H
^n. Shdk
of , , ^ <^ , oi"
(^ D*
THE COVENANTERS
KINiv r MARINES FIRST.
THE
COVENANTERS
A HISTORY .OF THE CHURCH IN SCOTLAND FROM
THE REFORMATION TO THE REVOLUTION, BY
JAMES KING HEWISON
M.A., D.D. (eDIN.): fellow OFTHE SOCIETY OF
ANTIQUARIES OF SCOTLAND : EDITOR OF THE
WORKS OF ABBOT NINIAN WINZET: AUTHOR OF
'THE ISLE OF BUTE IN THE OLDEN TIME,' ETC.
IN TWO VOLUMES
VOLUME I
GLASGOW : JOHN SMITH AND SON
1908
Edinburgh : T. and A. Constable, Printer* to Hi-. Majesty
TO THE MEMORY
OF
MY FATHER AND MOTHER
PREFACE
Students of History, and readers generally, have long felt the need
of an adequate work, stating as concisely as possible the most
important facts in the history of the Covenanters, exhibiting the
exact terms of their religious and secular bonds and leagues, and
tracing the growth of the spirit of freedom in Scotland, as that was
affected by the life and work of the National Church from 1560
until 1690. During that era sacred and civil affairs were much
intermingled, so that the historian now has great difficulty in marking
the boundary between the ecclesiastical and political spheres, and
in classifying the various facts which present themselves, as he
endeavours faithfully to depict the influential men and women of
that time.
Certain definite conclusions regarding the Covenanters, as a
rigid sect in the Christian Church, and as a restless, rebellious
political party in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, have
been arrived at by many students; and, as a general rule, a far
from favourable estimate of these brave and defensible patriots has
been based upon generalisations which will not bear investigation.
Perhaps unintentionally Sir Walter Scott, by his marvellous creation
of characters, of which the less worthy — as Ruskin pointed out —
have influenced the popular judgment, while the more virtuous and
delightful have been left out of consideration, helped to defame
one of the most extraordinary orders of devotees which the civilised
world ever saw. An absolutely impartial account of the Covenanters
was therefore a desideratum.
Notwithstanding what some authors of repute have written of late
regarding the credulity and the unreliability of the Reverend Robert
viii THE COVENANTERS
Wodrow, parish minister of Eastwood — the historian par excellence
of the Covenanters — all investigators in this department of his-
torical knowledge must continue to acknowledge indebtedness to one
whose vast collections of original and transcribed documents, too little
consulted, remain an inexhaustible treasure-house of relevant facts
and dates. These are easily accessible in the Advocates' Library,
Edinburgh, in the Library of the Church of Scotland, Edinburgh, and
in the Library of the University of Glasgow. A careful inspection
of these authorities proves that Wodrow was painfully anxious to
obtain reliable facts and attested accounts of events. The errors
of his printed History of the Sufferings are, after all, comparatively
few, and, in many instances, might not have existed, if his transcribed
manuscript entitled Scotia Sub Cruce had been literally adhered to,
and his invaluable notes been more utilised by his editor. Dr. Robert
Burns, in 1835. When the Scottish History Society publishes an
Index to these important papers, and when the Minute-Books of the
Justiciary Courts and Privy Council are printed, students will then
realise the extraordinary labours of Wodrow in his praiseworthy
efforts to secure, in most difficult circumstances, verification for the
facts he chronicled.
The light thrown upon the period under review, in our own day,
has been most definitive, and still more light is now appearing out of
unexpected quarters. Discerning the necessity for a thorough search
among unpublished papers and rare pamphlets yet hidden in public
archives, Town Council and private muniment rooms, and in the
repositories of Church papers, I have worked in these sources and
obtained some most interesting facts. The yields from various
collections of manuscripts in the Advocates' Library (Kirk, Den-
mylne, etc.), the Laing MSS. in Edinburgh University Library, the
Clarendon MSS. in the Bodleian Library, the MSS. relative to Laud
in Lambeth Palace, the Lauderdale MSS. in the British Museum,
and the still unpublished State Papers, Warrant Books, and Letters
in the Record Office, London, and in the Register House, Edinburgh,
are very important. Extracts from the Books of Adjournal can no
PREFACE . ix
longer be overlooked. The production of the Covenant signed by
Kincr Charles the Second must awaken a fresh interest in that
Covenanter's defections. A pathetic interest is attached to the
Minute-Book of the Lords of Justiciary on circuit in 1684 (especially
Queensberry, Drumlanrig, and Claverhouse), which assiduous
Wodrow could not find. These, and other priceless documents, will
abide to rectify the overhasty judgments of recent writers.
