CHAPTER XXVIII THE POLICY OF ROPE AND GUN 1 Gordon, a rising Royalist. THE heir-apparent returned to Court, assured that his succession to the throne would never be disputed in the northern kingdom, where he had left the Test as a touchstone to prove the loyalty of the Scots. His suave manners and conciliatory policy confirmed many aristocratic and disreputable friendships, which, meantime, he did not forget-soldiers being recommended for any little forfitur or fine,' and reverend spies for 'some little thing." In Chancellor Gordon, Chancellor son of that Sir John Gordon of Haddo who, on being executed for Royalism, left his six children to the care of the King, he had an influential supporter in Parliament, council, and judicature, active and willing to champion the unpopular cause of York.2 Gordon was accomplished. In his youth he acted as professor in Aberdeen University. He studied law abroad. He succeeded to his elder brother in the baronetcy, passed the Scottish bar in 1668, sat in Parliament in 1669, supported the Lauderdalian policy, and qualified for the Presidency, from which the Test drove Sir James Dalrymple. He was in his forty-fifth year when he was promoted to the Chancellorship, an honour which was followed in November by his elevation to the peerage as Earl of Aberdeen. Unfortunately this 'glied carl,' as John Dick, the martyr, called Aberdeen, was noted for his crooked person and vulgar manners, which, his opponents said, prevented him adorning his exalted position.. York trusted him. 3 A coadjutor was William Douglas, third Earl of Queensberry, Lord Justice-General, Treasurer, created Marquis on 11th May 1682, 1 Hist. MSS. Com. Rep., XV. viii. 182, 189. 2 Spalding, ii. 390. VOL. II. 2 Z 3 Letters, Preface, i-l (Spalding Club). 1 of Queens berry. Secretary Exit of The Marquis and Duke on 3rd February 1684. The magnificent pile of Drumlanrig, at this time being built on the site of the House of the Hassock, in Mid-Nithsdale, fitly immortalises the ambition of this thrifty Treasurer, who, notwithstanding that he flourished while other aristocrats were in penury, bitterly wrote on his accounts, 'Deil pike oot the een o' him wha looks herein.' All the peculating officers of the Crown might have docketed their papers in the same terms. The Earl of Melfort was bold enough to tell the King in 1685 that 'Duke Queensberry was an atheist in religion, ä villain in friendship, a knave in business, and a traitor in his carriage to him [James].'1 Yet this intriguer, according to Perth, posed as an angel of light.2 The Earl of Moray was appointed Secretary of State in room of Lauderdale, who realised his increasing decrepitude. Middleton was his deputy. Lauderdale, discredited at Court, worn by his excesses and cares, became apoplectic, and merely existed in his overgrown body, as impotent as before he was all-powerful, and died at Tunbridge Wells on 24th August 1682. York, when communicating news of his demise to Queensberry, one of the courtiers waiting for the dead man's shoes, made no comment, further than that he had recommended Hamilton for the coveted Garter, and Queensberry for the captaincy of the Castle of Edinburgh. Thus the great politician, who for years had moulded the regal and prelatic policy and hammered his native land, was never missed by the princes he served, because they had and more active agents to carry on their nefarious undertakings. The country did not mourn for what the Court did not miss. Lauderdale's body was laid in Inveresk Church in October 1682 and buried in Haddington in the following April. Bishop Paterson preached a funeral sermon from the text, 'O death, where is thy sting; O grave, where is thy victory?' The solemnities were rendered more memorable rurally by the fact that a drunk beggar, quarrelling over the alms, stabbed another in the churchyard and was hanged next day over the town bridge. Thus passed Lauderdale, ignominiously too, 3 1 Hist. MSS. Com. Rep., XI. vi. 171. younger 2 Ibid., XI. vi. 171. ▲ Observes, 76, 93. T like all the other Grand Viziers of the Stuart despots-Hamilton, Lauderdale. According to a reliable authority, Mr. Osmund Airy, Lauderdale's Estimate of career up to the Restoration had been 'a carefully arranged hypocrisy' of a cunning fellow, a bold and unabashed liar,' who lived to exemplify the French proverb 'Jeune hermite, vieux diable.'1 Lauderdale's misgovernment of Scotland gave rise to the rebellion in the West and to countless woes consequent upon it, but when honester politicians endeavoured to bring Lauderdale to his knees for his maladministration, all the satisfaction that these patriots got from the King for their anxiety was the unanswerable retort of the despot that the 'many damned