Mar. 4.
An act of grace towards the Presbyterians, passed at this time with the hope of conciliating them, had the effect of encouraging that disposition to private religious meetings, or conventicles, which for some years had given the government so much trouble. ‘From that day Scotland broke loose with conventicles of all sorts, in houses, fields, and vacant churches.... In Merse, Teviotdale, the Borders, Annandale, Nithsdale, Clydesdale, Lothian, Stirlingshire, Perthshire, Lennox, Fife, they fixed so many posts in the fields, mosses, muirs, and mountains, where multitudes gathered almost every Sabbath,’ until the time of Bothwell Bridge. ‘At these meetings, many a soul was converted to Christ, but far more turned from the bishops to profess themselves Presbyterians. The parish churches of the curates [that is, the regular parish clergy] came to be like pest-houses; few went to any of them, none to some, so the doors were kept locked. The discourse up and down Scotland was the quality and success of last Sabbath’s conventicle, who the preachers were, what the number of the people was, what the affections of the people; how sometimes the soldiers assaulted them, and sometimes killed some of them; sometimes the soldiers were beaten, and some of them killed.’
1674.
There appears to have been a band of about forty ministers who set the government at defiance in this manner, most of them young and active men. In the large towns, house conventicles prevailed; but in the country, ‘the people had a sort of affectation to the fields above houses.’ There came to be a regularity in these affairs; when the people in a rural district wished to have a conventicle minister, they sent to town to engage one. Danger made the congregations come armed. ‘Not many gentlemen of estates durst come, but many ladies, gentlewomen and commons, came in good multitudes. Wonderful conversions followed upon the sermons. People discovered their own secret scandals. Sometimes people of age bemoaned their want of baptism, and received it at these occasions. Sometimes a curate would come, and after the first sermon, stand up and profess his repentance, and afterwards would consecrate himself to that work by a solemn field-preaching. So the work of the gospel advanced in Scotland for several years.’—Kir.
June 4.
1674.
A strange scene was presented in the Parliament Close in Edinburgh. As the members of the Council approached their house of meeting, they found fifteen ladies prepared to present a petition, ‘desiring that a gospel ministry might be presented for the starving congregations of Scotland.’ There were present amongst them the widows of Mr Robert Blair and Mr John Neave, noted as entirely ‘faithful’ clergymen during the troubles; Lady Crimond, a daughter of Johnston of Warriston; a sister-in-law of the Laird of Dundas and a sister of the Earl of Melville; the rest being generally the wives of Edinburgh citizens. Seeing it was dangerous for men to appear in the form of remonstrants, these ladies had volunteered to undertake the duty. The singularity of the occasion had brought together a crowd, which filled the close, and which is said to have comprised a large proportion of the fair sex. The press was so great and so tumultuous around the councillors, that they could scarcely make their way to the council-house. As the chancellor descended from his coach, Archbishop Sharpe went close behind him, fearing bodily harm. It is alleged by Sir George Mackenzie that a design for doing some serious injury to the primate was entered into on this occasion, and that the ladies were to ‘set upon him’ when a certain member of the corps should raise her hand as a signal; but this would need confirmation. He was saluted with reproaches and cries of Judas! and Traitor! but the only approach to personal violence was a slap on the neck from one of the sisterhood, who at the same time took leave to tell him that that (meaning the neck) should yet pay for it ere all was done! One of the ladies, presenting her petition to the chancellor, he received it with a courteous salute, and listened to her with an inclined head till he got to the door of the council-chamber. Lord Stair tossed his copy to the ground, whereupon the fair petitioner reminded him he had not acted in that manner with the famous Remonstrance of 1651, which he helped to pen.
The Council took this matter in high dudgeon. They resented the personal disrespect of the scene in the Parliament Close, and they denounced the matter of the petition as tending to stir up hatred against his majesty’s government. For one thing, it ‘most falsely and scandalously bears that they [the supplicants] had long been deprived of the inestimable blessing of the public worship and ordinances of God, whereas it is notour that his majesty’s subjects do enjoy [those blessings] in great purity and peace, [there being] ane orderly ministry authorised and countenanced and established by law.’ In short, it was a seditious libel, calling for sharp punishment. Two of the ladies being brought before the Council, refused to take an oath or give evidence; the rest failed to appear on citation. The whole were put to the horn as rebels, and three suffered a short confinement.—Kir. P. C. R.