In my youth it was my privilege to dwell among a peasantry whose
ancestors fought and fell for the Covenant. Their vivid traditions,
narrated with awe-inspiring reverence around their hearths, in sight
of the trusty weapons which once guarded them, are now substantially
corroborated from the indestructible records, of whose existence the
raconteurs never heard. And it is remarkable how little error had
crept into the rural chronicles. I have elsewhere lingered to hear
woeful tales from the descendants of the favourers of Episcopacy,
who suffered at the hands of the rigid Presbyterians. To be sure of
my ground, I have visited scenes hallowed by the memories of
Romanist, Reformer, and Rebel, from Orkney to the Water of
Blednoch, from Dunnottar to Eilean Gherig, and have obtained
photographic memorials, many of which are herein reproduced.
The risks of error in dealing with the numerous facts and dates
which are embodied in this work are obvious ; but much care has
been taken to eliminate inaccuracies and to present the truth without
prejudice.
The first part of the book I have refrained from loading with
references to authorities, since the history of the earlier period has
been already fully treated and authenticated by competent writers.
Investigations among unpublished documents have produced so many
new facts that for the later periods more numerous references have
been necessary.
I tender my best thanks to Dr. David Hay Fleming for the great
privilege of being permitted to consult, in his home and library, his
unique collection of valuable books and rare pamphlets, and for much
kind help. I record my gratitude for the kindness and forbearance
X THE COVENANTERS
shown to me by the keepers of our great Hbraries : — Mr. J. T. Clark,
late Keeper of the Advocates' Library, Edinburgh, Mr. Stronach,
and his assistants ; the Rev. Dr. Christie, Librarian to the General
Assembly ; Mr. James Lymburn, late Librarian in Glasgow
University, and his successor, Mr. James L. Galbraith ; Mr.
Alexander Anderson, Librarian in Edinburgh University; Mr. J.
Maitland Anderson, Librarian in St. Andrews University ; and
Mr. Robert Adams, Mitchell Library, Glasgow. The Rev. John
Anderson, Curator of the Historical Department, H.M. Register
House, Edinburgh, has rendered me invaluable assistance. I am
also much indebted to the Rev. Dr. R. Menzies Fergusson, Logie,
the Rev. Robert Hislop, Thornhill, and Mr. D. J. Knox, Glasgow,
for reading the proof-sheets, and for valuable suggestions.
The work is enhanced by photographic reproductions of por-
traits, pictures, and Covenants, for which I offer my thanks to: —
The Most Honourable the Marquis of Tweeddale ; Sir James H.
Gibson-Craig of Riccarton, Baronet ; Mrs. Elizabeth Milbank,
Melville House; Rev. Thomas Kidd, M.A., Moniaive ; Mr. John
C. Montgomerie, Dalmore ; Mr. J. B. Dalzell, Larkhall ; Mr. Alfred
G. Miller, Hamilton; Mr. J. R. Brown, Liverpool; Mr. Charles
Pearson, Alloa; Mr. George N. Hislop, London; Mr. James
M 'Crone, Rothesay; Messrs. Valentine and Co., Dundee; Messrs.
G. W. Wilson and Co., Aberdeen ; Messrs. Drummond Young and
Watson, Edinburgh ; Messrs. T. and R. Annan and Sons, Glasgow ;
Mr. A. M. Nicolson, Wigtown ; Mr. Malcolm Macfarlane, jun., Bridge
of Allan ; Mr. Alexander Whitelaw, Cupar ; Rev. J. C. Walker,
Kirkinner ; Mr. R. Lauder, Glasgow; Colonel Horace Walpole, Heck-
field Place, Hants ; Professor C. Sandford Terry, Aberdeen ; and to
the possessors and custodiers of the Covenants, mentioned in the
Appendix, who have permitted me herein to present these historic
bonds in facsimile.
