Two days after, the judges, in formal pomp, arrayed in their robes, and attended by the executioner with the instruments of torture, like true inquisitors, first attempted to terrify their prisoner, before they literally put him to the question. It was in vain. They could not shake him. Had they not been dead to every nobler feeling of our nature, they must have quailed when he thus addressed them:—“My lords, I have now been these two full years in prison, and more than one of them in bolts and fetters—more intolerable than many deaths. Some in a shorter time have been tempted to make away with themselves; but, in obedience to the express command of God, I have endured all these hardships, and I hope to endure this torture also with patience, on purpose to preserve my own life, and that of others also, as far as lies in my power, and to keep the guilt of innocent blood off your lordships and your families, which you doubtless would incur by shedding mine. I repeat my protest. When you please, call for the men you have appointed to their work.” The executioner being in attendance, immediately tied Mr Mitchell in an arm-chair, and asked which of the legs he should take? The lords said, “Any of them.” The executioner laid in the left; but Mr Mitchell taking it out, said, “Since the judges have not determined, take the best of the two; I bestow it freely in the cause.” He was interrogated about his being at the battle of Pentland, his meeting with Wallace or with Captain Arnot—all of which he could veritably answer in the negative. The tormentor then began to drive the wedges, asking at every stroke if he had any more to say? To this he generally replied “No.” After a while, when the pain began to be excruciating, he exclaimed, again addressing his inquisitors—“My lords, not knowing but this torture may end my life, I beseech you to remember, that ‘he who showeth no mercy, shall have judgment without mercy;’ for my own part, my lords, I do freely and from my heart forgive you who are judges, and the men who are appointed to go about this horrid work, and those who are satiating their eyes in beholding. I do entreat that God may never lay it to the charge of any of you, as I beg that God, for his Son Christ’s sake, may be pleased to blot out my sin and mine iniquity.” At the ninth, the sufferer fainted through the extremity of pain. “Alas! my lords,” said the executioner, “he is gone!” The unfeeling wretches told him “he might stop,” and coolly walked off. When Mitchell recovered, he was carried in the same chair back to his prison. Here he continued till January 1677, when he was sent to the Bass.
BOOK X.
A.D. 1676-1677.
Remarkable sacramental solemnities occasion harsher measures—Council new modelled—Committee for public affairs—Kerr of Kersland—Kirkton—The expatriated pursued to Holland—Colonel Wallace.
Political power, combined with ecclesiastical, essentially forms a broad basis for the most excruciating tyranny, especially in spiritual matters, which admits of no medium between implicit obedience or cruel constraint. Accordingly, we always find, after some of those hallowed seasons in which the persecuted had been able to elude the vigilance of their oppressors, and had experienced them to be indeed times of refreshing from on high, that immediately some new and more violent proclamation followed, attempting, had it been possible, to have interdicted their sacred intercourse with heaven. Thus, the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper having been longed for by many of those in the west who could not receive it at the hands of the incumbents of their parishes, several ministers resolved to celebrate it at different places, which was accordingly done with peculiar solemnity, under the covert of night, to numerous assemblages in the parish of Kippen, Stirlingshire; at the House of Haggs, near Glasgow; and in a barn at Kennyshead, parish of Eastwood; and it was remarked that the Lord very much owned these communions as sweet sealing ordinances; but no sooner were these doings whispered abroad, than a former proclamation against conventicles was repeated, of more extensive comprehension, and imposing a heavier penalty on every heritor in the land on whose estate they should be held. Several council-committees were appointed to perambulate the country, in order to enforce a vigorous execution of the extra-legal mandates. This they did by requiring a number of respectable gentlemen and ministers, whom they called before them, to declare upon oath what conventicles they had attended since the year 1674, what number of children they had seen baptized, and whether they had reset or harboured any intercommuned persons. Those who appeared were fined in various sums, according to their circumstances, from fifty merks to a thousand pounds Scots. In this iniquitous inquisition, silence was construed into contempt; and to refuse, what no human law has a right to require, becoming one’s own accuser, was punished even more severely than an acknowledgment of default.
