VIII. BOOK his influence, and before the return of his adversaries, the opposition so formidable in the late 1078. parliament, was surmounted or quelled. The monthly assessments of six thousand pounds, introduced by Cromwell, were retained, and are still observed as the rate at which the land-tax is imposed. Five monthly assessments, or thirty thousand pounds a-year, were granted for five years, to support additional troops for the suppression of conventicles; and the most unqualified approbation was bestowed on Lauderdale's administration, in a letter to the king. Such base and abject servility, after the late popular complaints, exposed the country to deserved contempt; but an assessment expressly granted to suppress those seminaries of rebellion which were held in the fields, was productive of a doubt, and at length of a division among the presbyterians; whether or no, in order that they might themselves avoid persecution, it were lawful to contribute taxes for the persecution of those who frequented conventicles." Causes of an insurrection. It was the king's intention, according to some historians, to introduce a milder administration under the duke of Monmouth, (who had married the heiress, and had obtained the estate and titles of Buccleugh in Scotland,) when the alarm of the popish plot intervened. The tyranny actually endured in the one kingdom, was the more deeply apprehended in the other; and as the nobility and 9 Wodrow, i. 528. Burnet, i. 588. Kirkton, MS. 99. VIII. 1679. clergy, whose complaints the king disregarded, had BOOK acquired the friendship of the popular leaders in the English parliament, an insurrection has been too hastily ascribed to their correspondence and combination to renew the events of the preceding reign. A memorable speech of the earl of Shaftesbury's, that popery was intended to introduce slavery into England, but that slavery was the har- March 25. binger of popery in Scotland, was transmitted to Edinburgh, and eight thousand fanatical Scots are represented as starting to arms at the sound of a trumpet." Doubtless the Scots were encouraged by the impeachment of Danby, by the vigorous opposition in England to the duke of York, and by the attempts to limit or to exclude his succession to the throne. But as no trace exists of their correspondence with the popular leaders in England, so the marvellous operation of a distant speech diffused by the pen, is refuted by an intermediate series of domestic events. The cruel and iniquitous prosecution of the popish plot, had inflamed the court party with revenge, and the covenanters with the obstinate fury of despair. The highlanders were removed, but they were replaced with five thousand additional troops. The western 10 ❝Some of our lords and gentry made acquaintance with "the English dissenters, which stuck to them while they liv "ed." Kirkton. Such is the only evidence I have found, in Scottish historians, of a correspondence with the English. VIII. 1679. BOOK and southern shires were filled with garrisons in private houses; or with troops permitted to range at large in quest of conventicles, and indemnified for every violence committed in the search or pursuit. Additional judges were commissioned in each county, with the most rigorous instructions to enforce the laws, and with the most unlimited and despotical powers in ecclesiastical affairs; and their diligence and injustice were equally stimulated by permission to appropriate a moiety of the fines to themselves. The worst tyranny is a despotism under the disguise of the laws. On the slightest expression or suspicion of discontent, the opponents of Lauderdale were accused and convicted of propagating sedition, and imprisoned and fined by the privy council; and, under the accumulated oppressions of government, men began to grow weary of their country, and even of their lives. In the furious administration of Lau, derdale, it is in vain to search for the remote and latent causes of public events, or to reduce them under any common arrangement or description of crimes. Every new severity was productive of additional discontent, which fresh severities were employed to exasperate and to repress; nor is a different principle to be discovered in the government of Scotland, during the reigns of Charles and of his brother James. As the vindictive rigour and resentment of government were at once the cause and effect of the public discontent, each year, VIII. 1679. and, with a single, transient exception, every ad- BOOK ministration was worse than the preceding. Persecution and fanaticism continued mutually to exasperate and to augment each other, but it is the nature of persecution to vitiate the humant heart, and to debase and contaminate the national character wheresoever it prevails. The unhappy victims whom it reduces to despair, become vindictive, cruel, and unrelenting as their persecutors; and if inferior in open force, more insidious in their revenge. The covenanters had already be gun to retaliate on the military, of whom somé were murdered at night in their quarters, when an event which threatened to revive the practices of the ancient Scots, impelled each party to the most desperate extremes.12 Sharp. Under the primate's jurisdiction and influence, Murder of Carmichael, one of the commissioners appointed May 3. to exterminate conventicles, was peculiarly noted for his cruelties in Fife. If we may believe his enemies, he was accustomed among other enormities to beat and abuse the women and children, and to torture the servants with lighted matches, that they might be compelled to reveal where their husbands, or their fathers, or their masters were concealed. Nine of these unhappy fugitives, who wandered in small parties, intercommuned and interdicted from society, determined to intercept 12 Wodrow's MS. Collections, vol. 43. 4to. Hist. ii. 9. 27. VIII. 1679. BOOK and to chastise his person, if not to avenge their wrongs on his life. When about to separate, after an ineffectual search, they were informed of the archbishop of St. Andrews' approach. As he was slightly attended, the opportunity was embraced as a divine call, and the temptation to perpetrate a detestable deed was interpreted a special dispensation from heaven. They pursued and overtook his coach upon Magus-Moor, within a few miles of St. Andrews; dismounted his attendants, and as their shots proved ineffectual, they dragged the archbishop from his daughter's arms. His offers and entreaties for life were unavailing. They protested that they were actuated by no motives of personal revenge; reproached him with his perjury in Mitchel's trial; admonished him of the blood of the saints, in which his hands were embrued, and, amidst the shrieks and struggles of his daughter to save him, left his dead body in the highway, transfixed, and covered with the most barbarous wounds.13 His character. From the first beginning of the reformation in Scotland, Sharp was the third archbishop of St. Andrews who had suffered from popular or from private revenge. The assassination of Cardinal Beaton, was a crime congenial to the manners of the nation and the vices of the age. The execution of archbishop Hamilton was sanctioned by the forms of a legal attainder: but the murder of Sharp 13 Wodrow's MS. vol. iv. 8vo. Hist. ii. 30. Sharp's Life. |