King Charles. Kelly, Middleton, Montgomery, Thomas Dalyell (Binns), and many other officers, as well as nine ministers.1 The Duke of Hamilton, before he died of his wounds, had four painful days given him in which to ponder over that essay on death and immortality which he wrote the night before the battle. The Earl of Derby, by recovering from his wounds, met a worse fate on the traitor's block at Bolton. Wanderings of The King escaped. For six weeks, there followed the romantic hunt. and hair-breadth escapes in circumstances evincing devotion only equalled in that shown to 'Bonnie Prince Charlie.' His adherents scorned the reward offered for him. Yet he preferred his terrible privations to seeking security among the Scots. They afterwards had a feeble joke at his expense, saying their Achan hid himself in an aik (oak). At length, in the unsanitary plight of dirty vagrants, Charles, with his companion Wilmot, reached France on 16th October and cast himself, a starveling, on the charity of friends. The Pope would not grant him a subsidy until he implemented in face of Holy Church his proposal to be converted to Romanism.3 Assembly at Dundee, in Argyll, as soon as Charles took command of his army, with Hamilton as lieutenant-general and Leslie as major-general, realised that his Sovereign discounted the Campbells as a military factor. While the Scots levies were being dragged reluctantly into the field, and cavaliers were counterfeiting repentance in order to obtain mercenary employment in the so-called army of patriots, the Assembly was endeavouring to silence the dissentients from the Royalist policy. It met in St. Andrews on 16th July, and Balcarres was Commissioner. Members had the unedifying experience of hearing Andrew Cant open the meeting with a condemnation of the recalcitrant policy, and Douglas, the Moderator, traverse Cant's opinions. Before the business was allowed to begin, Guthrie protested against certain members taking their seats, while Professor John Menzies, Aberdeen, proposed debarring the whole Commission for their defections. There was the 1 Lamont, 43. 2 Cf. extant begging letters to John Knox, minister of Leith, 3rd and 4th August 1652, as to his 'straights and necesitys.' Sold by W. Brown, Bookseller, Edinburgh. His 'friend' Knox was deprived in 1662! 3 Airy, 168. usual wrangle, Douglas challenging this slander, and Blair offering mediation. Rutherford, and other twenty-one sympathisers, protested against the meeting as unconstitutional.1 The Resolutioners voted Douglas into the chair. The temper of the diets was not improved by an impolitic request from the King that the opponents of the Resolutions should be censured, nor by a trenchant epistle from Wariston. Before they could settle to legislation, the news from Inverkeithing made them seek safety in Dundee. There, on 22nd July, Rutherford's cogent Protest declining the Assembly was read. Balcarres in vain demanded that the twenty-two absent Protesters Deposition of should be reported for civil punishment for their reflections on the King, Parliament, and Church. The Assembly ordered Presbyteries to deal with them. It was ultimately agreed to cite Guthrie, Patrick Gillespie, James Simson, James Naismith, and John Menzies. They did not compear. The Assembly deposed Guthrie, Gillespie, and Simson, suspended Naismith, and referred Menzies to the Commission.2 After the meeting of the Assembly at St. Andrews, a work was published entitled A Vindication of the Freedom and Lawfulness of the late Assembly, etc.3 3 This was answered by The Nullity of the Pretended Assembly at Saint Andrews and Dundee.* This ill-advised policy of the Moderates of conciliating a faithless King and worthless politicians while coercing their conscientious and wiser co-religionists—the Protesters-was for ever fatal to the unity of the Church of Scotland. That great schism, which the Covenant 1 Peterkin, Records, 631; Lamont, 40. 2 Row, Blair, 278. 3 Vindication, by James Wood: Review by Guthrie from notes of Wariston; cf. Baillie, Letters, iii. 213. 