On leaving court, the four “noble” witnesses proceeded to the Council-chamber and inspected the books, where they saw the indelible record of their own guilt and infamy, which still remains, and, like convicted rogues, began each to vindicate himself. After a vain attempt to fix it upon the late Lord Advocate, Nisbet, had failed, Lauderdale, who seems to have had some compunctious visitations, proposed to grant a reprieve, and refer the matter to the king. But the primate insisted that if favour were shown to this assassin, it would be exposing his person to the next murderer who should attempt it. “Then,” said Lauderdale, “let Mitchell glorify God in the Grassmarket.”[[94]] He was accordingly executed, pursuant to his sentence. Sharpe, whose vanity and ambition were unbounded, aping an equality with royalty, had obtained an order from court, that Mitchell’s head should be affixed on some public place of the city, as if his crime had been high treason! But it was told him what was pronounced for doom could not be altered; so he missed this gratification. Nor did the fate of Mitchell tend to avert his own. Mitchell’s misguided act was forgotten in the deeper and more deliberate revenge of the archbishop, and in the atrocious breach of public faith by the council. His dying declaration, widely circulated through the country, exhibited such a view of the treachery and almost unexampled perjury of the first ministers in the church and in the state, as excited universal horror and execration.[[95]]
[94]. The usual place of execution at that time.
[95]. The question then much agitated—“The extraordinary execution of judgement by private men”—was supported by an apophthegm borrowed from Tertullian—“Every man is a soldier enrolled to bear arms against all traitors and public enemies;” and by the authority of Dr Ames, who, in his treatise on Conscience, published 1674, says—“Sometimes it is lawful to kill, no public precognition proceeding, when the cause evidently requires it should be done, and public authority cannot be got: For in that case a private man is publickly constitute the minister of justice, as well by the permission of God as the consent of all men.” Mitchell, when questioned by the Chancellor, thus defended his attack upon Sharpe—and it is easy to conceive that such reasoning would appear irrefragable to a mind excited as his was—“I looked upon him to be the main instigator of all the oppression and bloodshed thereupon, and the continual pursuing after my own; and, my lord, it was creditably reported to us (the truth of which your lordship knows better than we) that he kept up his majesty’s letter inhibiting any more blood upon that account, until the last six were executed; and I being a soldier, not having laid down my arms, but being upon my own defence; and in prosecution of the ends of the same covenant [which he also had sworn] which was the overthrow of prelates and prelacy; and I being a declared enemy to him on that account, and he to me in like manner: as he was always to take his advantage of me, as it appeareth, so I of him, to take any opportunity offered. Moreover, we being in no terms of capitulation, but on the contrary, I, by his instigation being excluded from all grace and favour, thought it my duty to pursue him at all events.”
Upon the 24th of January, the threatened army, better known by the name of “the Highland Host,”[[96]] assembled at Stirling. The Earls were their colonels, who received a handsome pay; but the active officers were a set of thievish lairds; and their retainers, wild savages, unacquainted with any other law than the will of their chiefs, whose mandates they obeyed without inquiry upon every occasion—only in the division of the spoil, they sometimes helped themselves without waiting the directions of their superiors. They amounted in all, including about two thousand regulars and two thousand militia, to about ten thousand men, with four field-pieces, and with a great quantity of spades, shovels, and mattocks, as if they were marching to besiege fortified cities; their daggers were formed to fasten on the muzzles of the muskets, as a kind of rude bayonets, to attack cavalry; yet were they accompanied with other instruments that betokened any thing but going to meet a regular force—iron shackles and thumb-screws!
[96]. Because Highlanders formed the majority; the regulars or king’s guards were the worst; the militia, although not good, seem to have been the best, if any could be called best among them, unless it were that in the act of plundering, they were not quite so fierce as the others. “The debauched clargie thought it no shame to call thes dragoons the ruling elders of the church.” Wodrow, MS. Advocates’ Lib. xl. art. 47, quoted by Dr M’Crie. Mem. of Geo. Brysson, p. 275.
