A Short History of Scotland by Andrew Lang

A >> Andrew Lang >> A Short History of Scotland

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19

CHAPTER XXVI. THE RESTORATION.

There was "dancing and derray" in Scotland among the laity when the king
came to his own again. The darkest page in the national history seemed
to have been turned; the conquering English were gone with their
abominable tolerance, their craze for soap and water, their aversion to
witch-burnings. The nobles and gentry would recover their lands and
compensation for their losses; there would be offices to win, and "the
spoils of office."

It seems that in Scotland none of the lessons of misfortune had been
learned. Since January the chiefs of the milder party of preachers, the
Resolutioners,--they who had been reconciled with the Engagers,--were
employing the Rev. James Sharp, who had been a prisoner in England, as
their agent with Monk, with Lauderdale, in April, with Charles in
Holland, and, again, in London. Sharp was no fanatic. From the first he
assured his brethren, Douglas of Edinburgh, Baillie, and the rest, that
there was no chance for "rigid Presbyterianism." They could conceive of
no Presbyterianism which was not rigid, in the manner of Andrew Melville,
to whom his king was "Christ's silly vassal." Sharp warned them early
that in face of the irreconcilable Protesters, "moderate Episcopacy"
would be preferred; and Douglas himself assured Sharp that the new
generation in Scotland "bore a heart-hatred to the Covenant," and are
"wearied of the yoke of presbyterial government."

This was true: the ruling classes had seen too much of presbyterial
government, and would prefer bishops as long as they were not pampered
and all-powerful. On the other hand the lesser gentry, still more their
godly wives, the farmers and burgesses, and the preachers, regarded the
very shadow of Episcopacy as a breach of the Covenant and an insult to
the Almighty. The Covenanters had forced the Covenant on the consciences
of thousands, from the king downwards, who in soul and conscience loathed
it. They were to drink of the same cup--Episcopacy was to be forced on
them by fines and imprisonments. Scotland, her people and rulers were
moving in a vicious circle. The Resolutioners admitted that to allow the
Protesters to have any hand in affairs was "to breed continual distemper
and disorders," and Baillie was for banishing the leaders of the
Protesters, irreconcilables like the Rev. James Guthrie, to the Orkney
islands. But the Resolutioners, on the other hand, were no less eager to
stop the use of the liturgy in Charles's own household, and to persecute
every sort of Catholic, Dissenter, Sectary, and Quaker in Scotland.
Meanwhile Argyll, in debt, despised on all sides, and yet dreaded, was
holding a great open-air Communion meeting of Protesters at Paisley, in
the heart of the wildest Covenanting region (May 27, 1660). He was still
dangerous; he was trying to make himself trusted by the Protesters, who
were opposed to Charles. It may be doubted if any great potentate in
Scotland except the Marquis wished to revive the constitutional triumphs
of Argyll's party in the last Parliament of Charles I. Charles now named
his Privy Council and Ministers without waiting for parliamentary
assent--though his first Parliament would have assented to anything. He
chose only his late supporters: Glencairn who raised his standard in
1653; Rothes, a humorous and not a cruel voluptuary; and, as Secretary
for Scotland in London, Lauderdale, who had urged him to take the
Covenant, and who for twenty years was to be his buffoon, his favourite,
and his wavering and unscrupulous adviser. Among these greedy and
treacherous profligates there would, had he survived, have been no place
for Montrose.

In defiance of warnings from omens, second-sighted men, and sensible men,
Argyll left the safe sanctuary of his mountains and sea-straits, and
betook himself to London, "a fey man." Most of his past was covered by
an Act of Indemnity, but not his doings in 1653. He was arrested before
he saw the king's face (July 8, 1660), and lay in the Tower till, in
December, he was taken to be tried for treason in Scotland.

