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CHAPTER XXIV

THE SCHEMES OF ANGELIC LEIGHTON AND IRON-HANDED LAUDERDALE

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Leighton

WHERE was the angelic Leighton all this time when the vice-gerent of Robert Christ acted Nero, when ministers of justice crushed guilty and inno- visionary. cent indifferently, when feminine virtue was not safe from unbridled cavaliers, and clergy were not fit company for squeamish Turner? 1 What Robert Baillie said of Leighton in 1658 was true of him to the end: Mr. Lichtoun does not [nought] to count of, but looks about him in his chamber.' 2 The Episcopal ministers of 1666 reckoned this their golden age, and hailed the cavaliers as a divine legion of protectors. By the banks of Allan Water' Leighton dwelt apart, wishing the churchyard would open for him a door to heaven. He moped over his own sins and the lack of virtue in others. The Register of his Synod proves that he strove to elevate the clergy of his 'precincts,' to inculcate domestic purity, and to promote religion of a public and liturgical kind especially; but there came not from him a Christian's proper reply to Naphtali, in protests against the brutalities of his peers and his coadjutors in Parliament and Council, nor even in any appeals for misguided fanatics and inhumanly treated innocents. His was the conciliatory spirit of a disembodied soul, and the chilling purity of a corpse. Gilbert Burnet records that he had to be prevailed upon to go to court to expose the violence of the executive in planting religion which he said he did not approve of.5 Yet he was one of the eleven Scots bishops who met on 16th Sep2 Letters, iii. 365.

4

1 Burnet, i. 379, 426.

* Wilson, Register of Synod of Dumblane, q.v. E.g. Agnes Anderson and

Hadden, starving prisoners, untried, even unaccused, petition for liberty, and are given to first skipper going to Barbadoes or Virginia: Reg.

Sec. Conc., Acta, 667, ult. February 1667.

5 Burnet, i. 382.

dation.'

tember and subscribed a subservient letter to Lauderdale, signifying their concurrence in the new policy for remedying the evils in the Church.1 Moray, the intriguer, and the diamond seal of Charles, also exalted Leighton into the peaceful heaven of resurrected Sharp. All were crying peace, save Archbishop Burnet and the swordsmen.

Leighton, however, was not so much a genuine champion of toleration as a juggler with concessions tending to uniformity, who maintained chimerical views, especially regarding the unimportance of distinctive Church principles.

The Accomo- Leighton, in a millennial vision, conceived a policy which was designated 'The Accommodation.' It proposed that the bishop, or 'constant moderator,' should preside in church courts, but have no negative vote; a dissentient presbyter on joining a 'precinct' (his name for a presbytery, or meeting of clergy under a bishop) might acknowledge the bishop under protest; a candidate for ordination might accept the bishop as the chairman of the presbyters; bishops were to submit themselves to the Synod for censure or approval every third year.? Of alternative schemes of conciliation-Kincardine's, imposing by law mutual terms of concession; and Tweeddale's, allowing field-preachers to minister in selected parishesLeighton favoured the former. Conventicling was not in harmony with his veiled projects. The author of Naphtali had good foundation for his bitter accusation: 'Mr. Lighton, prelat of Dumblan, under a Jesuitical-like visard of pretended holiness, humility, and crucifixion to the world, hath studied to seem to creep upon the ground, but always up the hill . . . and . . . none of them all hath with a Kiss so betrayed the Cause, and smiten Religion under the fifth rib, and been such an offence to the godly.' Leighton was no more clever than other schemers who had tried to busk the presbyter so as to hide the horns of Antichrist. It proved the shrewdness of the Covenanters that they were able to detect what Burnet, Leighton's confidant, divulged regarding these concessions: 'He [Leighton]

Leighton's

betrayal of
'The Cause.'

1 Laud. Pap., ii. 59.

3 Naphtali, 301.

3

2 Burnet, i. 497; Butler, Life of Leighton, 403, 422.

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thought it would be easy afterwards to recover what seemed necessary
to be yielded at present.'1

Mitchell

The strain of the times was too much for the ill-nourished mind James of James Mitchell, 'a stickit minister,' then in his prime. A poor stickit student from the Lothians, he graduated at Edinburgh; and doubt- minister.' less the spare diet of a private tutor and chaplain made him a 'lean, hollow-cheeked man of a truculent countenance.' 2 Robert Blair, minister of Edinburgh, confidently recommended this 'honest young man,' in 1661, as fit to be a teacher or precentor. He subscribed both Covenants when demanded by Principal Leighton, but, unlike the Principal, kept them. Enemies accused him of dealings with the bestial wizard, Weir. With Alexander Henderson he held that the bishops were the makers of the nation's woes. Believing Sharp to be the instigator of all the sufferings of the time, he imagined he had a call to remove him. He joined the insurgents, and was sent to Edinburgh to interview Stirling, the author of Naphtali, and Fergusson of Caitloch. Thereafter he skulked about, under the name of James Small, armed with two loaded Scots pistols." Sharp's mansion was on the High Street of Edinburgh, between the Netherbow and Blackfriars Wynd. On Saturday afternoon, 11th July, Mitchell, lurking on the north side of the High Street, saw Sharp, followed by Honyman, Bishop of Orkney, entering the Primate's coach. Mitchell Mitchell shoots fired through the window, but, being 'ane ill gunner,' missed Sharp, 11th July 1668. and shattered Honyman's wrist resting on the door of the carriage. Clearing a way with the second pistol, Mitchell dived down the Wynd, up Cowgate, into Fergusson's house in Stevenlaw's Close, where he removed his disguise before descending to the street to join in the hue and cry, from which he sought retirement, it is said, very Tolbooth. The cry A man killed,' was soon hushed by the report, 'Twas only a bishop.' Mitchell was not suspected, and escaped. Sharp, however, got a glimpse of that mummified

in the

1 Hist., i. 499.

Wodrow MSS., xxix. 4to, 94.
Laud. Pap., ii. 116.