The approach of such an array amazed the peaceable inhabitants of the west, nor were the military gentlemen themselves less astonished when they passed through a country represented as in a state of rebellion, but where they saw every thing perfectly loyal and tranquil. Nevertheless, the mountaineers in their march, and during the time they remained in the west, gratified the expectations of their employers to the full. Behaving with the unbridled insolence of victorious mercenaries in a conquered country, they made free with whatever they wanted without ceremony, seizing every serviceable horse for the transport of their baggage, even those at the ploughs in the midst of the tillage, extorting money and beating and wounding whoever resisted, without distinction. Nor were the few heritors who took the bond exempted. They found, when too late, that they had violated their consciences, or at least their consistency, in vain; and some of them afterwards deeply lamented their compliance, regretting that they had not rather, like the majority of their neighbours, taken quietly the spoiling of their goods.
Their head-quarters were first at Glasgow, but the tumultuous bands soon spread through Clydesdale, Renfrew, Cunninghame, Kyle, and Carrick. Previously to their arrival, the ministers had held a day of fasting, humiliation, and prayer. This the prelates represented as preparatory to a communion, after which there was to be a general insurrection. The report was soon discovered to be false, but it had quickened the advance of the host, and was either believed, or pretended to be believed, by Lauderdale; for, when a deputation from the nobility and gentry of Ayrshire came to Edinburgh to represent to the council the tranquillity and unimpeachable loyalty of the whole district, he would not so much as give them audience; and when some of them offered to engage for the peace of the shire, the proposal was peremptorily refused, and they were informed that no compromise could be entered into, nothing less would be accepted than that the whole of them present should instantly put their signatures to the bond, and pledge themselves for all the other heritors doing the same. The deputation could not promise for others, and they returned to witness the authorized enormous disorders they had employed every legal method in their power to prevent.
On the 28th of the month, the committee of council, armed with Justiciary power, met at Glasgow to consider their instructions and proceed to action.[[97]] They were directed to order the sheriffs of the different counties to convene all the heritors, and require them to subscribe a bond, obliging themselves, wives, bairns, and servants, as also their haill tenants, and cottars, with their wives, bairns, and servants, to abstain from conventicles, and not to receive, assist, or speak to any forfeited persons, intercommuned ministers, or vagrant preachers, but to use their utmost endeavours to apprehend all such, promising, if any of their families or dependents should contravene, to present them to the judge-ordinary that they might be fined or imprisoned for their delinquencies. All who took the bond were to receive a protection that their lands would not be quartered upon. They were also to cause the leaders of the horsemen of the militia troops to deliver to them the haill militia arms, and to disarm heritors and all other persons, except privy councillors and military men; but noblemen and gentlemen of quality were to be allowed to wear their swords. The arms were to be lodged in the Castle of Dumbarton.
[97]. The committee consisted of the Marquis of Atholl, the Earls of Marr, Murray, Glencairn, Wigton, Strathmore, Linlithgow, Airly, Caithness, Perth, and Lord Ross, all of whom were commanders in the army, except Glencairn and Wigton.
Framed as this bond was, it required no ghost to tell that it would not generally be taken; and its refusal was looked forward to by the government with joyful anticipation, as what would justify their pressing it with a rigour that would produce the grand, much longed-for consummation—a desperate resistance. But this was for the present postponed—the disarming of the people, although not complete, prevented any immediate outbreaking, while the example of the Duke of Hamilton, Lords Loudon, Cochrane, and especially the constancy of Lord Cassilis, encouraged the great body of the gentry to continue steadfast in opposition to a bond which the council had exceeded their powers in enacting, and could not legally oblige the lieges to subscribe without the authority of parliament. Besides its illegality, these patriots considered it cruel and degrading—cruel, in forbidding them to give relief to Christian ministers, and others in distress, even though their own relatives, and to shut up their bowels of compassion from them, merely on account of difference of opinion about church government—degrading, in desiring them to act as beadles or common messengers at arms, without their own consent.