A Short History of Scotland by Andrew Lang

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MALT RIOTS.

Other disturbances began in a resolution of the House of Commons, at the
end of 1724, _not_ to impose a Malt Tax equal to that of England (this
had been successfully resisted in 1713), but to levy an additional
sixpence on every barrel of ale, and to remove the bounties on exported
grain. At the Union Scotland had, for the time, been exempted from the
Malt Tax, specially devised to meet the expenses of the French war of
that date. Now, in 1724-1725, Scotland was up in arms to resist the
attempt "to rob a poor man of his beer." But Walpole could put force on
the Scottish Members of Parliament,--"a parcel of low people that could
not subsist," says Lockhart, "without their board wages." Walpole
threatened to withdraw the ten guineas hitherto paid weekly by Government
to those legislators. He offered to drop the sixpence on beer and put
threepence on every bushel of malt, a half of the English tax. On June
23, 1725, the tax was to be exacted. The consequence was an attack on
the military by the mob of Glasgow, who wrecked the house of their Member
in Parliament, Campbell of Shawfield. Some of the assailants were shot:
General Wade and the Lord Advocate, Forbes of Culloden, marched a force
on Glasgow, the magistrates of the town were imprisoned but released on
bail, while in Edinburgh the master brewers, ordered by the Court of
Session to raise the price of their ale, struck for a week; some were
imprisoned, others were threatened or cajoled and deserted their Union.
The one result was that the chief of the Squadrone, the Duke of Roxburgh,
lost his Secretaryship for Scotland, and Argyll's brother, Islay, with
the resolute Forbes of Culloden, became practically the governors of the
country. The Secretaryship, indeed, was for a time abolished, but Islay
practically wielded the power that had so long been in the hands of the
Secretary as agent of the Court.

THE HIGHLANDS.

The clans had not been disarmed after 1715, moreover 6000 muskets had
been brought in during the affair that ended at Glenshiel in 1719.
General Wade was commissioned in 1724 to examine and report on the
Highlands: Lovat had already sent in a report. He pointed out that
Lowlanders paid blackmail for protection to Highland raiders, and that
independent companies of Highlanders, paid by Government, had been
useful, but were broken up in 1717. What Lovat wanted was a company and
pay for himself. Wade represented the force of the clans as about 22,000
claymores, half Whig (the extreme north and the Campbells), half
Jacobite. The commandants of forts should have independent companies:
cavalry should be quartered between Inverness and Perth, and Quarter
Sessions should be held at Fort William and Ruthven in Badenoch. In 1725
Wade disarmed Seaforth's clan, the Mackenzies, easily, for Seaforth, then
in exile, was on bad terms with James, and wished to come home with a
pardon. Glengarry, Clanranald, Glencoe, Appin, Lochiel, Clan Vourich,
and the Gordons affected submission--but only handed over two thousand
rusty weapons of every sort. Lovat did obtain an independent company,
later withdrawn--with results. The clans were by no means disarmed, but
Wade did, from 1725 to 1736, construct his famous military roads and
bridges, interconnecting the forts.

The death of George I. (June 11, 1727) induced James to hurry to Lorraine
and communicate with Lockhart. But there was nothing to be done.
Clementina had discredited her husband, even in Scotland, much more in
England, by her hysterical complaints, and her hatred of every man
employed by James inflamed the petty jealousies and feuds among the
exiles of his Court. No man whom he could select would have been
approved of by the party.

To the bishops of the persecuted Episcopalian remnant, quarrelling over
details of ritual called "the Usages," James vainly recommended
"forbearance in love." Lockhart, disgusted with the clergy, and siding
with Clementina against her husband, believed that some of the wrangling
churchmen betrayed the channel of his communications with his king
(1727). Islay gave Lockhart a hint to disappear, and he sailed from
Scotland for Holland on April 8, 1727.

Since James dismissed Bolingbroke, every one of his Ministers was
suspected, by one faction or another of the party, as a traitor.
Atterbury denounced Mar, Lockhart denounced Hay (titular Earl of
Inverness), Clementina told feminine tales for which even the angry
Lockhart could find no evidence. James was the butt of every slanderous
tongue; but absolutely nothing against his moral character, or his
efforts to do his best, or his tolerance and lack of suspiciousness, can
be wrung from documents. {264}

By 1734 the elder of James's two sons, Prince Charles, was old enough to
show courage and to thrust himself under fire in the siege of Gaeta,
where his cousin, the Duc de Liria, was besieging the Imperialists. He
won golden opinions from the army, but was already too strong for his
tutors--Murray and Sir Thomas Sheridan. He had both Protestant and
Catholic governors; between them he learned to spell execrably in three
languages, and sat loose to Catholic doctrines. In January 1735 died his
mother, who had found refuge from her troubles in devotion. The grief of
James and of the boys was acute.