Sharp's friends were anxious to interfere in favour of establishing
Presbyterianism in England; he told them that the hope was vain; he
repeatedly asked for leave to return home, and, while an English preacher
assured Charles that the rout of Worcester had been God's vengeance for
his taking of the Covenant, Sharp (June 25) told his Resolutioners that
"the Protesters' doom is dight."

Administration in Scotland was intrusted to the Committee of Estates whom
Monk (1650) had captured at Alyth, and with them Glencairn, as
Chancellor, entered Edinburgh on August 22. Next day, while the
Committee was busy, James Guthrie and some Protester preachers met, and,
in the old way, drew up a "supplication." They denounced religious
toleration, and asked for the establishment of Presbytery in England, and
the filling of all offices with Covenanters. They were all arrested and
accused of attempting to "rekindle civil war," which would assuredly have
followed had their prayer been accepted. Next year Guthrie was hanged.
But ten days after his arrest Sharp had brought down a letter of Charles
to the Edinburgh Presbytery, promising to "protect and preserve the
government of the Church of Scotland as it is established by law." Had
the words run "as it may be established by law" (in Parliament) it would
not have been a dishonourable quibble--as it was.

Parliament opened on New Year's Day 1661, with Middleton as Commissioner.
In the words of Sir George Mackenzie, then a very young advocate and man
of letters, "never was Parliament so obsequious." The king was declared
"supreme Governor over all persons and in all causes" (a blow at Kirk
judicature), and all Acts between 1633 and 1661 were rescinded, just as
thirty years of ecclesiastical legislation had been rescinded by the
Covenanters. A sum of 40,000 pounds yearly was settled on the king.
Argyll was tried, was defended by young George Mackenzie, and, when he
seemed safe, his doom was fixed by the arrival of a Campbell from London
bearing some of his letters to Lilburne and Monk (1653-1655) which the
Indemnity of 1651 did not cover. He died, by the axe (not the rope, like
Montrose), with dignity and courage.

The question of Church government in Scotland was left to Charles and his
advisers. The problem presented to the Government of the Restoration by
the Kirk was much more difficult and complicated than historians usually
suppose. The pretensions which the preachers had inherited from Knox and
Andrew Melville were practically incompatible, as had been proved, with
the existence of the State. In the southern and western shires,--such as
those of Dumfries, Galloway, Ayr, Renfrew, and Lanark,--the forces which
attacked the Engagers had been mustered; these shires had backed Strachan
and Ker and Guthrie in the agitation against the king, the Estates, and
the less violent clergy, after Dunbar. But without Argyll, and with no
probable noble leaders, they could do little harm; they had done none
under the English occupation, which abolished the General Assembly. To
have restored the Assembly, or rather two Assemblies--that of the
Protesters and that of the Resolutionists,--would certainly have been
perilous. Probably the wisest plan would have been to grant a General
Assembly, to meet _after_ the session of Parliament; not, as had been the
custom, to meet before it and influence or coerce the Estates. Had that
measure proved perilous to peace it need not have been repeated,--the
Kirk might have been left in the state to which the English had reduced
it.

This measure would not have so much infuriated the devout as did the
introduction of "black prelacy," and the ejection of some 300 adored
ministers, chiefly in the south-west, and "the making of a desert first,
and then peopling it with owls and satyrs" (the curates), as Archbishop
Leighton described the action of 1663. There ensued the finings of all
who would not attend the ministrations of "owls and satyrs,"--a grievance
which produced two rebellions (1666 and 1679) and a doctrine of
anarchism, and was only worn down by eternal and cruel persecutions.

By violence the Restoration achieved its aim: the Revolution of 1688
entered into the results; it was a bitter moment in the evolution of
Scotland--a moment that need never have existed. Episcopacy was
restored, four bishops were consecrated, and Sharp accepted (as might
have long been foreseen) the See of St Andrews. He was henceforth
reckoned a Judas, and assuredly he had ruined his character for honour:
he became a puppet of Government, despised by his masters, loathed by the
rest of Scotland.

