Skirmishes and truces. The fight at Bothwell Bridge, June 1679. battalion near the bridge, and the main body on high ground near the Little Park, Hamilton.' The fine old narrow bridge with its guardhouse and toll-bar, when barricaded with stones, and adjacent dwellinghouses, were an ideal strength for the brave defenders, none braver than Hackston, Hall, Turnbull of the horse, and Fowler and Ross of the foot. The little brass piece defended the approach. The men of Stirling, Clydesdale, and Galloway, the latter brave with banners and terrible with pikes and halberds, stood on the south side of the bridge, Hackston being in command on the left side, near the houses at Bridgend. By seven o'clock Monmouth's force was marshalled along the north side of the Clyde, before the bridge, and some skirmishing took place. During the preliminary confusion consequent on this advance William Blackadder, bearing the address to Monmouth, accosted Hamilton and got him to sign what he said he had not read, but took on trust as the work of Cargill. Two envoys with a drummer, the former said to be David Hume, minister, and William Fergusson of Caitloch-other authorities mention Welsh, Captain M'Culloch, Murdoch-crossed the bridge carrying the address. The drum of truce returned to Hamilton, who, learning that Monmouth would only treat with the Whigs if they first laid down their arms, cynically replied, and hang next.' In turn Monmouth asked for Hamilton's ultimatum, which was 'no surrender.' The English park of artillery was trained on the bridge and the foe, and when the gunners fired, the musketeers and the brass piece Sabbath, 22nd replied with such effect that the timid Royalists abandoned the guns. Incredible to tell, there was no brave Dingwall ready to leap the barricade and spike the guns. They were manned again, and soon made a way for the pioneers. Hackston, Ure of Shargarton, and the men of Kippen and Galloway clung to their posts for two hours or more, calling out for supports and ammunition, and being supplied 1 Burnet, Hist., ii. 240. 2 Faithful Contendings, 195. 3 Blackadder, 225; Wodrow, iii. 106; Ure's Narr., 466; Terry, John Graham, 74 note (citing Smith, Account, 119). 4 Ure's Narr., 477. with raisins, till they were forced to retire, with 'sore hearts,' fighting as they retreated. Hamilton practically forbade a rally. Had he not been both incompetent and in the sulks, he would have reinforced the heroes, who, with a keg of powder, might have blown the bridge into the river. On a rising ground on the edge of the moorland, where the great public gibbet of the Nether Ward of Lanark stood, was posted the sullen horde of conventiclers, without a leader, helpless as a drove of sheep, while the army of Monmouth, headed by himself, marched across the bridge in unbroken order. Linlithgow was colonel of the foot-guards; Montrose was colonel of the horse-guards. On the first discharge of the cannon, the horses on both wings of the insurgents' main body grew restive and stampeded, and before ten men were killed in the action the foot was disordered as well.1 8 Covenanters. It was now ten o'clock. Monmouth loosed the cavalry under Stampede of Oglethorpe, Maine, and Claverhouse, and their thirsty swords completed the débâcle. Hamilton was the first to flee; Claverhouse was among the last to quit the scene of slaughter, where he and his troop, mad for blood, did the most cruel execution.' 'When we fled there was not ten men killed of us all,' Ure recorded. Some fugitives who sought safety in the parish church of Hamilton were butchered in the sacred edifice. Before the dragoons could be got to desist from slaying, some were knocked down by gentlemen of the lifeguard.' From Hackston's account of the fight we learn that after he and the other defenders of the bridge had been compelled to fall back upon the main body of Covenanters, and, as the Royalist troops filed across the bridge, there was a movement of the Covenanters, which was checked by the cry that their officers had deserted them. This was followed by a stampede of two troops of horse under Thomas Weir of Greenrig, formerly a trooper under Dalyell at Pentland, apparently done wilfully to disorder the ranks of the infantry, as well in the main body as in the reserve, on the left wing. 5 2 Blackadder, Memoirs, 227. 1 Ure's Narr., 483. Surrender of a craven mob. 1 Credit was given to Peden, far away on the Borders, for seeing a vision which made him refuse to preach, and constrained him to send the people to pray, as he saw the soldiers 'hagging and hashing them down and their blood is running like water.' It is not to the credit of the hair-splitting heroes that all escaped with sound skins, excepting Balfour, who was shot in the thigh, and Cargill, who was left for dead on the field and miraculously escaped death. Hamilton and his craven staff slept in Loudoun Castle that night. Kid was caught in the first bog. Many of the fugitives found refuge in the woods round Hamilton. Some innocent persons were killed in the chase. Monmouth personally did not follow far, and mercifully restrained the pursuers. On riding to Crookedstone, near West Quarter, the dragoons met and slew William Gordon of Earlston, a notorious old conventicler, returned exile, and outlaw, on his way to join his son, Alexander, who married Janet, only sister of Robert Hamilton. Alexander fled into a house in Hamilton, and disguising himself as a woman rocking a cradle, escaped the searchers. Hundreds were slain in town and field.3 Few Royalists fell. 3 A large body of the Covenanters, seemingly converted to a policy of non-resistance, gave up their arms without striking a blow. According to Blackadder, 'after the retreat was sounded they fell on taking prisoners, which were above twelve hundred on the place, who were all gathered together about a gallows that stood there, and kept in that place all night (and made to lye flat on their faces on the ground) with a strong guard.' He also mentions the barbarities 1 Six Saints, i. 53. 2 Wodrow, iii. 108, 109. 3 His tombstone in Glassford churchyard bears that he was sixty-five years of age: Martyr Graves, 253. 4 Crookshanks, Hist., ii. 15. 6 The numbers of slain and prisoners are variously stated: Wodrow gives 800 killed and 1100 taken; Creichton, 700 or 800, and 1500; Burnet between 200 and 300, and 1200; Blackadder, 400 and 1200; Law, 800 and 300. The figment found in Creichton's Memoirs (p. 34), that the Whigs had the gibbet and a cart-load of ropes ready to hang the Royalists wholesale, is a piece of Swift's delightful sarcasm. Yet the 'carts' disturbed the sober judgment of Hill Burton (Hist., vii. 232), and the 'new ropes' similarly affected Mr. Andrew Lang (Hist., iii. 353). The head of the moor, at the junction of Muir Street with Bothwell Road and Almada Street, is still known as 'Gallowhill' and 'Gallowsknowe,' and as the locality where the Nether Ward gibbet always stood. • Pages 228-9. 6 |