In 1736 Lovat was looking towards the rising sun of Prince Charles; was
accused by a witness of enabling John Roy Stewart, Jacobite and poet, to
break prison at Inverness, and of sending by him a message of devotion to
James, from whom he expected a dukedom. Lovat therefore lost his
sheriffship and his independent company, and tried to attach himself to
Argyll, when the affair of the Porteous Riot caused a coldness between
Argyll and the English Government (1736-1737).

THE PORTEOUS RIOT.

The affair of Porteous is so admirably well described in 'The Heart of
Mid-Lothian,' and recent research {265} has thrown so little light on the
mystery (if mystery there were), that a brief summary of the tale may
suffice.

In the spring of 1736 two noted smugglers, Wilson and Robertson, were
condemned to death. They had, while in prison, managed to widen the
space between the window-bars of their cell, and would have escaped; but
Wilson, a very stoutly built man, went first and stuck in the aperture,
so that Robertson had no chance. The pair determined to attack their
guards in church, where, as usual, they were to be paraded and preached
at on the Sunday preceding their execution. Robertson leaped up and
fled, with the full sympathy of a large and interested congregation,
while Wilson grasped a guard with each hand and a third with his teeth.
Thus Robertson got clean away--to Holland, it was said,--while Wilson was
to be hanged on April 14. The acting lieutenant of the Town Guard--an
unpopular body, mainly Highlanders--was John Porteous, famous as a
golfer, but, by the account of his enemies, notorious as a brutal and
callous ruffian. The crowd in the Grassmarket was great, but there was
no attempt at a rescue. The mob, however, threw large stones at the
Guard, who fired, killing or wounding, as usual, harmless spectators. The
case for Porteous, as reported in 'The State Trials,' was that the attack
was dangerous; that the plan was to cut down and resuscitate Wilson; that
Porteous did not order, but tried to prevent, the firing; and that
neither at first nor in a later skirmish at the West Bow did he fire
himself. There was much "cross swearing" at the trial of Porteous (July
20); the jury found him guilty, and he was sentenced to be hanged on
September 8. A petition from him to Queen Caroline (George II. was
abroad) drew attention to palpable discrepancies in the hostile evidence.
Both parties in Parliament backed his application, and on August 28 a
delay of justice for six weeks was granted.

Indignation was intense. An intended attack on the Tolbooth, where
Porteous lay, had been matter of rumour three days earlier: the prisoner
should have been placed in the Castle. At 10 P.M. on the night of
September 7 the magistrates heard that boys were beating a drum, and
ordered the Town Guard under arms; but the mob, who had already secured
the town's gates, disarmed the veterans. Mr Lindsay, lately Provost,
escaped by the Potter Row gate (near the old fatal Kirk-o'-Field), and
warned General Moyle in the Castle. But Moyle could not introduce
soldiers without a warrant. Before a warrant could arrive the mob had
burned down the door of the Tolbooth, captured Porteous--who was hiding
up the chimney,--carried him to the Grassmarket, and hanged him to a
dyer's pole. The only apparent sign that persons of rank above that of
the mob were concerned, was the leaving of a guinea in a shop whence they
took the necessary rope. The magistrates had been guilty of gross
negligence. The mob was merely a resolute mob; but Islay, in London,
suspected that the political foes of the Government were engaged, or that
the Cameronians, who had been renewing the Covenants, were concerned.

Islay hurried to Edinburgh, where no evidence could be extracted. "The
High Flyers of our Scottish Church," he wrote, "have made this infamous
murder a point of conscience. . . . All the lower rank of the people who
have distinguished themselves by the pretensions of superior sanctity
speak of this murder as the hand of God doing justice." They went by the
precedent of the murder of Archbishop Sharp, it appears. In the Lords
(February 1737) a Bill was passed for disabling the Provost--one
Wilson--for public employment, destroying the Town Charter, abolishing
the Town Guard, and throwing down the gate of the Nether Bow. Argyll
opposed the Bill; in the Commons all Scottish members were against it;
Walpole gave way. Wilson was dismissed, and a fine of 2000 pounds was
levied and presented to the widow of Porteous. An Act commanding
preachers to read monthly for a year, in church, a proclamation bidding
their hearers aid the cause of justice against the murderers, was an
insult to the Kirk, from an Assembly containing bishops. It is said that
at least half of the ministers disobeyed with impunity. It was
impossible, of course, to evict half of the preachers in the country.

