A Short History of Scotland by Andrew Lang

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The battle of Bothwell Bridge severed the extremists, Robert Hamilton,
Richard Cameron and Cargill, the famous preachers, and the rest, from the
majority of the Covenanters. They dwindled to the "Remnant," growing the
fiercer as their numbers decreased. Only two ministers were hanged;
hundreds of prisoners were banished, like Cromwell's prisoners after
Dunbar, to the American colonies. Of these some two hundred were drowned
in the wreck of their vessel off the Orkneys. The main body were penned
up in Greyfriars Churchyard; many escaped; more signed a promise to
remain peaceful, and shun conventicles. There was more of cruel
carelessness than of the deliberate cruelty displayed in the massacres
and hangings of women after Philiphaugh and Dunaverty. But the
avaricious and corrupt rulers, after 1679, headed by James, Duke of York
(Lauderdale being removed), made the rising of Bothwell Bridge the
pretext for fining and ruining hundreds of persons, especially lairds,
who were accused of helping or harbouring rebels. The officials were
rapacious for their own profit. The records of scores of trials
prosecuted for the sake of spoil, and disgraced by torture and injustice,
make miserable reading. Between the trials of the accused and the
struggle with the small minority of extremists led by Richard Cameron and
the aged Mr Cargill, the history of the country is monotonously wretched.
It was in prosecuting lairds and peasants and preachers that Sir George
Mackenzie, by nature a lenient man and a lover of literature, gained the
name of "the bluidy advocate."

Cameron and his followers rode about after issuing the wildest
manifestoes, as at Sanquhar in the shire of Dumfries (June 22, 1680).
Bruce of Earlshall was sent with a party of horse to pursue, and, in the
wild marshes of Airs Moss, in Ayrshire, Cameron "fell praying and
fighting"; while Hackstoun of Rathillet, less fortunate, was taken, and
the murder of Sharp was avenged on him with unspeakable cruelties. The
Remnant now formed itself into organised and armed societies; their
conduct made them feared and detested by the majority of the preachers,
who longed for a quiet life, not for the establishment of a Mosaic
commonwealth, and "the execution of righteous judgments" on "malignants."
Cargill was now the leader of the Remnant, and Cargill, in a conventicle
at Torwood, of his own authority excommunicated the king, the Duke of
York, Lauderdale, Rothes, Dalziel, and Mackenzie, whom he accused of
leniency to witches, among other sins. The Government apparently thought
that excommunication, to the mind of Cargill and his adherents, meant
outlawry, and that outlawry might mean the assassination of the
excommunicated. Cargill was hunted, and (July 12, 1681) was captured by
"wild Bonshaw." It was believed by his party that the decision to
execute Cargill was carried by the vote of Argyll, in the Privy Council,
and that Cargill told Rothes (who had signed the Covenant with him in
their youth) that Rothes would be the first to die. Rothes died on July
26, Cargill was hanged on July 27.

On the following day James, Duke of York, as Royal Commissioner, opened
the first Parliament since 1673-74. James secured an Act making the
right of succession to the Crown independent of differences of religion;
he, of course, was a Catholic. The Test Act was also passed, a thing so
self-contradictory in its terms that any man might take it whose sense of
humour overcame his sense of honour. Many refused, including a number of
the conformist ministers. Argyll took the Test "as far as it is
consistent with itself and with the Protestant religion."

Argyll, the son of the executed Marquis, had recovered his lands, and
acquired the title of Earl mainly through the help of Lauderdale. During
the religious troubles from 1660 onwards he had taken no great part, but
had sided with the Government, and approved of the torture of preachers.
But what ruined him now (though the facts have been little noticed) was
his disregard of the claims of his creditors, and his obtaining the lands
of the Macleans in Mull and Morven, in discharge of an enormous debt of
the Maclean chief to the Marquis, executed in 1661. The Macleans had
vainly attempted to prove that the debt was vastly inflated by familiar
processes, and had resisted in arms the invasion of the Campbells. They
had friends in Seaforth, the Mackenzies, and in the Earl of Errol and
other nobles.

