Prelacy, now fenced round with all the forms of law, and supported by all the civil and military authorities, wanted only the concurrence of the people to have become the permanent, as it was the predominant, religion of Scotland; and so fickle is the multitude—so little does real principle take hold on the minds of the mob of mankind—that a little moderation in the use of their power, by the prelates, seemed only wanting to have induced the bulk of the congregations to return to their parish churches, and to have sat down quietly under the ministrations of the curates and the form of Episcopacy. A contemporary Presbyterian writer says—“Truly, at this time the curates’ auditories were reasonably throng: the body of the people, in most places of Scotland, waited upon their preachings; and if they would have been content with what they had, in the opinion of many, they might have stood longer than they did; but their pride vowed they would be more glorious and better followed than the Presbyterians, and because respect would not do it, force should.”[[45]]
[45]. Kirkton, p. 221.
Much and justly as the king and courtiers have been blamed for the perfidious manner in which Episcopacy was re-introduced into Scotland, and for the establishment of despotism upon the ruins of a free constitution, solemnly approved and sanctioned both by his present majesty and his “martyred” father; yet in this year, at least at the commencement, softened perhaps by the state of the nations, they showed no disposition to proceed to extremities had they not been pushed on by the prelates.
Charles, by his mean subservience to France, had plunged the country into a ruinous war with Holland—an awful pestilence had almost desolated the city of London—while an unusually severe winter had interrupted all rural labour, till March threatened to add famine to the list of plagues. These judgments, calculated to solemnize the mind, and give weight to public instruction, were improved by the non-conforming ministers to rouse the attention of their hearers to their own sins and the sins of the people among whom they dwelt; and the general open apostacy from God which had accompanied the general defection from the national religion, was too palpable to avoid being noticed in the catalogue of crimes that had drawn down divine vengeance. These national visitations were, in some degree, subservient to the preservation of the Presbyterian cause, by impressing the guilt of apostacy more deeply on the minds of the serious, and even recalling the attention of the careless, while the public calamities and disgrace occupied the attention of the king and English government, and perhaps softening their rancour for the time, rendered them less anxious about pursuing their labours of religious persecution.
Although, however, government did not actively interfere to urge on the prosecution of ministers or frequenters of conventicles, the curates and their assistants, the troopers, continued their exertions; and Sir James Turner opened another campaign in the south and west, scouring the country and besieging the churches with a success and renown not unworthy his former fame. But his commission this year was extended; for, dreading the desperation to which the insulted peasantry might be driven, orders were issued for disarming the south and west, under pretence that the fanatics had an intention of joining the Dutch! As these districts had been always the most zealous in the cause of the covenants, so they were likewise the best supplied with arms,[[46]] and were, in an especial manner, the objects of the prelates’ aversion and dread. When they had got them deprived of arms, therefore, the next step was to deprive them of leaders; and this was effected by an arbitrary order from the Commissioner, to arrest the principal gentlemen in the country who were known to be unfriendly to Episcopacy, and, without accusation or trial, to confine them prisoners in the Castles of Edinburgh, Stirling, and Dumbarton. Among the gentlemen thus summarily proceeded with, were Major-General Robert Montgomerie, brother to the Earl of Eglinton; Sir William Cunningham of Cunninghamhead; Sir George Maxwell of Nether Pollock; Sir Hugh Campbell of Cesnock; Sir William Muir of Rowallan; Major-General Holborne; Sir George Munro; Colonel Robert Halket; Sir James Stuart, late provost of Edinburgh; Sir John Chiesly of Carswell; and Dunlop of Dunlop, &c. Yet arbitrary though these proceedings were, perhaps, upon the whole, they may be deemed providential, as, had any insurrection taken place while their leaders were at liberty and the people armed, the struggle might have been protracted—much bloodshed ensued—and the final result been far less propitious to the country and cause of religious liberty.
[46]. The Scottish peasantry had always been accustomed to keep arms, and when summoned to serve in the militia, each provided his own; so that, besides the indignity of being deprived of their weapons, the taking them away without compensation was an act of robbery.
A proclamation for levying the fines imposed by Middleton was immediately planned, with such modifications as evidently showed that not any disloyalty in the parties, but their sincere, tried attachment to the free constitution of their country in church and state, and their conscientious adherence to the religion in which they had been educated, were the delinquencies it was intended to punish. The term of payment for the first half was enlarged to such as had not already paid it, till the first of December; and the second moiety was to be remitted to all who, upon paying the first, should take the oath of allegiance and subscribe the declaration in the express words of the act of parliament—conditions which no true Presbyterian could comply with, and which therefore drew a distinctive line between those who disregarded, and those who feared, an oath; exposing the latter to all the penalties of the various enactments with the expenses of collecting them—a new and no trifling addition to the principal, and which was also intrusted to the military to exact.
Unnecessarily multiplying oaths is a deep species of criminality, of which the rulers of lands called Christian take little account, although nothing tends more to demoralize a people. The prelatic rulers of Scotland seemed to delight in it, and this year introduced a most pernicious practice, afterwards improved upon, of forcing students to take the oaths of allegiance and supremacy before they could obtain an university degree; and thus initiated them into the habit of taking oaths, about the propriety of which some of the wisest and best men in the land were divided, and concerning which they could not be supposed to be very accurately informed.
Towards the end of this year, the privy council resumed its cruel activity; and the primate being president, the High Commission was allowed quietly to demit, while its spirit was effectually transfused into the other. December 7th, an act was issued extending the severities of all former acts against Presbyterian ministers, to those who had been settled before 1649, who had relinquished their ministry or had been deposed; and all heritors were forbid to give them any countenance in their preaching or any part of their ministerial office. But, as the general opinion of the more moderate among the politicians was, that the change in the form of religion had been too sudden, that it ought to have been more gradual, to meet the prejudices of the older ministers, whose only crimes consisted in absenting themselves from the church courts—this act was accompanied by another, establishing a new kind of presbyteries, under the name of “meetings for exercise,” which was intended to leave without excuse the adherents of the abrogated system, as men who chose to differ from the present establishment from motives of sedition, and who refusing the substance because it was enacted by the king, would fight for a shadow from mere humour. This species of mock-presbyteries was specially declared to emanate from the royal supremacy, and was to consist of such of the curates as the bishops should judge qualified, who were to convene for exercise and assist in discipline as they should direct them; but the whole power of ecclesiastical censure, except parochial rebukes, was reserved to the bishop, who alone could suspend, deprive, or excommunicate. A kind of caricature session was at the same time brought forward, which was afterwards turned into an instrument of persecution—the established ministers were empowered to make choice of proper persons to assist them in the exercise of discipline, who, if they refused to obey his summons, were to be reported to the bishop; and if they continued obstinate, given up to the secular arm to be prosecuted as the heinousness of the case might require.
The usual strain of the curates’ pulpit services consisted of a quarter or half-hour’s harangue upon those moral duties their lives set at defiance, or in abusing or distorting doctrines they did not understand. Such of the people, therefore, as had the least relish for gospel truth, and who preferred the faithful sermons and earnest manner of their late pastors, to the insipid discourses listlessly read by the present incumbents, continued to follow after the private meetings and public ministrations of the former. The council, in consequence, determined that all such seditious practices should be put down, and, in a virulent proclamation of the same date, strictly charged and commanded all public officers to disperse every meeting assembled under the pretence of the exercise of religion, of whatever number they might consist, except such as were allowed by authority, stigmatizing them as the ordinary seminaries of separation and rendezvouses of rebellion, and subjecting every person who should be present at or give the smallest countenance to them, to the highest pains inflicted by law upon seditious persons.