Argyll now went into opposition against Walpole, and, at least, listened
to Keith--later the great Field-Marshal of Frederick the Great, and
brother of the exiled Earl Marischal.

In 1737 the Jacobites began to stir again: a committee of five Chiefs and
Lords was formed to manage their affairs. John Murray of Broughton went
to Rome, and lost his heart to Prince Charles--now a tall handsome lad of
seventeen, with large brown eyes, and, when he pleased, a very attractive
manner. To Murray, more than to any other man, was due the Rising of
1745.

Meanwhile, in secular affairs, Scotland showed nothing more remarkable
than the increasing dislike, strengthened by Argyll, of Walpole's
Government.

CHAPTER XXXII. THE FIRST SECESSION.

For long we have heard little of the Kirk, which between 1720 and 1740
passed through a cycle of internal storms. She had been little vexed,
either during her years of triumph or defeat, by heresy or schism. But
now the doctrines of Antoinette Bourignon, a French lady mystic, reached
Scotland, and won the sympathies of some students of divinity--including
the Rev. John Simson, of an old clerical family which had been notorious
since the Reformation for the turbulence of its members. In 1714, and
again in 1717, Mr Simson was acquitted by the Assembly on the charges of
being a Jesuit, a Socinian, and an Arminian, but was warned against "a
tendency to attribute too much to natural reason." In 1726-29 he was
accused of minimising the doctrines of the creed of St Athanasius, and
tending to the Arian heresy,--"lately raked out of hell," said the Kirk-
session of Portmoak (1725), addressing the sympathetic Presbytery of
Kirkcaldy. At the Assembly of 1726 that Presbytery, with others,
assailed Mr Simson, who was in bad health, and "could talk of nothing but
the Council of Nice." A committee, including Mar's brother, Lord Grange
(who took such strong measures with his wife, Lady Grange, forcibly
translating her to the isle of St Kilda), inquired into the views of Mr
Simson's own Presbytery--that of Glasgow. This Presbytery cross-examined
Mr Simson's pupils, and Mr Simson observed that the proceedings were "an
unfruitful work of darkness." Moreover, Mr Simson was of the party of
the _Squadrone_, while his assailants were Argathelians. A large
majority of the Assembly gave the verdict that Mr Simson was a heretic.
Finally, though in 1728 his answers to questions would have satisfied
good St Athanasius, Mr Simson found himself in the ideal position of
being released from his academic duties but confirmed in his salary. The
lenient good-nature of this decision, with some other grievances, set
fire to a mine which blew the Kirk in twain.

The Presbytery of Auchterarder had set up a kind of "standard" of their
own--"The Auchterarder Creed"--which included this formula: "It is not
sound or orthodox to teach that we must forsake sin in order to our
coming to Christ, and instating us in Covenant with God." The General
Assembly condemned this part of the Creed of Auchterarder. The Rev. Mr
Hog, looking for weapons in defence of Auchterarder, republished part of
a forgotten book of 1646, 'The Marrow of Modern Divinity.' The work
appears to have been written by a speculative hairdresser, an
Independent. A copy of the Marrow was found by the famous Mr Boston of
Ettrick in the cottage of a parishioner. From the Marrow he sucked much
advantage: its doctrines were grateful to the sympathisers with
Auchterarder, and the republication of the book rent the Kirk.

In 1720 a Committee of the General Assembly condemned a set of
propositions in the Marrow as tending to Antinomianism (the doctrine that
the saints cannot sin, professed by Trusty Tompkins in 'Woodstock').
But--as in the case of the five condemned propositions of Jansenius--the
Auchterarder party denied that the heresies could be found in the Marrow.

It was the old quarrel between Faith and Works. The clerical petitioners
in favour of the Marrow were rebuked by the Assembly (May 21, 1722); they
protested: against a merely human majority in the Assembly they appealed
to "The Word of God," to which the majority also appealed; and there was
a period of passion, but schism had not yet arrived.

The five or six friends of the Marrow really disliked moral preaching, as
opposed to weekly discourses on the legal technicalities of
justification, sanctification, and adoption. They were also opposed to
the working of the Act which, in 1712, restored lay patronage. If the
Assembly enforced the law of the land in this matter (and it did), the
Assembly sinned against the divine right of congregations to elect their
own preachers. Men of this way of thinking were led by the Rev. Mr
Ebenezer Erskine, a poet who, in 1714, addressed an Ode to George I. He
therein denounced "subverting patronage" and

"the woful dubious Abjuration
Which gave the clergy ground for speculation."

But a Jacobite song struck the same note--

"Let not the Abjuration
Impose upon the nation!"

and George was deaf to the muse of Mr Erskine.