In May-September 1662, Parliament ratified the change to Episcopacy. It
seems to have been thought that few preachers except the Protesters would
be recalcitrant, refuse collation from bishops, and leave their manses.
In point of fact, though they were allowed to consult their consciences
till February 1663, nearly 300 ministers preferred their consciences to
their livings. They remained centres of the devotion of their flocks,
and the "curates," hastily gathered, who took their places, were
stigmatised as ignorant and profligate, while, as they were resisted,
rabbled, and daily insulted, the country was full of disorder.

The Government thus mortally offended the devout classes, though no
attempt was made to introduce a liturgy. In the churches the services
were exactly, or almost exactly, what they had been; but excommunications
could now only be done by sanction of the bishops. Witch-burnings, in
spite of the opposition of George Mackenzie and the Council, were soon as
common as under the Covenant. Oaths declaring it unlawful to enter into
Covenants or take up arms against the king were imposed on all persons in
office.

Middleton, of his own authority, now proposed the ostracism, by
parliamentary ballot, of twelve persons reckoned dangerous. Lauderdale
was mainly aimed at (it is a pity that the bullet did not find its
billet), with Crawford, Cassilis, Tweeddale, Lothian, and other peers who
did not approve of the recent measures. But Lauderdale, in London,
seeing Charles daily, won his favour; Middleton was recalled (March
1663), and Lauderdale entered freely on his wavering, unscrupulous,
corrupt, and disastrous period of power.

The Parliament of June 1663, meeting under Rothes, was packed by the
least constitutional method of choosing the Lords of the Articles.
Waristoun was brought from France, tried, and hanged, "expressing more
fear than I ever saw," wrote Lauderdale, whose Act "against Separation
and Disobedience to Ecclesiastical Authority" fined abstainers from
services in their parish churches. In 1664, Sharp, who was despised by
Lauderdale and Glencairn, obtained the erection of that old grievance--a
Court of High Commission, including bishops, to punish nonconformists.
Sir James Turner was intrusted with the task of dragooning them, by
fining and the quartering of soldiers on those who would not attend the
curates and would keep conventicles. Turner was naturally clement and
good-natured, but wine often deprived him of his wits, and his soldiery
behaved brutally. Their excesses increased discontent, and war with
Holland (1664) gave them hopes of a Dutch ally. Conventicles became
common; they had an organisation of scouts and sentinels. The
malcontents intrigued with Holland in 1666, and schemed to capture the
three Keys of the Kingdom--the castles of Stirling, Dumbarton, and
Edinburgh. The States-General promised, when this was done, to send
ammunition and 150,000 gulden (July 1666).

When rebellion did break out it had no foreign aid, and a casual origin.
In the south-west Turner commanded but seventy soldiers, scattered all
about the country. On November 14 some of them mishandled an old man in
the clachan of Dalry, on the Ken. A soldier was shot in revenge
(Mackenzie speaks as if a conventicle was going on in the neighbourhood);
people gathered in arms, with the Laird of Corsack, young Maxwell of
Monreith, and M'Lennan; caught Turner, undressed, in Dumfries, and
carried him with them as they "went conventicling about," as Mackenzie
writes, holding prayer-meetings, led by Wallace, an old soldier of the
Covenant. At Lanark they renewed the Covenant. Dalziel of Binns, who
had learned war in Russia, led a pursuing force. The rebels were
disappointed in hopes of Dutch or native help at Edinburgh; they turned,
when within three miles of the town, into the passes of the Pentland
Hills, and at Bullion Green, on November 28, displayed fine soldierly
qualities and courage, but fled, broken, at nightfall. The soldiers and
countryfolk, who were unsympathetic, took a number of prisoners,
preachers and laymen, on whom the Council, under the presidency of Sharp,
exercised a cruelty bred of terror. The prisoners were defended by
George Mackenzie: it has been strangely stated that he was Lord Advocate,
and persecuted them! Fifteen rebels were hanged: the use of torture to
extract information was a return, under Fletcher, the King's Advocate, to
a practice of Scottish law which had been almost in abeyance since
1638--except, of course, in the case of witches. Turner vainly tried to
save from the Boot {208} the Laird of Corsack, who had protected his life
from the fanatics. "The executioner favoured Mr Mackail," says the Rev.
Mr Kirkton, himself a sufferer later. This Mr Mackail, when a lad of
twenty-one (1662), had already denounced the rulers, in a sermon, as on
the moral level of Haman and Judas.

