Meanwhile the marquis had been suffering a long imprisonment for his lapse with Montrose, and his estate was embarrassed with a fine of 50,000 merks. It had become indispensable for the good of his family, that he should be somehow reconciled to the stern powers then ruling. At the beginning of 1647, the descendant of those mail-clad Douglases who in the fifteenth century shook the Scottish throne, was found literally on his knees before the Lanark presbytery, expressing his penitence for breach of covenant, and giving assurance of faithfulness in time to come. The Estates consequently contented themselves with one half of his fine, and an offer of the use of his lands for the quartering of troops, and he was then liberated. Soon after, he agreed to consign his children to be boarded with the minister of the parish of Douglas, while a young man should attend to act as their preceptor; but the satisfaction produced by this concession was quickly dashed, when the presbytery learned that his lordship was secretly arranging to send his youngest son to be bred in France. It was really a curious game between their honest unsparing zeal on the one hand, and his lordship’s craft and territorial consequence on the other. Every now and then we have a peep of the demure lady, not less resolute in adhering to her faith than they were pertinacious in seeking to bring her to the superior light. How the recusant pair must have in secret chafed under the mute acquiescence which they were forced to give, in a rule outraging every sense of natural right, and every feeling of self-respect! With what smothered rage would they view those presbyterial deputations on their approach to Douglas Castle—more formidable than a thousand of the troops of Long-shanked Edward had ever been to the good Sir James! During the predominance of the Hamilton Engagement, there was a slight intermission: in those partially clouded days of the church, the presbytery was obliged to speak a little less resolutely. In October 1648, the cloud had passed away: Cromwell was now in the Canongate, conferring with Argyle, Loudon, and Dickson. We accordingly find the Lanark inquisition laconically ordering that, failing immediate satisfaction, his lordship be summoned and the lady ‘excommunicat.’ The noble marquis appeared in this month before them, to answer sundry challenges—‘for not keeping his son at the school with a sufficient pedagogue approven by the presbytery; for not delivering his daughter to some Protestant friend by sight [that is, under the approbation] of the presbytery; for not having a sufficient chaplain approven as said is, for family exercise in his house; for not calling home his son, who is in France;’ and, finally, for his grievous oppression of his tenants. On all of these points, he was forced to make certain professed concessions. And we soon after find this proud grandee pleading to have his son brought from the school of Glasgow to that of Lanark, but ‘not to come home to his parents except the presbytery permit.’ Still there was no real progress made with either the marquis or his lady, and simply because they continued to be Catholics at heart, and had it not in their power to give more than lip-worship to any other system.
Such being the case, what are we to think of the conclusion of the affair with the marchioness, when, on the 9th of March 1650, two ministers went to pass upon her that sentence of excommunication which was to make her homeless and an outlaw,[133] unless she should instantly profess the Protestant faith; at the same time telling her ‘how fearful a sin it was to swear with equivocation or mental reservation.’ The lady of course reflected that the system represented by her visitors was now triumphant over everything—that, for one thing, it had brought her brother Huntly, not a twelvemonth ago, beneath the stroke of the Maiden. She ‘declared she had no more doubts,’ and at the command of one of the ministers, held up her hand, and solemnly accepted the Covenant before the congregation. ‘After he had read the Solemn League and Covenant, and desired her to hold up her hand and swear by the great name of God to observe, according to her power, every article thereof, she did so; and after divine service was ended, he desired her to go to the session-table and subscribe the Covenant, and, before the minister and elders, she went to the said table and did subscribe.’
‘Heaven scarce believed the conquest it surveyed,
And saints with wonder heard the vows I made.’
1650.
On the very day that this was reported by the two ministers to the presbytery, the court, ‘hearing that of late the Marquis of Douglas and his lady had sent away one of their daughters to France, to a popish lady, to be bred with her in popery, without the knowledge of the presbytery, and without any warrant from the Estates, thought the fault intolerable, and so much the more, because they had sent away one of their sons before to the court of France.’ For some time after, the reverend presbytery dealt earnestly with the marquis for the withdrawal of his children from France, but without success. They also had occasion to lament that he and his lady rarely attended public worship, and failed to have private exercises at home. Of their own great error in forcing this noble family into hypocritical professions, and interfering so violently with their domestic arrangements, no suspicion seems ever once to have crossed their minds.[134]
Mar.
At the same time that the presbytery of Lanark was driving on matters with the Marchioness of Douglas, it had another serious affair on its hands. Towards the close of the preceding year, the marquis had sent eleven women of his parish to Lanark, as accused of witchcraft by one Janet Couts, ‘a confessing witch,’ then in prison at Peebles. There was a difficulty about the case, for the burgh declined to maintain so many persons pending their trial. It was therefore necessary to send them back to Crawford Douglas under security. Afterwards, one George Cathie, ‘the pricker,’ being brought to Lanark, the women were brought forward again, when, ‘before famous witnesses—namely, Gideon Jack and Patrick Craig, bailies in Lanark, James Cunningham of Bonniton, &c., Mr Robert Birnie himself [the minister of Lanark] being also present, and by consent of the women, the said George did prick pins in every one of them, and in divers of them without pain the pin was put in, as the witnesses can testify.’ The women were accordingly detained in prison. As ‘it was not possible for the parish out of which they came to furnish watches night and day for them,’ the county ‘did ordain that each parish should, proportionally to their quantity, furnish twelve men every twenty-four hours; whereupon the presbytery did ordain that the minister of that parish out of which the watches shall come for their turn, shall come along with them, to wait upon the suspected persons, and to take pains, by prayer and exhortation, to bring them to a confession.’
1650.