“I bless the Lord for keeping me to this very hour: little would I have thought a twelvemonth since that the Lord would have taken me a poor ploughman-lad, and have honoured me so highly, as to have made me first appear for him and then keep me straight; and now hath keeped me to this very hour to lay down my life for him.” At the ladder foot, he addressed his brother and other relatives who were standing and weeping around him—“Weep not for me, brother; but weep for the poor land, and seek God, and make him sure for yourself, and he shall be better to you than ten brethren. Now, farewell, all friends and relations; farewell, brother, sister, mother. Welcome, Lord Jesus; into thy hands I commit my spirit!” And then lifting the napkin off his face, he said, “Dear friends, be not discouraged because of the cross, nor at this ye have seen this day, for I hope you have seen no discouragement in me, and you shall see no more!”
While these sanguinary proceedings were going forward, the Scottish rulers were not less assiduous in the more lucrative departments of persecution, rendering even their acts of indemnity or indulgence the means of pecuniary oppression; for the conditions upon which these were granted were so hard, and the penalties for their infraction so severe, that few would accept of them, and those who did, found them both burthensome to their conscience and heavy on their purse, as a common requisition was, that the parties should bind themselves, their families, and dependants, under a specified sum, to regular attendance on the ordinances and implicit compliance with all the injunctions of the established clergy, nor harbour or hold any communication with those who acted otherwise. Absence from the parish church, if accompanied with any suspicious symptoms, constituted rebellion; and associating with rebels, was construed into the same offence, punishable by death, but commutable by fining or confiscation of rents, money, and moveables; so that pretexts were never wanting for plundering the Presbyterians, wherever “the honest party” were possessed of property.
More effectually to scour the country, the justiciary was required to divide into two sections or circuit courts; the one to traverse the west and south, the other the north and east. By a proclamation sent before them, the proprietors or occupiers of the lands on which any of the rebels lived, were required to apprehend and imprison them till the courts arrived, when they were to present them for prosecution; and if they should be either under hiding or fugitive themselves, their wives, children, and servants were to be ordered off the ground. Clerks were sent before to take up lists of all who were named in the proclamation, or should be informed against as having been at field-conventicles, or having threatened, robbed, or abused the orthodox clergy, who were all to be summoned and examined upon oath respecting their possessions in lands, money, and bonds, in order that the proceeds might be forthcoming in case they should be found guilty. Witnesses were to be prepared and held in readiness—sixteen in every rural parish, and twenty-four in every royal burgh or burgh of barony, who were to give information, under a penalty of forty pounds Scots, of all who had been at Bothwell, or who had harboured any that were there. They were also to name all whom they heard or suspected of being there. The sheriffs and justices of peace were exceedingly active in searching out the proper victims for spoliation, and so rigid in their duty, that they included several in their rolls who had been dead or left the place some time before. The curates were very zealous; and their diligence in this business, contrasted with their carelessness in their spiritual functions, did not tend much to exalt their characters or endear their office. Extensive as the range of sedition had been made, yet were the insatiable managers unsatisfied. They therefore had recourse to an old statute, long in dissuetude, by which all who did not attend the king’s host were liable to be punished with death; and changing the award into a pecuniary mulct, they with rigorous impartiality fleeced the lieges in all the devoted counties where there had been the smallest symptoms of discontent.
In October, the circuit-courts commenced their operations; but, as they either kept no record of their proceedings, or these records have been destroyed, the particulars of their extortions are but imperfectly known, only the general devastation they spread was long remembered; the absent heritors were denounced, and numbers of them forfeited, whose estates were bestowed upon noblemen, gentlemen, and soldiers, as rewards for their ready and unflinching obedience to the most cruel and barbarous decreets of the council, which the greater part of them kept hold of till the Revolution restored them to their rightful owners.
Besides this, the council gifted the moveables of such as were reported to have been at Bothwell, which laid the whole of those who were known to favour Presbyterian principles open to the most vexatious visitations; for the donators, to whom was committed “the uplifting of the spulzie,” literally “rode upon the top of their commissions,” exacting to the utmost, and, by returning oftener than once, frequently subjected the same persons to repeated pillage for the same accusation. Another source of wealth to the banditti who now ravaged Scotland, was the compositions of the fines paid to the clerks, or largesses to the officers, to escape the rifling searches of the soldiers, who, whenever they chose, could enter the houses of the most peaceable and destroy their furniture by casting it about, and rip up and render useless their beds and bedclothes, by thrusting them through with their swords, to find if any “cursed Whiggs” were concealed among them. The shires of Lanark and Ayr were peculiarly harassed—shires which, by every principle of sound policy, ought to have been peculiarly favoured, as they were the most industrious and wealthy, but unfortunately they were also reputed the most pious. Wretched as the country was, yet years more grievous followed. Monmouth while there had acted with as much moderation as circumstances would permit, and discouraged as far as possible the virulent spirit of clerical domination which the bishops and curates were so eager to display. When he went to London, he had carried with him very favourable impressions of the Scottish character, and was desirous to infuse somewhat of his own kindness into the councils of his father. Before he left Edinburgh, upon receiving a petition to present to the king, he said, “I think if any place get favour, it should be Scotland; for a gallanter gentry and more loving people, I never saw;” and previous to setting out, he procured what was termed the third indulgence, which was published at Edinburgh by proclamation, June 29. By it, ministers were prohibited under pain of death from holding field-conventicles, and all who attended were to be deemed traitors; but all laws against house conventicles south of the Tay, were suspended, “excepting the town of Edinburgh and two miles round about the same, with the lordships of Musselburgh and Dalkeith; the cities of St Andrews, Glasgow, and Stirling, and a mile about each of them; being fully resolved not to suffer the seat of OUR government nor OUR universities to be pestered with any irregularities whatsoever.” One preacher was to be allowed to each parish upon giving in their names to the privy council and finding security for their peaceable behaviour, provided they had not engaged in the late rebellion, nor been admitted, i. e. licensed, by the unconform ministers; assuring, at the same time, all who should offend, that we will maintain our authority and laws by such effectual courses, as, in ruining the authors, could not be thought rigid, especially after such unmerited favour. “This our forbearance being to continue only during our royal favour.”
