A few days later, Lord Ross, writing from Lanark, conveyed a similar warning. He could learn nothing, he said, but of an inclination to rise, although there were none yet actually in arms. This was on the 2nd of May. On the 5th he forwarded another despatch in which he had to report an encounter between a small party of troopers and some peasants of the district. The soldiers had been sent out to apprehend a man who was reported to have in his possession some of the ‘new-fashioned arms,’ that is, halberts which were provided with a cleek, or crooked knife, for the purpose of cutting the dragoons’ bridles, and of which the manufacture was in itself an indication of what was intended. After seizing the young fellow, who did not deny that he had been enlisted as one of those who were to defend the conventicles in arms, the troopers, instead of returning with their prisoner stabled their horses and fell a-drinking. Some of the neighbours, availing themselves of the opportunity, attacked them with forks, and the like, and wounded one of them ‘very desperately ill.’
The next day Claverhouse also forwarded his report from Dumfries. It contained, in addition to an account of his own movements, the following comment on orders which he had just received, and which indicated that the Earl of Linlithgow was also alive to the dangers of the situation:—
‘My Lord, I have received an order yesterday from your Lordship, which I do not know how to go about on a sudden, as your Lordship seems to expect. For I know not what hand to turn to, to find those parties that are in arms. I shall send out to all quarters, and establish spies; and shall endeavour to engage them Sunday next, if it be possible. And if I get them not here, I shall go and visit them in Teviotdale or Carrick; where they say, they dare look honest men in the face.’
On the 3rd of May, a few days before Lord Ross and Claverhouse drew up their respective reports, there had happened an event which was destined to bring matters to an immediate crisis, and which proved the signal for another, and a far more serious rising than that of 1666. James Sharp, Archbishop of St Andrews and Primate of Scotland, was murdered on Magus Muir, by a party of Covenanters.
Of this terrible tragedy, each side has its own account. On the one hand, there is that which is based on the narrative subsequently drawn up by Russell, one of the leading actors in it. According to this version, no premeditation existed on the part of the nine men concerned. They were in search of William Carmichael, the Sheriff-depute of Fifeshire, a man who had made himself obnoxious by the unrelenting severity which he displayed in carrying out the laws against the Covenanters. Having missed him, they were about to separate, when information was brought them that Sharp’s carriage was approaching. Interpreting this into ‘a clear call from God to fall upon him,’ they there and then resolved ‘to execute the justice of God upon him for the innocent blood he had shed.’
But if the Archbishop’s murder was not determined upon until the actual moment when circumstances cast him into the hands of his enemies, Russell’s account shows that it had been discussed a short time prior to its perpetration. He states that, on the 11th of April, a meeting was held to consider what course should be taken with Carmichael to scare him from his cruel courses; that it was decided to fall upon him at St Andrews; and that when ‘some objected, what if he should be in the prelate’s house, what should be done in such a case, all present judged duty to hang both over the post, especially the Bishop, it being by many of the Lord’s people and ministers judged a duty long since, not to suffer such a person to live, who had shed and was shedding so much of the blood of the saints, and knowing that other worthy Christians had used means to get him upon the road before.’ He further represents himself as urging the murder of Sharp, in the course of the hurried consultation held as the primate’s carriage was approaching, on the ground that ‘he had before been at several meetings with several godly men in other places of the kingdom, who not only judged it their duty to take that wretch’s life, and some others, but had essayed it twice before.’
Whilst it would appear from this account that no definite plan had been formed, to be carried out on the 3rd of May, though some of the more desperate of the Covenanters had come to a general understanding not to neglect any favourable opportunity ‘to execute the justice of God’ upon the wretch whom the Lord delivered into their hands, the other version, accepting the official narrative published immediately after the murder, asserts a distinct and premeditated purpose on the part of the assassins. It founds this on the ‘informations’ which were sent from St Andrews to the Privy Council, and which purported to embody the evidence of persons alleged to have been in communication with the men who perpetrated the crime.
In these it was stated that his Grace was waylaid by divers parties and could not escape, whether he went straight to St Andrews or repaired to his house at Scotscraig; that three days before the murder, several of those concerned in it met in Magask, at the house of John Miller, one of the witnesses, where they concerted the business; that the next night they put up with Robert Black, another witness, whose wife was a great instigator of the deed; that at parting, when one of them kissed her, the woman prayed that God might bless and prosper them, adding, ‘if long Leslie’—the episcopalian minister of Ceres—‘be with him, lay him on the green also,’ to which the favoured individual whom she more particularly addressed, holding up his hand, answered, ‘this is the hand that shall do it’; and that further, on the morning of the 3rd of May, the nine men followed the coach for a considerable distance, intending to attack it, first on the heath to the south of Ceres, and then at the double dykes of Magask, though owing to various circumstances, duly detailed, they did not get what seemed an available opportunity of doing so until it reached Magus Muir.
Standing thus, the question of premeditation gave rise to a long and acrimonious controversy in which recriminations and invectives were freely bandied, and which, being characterised, on either side, rather by a determination to uphold a preconceived opinion than by a desire to arrive at the plain truth, naturally led to no satisfactory conclusion.
The murder of Archbishop Sharp was followed by further proclamations against the Covenanters, to whom, as a body, the Government attributed the crime; and the episcopalian agents throughout the country, actuated partly by a desire for revenge, partly by fear for their own safety, displayed increased zeal in carrying out the repressive enactments of the Privy Council. This was met on the other side with corresponding measures for self-defence. Even before the tragedy at Magus Muir, a determination to repel force by force had been noted and reported, and conventicles had ceased to be merely peaceful gatherings of unarmed men. They now began to assume the appearance of military camps, to which the numerous smaller congregations that joined together for mutual protection gave formidable proportions.