal would be vain, made none, but threw himself on the royal mercy, declaring the innocence of his intentions, and noticing gently the provocation he had received. He was pronounced guilty of death by parliament, but the king shortly after remitted his punishment.
During these discussions, Tarbet had been gradually undermining Lauderdale’s influence, and, by his insinuating manners, had so far gained on Charles, that the fall of the favourite seemed on very distant or doubtful event, when the indiscretion of Middleton or his friends blighted all their flattering prospects. Afraid openly to attack the present ministers, an act was brought into parliament for incapacitating twelve persons by ballot, and lists were so formed that Lauderdale and Crawford were included in the number; and so anxious was Middleton to insure their dismissal, that, as soon as the act passed, he ratified it without ever communicating it to the king. Lauderdale, who had been apprised of the whole proceedings by the vigilant gratitude of Argyle before the official intelligence reached court, seized the opportunity of representing the affront offered to his majesty in such glaring colours, that, when the act arrived, he refused it his sanction, with a sarcastic remark, that the proceedings of his Scottish ministers were like those of madmen, or of men that were perpetually drunk.
Knowing the aversion of the Presbyterian ministers to the proposed changes, the privy council, before the bishops returned from court, endeavoured to overawe them and prevent opposition. They began with Mr Robert Blair, an eminent and aged minister, that it was necessary to remove from his charge at St Andrews to make room for Sharpe, to whom he was particularly obnoxious on account of his having the preceding year, by order of the presbytery, faithfully reproved him for his deceitful dealings at court and his proudly grasping after the archbishoprick. Although at an advanced age and in delicate health, the venerable saint was summoned before the council at Edinburgh, and examined as to his steadfastness in the principles he had professed through a long and honourable life: when it was found that he held fast his integrity, he was first sequestered from his parish, and confined successively to Musselburgh, Kirkaldy, and Couston; and then, in his last sickness, forced to send in his presentation to the council, to prevent his being dragged to Edinburgh while labouring under a mortal disease.
Upon the bishops’ arrival, it was deemed necessary to make an example of some of the most steadfast and distinguished Presbyterians in the west, as that part of the country had ever been remarkable for attachment to their profession. The Chancellor was, in consequence, directed to require the attendance of such ministers as he thought fit; and, by the suggestion of the prelates, wrote to Messrs John Carstair, Glasgow; James Nasmyth, Hamilton; Matthew Mowat and James Rowat, Kilmarnock; Alexander Blair, Galston; James Veitch, Mauchline; William Adair and William Fullarton, at St Quivox, as if he had merely wished the assistance of their advice. Upon their arrival, however, in Edinburgh, they were charged with holding disloyal principles, and particularly with some expressions they had used in their sermons. From the charge of disloyalty, they easily vindicated themselves, and desired that the particular passages in the offensive sermons might be pointed out; but these the Chancellor was unable to produce, and they were dismissed from their first interview, with a hint that the easiest way to get rid of further trouble, would be to comply with the king’s pleasure and acknowledge his bishops. When they would not consent to this, they were detained in town till the parliament met. No valid charges, however, being found against them, they were carried before the Lords of the Articles, and commanded, as a test of their loyalty, to subscribe the oath of allegiance.
As they were the first Presbyterian ministers to whom this oath had been tendered, they required a few days to consider—for they deemed it an object of high importance that they should be fully satisfied in their own minds as to their line of duty—lest, on the one hand, they should wound their consciences by the sin of denying the supreme kingship of Christ in his church, or incur the charge of disloyalty by refusing obedience to him whom they considered their rightful sovereign. They therefore set apart some time for solemn prayer to ask of the Lord light and direction. Then, after serious deliberation, they gave in their explication of the oath—which contained a brief but distinct statement of the principles upon which they and all the succeeding consistent Presbyterians refused to subscribe—what continued afterwards always to be pressed upon them under the false and insidious name of the oath of allegiance, while in fact and verity it was an explicit oath of supremacy. “They heartily and cheerfully acknowledged his majesty as the only lawful supreme governor under God within the kingdom, and that his sovereignty reached all persons and all causes, as well ecclesiastic as civil, having them both for its object; albeit it be in its own nature only civil, and extrinsic as to causes ecclesiastical; and, therefore, they utterly renounced all foreign jurisdictions, powers, and authorities, and promised with their utmost power to defend, assist, and maintain his majesty’s jurisdiction aforesaid.” For this explanation six of the ministers—Messrs Adair and Fullarton having through favour been passed over—were committed close prisoners to the public jail, where they were confined for several weeks; and the paper being laid before parliament, it was put to the vote—“whether process them criminally or banish them?”—when it was carried to banish them. Upon a representation to the commissioner by Mr Robert Dougal, that the sentiments of the explication were sound and orthodox, and such as would be approved by the whole reformed churches abroad, the sentence of banishment was changed into deprivation. But their churches were declared vacant, and they were ordained to remove their families and leave the possession of their manses and glebes at Martinmas next, their stipends for the current year were seized, and themselves forbid to reside within the presbyteries where their churches lie, or within the cities of Glasgow or Edinburgh.
Conscientious ministers were not only entrapped by these tyrannical yet pitiful devices, but likewise harassed by the rigorous enforcement of the act for celebrating the king’s birth-day as an “holyday.” A proclamation was issued ordering its observance by the ministers, under pain of deprivation; and numbers were deprived of their year’s stipend for non-observance.[[28]] But such had been the retrograde progress from the sobriety of their former profession, that within little more than one short year, the return of this holyday had become throughout the land the signal of universal riot and drunken uproar, particularly in these towns that had the misfortune to be burghs. On this occasion, Linlithgow signalized itself, not only by its outrageous loyalty, but by its shameless and profane contempt for the bonds their fathers had held so sacred, and they themselves had solemnly sworn to observe. After the farce of church-going which occupied the forenoon, bonfires were kindled in every corner of the streets in the afternoon. The magistrates, accompanied by the Earl of Linlithgow, assembled in the open area before the council-house, around a table covered with comfits, the beautiful gothic fountain all the while spouting from its many mouths French and Spanish wines, when the curate opened the evening service by singing a psalm and repeating what was either a long blessing or a short prayer. The company then tasted the confections and scattered the rest among the crowd. An irreverent pageant closed this part of the performance.
[28]. The same day had already been set apart as a day of thanksgiving for his restoration!