In 1732, 1733, Mr Erskine, in sermons concerning patronage, offended the
Assembly; would not apologise, appeared (to a lay reader) to claim direct
inspiration, and with three other brethren constituted himself and them
into a Presbytery. Among their causes of separation (or rather of
deciding that the Kirk had separated from them) was the salary of
Emeritus Professor Simson. The new Presbytery declared that the
Covenants were still and were eternally binding on Scotland; in fact,
these preachers were "platonically" for going back to the old
ecclesiastical claims, with the old war of Church and State. They
naturally denounced the Act of 1736, which abolished the burning of
witches. After a period of long-suffering patience and conciliatory
efforts, in 1740 the Assembly deposed the Seceders.

In 1747 a party among the Seceders excommunicated Mr Erskine and his
brother; one of those who handed Mr Erskine over to Satan (if the old
formula were retained) was his son-in-law.

The feuds of Burghers and Antiburghers (persons who were ready to take or
refused to take the Burgess oath), New Lights and Old Lights, lasted very
long and had evil consequences. As the populace love the headiest
doctrines, they preferred preachers in proportion as they leaned towards
the Marrow, while lay patrons preferred candidates of the opposite views.
The Assembly must either keep the law and back the patrons, or break the
law and cease to be a State Church. The corruption of patronage was
often notorious on one side; on the other the desirability of burning
witches and the belief in the eternity of the Covenants were articles of
faith; and such articles were not to the taste of the "Moderates,"
educated clergymen of the new school. Thus arose the war of "High
Flyers" and "Moderates" within the Kirk,--a war conducing to the great
Disruption of 1843, in which gallant little Auchterarder was again in the
foremost line.

CHAPTER XXXIII. THE LAST JACOBITE RISING.

While the Kirk was vainly striving to assuage the tempers of Mr Erskine
and his friends, the Jacobites were preparing to fish in troubled waters.
In 1739 Walpole was forced to declare war against Spain, and Walpole had
previously sounded James as to his own chances of being trusted by that
exiled prince. James thought that Walpole was merely angling for
information. Meanwhile Jacobite affairs were managed by two rivals,
Macgregor (calling himself Drummond) of Balhaldy and Murray of Broughton.
The sanguine Balhaldy induced France to suppose that the Jacobites in
England and Scotland were much more united, powerful, and ready for
action than they really were, when Argyll left office in 1742, while
Walpole fell from power, Carteret and the Duke of Newcastle succeeding.
In 1743 Murray found that France, though now at war with England over the
Spanish Succession, was holding aloof from the Jacobite cause, though
plied with flourishing and fabulous reports from Balhaldy and the
Jacobite Lord Sempill. But, in December 1743, on the strength of alleged
Jacobite energy in England, Balhaldy obtained leave from France to visit
Rome and bring Prince Charles. The Prince had kept himself in training
for war and was eager. Taking leave of his father for the last time,
Charles drove out of Rome on January 9, 1744; evaded, in disguise, every
trap that was set for him, and landed at Antibes, reaching Paris on
February 10. Louis did not receive him openly, if he received him at
all; the Prince lurked at Gravelines in disguise, with the Earl
Marischal, while winds and waves half ruined, and the approach of a
British fleet drove into port, a French fleet of invasion under
Roqueville (March 6, 7, 1744).

The Prince wrote to Sempill that he was ready and willing to sail for
Scotland in an open boat. In July 1744 he told Murray that he would come
next summer "if he had no other companion than his valet." He nearly
kept his word; nor did Murray resolutely oppose his will. At the end of
May 1745 Murray's servant brought a letter from the Prince; "fall back,
fall edge," he would land in the Highlands in July. Lochiel regretted
the decision, but said that, as a man of honour, he would join his Prince
if he arrived.

On July 2 the Prince left Nantes in the _Dutillet_ (usually styled _La
Doutelle_). He brought some money (he had pawned the Sobieski rubies),
some arms, Tullibardine, his Governor Sheridan, Parson Kelly, the titular
Duke of Atholl, Sir John Macdonald, a banker, Sullivan, and one
Buchanan--the Seven Men of Moidart.

On July 20 his consort, _The Elizabeth_, fought _The Lion_ (Captain
Brett) off the Lizard; both antagonists were crippled. On [July
22/August 2] Charles passed the night on the little isle of Eriskay;
appealed vainly to Macleod and Macdonald of Sleat; was urged, at
Kinlochmoidart, by the Macdonalds, to return to France, but swept them
off their feet by his resolution; and with Lochiel and the Macdonalds
raised the standard at the head of Glenfinnan on August [19/30].