These men, especially Mackenzie of Tarbet, an astute intriguer, seized
their chance when Argyll took the Test "with a qualification," and
though, at first, he satisfied and was reconciled to the Duke of York,
they won over the Duke, accused Argyll to the king, brought him before a
jury, and had him condemned of treason and incarcerated. The object may
have been to intimidate him, and destroy his almost royal power in the
west and the islands. In any case, after a trial for treason, in which
one vote settled his doom, he escaped in disguise as a footman (perhaps
by collusion, as was suspected), fled to England, conspired there with
Scottish exiles and a Covenanting refugee, Mr Veitch, and, as Charles
would not allow him to be searched for, he easily escaped to Holland.
(For details, see my book, 'Sir George Mackenzie.')

It was, in fact, clan hatred that dragged down Argyll. His condemnation
was an infamous perversion of justice, but as Charles would not allow him
to be captured in London, it is most improbable that he would have
permitted the unjust capital sentence to be carried out. The escape was
probably collusive, and the sole result of these intricate iniquities was
to create for the Government an enemy who would have been dangerous if he
had been trusted by the extreme Presbyterians. In England no less than
in Scotland the supreme and odious injustice of Argyll's trial excited
general indignation. The Earl of Aberdeen (Gordon of Haddo) was now
Chancellor, and Queensberry was Treasurer for a while; both were
intrigued against at Court by the Earl of Perth and his brother, later
Lord Melfort, and probably by far the worst of all the knaves of the
Restoration.

Increasing outrages by the Remnant, now headed by the Rev. Mr James
Renwick, a very young man, led to more furious repression, especially as
in 1683 Government detected a double plot--the wilder English aim being
to raise the rabble and to take or slay Charles and his brother at the
Rye House; while the more respectable conspirators, English and Scots,
were believed to be acquainted with, though not engaged in, this design.
The Rev. Mr Carstares was going and coming between Argyll and the exiles
in Holland and the intriguers at home. They intended as usual first to
surprise Edinburgh Castle. In England Algernon Sidney, Lord Russell, and
others were arrested, while Baillie of Jerviswoode and Carstares were
apprehended--Carstares in England. He was sent to Scotland, where he
could be tortured. The trial of Jerviswoode was if possible more unjust
than even the common run of these affairs, and he was executed (December
24, 1684).

The conspiracy was, in fact, a very serious affair: Carstares was
confessedly aware of its criminal aspect, and was in the closest
confidence of the ministers of William of Orange. What his dealings were
with them in later years he would never divulge. But it is clear that if
the plotters slew Charles and James, the hour had struck for the Dutch
deliverer's appearance. If we describe the Rye House Plot as aiming
merely at "the exclusion of the Duke of York from the throne," we shut
our eyes to evidence and make ourselves incapable of understanding the
events. There were plotters of every degree and rank, and they were
intriguing with Argyll, and, through Carstares who knew, though he
refused a part in the murder plot, were in touch at once with Argyll and
the intimates of William of Orange.

Meanwhile "the hill men," the adherents of Renwick, in October 1684,
declared a war of assassination against their opponents, and announced
that they would try malignants in courts of their own. Their manifesto
("The Apologetical Declaration") caused an extraordinary measure of
repression. A test--the abjuration of the _criminal_ parts of Renwick's
declaration--was to be offered by military authority to all and sundry.
Refusal to abjure entailed military execution. The test was only
obnoxious to sincere fanatics; but among them must have been hundreds of
persons who had no criminal designs, and merely deemed it a point of
honour not to "homologate" any act of a Government which was corrupt,
prelatic, and unholy.