things' urged against his political paramour proved nothing hurtful to the interests of the King. Like master, like slave-Self was the God of them both. Another worshipper at the same shrine was ready to take up the uncompleted task of the dead viceroy. obliterating That obliteration of dissent desired by Lauderdale, which grim Agents for Dalyell could not effect by means of torture, hair-shirts, sleepless dissent. tormentors, and other brutalities, was to be assured by the new protégé of York-Claverhouse—with his eager dragoons, relentless bailiffs and beagles, and his own pistols. As a spiritual power, and an effective administrator of ecclesiastical affairs, the hierarchy had become a nullity in the land. The bishops were mere automata. Equally happy in the torture-chamber and on the primatial seat, Archbishop Alexander Burnet, the 'Long Face' of earlier politicians, feline in his opposition of Whiggery and self-tormented by a horror of 1 Airy, Charles II., 264-9. Bishop. imaginary plots, found solace in promoting severer punishments for the extermination of nonconformists. The Test, which was the aversion of Bishop Scougal, was the exact measure of the toleration of Burnet.1 In January 1680, Burnet presided in a Synod which deposed James Gordon, Episcopal minister of Banchory-Devenick, The Reformed who, in an anonymous work, published abroad, entitled The Reformed Bishop, advocated the establishment of a moderate Episcopacy, as favoured by King Charles I. Gordon also animadverted on the innovations of Puritanism, pointed out the weakness of the existing Episcopacy, denounced corruption, lashed, without naming, black sheep in high places in the Church, and reprobated conversion by inquisitorial methods.2 Gordon submitted, and, after an interval, was restored to his charge. A contemporary epigram hit off the episode thus: Authorisation of Liturgy. 'If your book had never been seen On 12th February 1680, the Privy Council authorised the use of the Liturgy in family worship, which resulted in the sale of many copies of the Prayer Book.3 Nevertheless, Presbyterian rites and customs died hard. In October 1683, the Synod of Edinburgh ordained ministers to stand throughout divine service; to pray for archbishops and bishops; to pray for the King as the Head of the Church in all causes; and ordered the people to sing the doxology and to stand at prayers.* The refusal of the Test by the ministers of Lothian was to Archbishop Burnet 'the mystery of Iniquity.' As if the ghost of Sharp was re-incarnated in him, he informed Sancroft: 'If an Indulgence be allowed to any person upon any consideration whatsoever, our labour will be lost, and this poor Church utterly undone.'5 Burnet's hands were strengthened by his colleague in Glasgow, Arthur Ross, of the House of Kilravock, who, according to Burnet 1 Scougal died on 16th February 1682, aged seventy-five. 2 Grub, iii. 272. 5 Letters, 35, 36. Ross. the historian, was 'always a proud, ill-natured, and ignorant man, Archbishop 3 Paterson. All the time Paterson was Bishop of Edinburgh he never miti- Bishop gated his hatred of the Covenanters, and rendered himself such a nuisance to the advisers of the Crown that Drummond, afterwards Earl of Melfort, wrote to Queensberry that Secretary Middleton and he were planning Paterson's relegation to the Orkneys, because 'he is the most impudent of mankinde, for he attests me as a wittness of his litle medling.'2 Paterson wanted a house in Edinburgh to be built out of Moodie's Mortification, left for building a church in Edinburgh, then lying in the Treasury. This meant raising the Deil of Drumlanrig. Before Paterson ceased to trouble he had his cruel thumbscrews to perfect and introduce, pensions to secure by fraud, and stipends, from parishes purposely kept vacant, to hold up for his own self-aggrandisement. Thereafter the King and the Privy Council removed him from their choice society. These were the damning facts which 'opened the Whigs' mouths,' as the English prelates then observed. In the correspondence of the diplomatists Paterson figures as 'Mr. Pious' and 'Pope Pious'; but to the Covenanters this unblushing votary of Venus was nicknamed Bishop Bandstrings,' in allusion to the gossip that Paterson when preaching sometimes made use of his bands to convey amatory signals to neurotic women in the audience.5 The other bishops, Atkins in Galloway, Falconer in Brechin, afterwards in Moray, Maclean in Argyle, Bruce in Dunkeld, Wood in Caithness, and Archibald Graham, minister of Rothesay and Bishop of the Isles, were not very prominent men of affairs. One of the most distinguished ornaments of the Church, who pre 1 Hist., i. 510; ii. 430. 3 Hist. MSS. Com. Rep. (Drumlanrig MSS.), ii. 124, 125. |