JAMES KING HEWISON.
The Manse, Rothesay,
January 1908.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
THE HISTORICAL BEGINNINGS OF THE COVENANTERS— 1545-1561
The Roman Church in Scotland in
1557
Origin of the Protestant Church in
Scotland
Internal Church Reforms
Reformers not illiterate
Fundamental Principles of Reformed
Church ,
Standpoint of Covenanters
Origin of Covenants .
Wishart and Beaton, 1546
John Knox, 1515-1572
The Dun Covenant, 1556
The Godly Band, Edinburgh, 1557
Subscribers to Edinburgh Covenant
The Earls of Argyll, Glencairn, and
Morton ....
Regent Moray, 1531 (?)-i57o
First Church Standards
Martyrdom of Mill, 1558 .
Rising in Perth in 1559
Prayer of Congregation
Perth Covenant, 31st May, 1559
A religious crusade
Aim of Knox
9
10
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
21
Edinburgh Covenant, 13th July
1559
Stirling Covenant, ist August 1559
Leith Covenant, 27th April 1560
Parliament, August 1560
Confession of Faith, 1560 .
Disestablishment Acts, 1560
Continuity of Church .
Birthday of the Protestant Church
First General Assembly, 1560
Tolerance of Church .
Needs of new Church .
Spottiswood, Wynram, Willock, and
Row ....
Confession of Faith, 1560 .
Doctrines of the Confession
First Book of Discipline
Results of Book of Discipline
Book of Common Order
The Psalter
The Order not a Liturgy
Calvin's Catechism
Church office-bearers .
Church Courts .
24
25
27
30
30
31
32
33
33
34
35
35
36
37
38
41
41
42
43
44
45
46
Xll
THE COVENANTERS
CHAPTER II
MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS AND THE ROMANIST REACTION— 1561-1567
Queen Mary Stuartj 1561 .
Edict of Toleration, 25th August 1561
The Jesuit policy
The giddy Queen
Abbot Quintin Kennedy
Ninian Winzet ....
Ayr Covenant, 4th September 1562
Legislation in 1562
Knox on the situation
Maitland of Lethington
Mary marries Darnley, 29th July 1565
PAGE
. 48
General Assembly, 1565
PAGE
58
49
Rizzio slain, 1566 ....
59
• 50
Knox on Rizzio's death
60
• 51
Collapse of Reform party, 17 th March
• 52
1566 ......
61
• 53
Darnley's doom
61
• 54
Mary marries Bothwell
62
• 55
Carberry Hill, 15th June 1567 .
63
. 56
Mary, in Loch Leven, abdicates, 24th
■ 57
July 1567
^3
57
Battle of Langside, 13th May 1568
64
CHAPTER I II
THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE CHURCH BY LAW— 1567-1580
Establishment of Religion .
Coronation of James VI., 1567
Moray Regent ....
Edinburgh Assemblies, June and July
1567
Edinburgh Covenant, 25th July 1567
Moray's Parliament, 1567 .
Church self-organised .
Murder of Regent Moray, 23rd January
1570
Distractions in Scotland, 157 1 .
Leith Convention, 1572
Leith Concordat ....
Leith Covenant, 2nd July 1572 .
Perth Interim, 1572 .
65
66
67
68
68
69
70
71
71
72
73
75
75
Death of Knox, 1572 .
76
Rise of Regent Morton
77
Confession of Faith made a test .
• 78
Tulchan Bishops
. 78
Andrew Melville, 1574
80
Scots Church affairs in 1574
81
Debate on Episcopacy, 1575
82
General Assembly, 1576
^^
King reigns, 12th March 1578 .
83
Second Book of Discipline .
84
Function of the Church
85
The ideal clergy ....
86
Origin of presbyteries .
87
The Scots Bible ....
89
The new Christian Commonwealth
90
CONTENTS
Xlll
CHAPTER IV
THE KING'S CONFESSION— 1580-1582
Tragedies in the sixteenth centu
PAGE
ry . 91
Origin of the National Covena
int of
1580-1 ....
. 92
Papal plans ; the Arrnada .
• 93
Reason for Establishment .
• 93
Deaths of Church leaders .