Later victims of this view of duty were Margaret Lauchleson and Margaret
Wilson--an old woman and a young girl--cruelly drowned by the local
authorities at Wigtown (May 1685). A myth represents Claverhouse as
having been present. The shooting of John Brown, "the Christian
Carrier," by Claverhouse in the previous week was an affair of another
character. Claverhouse did not exceed his orders, and ammunition and
treasonable papers were in Brown's possession; he was also sheltering a
red-handed rebel. Brown was not shot merely "because he was a
Nonconformist," nor was he shot by the hand of Claverhouse.

These incidents of "the killing time" were in the reign of James II.;
Charles II. had died, to the sincere grief of most of his subjects, on
February 2, 1685. "Lecherous and treacherous" as he was, he was humorous
and good-humoured. The expected invasion of Scotland by Argyll, of
England by Monmouth, did not encourage the Government to use respective
lenity in the Covenanting region, from Lanarkshire to Galloway.

Argyll, who sailed from Holland on May 2, had a council of Lowlanders who
thwarted him. His interests were in his own principality, but he found
it occupied by Atholl and his clansmen, and the cadets of his own House
as a rule would not rally to him. The Lowlanders with him, Sir Patrick
Hume, Sir John Cochrane, and the rest, wished to move south and join
hands with the Remnant in the west and in Galloway; but the Remnant
distrusted the sudden religious zeal of Argyll, and were cowed by
Claverhouse. The coasts were watched by Government vessels of war, and
when, after vain movements round about his own castle, Inveraray, Argyll
was obliged by his Lowlanders to move on Glasgow, he was checked at every
turn; the leaders, weary and lost in the marshes, scattered from
Kilpatrick on Clyde; Argyll crossed the river, and was captured by
servants of Sir John Shaw of Greenock. He was not put to trial nor to
torture; he was executed on the verdict of 1681. About 200 suspected
persons were lodged by Government in Dunottar Castle at the time and
treated with abominable cruelty.

The Covenanters were now effectually put down, though Renwick was not
taken and hanged till 1688. The preachers were anxious for peace and
quiet, and were bitterly hostile to Renwick. The Covenant was a dead
letter as far as power to do mischief was concerned. It was not
persecution of the Kirk, but demand for toleration of Catholics and a
manifest desire to restore the Church, that in two years lost James his
kingdoms.

On April 29, 1686, James's message to the Scots Parliament asked
toleration for "our innocent subjects" the Catholics. He had substituted
Perth's brother, now entitled Earl of Melfort, for Queensberry; Perth was
now Chancellor; both men had adopted their king's religion, and the
infamous Melfort can hardly be supposed to have done so honestly. Their
families lost all in the event except their faith. With the request for
toleration James sent promises of free trade with England, and he asked
for no supplies. Perth had introduced Catholic vestments and furnishings
in Holyrood chapel, which provoked a No Popery riot. Parliament would
not permit toleration; James removed many of the Council and filled their
places with Catholics. Sir George Mackenzie's conscience "dirled"; he
refused to vote for toleration and he lost the Lord Advocateship, being
superseded by Sir James Dalrymple, an old Covenanting opponent of
Claverhouse in Galloway.

In August James, by prerogative, did what the Estates would not do, and
he deprived the Archbishop of Glasgow and the Bishop of Dunkeld of their
Sees: though a Catholic, he was the king-pope of a Protestant church! In
a decree of July 1687 he extended toleration to the Kirk, and a meeting
of preachers at Edinburgh expressed "a deep sense of your Majesty's
gracious and surprising favour." The Kirk was indeed broken, and, when
the Revolution came, was at last ready for a compromise from which the
Covenants were omitted. On February 17, 1688, Mr Renwick was hanged at
Edinburgh: he had been prosecuted by Dalrymple. On the same day
Mackenzie superseded Dalrymple as Lord Advocate.