At the same time, the council was new modelled. The primate was appointed president in absence of the Chancellor, and the two archbishops with any third creature of their own, formed a quorum of “the committee for public affairs,” who assumed the entire management of ecclesiastical matters, then the chief if not the whole of public business. Perhaps the most detestable feature in the proceedings of this execrable committee was the system of espionage they carried into private life. An example will best illustrate the remark. Robert Kerr of Kersland having been forced to go abroad with his family, his lady returned to Scotland to arrange some little private business. He followed secretly, and to his great grief found her sick of a fever when he arrived, yet durst not lodge in the same house, but was wont to visit her stealthily in the evenings. Robert Cannon of Mardrogat, a base spy, who hypocritically attended the secret meetings of the persecuted, at a time when he knew Kersland would be waiting on his sick lady, made application to Lauderdale for a warrant to apprehend Mr John Welsh, represented as then keeping a conventicle in her chamber. A friend of her’s who was with the Commissioner when he received the information, assured him that it was false, as she knew that Lady Kersland was very unwell. The warrant, however, was granted, but with express instructions from Lauderdale that the sick lady should not be disturbed if no conventicle appeared in the house.
A party came—there was no conventicle—and they were departing; but the reptile informer had told one of them that when any strangers came into the room, Kersland was wont to secrete himself behind the bed. He, accordingly, stepped direct to the place, and drawing the gentleman from his concealment, ordered him to surrender his arms. Kersland told him he had no arms but the Bible—the sword of the Spirit—which he presented to him. He was immediately made prisoner. When led away, his wife displayed great composure, and besought him to do nothing that might wound his conscience out of regard for her or her children, repeating earnestly as he left her—“No man having put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.”
Before the council, he undauntedly defended the patriotic “rising” at Pentland, as a lawful effort in defence of their liberties; on which he was immediately ordered to prison. When being carried off, the Chancellor sneeringly asked him what it was his lady said to him at parting? He replied “he did not exactly remember.” “Then I will refresh your memory—she exhorted you to cleave to the good old cause;—ye are a sweet pack!” He was after this imprisoned in different jails for several years, till at last, being ordered into close confinement in Glasgow tolbooth, to be kept there during the archbishop’s pleasure, who had a personal dislike at him, a dreadful fire most opportunely broke out in the town, which threatening the prison, the populace with instinctive humanity released all the inmates; and Kersland among the rest regained his liberty.[[85]] He then went to Holland, the common asylum for Protestant sufferers, and died at Utrecht, in November 1680.
[85]. “Nov. 3, 1677. The fire brake up in Glasgow in the heid of the Salt-mercat, on the right, near the cross, which was kyndled by a malicious boy, a smith’s apprentice, who being threatened, or beatt and smittin by his master, in revenge whereof setts his work-house on fyre in the night-tyme, being in the backsides of that forestreet, and flyes for it. It was kyndled about one in the morning; and having brunt many in the backsyde, it breaks forth in the fore streets about three of the morning; and then it fyres the street over against it, and in a very short tyme burned down to more than the mids of the Salt-mercat; on both sydes fore and back houses were all consumed. It did burn also on that syd to the Tron Church, and two or three tenaments down on the heid of the Gallowgate. The heat was so great, that it fyred the horologe of the tolbooth (there being some prisoners it at that tyme, amongst whom the Laird of Carsland was one, the people brake open the tolbooth-doors and sett them free); the people made it all their work to gett out their goods out of the houses; and there was little done to save houses till ten of the cloke, for it burnt till two hours afternoon. It was a great conflagration and nothing inferior to that which was in the yeir 1652. The wind changed several tymes. Great was the cry of the poor people, and lamentable to see their confusion. It was remarkable that a little before that tyme, there was seen a great fyre pass through these streets in the night-tyme, and strange voices heard in some parts of the city.” Law’s Memorials, p. 135.