• 94
Dundee Assembly, 1580
• 95
D'Aubigny, 1579
. 96
Earl of Arran .
• 97
John Craig
• 98
The King's Confession, 1581
. 99
Subscribers to the Confession
• 103
Fall of Morton .
104
Glasgow Assembly, 1581 .
PAGE
Archbishop Montgomery, 1581 .
105
Assembly in St. Andrews, in April
1582
106
John Durie, 1537-1600
107
Perth Convention, 1582
108
Policy of Covenanters
109
Gowrie Bond and Raid of Ruthven,
1582
109
Politics in the Church
I ro
Flight of Lennox and Arran
III
Death of Buchanan, 28th September
1582
112
CHAPTER V
THE FIGHT FOR PREROGATIVE— 1582-1603
Character of King James .
Scotland in 1584
Letter from James to the Pope .
Archbishop Adamson, 1537-1592
Andrew Melville's case
Melville's flight to England, 1584
The Brownists, 1584
The Black Acts of 1584 .
The Scottish Pope
Paralysis of the Church, 1584 .
St. Andrews Covenant, 1585
Capture of King James, 1585
A Royal /r^w/fTi?/?, 1585
Adamson's case
Holyrood Assembly, 1586
PAGE
• 113
• ^15
• 115
. 116
. 116
. 118
. 119
. 119
. 120
. 121
. 124
. 124
. 125
. 126
. 126
Execution of Queen Mary, 1587
Fateof Adamson, 1592
PAGE
127
128
Covenant of 1590
129
Condition of people in 1588
Marriage of James, 1589 .
The King at work
130
131
132
Parliament of 1592 .
133
The parochial system
The ' Spanish Blanks '
Aberdeen Covenant, 1593.
134
134
135
David Black's case .
136
Edinburgh Assembly, 1596
Covenant signed, 1596
Octavians and Cubiculars .
137
138
139
Falkland Convention, 1596
^39
XIV
THE COVENANTERS
Emeute in Edinburgh, December 1596 141 1 The King's literary works
Royal Proclamation .
Linlithgow Test, 1596
Perth Assembly, 1597
Dundee Assembly, 1597 .
Parliament, 13th December 1597
Falkland Convention and Holyrood
Conference . . . . .
142
M3
144
145
146
147
Montrose Assembly, 1600 .
Gowrie Plot, 1600 . . . .
Birth of Prince Charles, 19th Novem-
ber 1600 . . . . .
Burntisland Assembly, 1601
Holyrood Assembly, 1602 .
148
150
151
152
152
153
CHAPTER VI
CLERICAL LIFE AND LEARNING AFTER THE REFORMATION— 1560-1625
PAGE
Rudeness after Reformation . .154
Illiterate ministers
PAGE
. 162
Impious Reformers .
154
Schools ....
. 163
Poverty of clergy
155
' Form of Prayers '
. . 163
Stipends .
156
Influential treatises .
. 164
Miseries of ministers
157
Leading Reformers .
164-166
Debts
158
Printers ....
. 167
Libraries and Books .
158
Scots poets . . , .
. 168
Assaults on ministers
159
The Melvilles .
. 168
Immoral ministers
160
Grammarians
. 169
The Reformers men of culture
161
Robert Bruce, 15 54-1 631 .
. 172
Famous graduates in the ^'
inisti
y
162
CHAPTER VII
THE ERASTIAN KING— 1 603-1625
King James in England . . -173
Puritanism . . . . -174
Hampton Court Conference, 1604 . 175
Archbishop Spottiswood, 20th July
1603 ...... 176
Hierarchy restored . . . -177
Aberdeen Assembly, 1605 . . 177
Clergy invited to London, 1606 . 178
The Red Parliament, 1606 . . 179
Temporal lordships . . . -179
Conference at Hampton Court, 1606 180
Trials of the eight Scots . . . 181
Melville's hardships and death, 1622 . 182
The Blackness convicts . . .183
CONTENTS
XV
Constant Moderators
The Angelical Assembly of Glasgow
8th June 1610
Consecration of Scots bishops .
National Bible, 161 1 .
Pope blesses Queen .
Edicts of Aberdeen Assembly, 1616
The Five Articles
King James returns in 161 7
Parliament of 161 7 .