After the birth of the White Rose Prince of Wales (June 10, 1688),
Scotland, like England, apprehended that a Catholic king would be
followed by a Catholic son. The various contradictory lies about the
child's birth flourished, all the more because James ventured to select
the magistrates of the royal burghs. It became certain that the Prince
of Orange would invade, and Melfort madly withdrew the regular troops,
with Claverhouse (now Viscount Dundee) to aid in resisting William in
England, though Balcarres proposed a safer way of holding down the
English northern counties by volunteers, the Highland clans, and new
levies. Thus the Privy Council in Scotland were left at the mercy of the
populace.

Of the Scottish army in England all were disbanded when James fled to
France, except a handful of cavalry, whom Dundee kept with him. Perth
fled from Edinburgh, but was taken and held a prisoner for four years;
the town train-band, with the mob and some Cameronians, took Holyrood,
slaying such of the guard as they did not imprison; "many died of their
wounds and hunger." The chapel and Catholic houses were sacked, and
gangs of the armed Cameronian societies went about in the south-west,
rabbling, robbing, and driving away ministers of the Episcopalian sort.
Atholl was in power in Edinburgh; in London, where James's Scots friends
met, the Duke of Hamilton was made President of Council, and power was
left till the assembling of a Convention at Edinburgh (March 1689) in the
hands of William.

In Edinburgh Castle the wavering Duke of Gordon was induced to remain by
Dundee and Balcarres; while Dundee proposed to call a Jacobite convention
in Stirling. Melfort induced James to send a letter contrary to the
desires of his party; Atholl, who had promised to join them, broke away;
the life of Dundee was threatened by the fanatics, and on March 18,
seeing his party headless and heartless, Dundee rode north, going
"wherever might lead him the shade of Montrose."

Mackay now brought to Edinburgh regiments from Holland, which overawed
the Jacobites, and he secured for William the key of the north, the
castle of Stirling. With Hamilton as President, the Convention, with
only four adverse votes, declared against James and his son; and Hamilton
(April 3) proclaimed at the cross the reign of William and Mary. The
claim of rights was passed and declared Episcopacy intolerable. Balcarres
was thrown into prison: on May 11 William took the Coronation oath for
Scotland, merely protesting that he would not "root out heretics," as the
oath enjoined.

This was "the end o' an auld sang," the end of the Stuart dynasty, and of
the equally "divine rights" of kings and of preachers.

In a sketch it is impossible to convey any idea of the sufferings of
Scotland, at least of Covenanting Scotland, under the Restoration. There
was contest, unrest, and dragoonings, and the quartering of a brutal and
licentious soldiery on suspected persons. Law, especially since 1679,
had been twisted for the conviction of persons whom the administration
desired to rob. The greed and corruption of the rulers, from Lauderdale,
his wife, and his brother Haltoun, to Perth and his brother, the Earl of
Melfort, whose very title was the name of an unjustly confiscated estate,
is almost inconceivable. {225} Few of the foremost men in power, except
Sir George Mackenzie and Claverhouse, were free from personal profligacy
of every sort. Claverhouse has left on record his aversion to severities
against the peasantry; he was for prosecuting such gentry as the
Dalrymples. As constable of Dundee he refused to inflict capital
punishment on petty offenders, and Mackenzie went as far as he dared in
opposing the ferocities of the inquisition of witches. But in cases of
alleged treason Mackenzie knew no mercy.

Torture, legal in Scotland, was used with barbarism unprecedented there
after each plot or rising, to extract secrets which, save in one or two
cases like that of Carstares, the victims did not possess. They were
peasants, preachers, and a few country gentlemen: the nobles had no
inclination to suffer for the cause of the Covenants. The Covenants
continued to be the idols of the societies of Cameronians, and of many
preachers who were no longer inclined to die for these documents,--the
expression of such strange doctrines, the causes of so many sorrows and
of so many martyrdoms. However little we may sympathise with the
doctrines, none the less the sufferers were idealists, and, no less than
Montrose, preferred honour to life.

With all its sins, the Restoration so far pulverised the pretensions
which, since 1560, the preachers had made, that William of Orange was not
obliged to renew the conflict with the spiritual sons of Knox and Andrew
Melville.

