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Execution of

Mitchell,

1678.

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glorify God in the Grassmarket.' The lack of truthfulness, honour, and trustworthiness in these high officers of state is almost incredible. Primrose also gloated over the fact that in this trial his enemies consigned the 'damnation of their souls in his hands.' Sharp had already been exposed. Hatton, afterwards impeached for his false testimony by William Noble, member for Dumbartonshire, was humiliated, and fined. In his own writings Mackenzie left proofs of his unscrupulous and untruthful nature, as when he recorded that 'the Registers of Council were produced, but not the least mark of a promise was made to appear by either.'3 In his Memoirs he also avers that 'Sir George Lockhart refused to speak for Mitchell, being unwilling to offend Lauderdale.' With similar incorrectness he records that

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'very famous witnesses . deposed that Mitchell was upon a new plot to kill the same Archbishop'; and that he died 'glorying in his crimes and recommending to others the sweetness of such assassinations.'5

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Mitchell spent his last days writing his Testimony, and, on the 18th January morning of the day on which he was executed, he wrote a letter in which he testified: 'I wish heartily that this my poor life may put an end to the persecution of the true members of Christ in this kingdom. by the perfidious prelates.' Through a crowd of sympathising women Mitchell was taken to the gibbet. A rescue was expected, and Major Johnson kept close to the prisoner to stab him if the attempt was made. He met his fate bravely, and was thrown over the ladder amid the rolling of drums. His unmutilated body was removed under a velvet pall to the Magdalen Chapel.' 'Thus they hunted this poor man to death,' wrote the diarist Fountainhall, ‘a prey not worthy of so much pains, trouble, and obloquie as they incurred by it.'s The country was roused and incensed by the sensational news of the trial and martyrdom of Mitchell and of the perjury of the 'famous witnesses,' and many scribes were busy

1 Burnet, ii. 141.

3 Vindication, 19.

2 Cobbett, State Trials, vi. 1262-70; Scot. Hist. Misc., 244.
4 Memoirs, 328.
5 Vindication, 19.

6 Wodrow, ii. 473; Laing MSS., 269; ibid., 89, fol. 99; Hist. MSS. Com. Rep., XIII. ii. 46.
7 Hickes, Ravillac Redivivus, 53.
8 Hist. Not., i. 185.

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penning and circulating poems, pasquils, satires, and papers bringing
contempt upon the corrupt Government, and giving dark warnings
to Sharp.1 Denunciation of the murderers of Mitchell was made an
article in the unwritten creed of the fugitive hillmen. The accusation
of murder was hissed into the ears of the dying Primate on Magus
Moor.

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of the Whigs.

The Privy Council never rested from their infamous work. The Punishment noisome jails were emptied to be filled again with prisoners, including children, caught at the ever-increasing conventicles, and left in the cells without being charged till health gave way. Alexander Ross came to Edinburgh on tutorial business, and was clapt into prison without a reason for four months. James Webster, afterwards minister in Edinburgh, for holding a private prayer meeting in Dundee, was kept praying in jail there for eighteen months, in spite of the indemnity applicable in his case. George Hume of Kimmerghame and his wife, Lady Ayton, were imprisoned for three months in the Castle of Edinburgh for being married by an unauthorised minister. James Lawson, a boy conventicler of fourteen years of age, was liberated; Alexander Anderson, aged sixteen, was banished. These were not uncommon cases.5 Ex-Provost Sir James Stewart, old and infirm, was also released.

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of prisoners.

Consignments of men, women, and boys were kept waiting their Transportation turn to be shipped off to the East Indies to be sold as slaves. Peden was one of sixty-nine prisoners marched down to Leith harbour into the 'St. Michael of Scarborough,' Captain Edward Johnston, all consigned to Ralph Williamson in London for transportation. The prescient Peden declared there was never a ship built that would take him to Virginia. At Gravesend, Williamson did not appear, and the skipper of the convict ship, expecting a gang of rogues, refused to take the holy men off Johnston's hands. The latter released them, and gaily they tramped away to Scotland."

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1 Laing MSS., Mitchell's Ghost: Manes Mitcheliani, etc., Nos. 148, 149, 150, 151, 152.
2 Wodrow, ii. 475.
3. Ibid., 484.

Reg. Sec. Conc., Dec., 178, 2nd January 1679; Wodrow, ii. 484.

Reg. Sec. Conc., Dec., 172, 12th December 1678; Six Saints, 52, 53.

4 Ibid., 480.

6 Hist. Not., i. 204.

Scuffle at
Whitekirk.

Blackadder's conventicle in Irongray parish.

A conventicle on the hills of Whitekirk on 5th May was attacked by Ensign Maitland and some soldiers from the Bass, who were repelled, leaving one of their number, John Hogg, dead. Of some men afterwards apprehended, James Learmont, a chapman, and William Temple were tried and condemned, the former to be hanged on the 27th September in the Grassmarket and the latter to be transported.1 Mackenzie, with his usual inaccuracy, calls the man executed 'George,' whereas George was acquitted. Learmont's defence was that he was unarmed and innocent-a plea which the Crown met with the charge of accession to murder. This incident gave Mackenzie ground for the following statement in his Vindication: 'As to the sending away People to the Plantations, it is answered that none were sent away, but such as were taken at Bothwell Bridge or in Argyle's Rebellion.' The Council, on 16th January 1679, informed Lauderdale that several were shipped to the plantations.

