Annals of the persecution in Scotland

by James Aikman

That those who had been nurtured in the wilds, and borne for eighteen years the brunt of the persecution, and whose intercourse had been chiefly confined to their fellow-sufferers, should have been keen, contracted, and irritable, was what was naturally to have been expected; and yet, from the accounts we have of these disputes, those who assumed the name of moderates appear to have been mainly to blame by their unyielding contendings for milder principles and softer proceedings. As they then stood, to talk of moderation was to invite disaster. They had been declared rebels, and when they drew the sword, no hope remained but what its point could purchase. To attempt soothing their opponents by honeyed words was like hushing the hungry tiger with a song. The moderate party objected to the clause “All things depending thereupon,” and desired it to be erased as too closely pointing out the indulgence at a time when every bone of contention should be taken away from the Presbyterians that might tempt them to bite and devour one another. The ultras urged that the expressions were general; and, in their opinion, erastianism was as directly abjured by their church as prelacy, and that the indulgence was a fruit of erastianism.[^[122]] Contentions grew hot and love waxed cold.

[122]. The doctrine of Erastus, a German divine, who asserted that the pastoral office was only persuasive, like that of the professorship of any other science; that the communion was free to all, and that a minister could only dissuade, but not prohibit, a vicious character from participating in the ordinance of the Lord’s Supper; and that the punishment of all ecclesiastical offences, as well as the support of all ecclesiastical institutions, belonged to the civil magistrate, upon the principle that they who paid servants had a right to demand their service in the manner they thought most proper, and to dismiss them if they disobeyed their orders.

At another meeting—for their meetings and debates were endless—it was proposed that a day should be set aside for fasting and humiliation. Alas! it turned out to be a day of strife and confusion. In their confession of sins, the moderates were now for generals, the ultras for particulars, and enumerated—1st, The universal rioting throughout the land on the king’s return in 1660, the many public abuses then committed, and the frequent profaning of the Lord’s name. 2d, The establishing and complying with prelacy. 3d, Neglecting a public testimony against the tyrannical hierarchy, and against defacing the Lord’s glorious work and overturning the right government of his house. 4th, The sin of taking unlawful bonds. 5th, The paying cess; and, 6th, Complying with abjured erastianism:—ministers appearing at the court of usurping rulers, and there accepting from them warrants and instructions, founded upon that sacrilegious supremacy to admit them to, and regulate them in, the exercise of their ministry; their leading blindfold along with them many of the godly in that abjured course; their indulgence becoming a public sin and snare both to themselves and others.

The moderates would not consent to the enumeration, though it is not easy to imagine upon what grounds men who contended for the supreme headship of Christ in his church could consistently oppose it. No fast was kept; and, if we may be allowed to judge from a communication between the heads of the parties, perhaps it was as well that it was not. Mr Hamilton sent a message to the ministers of the moderate side to preach against the indulgence, otherwise he and a number of the officers would not come to hear them. Mr Rae, one of the ministers, returned for answer—“That he had been wrestling against erastianism in the magistrate for many years, and he would never truckle to the worst kind of erastianism in the common people; that he would receive no instruction from him nor any of them as to the subject and matter of his sermons; and wished he might mind what belonged to him, and not go beyond his sphere and station.”

Differing so widely respecting the testimony they were to bear to the cause, as little could they agree with regard to their manifesto to the nation. In a meeting of their officers,[^[123]] the ultras proposed that the Rutherglen declaration should be adopted as the basis; the moderates, that the king’s authority should be expressly acknowledged, in terms of the 3d article of the Solemn League and Covenant, in which they swore “to defend the king’s majesty’s person and authority in the preservation and defence of the true religion and liberties of the kingdom, that the world may bear witness with our consciences of our loyalty, and that we have no thoughts or intentions to diminish his majesty’s just power and greatness.” To this the others answered—that, as they had not urged any positive declaration against him, although he had in fact declared war against his people; and all the oppression, cruelty, and persecution in Scotland of which they complained, and for the redress of which they were now in arms, were carried on in his name—they could not consistently with their previous declarations, nor with the covenants which bound the whole land, first to God and then to one another; and then to the king only in defence of the true religion, which he had actually overturned by setting up prelacy, ruined the covenanted work of reformation and the liberties of the nation, persecuted to death the supporters of both, and broken the conditions of government sworn to at his coronation, on which his right and their allegiance were founded.

