The Highlanders were not sensible of these refining distinctions. They rose in a considerable body in February under Thomas Mackenzie of Pluscardine, a brother of the Earl of Seaforth; professing only a desire to restore the king. This little band took Inverness, but was soon put down. The only effect was, that the ruling powers now wreaked vengeance on their old opponent, the Marquis of Huntly, who had been a pining prisoner in Edinburgh Castle for sixteen months, and was not likely to have long troubled them, since he was manifestly dying of a dysentery. We have seen this noble entering life as Master of the king of France’s Scottish guard. A great prince he was in the north. Through the whole civil war, he had been constant to the king as simply the king, but had not always acted with consummate prudence. Now comes at length an evil day for the House of Gordon, when the wrath accumulated against it for its seventy years’ opposition to a ‘truth’ which it could never appreciate, must be discharged. It might have been expected that the Marquis of Argyle, who was Huntly’s brother-in-law, and to appearance all-powerful, would interfere to save him. To that end, his sister, the Marchioness of Douglas, and his three daughters—the Lady Drummond, the Lady Seton, and the Countess of Haddington, went and threw themselves on their bended knees before Macaleinmore. He declined to meddle with what the parliament had decreed, the truth being, that no lay power was then able to stand against an object on which the leading clergy had set their hearts. The poor ladies pleaded even to have a respite of a few days, hoping that nature would save their brother and parent a public and cruel death; but even this boon could not be obtained. On the 22d of March, the marquis is brought down from his airy prison, along the High Street of Edinburgh, clad in the deepest mourning, very weak in body, we are told, but cheerful in spirit, as not wishing to live after his master was gone, and placed on a scaffold at the Cross, where the Maiden stands prepared to receive him in her dismal embraces. He writes a few lines to his children, and speaks a few sentences to the multitude. The gleaming axe descends, and the noble of a score of illustrious titles is no more.[124]
After all, the Highlanders were not disposed to be at peace. One Sunday in May, about fifteen hundred Mackenzies and Mackays came over the Kessock Ferry to Inverness, while the people were at church, and proceeded to great insolencies. ‘Instead of bells to ring in to service,’ says a clergyman who was present, ‘I saw and heard no other than the noise of pipes, drums, pots, pans, kettles, and spits in the streets, to provide them with victuals in every house. In their quarters the rude rascality would eat no meat at their tables, until the landlord laid down a shilling Scots upon each trencher, terming this argiod cagainn, or chewing money, which every soldier got, so insolent were they.’ This doughty band was in a few days half cut to pieces by two troops of horse under Colonels Strachan and Kerr, and about a thousand of them came back as prisoners to Inverness, where, ‘those men who, in their former march, would hardly eat their meat without money, are now begging food, and, like dogs, lap the water which was brought them in tubs and other vessels in the open streets.’[125] Such are amongst the scenes proper to a time of civil broil.
The clergy were sensible of the benighted state of the Highlands, and longed to see the Gael brought to a sense of the beauty of a pure faith. As one small effort towards the object, the General Assembly ordained a collection to be made for the purpose of keeping forty Highland boys at school. It appears, however, that very little was efficiently done for the education of youth in the Highlands, till fully a century later. Dr Shaw, in his History of the Province of Moray, published in 1775, makes the remarkable declaration: ‘I well remember when from Speymouth (through Strathspey, Badenoch, and Lochaber) to Lorn there was but one school—viz., at Ruthven in Badenoch; and it was much to find, in a parish, three persons that could read and write.’
1649.
A perfect accord reigned between the clergy and the Estates, the latter ratifying whatever the former required. A seasonable testimony against the sins and dangers of the times being issued by the church-commission, the Estates passed an act responding to it, ‘heartily concurring in the grounds thereof against toleration and the present proceedings of the Sectaries in England;’ declaring for ‘one King, one Covenant, one Religion;’ promising all strenuous endeavour for ‘the settling truth and peace in these kingdoms upon the propositions so often agreed to’—that is, by the forcible putting down of every profession in England and Ireland but that of pure Presbyterianism. At the request of the church, lay patronages were abolished, and acts were passed imposing capital punishment on blasphemy, the worship of false gods, and incest. The church had for some time been under great concern about ‘the growth of the sins of witchcraft, charming, and consulting,’ and it now appointed a conference of ministers, lawyers, and physicians, ‘to consider seriously of that matter, and advise therein amongst themselves,’ and afterwards report. The Estates, fully entering into these views, passed an act not expressly against witchcraft, for that had been done, as we have seen, so long ago as Queen Mary’s days, but to meet the fact that there are people who consult devils and familiar spirits, thinking to escape punishment because consulters of spirits are not mentioned in the former act. For this reason, the parliament enacted the punishment of death to ‘consulters,’ at the same time ratifying ‘all former acts against witches, sorcerers, necromancers, and consulters with them, in the whole heads, articles, and clauses thereof.’[126]
The perfect simplicity and earnestness of all this is, in the conception of the author, as certain as its being obviously short of the better wisdom and better temper of our own time. The evil effects of the pursuit of rigorous extremes in state policy, in religious doctrine, and in ecclesiastical systems, had not then been experienced. No one yet dreamed of there being any harm in intolerance, but, on the contrary, it seemed a sin and a scandal to omit any means which promised to compel the wandering to come in. As to witchcraft and consulting, which we have learned to regard as imaginary offences, it was enough for the jurist of the seventeenth century that these words were entered in the Levitical law as descriptive of crimes deserving punishment.
1649.
One direction in which the earnestness of the time more especially projected itself, was towards an absolute exclusion of all shortcoming in religion, or even in what might be called church politics. Not only did an act of parliament thrust out of offices and places of trust all who had been in the slightest degree concerned in the Engagement—who must have been a large portion of the middle and upper classes of lay society—but the church-courts were equally unsparing of any clergy who had touched the unclean thing, or proved at all slack in faith and zeal. As a specimen—In September, a ‘visitation’ sat at the appointment of the General Assembly in the synodal province of Angus and Mearns, under the moderatorship of Mr Andrew Cant. It called several ministers of twenty years’ standing before it to preach, that there might be trial of doctrine and efficiency. In all, eighteen ministers were deposed, on the ground of insufficiency, ‘silence during the time of the late Engagement,’ ‘famishing of congregations,’ and corruption of life or doctrine.—Lam. This was only one of ‘diverse commissions’ which had gone east, west, north, and south, as Robert Baillie expresses it, and ‘deposed many ministers, to the pity and grief of my heart; for sundry of them might have been, for more advantage every way, with a rebuke, keeped in their places; but there was few durst profess so much.’ In short, as invariably happens in revolutions and times of danger, an institution professedly of a popular cast was ruled by this Mr Cant and two or three of his fellows, with as uncontrolled a power as usually belongs to institutions of an avowedly despotic character; and, doubtless, unavoidably so. It is at the same time evident that large numbers of individuals could not thus be made to suffer for merely sentimental offences, without some perilous consequences. It only afforded too good a precedent, as well as excuse, for retributory acts of the same kind after a reaction had set in. It is clear that the throwing of so many people out of their ordinary means of livelihood must have added not a little to the distresses of a time which, from natural as well as political causes, was one of general suffering.
Feb.