BOOK XV.
A.D. 1680.
Perplexity of the moderate ministers—Murder of Mr Hall—Queensferry paper—Cargill joins Cameron—Sanquhar declaration—Council’s proclamation in reply—Reflections—Bond—Fresh plunderings by Dalziel—Skirmish at Airs-moss—Death of Cameron—of Rathillet—Cargill—Torwood excommunication—York arrives in Edinburgh—Spreul tortured—Skene, Stewart, and Potter executed—Effigy of the Pope burnt.
Never, perhaps, were men placed in more perplexing and trying circumstances than the conscientious ministers who durst not abstain from preaching the gospel as they had opportunity, but who could neither accept of the fettered indulgences offered them by their rulers, nor yet “had clearness” to disown a government which they thought it their duty to disobey. They got no credit from their persecutors for their professions of loyalty, and were shunned by their brethren who more consistently followed out the constitutional principles they had covenanted to preserve. The breach now became wider by a transaction which also added fresh fuel to the fire of persecution.
Mr Henry Hall of Haughead, in the parish of Eckford, in Teviotdale—one of the proscribed who had fled to Holland—having returned in order to strengthen the hands of Donald Cargill, at that time assiduously preaching the gospel on the banks the Forth, in Fife, and Mid-Lothian, attracted the notice of the curates of Borrowstounness and Carriden, who informed Middleton, a papist, governor of Blackness Castle, of the movements of these two distinguished “rebels.” He immediately went in pursuit, followed by his men in twos and threes to avoid suspicion. Tracking them to a house in Queensferry, he introduced himself as a friend, and requested they might take a glass of wine together, to which they agreed, when he, throwing off his mask, told them they were his prisoners, and commanded the people of the house, in the king’s name, to assist. None, however, paid any attention, except one Thomas George, a waiter, who came in while Mr Hall was struggling with the governor—Cargill having made his escape, although wounded—and striking him on the head with the butt end of his carabine, mortally wounded him; yet, though in this state, did Dalziel, whose house of Binns lies in the neighbourhood, on coming to the spot, order him to be carried to Edinburgh. As might have been expected, he died upon the road. For three days his body lay exposed in the Canongate jail, till at last its putrescence forced the wretches to allow his friends to carry it away and bury it under cloud of night.
In this gentleman’s pocket was found an unsubscribed paper, which, from the place where he was murdered, has usually been called “The Queensferry Paper.” It was merely notes, or rather a rude draught of a declaration, in which, after stating their adherence to the doctrine of the reformed churches, as contained in the covenants, and their determination to persevere in it to the end, they bound themselves to endeavour to their utmost the overthrow of the kingdom of darkness, and whatsoever is contrary to the kingdom of Christ, especially idolatry and popery, will-worship, prelacy, and erastianism; and, in order to attain this end, they renounced their allegiance; rejecting those who had rejected God, altered and destroyed the established religion, overturned the fundamental laws of the kingdom, and changed the civil government into a tyranny. Then they proposed to set up governors and a government according to the word of God, ‘able men, such as fear God; men of truth, hating covetousness;’ and no more to commit the government to one single person, or a lineal succession, that kind being liable to most inconveniences and aptest to degenerate into tyranny; at the same time, obliging themselves to defend each other in their worshipping of God, and in their natural, civil, and divine rights and liberties.
Cargill, upon his escape, fled south, and joined Mr Richard Cameron and the wanderers who followed him, and were outlawed, and declared rebels. After much deliberation, they finally agreed upon a declaration and testimony, suitable to the melancholy appearance of the times and the distressed state of the church, which Michael Cameron, accompanied by about twenty persons armed, carried to the small burgh of Sanquhar, read, and afterwards affixed to the cross, on the 22d of June 1680. This declaration, which was in substance the same as “The Queensferry Paper,” after stating that they considered “it as not among the smallest of the Lord’s mercies to this poor land, that there had always been some who had given their testimony against every course of defection, which they reckoned a token for good that he did not intend to cast them off altogether, but to leave a remnant in whom he would be glorious, if they through his grace kept themselves clean and walked in his ways, carrying on the noble work of reformation in the several steps thereof, both from popery and prelacy, and also from erastian supremacy, so much usurped by him, who,” they add, “it is true, so far as we know, is descended from the race of our kings; yet he hath so far deborded from what he ought to have been by his perjury and usurping in church matters, and tyranny in matters civil, that although we be for government and governors such as the word of God and our covenants allow, yet we for ourselves, and all that will adhere to us, the representatives of the true Presbyterian church and covenanted nation of Scotland, considering the great hazard of lying under sin any longer, do by these presents disown Charles Stuart, who hath been reigning, or rather we may say tyrannizing, on the throne of Britain, forfeited several years since by his perjury and his breach of covenant with God and his church. As also, under the banner of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Captain of our salvation, we do declare war with such a tyrant and usurper.” “As also, we disown and resent the reception of the Duke of York, a professed papist, as repugnant to our principles and vows to the most High God, and as that which is the great, though, alas! the just reproach of our church. We also protest against his succeeding to the crown, as against whatever hath been done, or any are assaying to do, in this land given to the Lord, in prejudice to our work of reformation.”
A proclamation was issued on the last day of June, in reply, stating in exaggerated terms what the council chose to call the sentiments of Mr Richard Cameron and his brother, and Mr Cargill and others, their accomplices,—sacrilegiously engaging themselves by a solemn oath “to murder such as are in any trust or employment under us, declaring us an usurper, and that none should obey them who are in authority under us, but such as would obey the devil and his vicegerents.”
Although Cameron and Cargill did think, and I believe justly, that Charles and the vile turn-coat crew who composed his government were—if perjury, cruelty, tyranny, profligacy, and every species of open undisguised licentiousness embodied, constitute such beings—the representatives of the devil in human shape, yet it does not appear that they used the expressions which they in justice did apply to their persecutors, till they themselves were unconstitutionally and unjustly placed without the pale of the law, denied the rights which had been parliamentarily insured to them, and denounced as the vilest of malefactors for—preaching the gospel. Several of the excellent followers of these noble men have been at no little labour to extenuate or excuse their conduct. It ought never to have been mentioned, but in accents of praise—it needed no justification. The government had broken all faith:—and society is based in its public as well as its private associations on the bonds of mutual reciprocal obligation and the righteous performance of these relative duties. When either party violate them, they deserve punishment for their crime. That popular insurrection should be put down, is allowed; that aristocratical domination was to be equally checked, these denounced Cameronians asserted; and this was in fact the grand crime for which they were hunted like wild beasts upon the mountains.
But they were not the people to be scared from their principles by any prospect of danger. While the fields were traversed by the blood-hounds of their persecutors, the same indomitable bands united more closely together, and entered into a new bond, obliging themselves to be faithful to God and true to one another in the prosecution of their grand design, as assertors of their civil and religious rights, which they believed could only be secured by driving from the throne that “perfidious covenant-breaking race, untrue both to the most High God and the people over whom for their sins they were set.”