From Glasgow the committee proceeded to Ayr; and among their first proceedings, they ordered the Earl of Cassilis to demolish all the meeting-houses in Carrick. The Earl represented the probability of opposition, and having been disarmed, requested that a party of soldiers, or at least some of the neighbouring gentlemen, might be ordered to protect him; even this reasonable request could not be granted; and while he hesitated, a friendly councillor hinted that there was but an hair’s-breadth between him and imprisonment. Such, however, was the esteem in which this young nobleman was held, that the people themselves demolished the offensive places of worship, rather than that he should be troubled about them.[[98]] But the council, not willing that he should get so quietly rid of the job, ordered him to bring back the doors and all the timber of these meeting-houses, and burn it on the spot where they had stood. his lordship complied with this useless but tyrannically-teasing order.
[98]. The meeting-houses were not in common very costly fabricks. Like the temple at Jerusalem, no mason’s iron was heard in their building, being generally framed of rough unhewn stones, covered with turf; and the people were thankful when the government did not interfere with their cheap church-extension scheme. Stately cathedrals they asked not, they cheerfully left them to the Romanists and the renegade prelatical conformists, their brethren. Consecrated walls were words unknown in their vocabulary, all they asked was shelter from the weather and very humble accomodation for their wearied limbs. Nor did they always ask even these; for their ministers, following the example of Him whose servants they professed to be, oftener had the mountain for their pulpit and the heavens for their sounding-board, than the crimson-covered desk with velvet cushion and gilded canopy; while they themselves were satisfied, if they could hear the gospel faithfully preached, although on the mountain side, or in “divot theikit beilds.”
Notwithstanding the stubborn opposition it met with, the council appeared determined to urge the bond, and issued a fresh proclamation, February 11, forbidding any person to be received as a tenant or servant without a certificate from the landlord or master they last left, or from the minister of the parish, that they had lived orderly and attended the parish church, and had not heard any of the vagrant preachers, who without license impiously assumed the holy orders of the church. To this was annexed a new bond of similar import with the former, and as an encouragement, all the members of council signed it, and appointed the lords of session to do the same when they met. Every inducement proved ineffectual; and the reports of the commissioners appointed to see their orders carried into execution, were by no means satisfactory to the council. The arms were only partially delivered up, and the bond would not at all go down; and what was the most vexatious part of the business, it was decidedly rejected by some eminent lawyers in the capital, and several of the chief nobility in Fife, Stirlingshire, and Teviotdale. The report from Lanark, too, was provoking beyond measure; of two thousand nine hundred heritors, only nineteen of the smallest complied.
Perceiving at length that the opposition was too extensive, and based upon principles which could not be sneered at as fanatical, Lauderdale is said at one of their meetings to have bared his arm in fury, and sworn by Jehovah that he would force them to take the bond. But it was to be tendered in another shape, under the guise of a legal quibble—probably the new Lord Advocate might have had the merit of suggesting it; for certainly the scheme was more like the device of a pettifogging attorney than the counsel of a sound statesman. When a deadly feud had arisen between two neighbours, as the ancient Scots were an ardent irascible race, it generally terminated fatally, and not infrequently involved the whole relations in a species of domestic warfare, which lasted for generations till one party was worn out or gave in. To prevent these consequences, it had been enacted in the reign of James II. and confirmed in the 7th parliament of James VI., that an individual who feared bodily harm from another, by an application upon oath to a magistrate, might obtain a “writ of law-burrows” to oblige the person of whose violence he was apprehensive, to give security that he should keep the peace, nor “skaith or damage” the applicant. This legal pledge, a wise and necessary precaution to insure personal safety in turbulent times, such as the frequent minorities of the Jameses had produced, the council contrived to convert into a more oppressive obligation than even the bond itself. Assuming an absurd legal fiction, that his majesty and his government were put in bodily fear by the persons who refused to take the bond, they issued writs of law-burrows, not only against individuals, but against a county.
By additional instructions, the committee were directed to pursue all heritors who had not taken the bond for all conventicles kept on their lands since the 24th of March 1674—the fine to be exacted for each conventicle being fifty pounds. They were also to summon them and their tenants, &c. to answer for building, or being present at the building, of any preaching-house—the fine imposed to be arbitrary. No nobleman or gentleman who refused the bond was to be allowed to wear his sword, and whoever delayed beyond six days to appear at the council-bar, after they were summoned, were to be amerced in two years’ valued rent, and were likewise liable for the delinquencies of their tenants and servants.
