Donald M‘Donald, commonly called the Halkit Stirk,[227] had been liberated from the Edinburgh Tolbooth in December 1660, on caution being given by Donald M‘Donald, younger of Slate, to the extent of £1000 sterling, that the prisoner should present himself, when called upon, to answer anything that could be laid to his charge. It being found that the Halkit Stirk had ever since lived the life of a robber, and had committed divers slaughters, the young Laird of Slate was now called upon to render up the delinquent or forfeit his caution. The young laird accordingly brought the Halkit Stirk before the Council, and got a discharge of his bond. The robber was committed to the Tolbooth.
1671.
During this year, a great impulse seemed to be given to Quakerism both in England and Scotland. It being found, says Law, that a rejection of ordinances and the Scriptures were not taking with the people, they began to have preaching and prayer at their meetings, and to acknowledge the Bible as the rule of their life and judge of controversies. The profession was found thus to be more ‘ensnaring.’ Some men of note, and of parts and learning, such as Robert Barclay of Urie, who afterwards wrote the Apology for the Quakers, now joined the society.
In his dedication to the king, written in 1675, Mr Barclay claimed credit for his sect, not only that they meddled with no civil affairs, but that, in the times of most violent persecution, being ‘clothed in innocency, they have boldly stood to their testimony for God, without creeping into holes or corners, or once hiding themselves, as all other dissenters have done’—rather a severe taunt at the extreme Presbyterians, who had been contenders for the political supremacy of their church, and had now to comport themselves as rebels. The Presbyterians, while themselves suffering, approved of the severities against these most innocuous of all Christians; they only thought them not severe enough. Wodrow speaks of the Council as, in 1666, ‘coming to some good resolutions against Quakers,’ but complains generally of its slackness concerning ‘that dangerous sect,’ which, he says, ‘spread terribly during this reign.’
One William Napier, a seafaring man in Montrose, had turned Quaker, and other Quakers began in consequence to draw towards that place, keeping frequent meetings in Napier’s house, ‘to the great scandal of religion and disturbance of the peace and quiet of the burgh.’ On the 12th of January 1672, ‘betwixt twenty and thretty persons did convene at William Napier his house, where they had such pretendit devotion as they pleased to devise, whereupon a great tumult and confusion was like to have been made,’ and the magistrates, to settle matters as far as possible, clapped up fifteen of the congregation in the Tolbooth. On a petition from the magistrates, representing how by these doings the people were becoming ‘deboshed in their principles,’ the Council ordered that William Napier should be sent to Edinburgh, and imprisoned during pleasure in the Tolbooth there, while the rest of the prisoners should remain in durance at Montrose. In this case the Council ultimately took a lenient course. On a humble petition from Napier, representing the injury he would sustain in his business from an intended voyage being stopped, he was ordered to be set at liberty after about a fortnight’s confinement. Three of the company were ordered, on petition, to be liberated eight months after, and on the ensuing day a general order was issued for the liberation of any other Quakers that might still remain in confinement at Montrose.—P. C. R.
1671.
A general order was issued by the Council, in March 1672, to the magistrates of Aberdeen, commanding them to execute the laws against a number of the citizens who had deserted the parish churches on account of Quakerism, enjoining that these people should be strictly punished according to act of parliament—that is, fined in the proportion of a fourth of their means for the offence.
In March 1673, there were eleven men in prison at Kelso for attending a Quaker meeting; but the Council, unwilling to keep them confined till the circuit court could try them, sent the Earl of Roxburgh with a commission to judge whether they might be set at liberty or not.
The liberty of conscience which the Quakers asserted as a principle made them unscrupulous in associating with papists, and this formed one of the strongest grounds of prejudice against them. Law relates a childish story of a gentleman Quaker at Montrose being induced by his daughter to repent, and return to church, where he confessed that the chief Quakers kept up a correspondence with the chief papists and with the pope; as also that they ‘had converse with Satan.’