4 4to, pp. 312, 1652. The Nullity, p. 79, gives list of forty Remonstrants: Stranraer, Turnbull; Kirkcudbright, S. Row; Wigton, Richeson; Ayr, Wylie; Irvine, Mowet; Dumbarton, Henry Semple; Paisley, A. Dunlop; Glasgow, P. Gillespie; Hamilton, Nasmith; Lanark, Sommerville; Auchterarder, Murray; Perth, Rollok; Dunkeld, Oliphant; Kirkcaldy, Moncrieff; Cupar, Macgill; St. Andrews, S. Rutherfurd; Forfar, Lindsay; Arbroath, Reynolds; Aberdeen, Cant; Kincardine, Cant; Dumfries, Henry Henderson; Penpont, Samuel Austine; Lochmaben, Thomas Henderson; Middlebie, David Lang; Jedburgh, John Livingston; Turriff, Mitchell; Garioch, Tellifer; Kelso, Summervail; Earlstoun, John Veitch; Chirnside, Ramsay; Edinburgh, Robert Trail; Linlithgow, Melvill; Biggar, Livingstone; Dalkeith, Sinclair; Stirling, James Guthrie; Deer, Keith; Elgin, Brodie; Inveraray, Gordon; Dundee, Oliphant. Protesters. itself banned, and time never remedied, was not the only fruit of this Laodicean assembly. The public Resolutions were a source of discord to both sections of the protesting party—those who, like James Guthrie, held them to be unscriptural, and those who maintained their incongruity with the former resolutions of the Church to be done with the Malignant party. But both sections, and many other Covenanters as well, held that Sin, personal, ministerial, official, regal, and national, was the root of all their domestic troubles and The Causes of God's Wrath' on a sinful land. They agreed that this opinion or fact should be publicly voiced, and promulgated in express terms. When they met to condescend on the form of the declaration, there was division of opinion and adjournment of debate. The Commission had, after Dunbar, published Causes for Humiliation, but the anti-Resolutionists did not consider them exhaustive, at a meeting held at Glasgow in September 1651, which was adjourned to meet at Edinburgh in October. Thither the Protesters came by urgent request.' The whole questions 1 The ministers and elders who attended the 'Confessions' of the Ministers in 1651, which resulted in the production of The Causes of God's Wrath, were named in the Process against Wariston as follows: Thomas Ramsay Thomas Wyllie John Nevay James Nasmyth Robert Lockhart William Somervell James Donaldson Samuel Rutherford James Guthrie Robert Traill John Stirling Alexander Moncrieff Alexander Bartane Hugh Kennedy John Sinclair John Cleland Thomas Hog Robert Row, Elders, Andrew Hay Colonel Ker (Sir James Stewart?). Act. Parl. Scot., vii. App. 66. of the hour, religious and political, were discussed, but 'they only emitted some causes of a fast,' and declared the root sin to be the Restoration. The ten 'General Heads of the Causes why the Lord contends with the land,' as agreed upon by the Commission, were accepted, and it was agreed that these should be amplified, after this meeting held in October, as stated in the work itself. James Guthrie is usually credited with the clerical work of preparing the manifesto-Hugh Kennedy also being associated in it— which appeared with the title, Causes of the Lords wrath against Scotland manifested in his sad late Dispensations. Whereunto is added a Paper, particularly holding forth the Sins of the Ministery.2 The manuscript, subscribed by Wariston, was given by him to John Ferrier, who carried it to Christopher Higgins the printer, who, in turn, executed the work as instructed by Colonel Fynick.3 The indictment of Guthrie bore that he was the compiler, but Guthrie in defence pleaded that he was only one of the compilers and enlargers of the 'Heads.'* The indictment of Wariston also accused him of being art and part in the compilation.5 Setting apart the fact that King Charles was a pledged Covenanter, the pamphlet was the rankest treason possible. Otherwise it was both legal and justifiable. So widespread was the influence of this pamphlet that Parliament enjoined that Remonstrators and persons accessory to it should remove ten miles from the Capital." It was burned by the common hangman. The Assembly, as if ashamed of the West Kirk Declaration, authorised this interpretation of it: 'That the King's interest is not to be owned but in subordination to God, the Kirk being ever willing, as their duty is, to own and maintain in their station his Majesty's interest in that subordination, according to the Covenants.' 1 Row, Blair, 266, 270; Suppl., 285, 286. 3 Act. Parl. Scot., vii. App. 66. 5 Ibid., 10. 6 1661, c. II. 2 4to, n.p., 1653, pp. 98; Aldis, List, 1472. 4 Ibid., 35, 36-42. 7 Peterkin, Records, 636. CHAPTER XIX THE RULE OF THE IRONSIDES Cromwell's 'crowning mercy.' CROMWELL accepted his victory at Worcester as the divine sign of 2 Dundee in 1651 was an exceedingly opulent, well-fortified city, whose roadstead was crowded with merchantmen, whose lock-fast places were filled with the valuables of the surrounding districts. It was held for the Covenanters by an old campaigner with Gustavus Adolphus-Major-General Robert Lumsden of Mountquhanie-whom Cromwell had captured at Dunbar. Acting-General Leven and the Committees of State and Church met in Alyth, on the Sidlaw Hills, in order to consider means for thwarting Monck and saving Dundee. Well informed of this intention, Colonel Matthew Alured and eight hundred of Monck's Horse, after a bold night ride in the rain, surrounded the town early on 1 Letters clxxxii., clxxxiii. 2 Scotland and Commonwealth, ii. 66. |