[59]. Some curious interviews took place with Sutherland and one White, a curate, of which he afterwards published an account. The following is a specimen:—“Then came one Mr White, a curate, to persuade me, who said to me, ‘What are you doing? Do you not know that these men are guilty of the sin of rebellion, and rebellion in Scripture is as the sin of witchcraft?’ ‘I answered, I know the Scripture, it is in 1 Sam. xv. 28. That was Saul’s rebellion against the immediate revealed will of God, in sparing Agog and the best of the flocks; and that it was like that rebellion spoken of in the Israelites, when they rebelled and refused to go to the land of Canaan, according to God’s command, but would have chosen a captain and gone back again to Egypt. He then instanced Shemei, who cursed David and flang earth and stones at him; yet David forgave him, and much more should the king forgive the Galaway men who respect and pray for him, and would not let a hair of his head fall to the ground if he were among them.’ ‘But,’ says Mr White, ‘David was a prophet and a merciful man!’ ‘Ho!’ says I, ‘ye will not take a good man for your example, but an ill man; what divinity is that?’ At which, the soldiers laughing, he said in his anger, the devil was in me, and that I had to do with a familiar spirit. I said, than he was an unnatural devil, for he was not like the rest of the devils who desire the destruction of many, that he may get many souls, but the spirit that is in me, will not suffer me to take good men’s lives; so at that time Mr White went away as ashamed.” Life and Declaration of William Sutherland, pp. 4, 5. Wodrow says of this declaration, I am well assured it is genuine, and formed by himself, vol. i. p. 260.
BOOK VI.
JANUARY, A.D. 1667-1669.
Dalziel sent to the South and West—His cruelty, and that of the inferior officers—Sir Mungo Murray—Sir William Bannantyne—Arrival of the Dutch fleet—Crusade abates—Forfeitures increase—Standing army proposed—Convention of estates—Cess—King’s letter—West country disarmed—Sir Robert Murray sent to Scotland—Army partially disbanded—Political changes—Bond of peace—Trials of Sir James Turner and Sir William Bannantyne—Field-preaching proscribed—Michael Bruce—John Blackadder—Attempt upon Sharpe’s life—Search for the assassin—Remarkable escape of Maxwell of Monreith—Case of Mr Robert Gray, merchant—Mrs Kelso and Mrs Duncan—Death of Mr Gillon, minister of Cavers—Field-preaching and family worship punished—Mr Fullarton of Quivox before the Council—Mr Blackadder patrols his “diocese” untouched safely—Mr Hamilton, minister of Blantyre.
The army followed fast upon the heels of the justiciary, and the devoted west and south were again subjected to military oppression. Dalziel established his head-quarters at Kilmarnock, and, in a few months, extorted from that impoverished district, the sum of fifty thousand merks, besides what was destroyed by the soldiers in their quarterings through mere wantonness and a love of mischief. Whoever was suspected of favouring Presbyterianism was apprehended and brought before the General. If he possessed money, the process was short. A private examination was generally terminated by a heavy fine or loathsome imprisonment in a vile dungeon, where men and women were so crowded together, that they could neither sit nor lie, and where decency and humanity were at once violated. An instance of the summary mode in which Dalziel exercised his authority will show, better than any general description, the miseries of military rule. David Findlay at Newmilns, a plain country man, who had accidentally been at Lanark when the covenanters were there, but had not joined, was brought before him; and, because he either would not, or could not, name any of the rich Whigs who were with the army, he was instantly ordered, without further ceremony, to be shot. When the poor man was carried out to die, neither he nor the lieutenant who was to superintend the execution, could believe that the General was in earnest, but the soldiers told him their orders were positive. He then earnestly entreated only for one night’s delay, that he might prepare for eternity; and the officer went to Dalziel to request this short respite, when the ruffian threatened him for his contumacy, and told him that “he would teach him to obey without scruple.” In consequence, there was no further delay; Findlay was shot, stripped, and his naked body left upon the spot.
Nor were the inferior officers unworthy of their commander. Sir Mungo Murray having heard that two cottar tenants had lodged for a night two of the men who had escaped from Pentland, bound them together with cords, and then suspending them by their arms from a tree, went to bed, and left them to hang for the night in this torture, which, in all probability, would have finished them before morning, had not some of the soldiers, more merciful than he, relieved them from their painful situation at their own peril. Sir William Bannantyne, in Galloway, caused even the removal of Turner to be regretted. He took possession of Earlston House, which he garrisoned, and thence sent out his parties who plundered indiscriminately the suspected and those who had given no cause for suspicion, whose only crime was their property. Some, who could not purchase forbearance, they stripped almost naked—then thrust them into the most abominable holes in the garrison, where they were kept till nearly dead, before they were suffered to depart; and one woman, whom they alleged to have been accessary to her husband’s escape, they tortured, by burning matches between her fingers with such protracted cruelty, that she fevered, and shortly after died; and so great was the universal consternation produced in these quarters among the conscientious Presbyterians, that such as could get out of the country, fled to foreign parts; and those who remained, lurked during a severe winter, in caves, pits, or remote unfrequented places of the land.
The arrival of a Dutch fleet in the Frith of Forth (April) relieved the afflicted west a little. This squadron, which had threatened Leith, and fired a few shots at Burntisland, occasioned the collecting of the whole troops in Scotland to defend the east, while the success that attended an attack upon the shipping in the Thames, obliged the government to suspend their crusades against the Presbyterian heretics, in order to guard their coasts from foreign insult. At the same time, the exasperation of the English, on account of their national disgrace, enabled the king to get rid of Lord Clarendon, a troublesome minister, whose habits of business, and ideas of economy, ill suited the beloved indolence and unmeaning, and worse than useless, profusion of his master, and whose regard for the decencies of life were opposed to the utter shamelessness of his profligate court.
But though relieved, in some measure, from military execution, the property of the Presbyterians was reached by a more base and cowardly mode of rapine. Heretofore, in cases of treason, the estates of rebels could not be confiscated, as the rebels themselves could not be tried in absence; and so express was the law on this subject that, in a former reign, it was deemed necessary to bring the mouldering bones of a traitor from his grave, and produce them in court, before he could be legally forfeited. The Lord Advocate, however, judged it proper to procure the authority of the court, previously to proceeding in opposition both to the statutes and common practice; and, therefore, proposed to the judges the following query—“Whether or not a person guilty of high treason might be pursued before the justices, albeit they be absent and contumacious, so that the justices, upon citation and sufficient probation and evidence, might pronounce sentence and doom of forfeiture, if the dittay be proven?” The lords answered in the affirmative, and established a precedent, which was afterwards improved, for forwarding the severe measures of a party already sufficiently disposed to disregard all the ordinary forms of justice. All the gentlemen of property who had gone into exile, were in consequence forfeited, and their estates divided between the rulers and their friends.
Continual dissensions among the Scottish politicians had been the bane of Scotland almost ever since the nation existed. At this period they proved of some small service, by diverting, for a short space, the attention of the persecutors to their own personal affairs. Sharpe, by his duplicity, had incurred the displeasure of the king; and a strong party in the Scottish council, consisting of the military officers and a majority of the prelates, were opposed to Lauderdale, whom they still suspected of being too much attached to his old friends, and envied for enjoying so much of the favour of the king. This party, to secure their ascendancy, proposed to continue and increase the standing army, and to enforce the declaration, under pains of forfeiture, upon all the Presbyterians, fanatics, or Whigs, whom it was necessary to extirpate as incorrigible rebels, whose principles were hostile to all good government, and Lieutenant-General Drummond, with Burnet, archbishop of Glasgow, had been sent to London to procure the king’s concurrence.