It is entirely untrue that Sharp concealed a letter from the king
commanding that no blood should be shed (Charles detested hanging
people). If any one concealed his letter, it was Burnet, Archbishop of
Glasgow. Dalziel now sent Ballantyne to supersede Turner and to exceed
him in ferocity; and Bellenden and Tweeddale wrote to Lauderdale
deprecating the cruelties and rapacity of the reaction, and avowing
contempt of Sharp. He was "snibbed," confined to his diocese, and "cast
down, yea, lower than the dust," wrote Rothes to Lauderdale. He was held
to have exaggerated in his reports the forces of the spirit of revolt;
but Tweeddale, Sir Robert Murray, and Kincardine found when in power that
matters were really much more serious than they had supposed. In the
disturbed districts--mainly the old Strathclyde and Pictish Galloway--the
conformist ministers were perpetually threatened, insulted, and robbed.

According to a sympathetic historian, "on the day when Charles should
abolish bishops and permit free General Assemblies, the western Whigs
would become his law-abiding subjects; but till that day they would be
irreconcilable." But a Government is not always well advised in yielding
to violence. Moreover, when Government had deserted its clergy, and had
granted free General Assemblies, the two Covenants would re-arise, and
the pretensions of the clergy to dominate the State would be revived.
Lauderdale drifted into a policy of alternate "Indulgences" or
tolerations, and of repression, which had the desired effect, at the
maximum of cost to justice and decency. Before England drove James II.
from the throne, but a small remnant of fanatics were in active
resistance, and the Covenants had ceased to be dangerous.

A scheme of partial toleration was mooted in 1667, and Rothes was removed
from his practical dictatorship, while Turner was made the scapegoat of
Rothes, Sharp, and Dalziel. The result of the scheme of toleration was
an increase in disorder. Bishop Leighton had a plan for abolishing all
but a shadow of Episcopacy; but the temper of the recalcitrants displayed
itself in a book, 'Naphtali,' advocating the right of the godly to murder
their oppressors. This work contained provocations to anarchism, and, in
Knox's spirit, encouraged any Phinehas conscious of a "call" from Heaven
to do justice on such persons as he found guilty of troubling the godly.

Fired by such Christian doctrines, on July 11, 1668, one Mitchell--"a
preacher of the Gospel, and a youth of much zeal and piety," says Wodrow
the historian--shot at Sharp, wounded the Bishop of Orkney in the street
of Edinburgh, and escaped. This event delayed the project of
conciliation, but in July 1669 the first Indulgence was promulgated. On
making certain concessions, outed ministers were to be restored. Two-and-
forty came in, including the Resolutioner Douglas, in 1660 the
correspondent of Sharp. The Indulgence allowed the indulged to reject
Episcopal collation; but while brethren exiled in Holland denounced the
scheme (these brethren, led by Mr MacWard, opposed all attempts at
reconciliation), it also offended the Archbishops, who issued a
Remonstrance. Sharp was silenced; Burnet of Glasgow was superseded, and
the see was given to the saintly but unpractical Leighton. By 1670
conventiclers met in arms, and "a clanking Act," as Lauderdale called it,
menaced them with death: Charles II. resented but did not rescind it. In
fact, the disorders and attacks on conformist ministers were of a
violence much overlooked by our historians. In 1672 a second Indulgence
split the Kirk into factions--the exiles in Holland maintaining that
preachers who accepted it should be held men unholy, false brethren. But
the Indulged increased in numbers, and finally in influence.