PAGE
. 184
Assembly at St. Andrews, 25th
ember 1617 .
Nov
. 186
Perth Assembly, 16 18
. 187
Perth Articles .
. 189
Book of Sports, 16 18
. 191
Black Saturday, 1621
192
Policy of extermination
• ^93
The Stewartoh revival;, 1622
. 194
The Shotts revival, 1630 .
• 195
King James dies, 1625
197
197
198
201
202
203
204
205
206
CHAPTER VIII
THE LITURGY IMBROGLIO— 1625-1637
Charles i., 1625 . . . .
PAGE
208
William Laud
209
Misery of Scotland in 1630
"213
Charles marries, ist May 1625 .
213
General Revocation . . . .
214
Liturgy mooted, 1628
215
Coronation of Charles, 1633
216
Liturgy read in St. Giles .
219
Parliament of 1633 .
220
New constitutional party, 1633 .
223
Lord Balmerino's trial
224
Laud's primacy, 1 633
225
The Scottish Liturgy, 1616-1619
, 226
Book of Canons
227
Evolution of the Scottish Prayer Bool«
: 230
Charles the r'edacteur of the Liturgy
Scope of Prayer Book
Popish doctrines in the Prayer Book
Horror of Presbyterians
Papal alliance suspected .
Prayer Book not approved by Rome
Laud's desire of uniformity
Attitude of Puritans .
St. Giles Church, 23rd July 1637
' The Stony Sabbath '
Alleged conspiracy of Henderson and
others
Jenny Geddes ....
Prayer Books suspended .
Glasgow riot ....
232
233
235
236
237
238
240
241
242
244
246
247
248
248
CHAPTER IX
THE NATIONAL COVENANT— 1637-1638
Anger of King Charles i. .
Alexander Henderson's appeal .
250 Henderson's character, 1583-1646
251 Council's decision
C
PAGE
252
253
XVI
THE COVENANTERS
Riots in Edinbursrh in autumn i
637 •
254
Petitions of ' Supplicants ' .
256
Appointment of Commissioners of the
Covenanters, afterwards called The
Tables
256
Earl of Loudoun
257
The Tables resist autocracy
258
Views of King Charles
259
Edinburgh in February 1638
259
The night ride to Stirling .
260
The Stirling Protestation .
261
Protestation at Edinburgh, 22nd
Feb-
ruary
261
An anti- Royalist combination .
262
PAGE
263
Johnston of Wariston
The 1638 Covenant in course of pre
paration ....
Nature of the Covenant
Aim of the Covenanters
Subscribing of the Covenant . 267-272
Opposition to Covenant in Aberdeen . 275
Covenanters masters of the field
The Aberdeen Doctors
Privy Council proceedings in March
1638 . . .
The Covenant a constitutional docu-
ment
Opinion of the King's jester
264
265
266
276
276
278
279
280
CHAPTER X
•.V
THE GLASGOW ASSEMBLY AND THE ABOLITION OF EPISCOPACY— 1638
The King's opinion of the crisis
National enthusiasm .
Doleful report of the bishops
The third Marquis of Hamilton, 1638
The Covenant held to be legal
The King's instructions
The King prepares force
The Primate's ruse .
The Tables alert
The King's fixed idea
The Protestation
Scheme to divide the Covenanters
The Tables prepare for Glasgow
Assembly .....
Privy Council subscribe 1581 Covenant
Advice of Royalists ....
The Aberdeen Doctors (jualify the
New Bond .....
281
282
283
284
286
286
287
288
289
289
290
292
292
294
295
296
The Tables in a difficulty .
Complaint against the bishops .
Preparations for Assembly in Glasgow
Assembly in Glasgow Cathedral, 21st
November 1638
Declinature of the bishops
Commissioner dissolves the Assembly
Assembly passes seventy-two Acts
Episcopacy abolished
Processes against the bishops
Montrose's opinion of the bishops
The Bishops' Doom .
Justification of the sentence
Sundry Acts ....
The Moderator's parting Council
Results of Covenant .
The Assembly alleged to be incom
petent .....
PAGE
296
297
298
299
302
306
306
307
308
310
311
312
313
314
3^5
CONTENTS
xvii
CHAPTER XI
THE FIRST BISHOPS' WAR— 1639
Policy of the Crown .