[123]. This is styled indiscriminately, a meeting of officers or a council of war.

The ultras were right in the abstract; and had they known how to mould it to practical purposes, they might have anticipated, as they certainly prepared the way for, the Revolution of 1688; that sound, practical exposition of the principles which the others missed, by contending for what is utterly impossible under the present constitution of human nature:—uniformity in a religious creed and civil liberty to be held together in a nation, composed of reasoning beings, susceptible of different views of the same truths, and allowed to exercise their reasoning powers. I am strongly inclined to believe, however, that much personal feeling mixed up in the controversy, and that the moderates allowed themselves to be led astray by an especial opposition to Robert Hamilton; and by showing this too openly, united to that politico-religious demagogue the honest and upright party, who were induced to suspect some lurking trimming policy in the measures of the moderates, because they appeared to them to encourage an accommodation with the enemy upon a compromise of principle. The others carried their doctrine of submission to the civil government to a length unwarrantable in free countries; and Scotland ought to have been a free country. There are reciprocal duties between the people and their rulers; and it is against one of the first principles of our nature, to assert that either of the parties have a right to violate their obligations, merely because they happen to have the means of so doing.

While these disputes were distracting the Presbyterians in Scotland, intrigue and emulation were dividing the councils of their enemies in London. The wretched Charles found that licentiousness was not the road to happiness, and that concubinage did not tend to promote domestic felicity. With the struggles of panders for domination over the poor heartless thing, that revelled amid the gaudy trappings of royalty, I do not intend to pollute my pages; it is sufficient to say, that his favourite bastard, whom he had decorated with the title of Duke of Buccleuch and Monmouth, gained the perilous and to him fatal eminence of commander-in-chief of his forces in Scotland. The temper of this young man was amiable; and, unlike the Stuarts, he both wished and endeavoured to promote the welfare of the people and adhere to moderate and salutary councils; but these dispositions rendered him obnoxious to those who ruled the councils of his father. The Duke of York, by his imperious, severe, and obstinate temper, had long held Charles in bondage, and prevented the exercise of any humane feeling towards the Scottish insurgents, which, however transient, he on some occasions appeared to possess; and Lauderdale, instigated and supported by the clergy of Scotland, preferred pursuing a line of conduct which recommended him to them rather than what accorded either with the circumstances of the times or the real stability of the throne.

Monmouth’s instructions were in accordance with the wishes of the prelatic rulers—forbidding him to negotiate with the rebels, whom he was to extirpate, not to reconcile. On the 18th of June, he arrived at Edinburgh, and was admitted a privy councillor. Next day, he proceeded to assume the command of the army, which lay within two miles of the Kirk of Shotts, and, having been reinforced by some troops from England, amounted to ten thousand men. A letter from the king immediately followed his Grace, thanking the council for their diligence in endeavouring to meet the emergency, and informing them that it was his royal will and pleasure “that they should prosecute the rebels with fire and sword, and all other extremities of war, and particularly requiring them to use their utmost endeavours in getting the best intelligence of all such as were engaged in this unnatural rebellion, being fully resolved to bring the ringleaders among them to condign punishment suitable to their notorious and insolent conduct; likewise putting them in mind that all care and diligence be used for discovering the murderers of the late Archbishop of St Andrews, by all the severity that law would allow, and punishing with all rigour the actors or accessaries to that horrid murder, their resettors or abettors;” thus anticipating, or rather authorising, the subsequent watchword, which became the warrant for unrelenting and indiscriminate massacre.

The council, in reply, expressed the universal joy which this gracious communication had created among them, and extolled that royal wisdom which had given such just measures and directions for suppressing the insurrection and securing his own government, together with their religion, lives, and properties, which would all undoubtedly have been endangered by the frequency of similar attempts that would have ensued, if the present insolent rebels, who now disturbed the kingdom, had been ordered to be spared or gently dealt with; thus, in like manner, anticipating the cruelties in which they afterwards rioted. A copy of the king’s letter was immediately forwarded to Monmouth for his guidance.