This fact is not so generally recognised as it might be. It is therefore
proper to quote the corroborative opinion of the learned Historiographer-
Royal of Scotland, Professor Hume Brown. "By concession and repression
the once mighty force of Scottish Presbyterianism had been broken. Most
deadly of the weapons in the accomplishment of this result had been the
three Acts of Indulgence which had successively cut so deep into the
ranks of uniformity. In succumbing to the threats and promises of the
Government, the Indulged ministers had undoubtedly compromised the
fundamental principles of Presbyterianism. . . . The compliance of these
ministers was, in truth, the first and necessary step towards that
religious and political compromise which the force of circumstances was
gradually imposing on the Scottish people," and "the example of the
Indulged ministers, who composed the great mass of the Presbyterian
clergy, was of the most potent effect in substituting the idea of
toleration for that of the religious absolutism of Knox and Melville."
{226}

It may be added that the pretensions of Knox and Melville and all their
followers were no essential part of Presbyterial Church government, but
were merely the continuation or survival of the clerical claims of
apostolic authority, as enforced by such popes as Hildebrand and such
martyrs as St Thomas of Canterbury.

CHAPTER XXVII. WILLIAM AND MARY.

While Claverhouse hovered in the north the Convention (declared to be a
Parliament by William on June 5) took on, for the first time in Scotland
since the reign of Charles I, the aspect of an English Parliament, and
demanded English constitutional freedom of debate. The Secretary in
Scotland was William, Earl of Melville; that hereditary waverer, the Duke
of Hamilton, was Royal Commissioner; but some official supporters of
William, especially Sir James and Sir John Dalrymple, were criticised and
thwarted by "the club" of more extreme Liberals. They were led by the
Lowland ally who had vexed Argyll, Hume of Polwarth; and by Montgomery of
Skelmorley, who, disappointed in his desire of place, soon engaged in a
Jacobite plot.

The club wished to hasten the grant of Parliamentary liberties which
William was anxious not to give; and to take vengeance on officials such
as Sir James Dalrymple, and his son, Sir John, now Lord Advocate, as he
had been under James II. To these two men, foes of Claverhouse, William
clung while he could. The council obtained, but did not need to use,
permission to torture Jacobite prisoners, "Cavaliers" as at this time
they were styled; but Chieseley of Dalry, who murdered Sir George
Lockhart, President of the College of Justice, was tortured.

The advanced Liberal Acts which were passed did not receive the touch of
the sceptre from Hamilton, William's Commissioner: thus they were
"vetoed," and of no effect. The old packed committee, "The Lords of the
Articles," was denounced as a grievance; the king was to be permitted to
appoint no officers of State without Parliament's approbation. Hamilton
offered compromises, for William clung to "the Articles"; but he
abandoned them in the following year, and thenceforth till the Union
(1707) the Scottish was "a Free Parliament." Various measures of
legislation for the Kirk---some to emancipate it as in its palmy days,
some to keep it from meddling in politics--were proposed; some measures
to abolish, some to retain lay patronage of livings, were mooted. The
advanced party for a while put a stop to the appointment of judges, but
in August came news of the Viscount Dundee in the north which terrified
parliamentary politicians.

Edinburgh Castle had been tamely yielded by the Duke of Gordon;
Balcarres, the associate of Dundee, had been imprisoned; but Dundee
himself, after being declared a rebel, in April raised the standard of
King James. As against him the Whigs relied on Mackay, a brave officer
who had been in Dutch service, and now commanded regiments of the Scots
Brigade of Holland. Mackay pursued Dundee, as Baillie had pursued
Montrose, through the north: at Inverness, Dundee picked up some
Macdonalds under Keppoch, but Keppoch was not satisfactory, being
something of a freebooter. The Viscount now rode to the centre of his
hopes, to the Macdonalds of Glengarry, the Camerons of Lochiel, and the
Macleans who had been robbed of their lands by the Earl of Argyll,
executed in 1685. Dundee summoned them to Lochiel's house on Loch Arkaig
for May 18; he visited Atholl and Badenoch; found a few mounted men as
recruits at Dundee; returned through the wilds to Lochaber, and sent
round that old summons to a rising, the Fiery Cross, charred and dipped
in a goat's blood.