The English Government had already offered 30,000 pounds for the Prince's
head. The clans had nothing to gain; they held that they had honour to
preserve; they remembered Montrose; they put it to the touch, and
followed Prince Charlie.

The strength of the Prince's force was, first, the Macdonalds. On August
16 Keppoch had cut off two companies of the Royal Scots near Loch Lochy.
But the chief of Glengarry was old and wavering; young Glengarry,
captured on his way from France, could not be with his clan; his young
brother AEneas led till his accidental death after the battle of Falkirk.

Of the Camerons it is enough to say that their leader was the gentle
Lochiel, and that they were worthy of their chief. The Macphersons came
in rather late, under Cluny. The Frazers were held back by the crafty
Lovat, whose double-dealing, with the abstention of Macleod (who was
sworn to the cause) and of Macdonald of Sleat, ruined the enterprise.
Clan Chattan was headed by the beautiful Lady Mackintosh, whose husband
adhered to King George. Of the dispossessed Macleans, some 250 were
gathered (under Maclean of Drimnin), and of that resolute band some fifty
survived Culloden. These western clans (including 220 Stewarts of Appin
under Ardshiel) were the steel point of Charles's weapon; to them should
be added the Macgregors under James Mor, son of Rob Roy, a shifty
character but a hero in fight.

To resist these clans, the earliest to join, Sir John Cope, commanding in
Scotland, had about an equal force of all arms, say 2500 to 3000 men,
scattered in all quarters, and with very few field-pieces. Tweeddale,
holding the revived office of Secretary for Scotland, was on the worst
terms, as leader of the _Squadrone_, with his Argathelian rival, Islay,
now (through the recent death of his brother, Red Ian of the Battles)
Duke of Argyll. Scottish Whigs were not encouraged to arm.

The Prince marched south, while Cope, who had concentrated at Stirling,
marched north to intercept him. At Dalnacardoch he learned that Charles
was advancing to meet him in Corryarrick Pass (here came in Ardshiel,
Glencoe, and a Glengarry reinforcement). At Dalwhinnie, Cope found that
the clans held the pass, which is very defensible. He dared not face
them, and moved by Ruthven in Badenoch to Inverness, where he vainly
expected to be met by the great Whig clans of the north.

Joined now by Cluny, Charles moved on that old base of Montrose, the
Castle of Blair of Atholl, where the exiled duke (commonly called Marquis
of Tullibardine) was received with enthusiasm. In the mid-region between
Highland and Lowland, the ladies, Lady Lude and the rest, simply forced
their sons, brothers, and lovers into arms. While Charles danced and
made friends, and tasted his first pine-apple at Blair, James Mor took
the fort of Inversnaid. At Perth (September 4-10) Charles was joined by
the Duke of Perth, the Ogilvys under Lord Ogilvy, some Drummonds under
Lord Strathallan, the Oliphants of Gask, and 200 Robertsons of Struan.
Lord George Murray, brother of the Duke of Atholl, who had been out in
1715, out in 1719, and later was _un reconcilie_, came in, and with him
came Discord. He had dealt as a friend and ally with Cope at Crieff; his
loyalty to either side was thus not unnaturally dubious; he was suspected
by Murray of Broughton; envied by Sullivan, a soldier of some experience;
and though he was loyal to the last,--the best organiser, and the most
daring leader,--Charles never trusted him, and his temper was always
crossing that of the Prince.

The race for Edinburgh now began, Cope bringing his troops by sea from
Aberdeen, and Charles doing what Mar, in 1715, had never ventured. He
crossed the Forth by the fords of Frew, six miles above Stirling, passed
within gunshot of the castle, and now there was no force between him and
Edinburgh save the demoralised dragoons of Colonel Gardiner. The sole
use of the dragoons was, wherever they came, to let the world know that
the clans were at their heels. On September 16 Charles reached
Corstorphine, and Gardiner's dragoons fell back on Coltbridge.

On the previous day the town had been terribly perturbed. The old walls,
never sound, were dilapidated, and commanded by houses on the outside.
Volunteers were scarce, and knew not how to load a musket. On Sunday,
September 15, during sermon-time, "The bells were rung backwards, the
drums they were beat," the volunteers, being told to march against the
clans, listened to the voices of mothers and aunts and of their own
hearts, and melted like a mist. Hamilton's dragoons and ninety of the
late Porteous's Town Guard sallied forth, joining Gardiner's men at
Coltbridge. A few of the mounted Jacobite gentry, such as Lord Elcho,
eldest son of the Earl of Wemyss, trotted up to inspect the dragoons, who
fled and drew bridle only at Musselburgh, six miles east of Edinburgh.

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