To such a man as Leighton the whole quarrel seemed "a scuffle of drunken
men in the dark." An Englishman entering a Scottish church at this time
found no sort of liturgy; prayers and sermons were what the minister
chose to make them--in fact, there was no persecution for religion, says
Sir George Mackenzie. But if men thought even a shadow of Episcopacy an
offence to Omnipotence, and the king's authority in ecclesiastical cases
a usurping of "the Crown Honours of Christ"; if they consequently broke
the law by attending armed conventicles and assailing conformist
preachers, and then were fined or imprisoned,--from their point of view
they were being persecuted for their religion. Meanwhile they bullied
and "rabbled" the "curates" for _their_ religion: such was Leighton's
"drunken scuffle in the dark."

In 1672 Lauderdale married the rapacious and tyrannical daughter of Will
Murray--of old the whipping-boy of Charles I., later a disreputable
intriguer. Lauderdale's own ferocity of temper and his greed had created
so much dislike that in the Parliament of 1673 he was met by a
constitutional opposition headed by the Duke of Hamilton, and with Sir
George Mackenzie as its orator. Lauderdale consented to withdraw
monopolies on salt, tobacco, and brandy; to other grievances he would not
listen (the distresses of the Kirk were not brought forward), and he
dissolved the Parliament. The opposition tried to get at him through the
English Commons, who brought against him charges like those which were
fatal to Strafford. They failed; and Lauderdale, holding seven offices
himself, while his brother Haltoun was Master of the Mint, ruled through
a kind of clique of kinsmen and creatures.

Leighton, in despair, resigned his see: the irreconcilables of the Kirk
had crowned him with insults. The Kirk, he said, "abounded in furious
zeal and endless debates about the empty name and shadow of a difference
in government, in the meanwhile not having of solemn and orderly public
worship as much as a shadow."

Wodrow, the historian of the sufferings of the Kirk, declares that
through the riotous proceedings of the religious malcontents "the country
resembled war as much as peace." But an Act of Council of 1677 bidding
landowners sign a bond for the peaceable behaviour of all on their lands
was refused obedience by many western lairds. They could not enforce
order, they said: hence it seemed to follow that there was much disorder.
Those who refused were, by a stretch of the law of "law-burrows," bound
over to keep the peace of the Government. Lauderdale, having nothing
that we would call a police, little money, and a small insufficient force
of regulars, called in "the Highland Host," the retainers of Atholl,
Glenorchy, Mar, Moray, and Airlie, and other northern lords, and
quartered them on the disturbed districts for a month. They were then
sent home bearing their spoils (February 1678). Atholl and Perth (later
to be the Catholic minister of James II.) now went over to "the Party,"
the opposition, Hamilton's party; Hamilton and others rode to London to
complain against Lauderdale, but he, aided by the silver tongue of
Mackenzie, who had changed sides, won over Charles, and Lauderdale's
assailants were helpless.

Great unpopularity and disgrace were achieved by the treatment of the
pious Mitchell, who, we have seen, missed Sharp and shot the Bishop of
Orkney in 1668. In 1674 he was taken, and confessed before the Council,
after receiving from Rothes, then Chancellor, assurance of his life: this
with Lauderdale's consent. But when brought before the judges, he
retracted his confession. He was kept a prisoner on the Bass Rock; in
1676 was tortured; in January 1678 was again tried. Haltoun (who in a
letter of 1674 had mentioned the assurance of life), Rothes, Sharp, and
Lauderdale, all swore that, to their memory, no assurance had been given
in 1674. Mitchell's counsel asked to be allowed to examine the Register
of the Council, but, for some invisible technical reasons, the Lords of
the Justiciary refused; the request, they said, came too late. Mackenzie
prosecuted; he had been Mitchell's counsel in 1674, and it is impossible
to follow the reasoning by which he justifies the condemnation and
hanging of Mitchell in January 1678. Sharp was supposed to have urged
Mitchell's trial, and to have perjured himself, which is far from
certain. Though Mitchell was guilty, the manner of his taking off was
flagrantly unjust and most discreditable to all concerned.