Much time was spent in preliminary manoeuvring and sparring between
Mackay, now reinforced by English regulars, and Dundee, who for a time
disbanded his levies, while Mackay went to receive fresh forces and to
consult the Government at Edinburgh. He decided to march to the west and
bridle the clans by erecting a strong fort at Inverlochy, where Montrose
routed Argyll. A stronghold at Inverlochy menaced the Macdonalds to the
north, and the Camerons in Lochaber, and, southwards, the Stewarts in
Appin. But to reach Inverlochy Mackay had to march up the Tay, past
Blair Atholl, and so westward through very wild mountainous country. To
oppose him Dundee had collected 4000 of the clansmen, and awaited
ammunition and men from James, then in Ireland. By the advice of the
great Lochiel, a man over seventy but miraculously athletic, Dundee
decided to let the clans fight in their old way,--a rush, a volley at
close quarters, and then the claymore. By June 28 Dundee had received no
aid from James,--of money "we have not twenty pounds"; and he was between
the Earl of Argyll (son of the martyr of 1685) and Mackay with his 4000
foot and eight troops of horse.

On July 23 Dundee seized the castle of Blair Atholl, which had been the
base of Montrose in his campaigns, and was the key of the country between
the Tay and Lochaber. The Atholl clans, Murrays and Stewarts, breaking
away from the son of their chief, the fickle Marquis of Atholl, were led
by Stewart of Ballechin, but did not swell Dundee's force at the moment.
From James Dundee now received but a battalion of half-starved Irishmen,
under the futile General Cannon.

On July 27, at Blair, Dundee learned that Mackay's force had already
entered the steep and narrow pass of Killiecrankie, where the road
skirted the brawling waters of the Garry. Dundee had not time to defend
the pass; he marched his men from Blair, keeping the heights, while
Mackay emerged from the gorge, and let his forces rest on the wide level
haugh beside the Garry, under the house of Runraurie, now called Urrard,
with the deep and rapid river in their rear. On this haugh the tourist
sees the tall standing stone which, since 1735 at least, has been known
as "Dundee's stone." From the haugh rises a steep acclivity, leading to
the plateau where the house of Runraurie stood. Mackay feared that
Dundee would occupy this plateau, and that the fire thence would break up
his own men on the haugh below. He therefore seized the plateau, which
was an unfortunate manoeuvre. He was so superior in numbers that both of
his wings extended beyond Dundee's, who had but forty ill-horsed
gentlemen by way of cavalry. After distracting Mackay by movements along
the heights, as if to cut off his communications with the south, Dundee,
who had resisted the prayers of the chiefs that he would be sparing of
his person, gave the word to charge as the sun sank behind the western
hills. Rushing down hill, under heavy fire and losing many men, the
clans, when they came to the shock, swept the enemy from the plateau,
drove them over the declivity, forced many to attempt crossing the Garry,
where they were drowned, and followed, slaying, through the pass. Half
of Hastings' regiment, untouched by the Highland charge, and all of
Leven's men, stood their ground, and were standing there when sixteen of
Dundee's horse returned from the pursuit. Mackay, who had lost his army,
stole across the Garry with this remnant and made for Stirling. He knew
not that Dundee lay on the field, dying in the arms of Victory. Precisely
when and in what manner Dundee was slain is unknown; there is even a fair
presumption, from letters of the English Government, that he was murdered
by two men sent from England on some very secret mission. When last seen
by his men, Dundee was plunged in the battle smoke, sword in hand, in
advance of his horse.

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