Preparations for war .
The Earl of Montrose, 161 2-165
The Earl of Argyll, 1598-1664
Charles summons an army, ist
1639 ....
King's plan of campaign .
Field-Marshall Leslie, 1582-166
Leslie captures the arsenals
Activity of the Covenanters
April
317
317
318
319
323
324
325
PAGE
Montrose traps Huntly . . -325
Hamilton's expedition, ist May 1639 326
English army at Birks, 30th May . 326
Baillie's description of the camp at
Duns ...... 327
Second campaign of Montrose . -328
Aboyne's force . . . . -328
Councils at Birks, June 1639 . . 329
Terms of Pacification of Berwick, . 330
CHAPTER XII
THE SECOND BISHOPS' WAR— 1639-1641
Tortuous policy of the King
Edinburgh Assembly, 1639
Act abolishing Episcopacy
The first Barrier Act .
Large Declaration condemned
Assembly dissolved, 30th August
Meeting of Scots Parliament, August
November 1639 .
Fate of the Prelates .
Perfidy of the King .
Traquair inflames the King
Letter of Scots to French King, igtl
February 1640
Loudoun threatened with execution
The Short Parliament in England,
1640 ......
331
334
335
337
337
338
339
340
341
342
342
343
344
Scottish preparations for war in 1640 .
Acts of Parliament of 1640 restoring
Presbyterianism
Argyll and Monro's campaigns .
Aberdeen Assembly, July 1640 .
The Scottish muster at Duns, July
1640 .....
Scots enter England, 17 th August
Battle of Newburnford, 28th Augus
1640 .....
English and Scottish grievances
Treaty of Ripon, 26th October 1640
The Long Parliament, 3rd November
1640 ......
Treaty of London, 10th August 1641
345
345
346
347
348
349
350
351
352
352
353
XVIU
THE COVENANTERS
CHAPTER XIII
•LEX REX'— THE RISE OF PARLIAMENTARY POWER-
SCOTLAND— 164 1
-THE KING IN
Loyalty of the Scots .... 354
Charles visits Edinburgh . . -355
Parties in 1641 . ... 356
Montrose's Damnable Band . -357
Treachery of Montrose . . -358
A Montrose junto .... 359
Inception of Solemn League and
Covenant, 1641 . . . . 360
Meeting of Parliament, 17th August
1641 361
Montrose in prison . ' .
The Incident ....
The Irish Massacres, 1641
Largesse from the King
Revolutionary events in England
Civil War begun
Immediate cause of the Solemn
League and Covenant .
362
362
363
364
365
367
368
CHAPTER XIV
THE SOLEMN LEAGUE AND COVENANT— 1642-1643
The Solemn League and Covenant,
1643
Covenant ratified by Convention
Purport of Solemn League
Robert Douglas and Samuel Ruther
ford
George Gillespie
Duke of Lauderdale .
The Earls of Cassillis and Loudoun
Covenant subscribed in London
Covenant accepted in Scotland .
Origin of idea of Uniformity
PAGE
• 370
Covenanters tolerant .
• 371
Remodelling of Standards .
• 372
Spread of idea of Uniformity
• 373
General Assembly in 1642
• 374
Proposed English Assembly
• 375
Intrigues at Court
• 375
Montrose's plan
• 376
Counterplots of Covenanters and P
uri-
tans
• 377
General Assembly, 1643 .
• 377
378
379
380
381
383
384
385
386
388
CHAPTER XV
THE WESTMINSTER STANDARDS— 1643-1 650
I'AGE 1
English Parliament convene Assembly 389 I Assembly discuss Covenant
Assembly proscribed . . . 390 ! Covenant enjoined in England
Divines sit in Westminster . . 390 | Directory for Public Worship
PAGE
392
392
393
CONTENTS
XIX
Opposition from Independents .
Cromwell and ' The Accommodation '
Debates on Presbytery
PAGE
394
395
396
Westminster Confession of Faith
The Catechisms
The Metrical Psalter .
PAGE
398
CHAPTER XVI
THE GREAT CIVIL WAR: THE STRUGGLE FOR LIBERTY OF
PARLIAMENT AND FREEDOM OF CONSCIENCE— 1644-1645
State of Country in 1644 .
