The blame of the murder has been the more plausibly thrown upon the whole party, that it was immediately followed by an insurrection. On the 29th of May, which was the king’s birthday, a party of about eighty deliberately marched into the town of Rutherglen, three miles from Glasgow, where they publicly burnt all the acts of parliament against Presbytery. They afterwards extinguished the bonfires, in order to mark their disapprobation of all holidays of human institution, and concluded by fixing upon the Cross a declaration of their sentiments respecting the late proceedings of the government. Having done this, they retired to a mountainous part of the country between Lanarkshire and Ayrshire, where there was to be a grand conventicle on the ensuing Sunday. The government looked upon this proceeding as an act of rebellion, and despatched a military party after the offenders, consisting of three troops of newly levied dragoons, under the command of Captain Graham of Claverhouse, a man of remarkable energy of character, who had recently entered the king’s service in Scotland. On Sunday, Graham came up with the insurgents, at a place near Loudoun Hill, where they were assembled at devotion. They were about forty horse and two hundred foot, under the command of a gentleman named Hamilton, but without the least discipline or acquaintance with military affairs. Graham fired a volley, which they eluded in a great measure by falling upon their faces. He then tried to charge them through a morass, behind which they were placed, but in doing so threw his men into confusion, and exposed himself to the assault of the enemy. They took instant advantage of his distress, attacked the dragoons sword in hand, and soon compelled them to retire. Graham had his horse shot under him, and about twenty of his men were slain, while only one of the insurgents had fallen. A minister and some country-people whom he had brought along with him as prisoners were rescued by the victors.
The broken dragoons retreated to Glasgow, which was then garrisoned by about eight hundred troops. The insurgents, flushed with their success, and thinking it safer to go on than to draw back, marched next morning to that city with considerably increased forces. The troops barricaded the streets, so that the country-people could make little impression upon them, while they were greatly exposed in their turn. Eight were slain in this needless encounter; the rest retreated in rather low spirits to Hamilton, where they formed a kind of camp.
Their numbers were here augmented in a short time to about five thousand, chiefly peasants and farmers of Lanarkshire, Ayrshire, and Galloway, but comprising also a few gentlemen of property, though none of any note. Hamilton continued to exercise a nominal command, though rather from his having been the leading man at the commencement, than from any idea of his fitness for the situation. All of them had arms, and many of them horses; but there was neither discipline, nor any attempt to impose it. The whole insurrection proceeded upon mere impulse. The unfortunate people acted, it would appear, simply from the pressure of immediate circumstances, glad to protect themselves, for a while, even at the risk of utter destruction, against an oppression they could no longer endure.
The Privy Council collected all its disposable forces at Edinburgh, and requested instructions from the court. It was speedily determined that the Duke of Monmouth should be sent down to take command of the army. This was the eldest natural son of the king; a youth of amiable character, anxious for popularity, and intimately connected with the English non-conformists, whom he expected to favour him in his views upon the succession. The duke arrived in Edinburgh on the 19th of June, and led forward the army to meet the insurgents. He marched very slowly, in order, as was supposed, to afford them an opportunity of dispersing; but they shewed no disposition to avail themselves of his kindness. They had spent the three weeks during which they had existed as an army, not in training themselves to arms, or arranging themselves into proper divisions, but in disputing about the spiritual objects for which they were in arms. One great cause of division was the Indulgence, which some were for condemning, and others for overlooking; they were also greatly divided as to the propriety of acknowledging their allegiance to the king. In these abstractions they lost all view of practical measures. They called such things ‘trusting in the arm of flesh,’ for which, of course, they could adduce an abundance of condemnatory texts.
On Sunday, the 22d of June, Monmouth had advanced to Bothwell, a village about a mile distant from the insurgent camp. The river Clyde ran between the two armies, and was only to be crossed by Bothwell Bridge, a long narrow pass, highly capable of defence. The non-conformists, who lay upon the ground beyond the bridge, were still, at this late moment, holding high disputes, and there was even a proposal for remodelling the army, and appointing new officers. The moderate party sent two gentlemen in disguise—Mr David Hume and the Laird of Kaitloch—to present a supplication to the duke, in which it was proposed to disperse, on the condition that their grievances should be redressed. But Monmouth was unable, from his instructions, to treat with them unless they should have first laid down their arms. He charged the two deputies with a message to that effect, threatening if they did not throw themselves upon his mercy within half an hour, that he should advance with his army. When these gentlemen returned, they found the army on the point of falling to pieces through dissension. In truth, many must have now been only seeking for occasion to withdraw themselves from an adventure which they saw to be ruinous. The most zealous and clamorous were the first to retire. The rest remained, unable either to take advantage of the duke’s proposal, or to prepare for giving him battle. At the time he had specified, he advanced his troops to the brink of the river, and sent a large party to force the passage of the bridge. That point was stoutly defended, for nearly an hour, by some men from Galloway and Stirlingshire, under Hackstoun of Rathillet. At length, when their ammunition ran short, they sent back to the main body for a supply, which was denied. They were of course obliged to retire, and leave a free passage to the royal troops. When the horse soon after rode off from the field, the foot, left defenceless, could not stand an instant against the charge of the enemy. Excepting twelve hundred, who laid down their arms, the whole body took to flight, without having made the least effort at resistance. About three hundred were cut down in the pursuit.