Huge armed conventicles, and others led by Welsh, a preacher, marched
about through the country in December 1678 to May 1679. In April 1679
two soldiers were murdered while in bed; next day John Graham of
Claverhouse, who had served under the Prince of Orange with credit, and
now comes upon the scene, reported that Welsh was organising an armed
rebellion, and that the peasants were seizing the weapons of the militia.
Balfour of Kinloch (Burley) and Robert Hamilton, a laird in Fife, were
the leaders of that extreme sect which was feared as much by the indulged
preachers as by the curates, and, on May 2, 1679, Balfour, with Hackstoun
of Rathillet (who merely looked on), and other pious desperadoes, passed
half an hour in clumsily hacking Sharp to death, in the presence of his
daughter, at Magus Moor near St Andrews.

The slayers, says one of them, thanked the Lord "for leading them by His
Holy Spirit in every step they stepped in that matter," and it is obvious
that mere argument was unavailing with gentlemen who cherished such
opinions. In the portraits of Sharp we see a face of refined goodness
which makes the physiognomist distrust his art. From very early times
Cromwell had styled Sharp "Sharp of that ilk." He was subtle, he had no
fanaticism, he warned his brethren in 1660 of the impossibility of
restoring their old authority and discipline. But when he accepted an
archbishopric he sold his honour; his servility to Charles and Lauderdale
was disgusting; fear made him cruel; his conduct at Mitchell's last trial
is, at best, ambiguous; and the hatred in which he was held is proved by
the falsehoods which his enemies told about his private life and his
sorceries.

The murderers crossed the country, joined the armed fanatics of the west,
under Robert Hamilton, and on Restoration Day (May 29) burned Acts of the
Government at Rutherglen. Claverhouse rode out of Glasgow with a small
force, to inquire into this proceeding; met the armed insurgents in a
strong position defended by marshes and small lochs; sent to Lord Ross at
Glasgow for reinforcements which did not arrive; and has himself told how
he was defeated, pursued, and driven back into Glasgow. "This may be
accounted the beginning of the rebellion in my opinion."

Hamilton shot with his own hand one of the prisoners, and reckoned the
sparing of the others "one of our first steppings aside." Men so
conscientious as Hamilton were rare in his party, which was ruined
presently by its own distracted counsels.

The forces of the victors of Drumclog were swollen by their success, but
they were repulsed with loss in an attack on Glasgow. The commands of
Ross and Claverhouse were then withdrawn to Stirling, and when
Livingstone joined them at Larbert, the whole army mustered but 1800
men--so weak were the regulars. The militia was raised, and the king
sent down his illegitimate son, Monmouth, husband of the heiress of
Buccleuch, at the head of several regiments of redcoats. Argyll was not
of service; he was engaged in private war with the Macleans, who refused
an appeal for help from the rebels. They, in Glasgow and at Hamilton,
were quarrelling over the Indulgence: the extremists called Mr Welsh's
party "rotten-hearted"--Welsh would not reject the king's authority--the
Welshites were the more numerous. On June 22 the Clyde, at Bothwell
Bridge, separated the rebels--whose preachers were inveighing against
each other--from Monmouth's army. Monmouth refused to negotiate till the
others laid down their arms, and after a brief artillery duel, the Royal
infantry carried the bridge, and the rest of the affair was pursuit by
the cavalry. The rival Covenanting leaders, Russel, one of Sharp's
murderers, and Ure, give varying accounts of the affair, and each party
blames the other. The rebel force is reckoned at from five to seven
thousand, the Royal army was of 2300 according to Russel. "Some
hundreds" of the Covenanters fell, and "many hundreds," the Privy Council
reported, were taken.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19