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Among notable conventicles held in 1678 those conducted by Welsh and Blackadder at Meiklewood and Skeoch Hill were remarkable for numbers and for fervour. Blackadder describes the march of fully armed and mounted gentlemen from Lanarkshire down Enterkin Pass into Nithsdale and on to the Vale of Cairn or Cluden in Irongray, near Dumfries. Fourteen thousand persons assembled and remained for three days, the Communion Season, as it was called. The services were held and the Sacraments dispensed in the lone, bracken-clad amphitheatre of Skeoch Hill, where on a slope a mass of rough stones, still visible, formed a Communion-table and pulpit, and four rows of stones afforded seats for the communicants. While Blackadder, Welsh, Arnot, and Dickson in turn lectured, preached, and dispensed the Bread of Life, alert sentinels were posted on every coign of vantage to guard against surprise; and Earlston at the head of the Galloway Horse stood ready for every emergency. The timid garrisons from afar spied the convention, which was too strong to be disturbed. In September Colonel Strother requested Lauder

1 Wodrow, ii. 477-9; Add. MSS., 23251, fol. 96. 2 Pages 11, 20. 3 Wodrow, iii. 24. 4 Letter, 23rd August 1678: State Papers (Charles II.), 396; Blackadder, Memoirs, 197-203.

dale to send troops to the Borders to suppress Welsh's party of horse, which had lately shot his cousin Marly, and Carr of Cherrytrees.1 So far north as Forgandenny, Stewart of Ballechin and some Highland soldiers scattered a conventicle and shot Andrew Brodie, wright, near Culteuchar Hill in October.2

Lauderdale was the fountainhead of power, and, as Dr. Matthew M'Kail at the time graphically wrote: 'In judgment a dog cannot move his tongue against him . . . he values the Episcopal Clergy as little as the Presbyterians when it comes in competition with the King's supremacy.' In consequence of this, self-defence became an article of an outlaw's faith, and M'Kail reported, 'There is many a man in Galloway, if he hath but two cows, he will sell one cow for a pair of pistols.' 3 The saints had greater need of them than ever. In a letter from Edinburgh it is stated: 'There is invented (as is Invention of alleged) by the famous bishop of Galloway [Paterson] a certain screw to couple their thumbs together by pairs to disable them from defensive or offensive war.' Worse still, on 23rd September, a captain's commission for a troop of horse was given to John Graham of Claverhouse, and soon the relentless harriers of the Whigs would be in the southern fields.5

At this crisis eight bishops met, not for prayer, but to commission the Primate, Sharp, to visit Lauderdale and concert still sterner measures for annihilating the Covenanters."

1 15th September: Add. MSS., 23251, fol. 99.

2 Martyr Graves of Scotland, 215.

3 State Papers (Charles II.), 396.

4 M'Kail to Adams, 16th November 1678: State Papers (Charles II.), 408.

5 Terry, John Graham, 38.

6 23rd November 1678, Letter of Sharp to Lauderdale: Laing MSS., 784.

thumbscrews.

CHAPTER XXV

THE EXIT OF SHARP

Scotland's

SCOTLAND had reached the nadir of degradation when Lauderdale curse in 1679. occupied the vice-regal chair, when Sharp controlled the well-springs

The harrying of William

Veitch.

of religion, when Paterson, the inventor of the double thumbscrews, was advanced to the Privy Council and to the see of Edinburgh, when mendacious Mackenzie pleaded in the name of justice, when heartless Claverhouse rode out to guard the angel of peace in 1679. While King Charles, with an incredible dissimulation, himself a secret Papist, sanctioned the persecution of his co-religionists, even permitting death to overtake a sayer of mass, and allowed the people to be disturbed over popish plots and the dissolution of the Cavalier Parliament, the best Scottish minds were occupied with thoughts of salvation. There are more converts than ever,' wrote Blackadder to exiled MacWard. Armies of believers met all winter. If there were more crowns there were more crosses. The Council proclaimed the Papists and Quakers, but refrained from prosecuting them.

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The case of William Veitch indicates how differently Presbyterian dissenters were harried. Veitch, an unattached probationer, joined the insurgents in 1666, and being dispatched on business, just missed the fight but got into the rout after Rullion Green. After marvellous escapes he reached England, with other fugitives, and lurked all winter in Newcastle under the name of William Johnston. His wife followed. He farmed and taught, to maintain a home, ultimately settling at Stanton near Morpeth. He was discovered and sent down to Edinburgh, where he appeared before Sharp and the 2 The Scots Worthies (Carslaw's edition) 607-22.

1 Hallam, ii. 443.

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