The prisoners were brought in a body to Edinburgh, and confined, like sheep in a fold, within the gloomy precincts of the Greyfriars’ Church-yard, where, for four months, they had no seat or couch but the bare ground, and no covering but the sky. Two clergymen, Kid and King, were executed. Of the rest, all were set at liberty who would own the insurrection to have been rebellion, and the slaughter of the archbishop murder, and promise never more to take up arms against the government. Those who refused were sent to the Plantations; a mode of disposing prisoners which had been introduced by Cromwell.
Under all the severities of this reign, the spirit of English liberty was still kept alive. The king having been long married without any children, his brother, the Duke of York, was heir-presumptive. But this prince, besides various natural faults of character, had unfitted himself for governing a Protestant people by becoming an avowed convert to the Catholic faith. An attempt was made in the House of Commons to pass an act for excluding him from the succession; it was read a second time by a majority of 207 against 128; and the king only evaded the question by proroguing the parliament. The duke, seeing himself so unpopular in England, resolved to make friends, if possible, in Scotland; so that, in the event of any resistance to his succession in the former country, he might bring up an army of Scotch to his assistance. He therefore paid a visit to Edinburgh in October 1679, and revived the long dormant court of Holyroodhouse. As the persecution had been in a great measure a local affair, it operated little against his present views. The gentry, except in the western district, were chiefly Cavaliers; in the Highlands, altogether so. Among a people remote from a court, the mere presence of royalty—its slightest acts of condescension—are sure to communicate a favourable impression, although, perhaps, accompanied by but little merit or virtue in the royal person. We are not therefore to be surprised that the duke somewhat strengthened himself in Scotland on this occasion. He returned at the end of February 1680 to London.
The excitement of the time now gave rise to a new and more fanatical sect, who renounced their allegiance, and issued anathemas not only against their persecutors, but against the great mass of their brethren, who had submitted to the government. A minister named Cargill and his associate, Cameron, with about twenty armed men, appeared at Sanquhar on the 22d of June, and there affixed upon the market-cross a declaration, in which they disavowed all obedience to the king, and protested against the succession of the Duke of York. Cameron was soon after killed, with some of his friends, at Airdsmoss, and Hackstoun of Rathillet was seized and executed. Cargill, so far from being deterred, held a large conventicle at Torwood, where he formally delivered over the king, his brother, and ministers, to Satan, after the usual forms of excommunication. He was soon after taken prisoner and hanged. The whole proceedings of this sect were seriously injurious to the great body of Presbyterians; as the government, wilfully overlooking remonstrances to the contrary, held all that was done as criminating the whole body, and took occasion from that to exercise greater severities.
In October 1680, the Duke of York was again obliged, by the patriotic party in England, to take up his residence at Holyroodhouse. A bill for excluding him from the throne was now actually passed by the House of Commons, but was lost in the House of Lords by thirty-three against thirty. On Christmas Day, the spirit of the Scottish people against a Catholic successor was manifested by the students of the Edinburgh University, who, notwithstanding every effort to prevent them, publicly burnt the pope in effigy. A parliament, the first for nine years, sat down in July 1681, the duke acting as commissioner. A test oath was here framed, to be taken by all persons in public trusts, as an assurance of their loyalty; but it turned out to be such a jumble of contradictory obligations, that many persons, including eighty of the established clergy, refused to take it. The Earl of Argyle, son to the late marquis, and a faithful friend to the Protestant religion, would only receive it with an explanation, which was held to be an act of treason, and he was accordingly tried and condemned to death. The real object of this prosecution was to destroy a powerful Highland chief, who might be disposed to use his influence against the succession of the Duke of York. His lordship contrived to escape to Holland.
In the latter part of this year, the party left by Cargill and Cameron formed themselves into a secret society, and on the 12th of January 1682, published at Lanark a declaration of adherence to the transactions at Sanquhar, which they affected to consider as the work of a convention of estates. This, of course, only provoked new severities.