These tokens of kindliness, stinted as they were, proved very unpalatable to the harpies who were fattening upon the spoils of their patriotic countrymen; and they immediately unbosomed their difficulties to their friend Lauderdale, in the form of an inquiring epistle from the council, dated July 12:—“There being doubts,” say they, “as to the sense of that clause in the proclamation, June 29, suspending all letters of intercommuning, and all other executions, if these words ‘all other executions’ do import that all persons, whether preachers at field-conventicles, or other persons, who being ringleaders of these rebellious rendezvouses, and have been seized according to former proclamations, promising sums of money to the apprehenders, the imprisoned should be set at liberty or not; and if such as have been imprisoned till they pay the fines imposed upon them by sentence of council or other judges, shall also be enlarged and set at liberty; and if these field-preachers and other persons, qualified as aforesaid, are to be liberate—they crave his majesty may declare his pleasure upon what terms and conditions they are to be liberate.” The answer appears to have been favourable to the persecuted.
Several ministers who were in prison for holding conventicles, but had not been at Bothwell, were now set at liberty upon enacting themselves in the books of privy council for their peaceable behaviour, and that they would not preach at field-conventicles. Others, who could not conscientiously enter into such engagements, were dismissed for the time, upon giving security to appear when called for. Among these were fourteen prisoners on the Bass, among whom was Fraser of Brea, who tells us in his memoirs that in twenty-four hour’s space, they found security for eight hundred pounds; “for we would not,” he adds, “give obligement not to rise in arms, nor to forbear field-meetings, because we saw no law for it, and because it was considered by us dishonourable, and to reflect upon our ministry.”
Anxious to improve this breathing time, a numerous meeting of ministers assembled at Edinburgh, August 8, to consider what steps should be taken, and proceeded to re-organize, as far as in them lay, the presbyterial form of their broken down and afflicted church; but before they could realize their intentions, indeed almost ere they enunciated them, the wind passed over them and they were gone! Towards the latter end of the same month, Charles was attacked with fever, and his life supposed in danger. The Duke of York, who had been obliged by the ascendency of the patriotic party to retire from court and reside abroad, was immediately sent for and quickly arrived at Windsor. His sudden appearance took his opponents by surprise, and, by the influence which he had over his brother, he effected the fall of Monmouth, who was sent into that exile from which he himself had so unexpectedly returned. With his elevation, all hopes of favour towards the Presbyterians vanished, and the persecution recommenced with renewed fury. A letter from the king, September 18, announced that he had recalled his commission to the Duke of Buccleuch and Monmouth as General. On the very next day, a warrant was granted by the council to Lieutenant-General Dalziel to apprehend whoever had not taken the bond or who harboured recusants, and secure them in prison till they be brought to justice—to dissipate field-conventicles and seize whoever were present at them; and they indemnify all slaughter or mutilation in case of resistance. They also granted him power, along with several others, to sequestrate the rents of lands, sums of money, and moveables belonging to heritors or others, who came under their denomination of rebels, in order to prevent their being embezzled!!
The Duke of York paid a short visit about this time to Scotland. With the characteristic cunning of a papist, who first cajoles before he ensnares a community, he carried himself towards all with as great suavity as his severe unyielding temper and ungracious manner would permit; but he especially cultivated the goodwill of the Highland chieftains, who had a leaning towards popery, and whose assistance he counted on to aid him in the contemplated destruction of a heretical religion, and forcible establishment of his own. Though admitted to act as a privy councillor, without taking any of the oaths at the king’s particular desire, he did not publicly interfere with political matters, but he paved the way for his subsequent rule, and received from the authorities, particularly the magistrates of Edinburgh, the homage and honour so readily paid to an heir-apparent, being feasted sumptuously, and lauded excessively for excellences which, if he did not, he ought to have possessed, and which they were willing to suppose his innate modesty alone prevented him from exhibiting.