Immediately after this, a number of gentlemen in Ayrshire were summoned before the committee, upon a charge of law-burrows; but while they made the strongest professions of loyalty, they steadily resisted putting their hands to a deed which they deemed illegal, irreconcilable with their profession as Presbyterians, and impracticable with respect to all their retainers and dependents. One of them, unfortunately his name is not preserved, who had indignantly refused, on being told by the president that, if he continued obstinate, the Highlanders, who had been quartered upon a neighbouring gentleman’s property till he had complied, would be transferred to his till he became convinced of the propriety of obedience, replied, “he had no answer to that argument; but before he would comply with the law-burrows, he would rather go to prison.”
Lord Cochrane was next before them. He had been served with an indictment, charging him with encouraging field and house conventicles, and conversing with intercommuned ministers; in a word, he or his wife, or some of his family or tenants, had rebelled against the king by attending upon the preaching of the gospel, impiously proclaimed by men who owned no bishop, and who wore no surplice; and was called to answer to the charge within twenty-four hours. His lordship objected to the shortness of the time allowed to answer, and contended that, as his indictment contained a capital charge, it was necessary the “diet” or meeting should be prolonged, that he might have time to consult with his advocates; and, when called to answer upon oath, declined to do so, “no man being bound by any law to give his oath, where the punishment may be in any way—corporis afflictiva, quia nemo est dominus membrorum suorum”—destructive to the body, because nobody is lord of his own body. The committee told him their diets were peremptory, i. e. their meetings were fixed for certain times, and therefore the accused were bound to answer upon the instant; but, at the same time, passed an interlocutor, restricting the libel to an arbitrary punishment, i. e. declaring that whatever his lordship might depone should never infer a capital infliction.
His lordship next pleaded that, by an act of council so late as the 5th of October last year, all libels against conventicles were restricted to a month backwards, consequently he was free. He was asked if he had brought an extract of the act? He replied he had not, but it was well enough known, and referred to their lordships themselves and the public prosecutor. They all declared they knew nothing about it. He then begged that the clerk might be questioned; but they would not allow their clerk to give evidence in that matter; and he was again called upon to swear, otherwise he would be held as confessed. Seeing at last that nothing else, no not even their own acts, would avail, he made oath “that he was free of all conventicles, as were all his servants, to the best of his knowledge.” Some new queries were now put to him by the Lord Advocate. He refused to answer to any matters not alleged against him in his indictment, and appealed to their lordships. They gave it in his favour! finding “that he was not obliged to depone to any thing not contained in his indictment;” and the court adjourned.
When they met in the afternoon of the same day—21st February 1678—Lord Cathcart, Sir John Cochrane, with some others, among whom was the Laird of Kilbirnie, refused the bond upon the same grounds—the act of council, October the 5th. The lords again denied their knowledge of such an act; but when Kilbirnie, prepared for this, offered to produce a copy, they would not receive it, saying, if there was such an act it was superseded by posterior acts. He then offered to protest against their proceeding without allowing him to produce it. This the Earl of Caithness opposed, by representing the danger he incurred in so doing; but when he persisted, his lordship suddenly adjourned the sederunt, and thus prevented him from getting it formally entered on the record.
While the committee were denying the provisions of their own acts which had the least semblance of moderation, “the Highland Host” were ravaging the devoted west without mercy.[[99]] Free quarters were every where exacted by the militia and king’s forces, although they received regular pay. But the Highlanders, not content with free quarters, would march in large bands to gentlemens’ and heritors’ houses, as well as their tenants, and take up their lodgings, and force the proprietors to furnish them with whatever they chose to demand, or they would take whatever struck their fancy; and, when some of their own officers interposed, would present their daggers to their breasts, and dare them to touch their plunder. They infested the high-roads in a most ferocious manner, not only robbing the passengers of their money or baggage, but even stripping them of their clothes, and sending them to travel naked for miles ere they could reach home. From the country-folks’ and cottars’ houses, they carried off pots, pans, wearing-apparel, bedclothes, or whatever was portable; and, notwithstanding the government had taken care to order provisions, both officers and men carried off or wantonly killed the cattle, under pretence that they wanted food, unless they were bribed by money; yet that did not always avail, the plunderers often both pocketing the coin and driving the cattle. In some places they proceeded the horrible length of scorching the people before large fires, in order to extort a confession, if they suspected they had any hidden valuables; and to these rapacious, needy hordes, the lowest necessary utensils of civilized life were precious.