The head men of the country, deprived of the presence of their chief, the marquis, were obliged to bow to the rule of General Munro. Some came in, and undertook to join the Covenanting army; others, who did not do so, submitted to large fines. ‘Neither work-horse nor saddle-horse was left about Strathbogie, but either the master was forced to buy his own horses, or let them go for the service of the army;’ all arms being likewise taken from them. ‘Baron, gentleman, herd, and hireman,’ all alike suffered. Amongst other spoil, Munro seized a great quantity of home-made cloth which he found bleaching about the country, hanging it over the lofty walls of Strathbogie Castle to dry—‘pity to behold!’ At length, after oppressing the country for upwards of a month, this Covenanting party ‘flitted their camp,’ previously setting fire to their wooden lodges, and emptying out what was unspent from the girnels. ‘They left that country almost manless, moneyless, horseless, and armless.’—Spal.
Aug. 5.
At the command of a committee of the General Assembly, some memorials of the ancient worship, hitherto surviving in Aberdeen, were removed. In Machar Kirk, they ‘ordained our blessed Lord Jesus Christ his arms to be hewen out of the front of the pulpit, and to take down the portrait of our blessed Virgin Mary, and her dear son baby Jesus in her arms, that had stood since the up-putting thereof, in curious work, under the sill-ring at the west end of the pend whereon the great steeple stands.... Besides, where there was ane crucifix set in glassen windows, this he [the Master of Forbes] caused pull out in honest men’s houses. He caused ane mason strike out Christ’s arms in hewen wark on ilk end of Bishop Gavin Dunbar’s tomb, and siclike chisel out the name of Jesus, drawn cypher-wise IHS, out of the timber wall on the fore-side of Machar aile, anent the consistory door. The crucifix on the Old Town cross dung down; the crucifix on the New Town cross closed up, being loath to break the stone; the crucifix on the west end of St Nicholas’ Kirk in New Aberdeen dung down, whilk was never troubled before.’—Spal.
Aug. 30.
1640.
This day, being Sunday, a dismal accident happened, of some consequence for its bearing on the interests of the Covenant, as it caused the destruction of a considerable number of gentlemen who were preparing to act in that cause. The Earl of Haddington was at this time stationed at Dunglass Castle, in Berwickshire, along with a number of other Covenanting chiefs, and a store of ammunition. On the day noted, the house was blown up by the explosion of the powder, which was placed in a vault underneath. There perished the earl himself, his brother Robert, and a bastard brother; Colonel Alexander Erskine, son of the Earl of Mar; Sir John Hamilton of Redhouse; Sir Gideon Baillie of Lochend; James Inglis of Ingliston; John Coupar of Gogar; Sir Alexander Hamilton of Innerwick; and some others, including about fifty-four servants, men and women; while thirty gentlemen, and others of inferior degree, were sore hurt, but not irrecoverably. It was thought that an English page, named Edward Paris, who was trusted by the earl with the key of the vault, set fire to the powder voluntarily, in consequence of pet; but accident is much more probable. ‘No part of him was ever found but ane arm, holding ane iron spoon in his hand.’
‘One thing wonderful happened, about eight of the clock, on the Thursday at night, before the blowing up of the house of Dunglass. There appeared a very great pillar of fire to arise from the north-east of Dunbar, as appeared to them in Fife who did behold it, and so ascended towards the south, until it approached the vertical point of our hemisphere, yielding light as the moon at her full, and by little evanishing until it became like a parallax, and so quite evanished about eleven of the clock in the night.’—Bal.
The Earl of Haddington, being only the second generation of a family raised by state employment and royal favour to extraordinary wealth, might have been expected to take no part against King Charles. It is stated that when the king heard of the accident, he remarked that ‘albeit Lord Haddington had been very ungrateful to him, yet he was sorry that he had not at his dying some time to repent.’[89]