2 Ravillac Redivivus, 11.

* Laing MSS., Papers left by Mitchell, 269.
Others said Lord Oxenford's garden in Cowgate,

at Sharp,

Sharp scared

face beneath the odd periwig, which haunted him for years, till he identified it again at Robert Douglas's funeral and had Mitchell apprehended.1

Sharp was scared out of his wits. In a letter, dated 23rd July, out of his wits. he makes wild statements about a 'hellish design for murdering the King about that tyme,' and a combination of Pentland rebels and city conventiclers for rescuing the assassin; whereas Mitchell at his trial declared that no one was privy to his design. These whinings were flouted in official circles. Gilbert Burnet politely visited Sharp to offer his congratulations. The Primate, assuming a pious visage, exclaimed: 'My times are wholly in Thy hand, O thou God of my life.' Burnet adds the cutting comment: This was the single expression savouring of piety that ever fell from him in all the conversation that passed between him and me.'

Governmental

vengeance.

As was to be expected, the authorities could not allow the outrage to go unavenged. All probable sympathisers with the criminal were haled in for examination; flying squadrons searched the wild west for phantom rebels; and former victims of the High Commission were more harshly treated. For giving unsatisfactory answers regarding her knowledge of certain suspects, Anna Kerr, relict of James Duncan, a minister, kept in prison with her two children for months, and sentenced to the plantations, was only saved from torture by Rothes saying that it was not proper for gentlewomen to wear boots.' Margaret Dury, relict of James Kello, a city merchant in Edinburgh, who gave Welsh an asylum, was sentenced to banishment, as well as to pay a fine of 5000 merks, and was kept in prison for months. Many churches were vacant. Disorder had to be cured, for Lauderdale had sworn

'I'll conform the Church and every man,
By placing calves at Bethell and at Dan.'5

1 Laud. Pap., ii. 109; Hist. Notices, 90; Add. MSS., 23245, fol. 14, 15; Row, Blair, 518; Scott, Fasti, i. 348, gives February 1674 as date of Douglas's death.

2 Laing MSS., Papers left by Mitchell ; Just. Rec., ii. 307.

4 Wodrow, ii. 118; Laud. Pap., ii. 116-30, July 1668.

5 'The New Policie': Laing MSS., 89, fol. 142.

3 Hist., i. 502.

The King invited Sharp to London, to win over that pliable courtier to the policy of toleration; and Sharp returned to Scotland in November, openly to promote what Burnet and he privately detested.1 His vexed soul found vent in diatribes against the disaffected, especially those he styled 'she-zealots' and 'Satanesses.'

Gilbert Burnet.

At this juncture there came into prominence a brilliant young man, Advent of Gilbert Burnet, minister of Salton, a social pusher, able to worm out the confidences of public men, who considered himself as important a factor in the Church as Turner imagined himself to be the Bayard of the Army.

Indulgence,

Burnet, having picked the brains of Leighton, Sharp, George Hutcheson, the Hamiltons, and the leading Whigs, wrote to Tweeddale recommending the settlement of moderate Presbyterians in the vacant charges. Thereupon Tweeddale prevailed on some conciliatory ministers-Robert Douglas, Stirling, and others—to write to him in a similar strain. The communications were passed on to the King, who dispatched through Tweeddale an order to the Privy Council (7th June) authorising a conditional Indulgence. The Indulgence provided for parish ministers resuming duty in their A conditional charges when vacant, in other parishes when presented to them by 1669. patrons, in consideration of being orderly, receiving collation, attending ecclesiastical courts, and receiving full emoluments; refusers of collation were allowed the use of manses and glebes; all were to attend the Presbyterian courts, and to restrict their services to their own parishes. Other orderly outed ministers were to be paid four hundred merks annually out of vacant parishes. Conventicles were to be suppressed. This establishment of modified Presbyterianism was the public rebuke of prelatic incompetence, and Sharp was warned that, if the clergy and Church were not reformed, the King would turn disciplinarian himself." When Sharp refused to recognise

.

1 Burnet, Hist., i. 502; Laud MSS., 23130, fol. 42; 23131, fol. 26.
2 Clarke and Foxcroft, A Life of Bishop Burnet (Cambridge, 1907), q.v.

3 Burnet, Hist., i. 496, 507; Wodrow, ii. 130, 131; Row, Blair, 524, 525.

* Brown, History of the Indulgence: in Faithful Witness Bearing, 135.
5 Laud. Pap., ii. 196.

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