July 28.
The Shorter Catechism recently framed by the Westminster Assembly of Divines, for the instruction ‘of such as are of weaker capacity,’ and which has since been in constant and universal use in Scotland, was this day sanctioned by the General Assembly, sitting in Edinburgh.
Oct. 4.
1648.
Oliver Cromwell paid his first visit to Edinburgh. He came hot from the destruction of the Duke of Hamilton’s semi-royalist Scotch army at Preston, designing to confer with the heads of the ultra-presbyterian party for the extinction of that kind of opposition in the northern part of the island. The Earl of Kirkcudbright and Major-general Holburn conducted him into the city, where he was lodged very handsomely in the Earl of Moray’s house in the Canongate; a strong guard of his own troops was mounted at the gate. ‘The Earl of Moray’s house,’ says Thomas Carlyle, ‘still stands in the Canongate, well known to the inhabitants there—a solid spacious mansion, which, when all bright and new two hundred years ago, must have been a very adequate lodging.’ ‘As soon as he came there, the Chancellor [Loudon], the Marquis of Argyle, the Earl of Cassillis, the Lord Burleigh, the Provost of Edinburgh,[121] with many other lords and gentlemen, went to pay their respects to him; and the next day, the Earl of Cassillis and Sir Archibald Johnston of Warriston went to visit him on the part of the Committee of Estates, to know what he had to communicate to them. Cromwell presented them a writing, whereby he demanded that, in order to keep Hamilton’s party from being able to rise up again in Scotland, where they might embroil the two kingdoms, they would be pleased to order that none of those who had carried arms under his command, or who had consented to the invasion of England, should have any public employment in Scotland. The committee granted him that article.’ Such was the ostensible, and, as far as appears on any good evidence, the real business between Cromwell and the committee men. Bishop Guthry adds the vulgar royalist rumour: ‘While Cromwell remained in the Canongate, those that haunted him most were, besides the Marquis of Argyle, Loudon the chancellor, the Earl of Lothian, the Lords Arbuthnot, Elcho, and Burleigh; and of ministers, Mr David Dickson, Mr Robert Blair, and Mr James Guthrie. What passed among them came not to be known infallibly; but it was talked very loud, that he did communicate to them his design in reference to the king, and had their assent thereto.’
Cromwell was only three days in Edinburgh on this occasion. On Saturday, all business being adjusted, ‘“when we were about to come away, several coaches were sent to bring up the lieutenant-general, the Earl of Leven [governor of the Castle and Scotch commander-in-chief], with Sir Arthur Haselrig, and the rest of the officers, to Edinburgh Castle; where was provided a very sumptuous banquet [old Leven doing the honours], my Lord Marquis of Argyle and divers other lords being present to grace the entertainment. At our departure, many pieces of ordnance and a volley of small shot was given us from the Castle; and some lords convoying us out of the city, we were parted.” The lord provost had defrayed us all the while in the handsomest manner.’—Carlyle.
1648.
To the fall of this year is to be traced the origin of the term Whig, as applicable to a well-known party in the state. Burnet, who was likely to know the facts well, makes the following statement: ‘The south-west counties of Scotland have seldom corn enough to serve them round the year; and the northern parts producing more than they need, those in the west come in the summer to buy at Leith the stores that come from the north. From a word Whiggan, used in driving their horses, all that drove were called the Whiggamores, and, shorter, the Whigs.... After the news came down of Duke Hamilton’s defeat, the ministers animated their people to rise and march to Edinburgh; and they came up marching on the head of their parishes, with an unheard-of fury, praying and preaching all the way as they came. The Marquis of Argyle and his party came and headed them, they being about 6000. This was called the Whiggamores’ Inroad [strictly the Whigs’ Raid]; and ever after that, all that opposed the court came in contempt to be called Whigs.’