404
Scots under Leven invade England .
405
Huntly in hiding ....
406
Armies, meet at Marston Moor, 2nd
July 1644
407
Montrose raises Royal Standard at
Blair-Athole
408
Battle of Tippermuir, ist September
1644
410
Montrose proclaimed traitor
411
Montrose's victory at Aberdeen, 13th
September
412
Argyll's expedition . .' .
412
Montrose invades Argyle .
413
Montrose's mountain marches ,
414
Victory at Inverlochy, 2nd February
1645
414
Attempts at peace-making .
416
Baillie recalled
416
Raids of Montrose .
Capture of Dundee .
Battle of Auldearn, 9th May
Heroism of Alasdair Macdonald
Battle of Alford, 2nd July 1645
Flight of Baillie
Montrose marches to Kilsyth
Plan of Council of War
Slaughter at Kilsyth, 15th August
1645
Clansmen lose faith in Montrose
Recall of David Leslie
Montrose meets Leslie at Philiphaugh
Victory of Covenanters, 13th Sep-
tember 1645 ....
Butchery of Irish women .
Covenanters clamour for vengeance
Commission of General Assembly
Montrose and King Charles foiled
417
417
419
420
421
422
423
424
425
426
427
428
428
429
430
431
432
CHAPTER XVII
THE ENGAGEMENT: THE FALL OF CHARLES FIRST
AND OF MONTROSE— 1 646-1 650
Scots fight for Presbytery and
Monarchy ..... 434
Montereul's negotiations . . -434
FAGB
Aims of the Independents . . . 435
Montereul advises Charles, January
1646 436
XX
THE COVENANTERS
Charles seeks refuge in Scots army,
5th May 1646
Escape of Montrose in July
Henderson debates with Charles
Death of Alexander Henderson, 19th
August 164-6 ....
Argyll's policy ....
Charles maintains Episcopacy .
Charles delivered to Parliamentary
army, 3rd February 1647
Leslie massacres the Macdonalds
Cromwell attempts conciliation, 20th
October 1647 ....
The Engagement, 27th December 1647
Scottish Estates approve of the Engage-
ment
Skirmish at Mauchline
Assembly condemn Engagement
Cromwell defeats Hamilton at Preston
17th August 1648 .
The Whigamore's Raid
Cromwell visits Edinburgh, October
1648
Loudoun joins Argyll's party
437
437
438
438
440
440
441
442
444
444
445
445
446
447
448
448
449
Death of Charles i. resolved on .
Trial and execution of Charles i.
Character of Charles i.
Doom of Hamilton and Huntly .
Act of Classes ....
Abolition of Church patronage .
Charles 11. proclaimed King
Montrose vows vengeance .
Aim of Charles 11. .
Scots Commissioners and Charles
Concessions by Charles 11.
Montrose commissioned to fight
Proposed alliance of Covenanters and
Sectaries ..... 460
Mission of Lord Libbertoun . .461
Instructions to Montrose . . .461
Negotiations at Breda . . .462
Montrose abandoned : fight at Car-
bisdale 463
Capture, examination, trial, and execu-
tion of Montrose . . . 465-468
Mendacity of the King . . . 469
Montrose a patriot . . . 470-471
PACK
449
450
450
451
452
453
454
455
456
457
458
459
APPENDICES
PAGE
L The National Covenant . .472
n. A Solemn League and
Covenant . . . -479
in. Extant Copies of the Scottish
Covenants .
481
IV. Extant Copies of the British
Solemn League and Covenant 490
V. The x\cts of Scottish Parliament
relative to the Covenants . 493
VI. The Irish Massacres of 1641-2 494
VII. The Westminster Confession of
Faith and the Proofs . . 494
VIII. Crimes and Sufferings of the
Scottish Clergy . . . 496
IX. The Samuel Rutherford Scandal 497
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
King Charles I. ...... .
Vignette, from Laud's 'Liturgy,' 1637 . • .
The Covenant of 1557 — 'The Common or Godly Band'
The Leith-Edinburgh Covenant of 1560 ....
Preserved in Hamilton Palace.
Rulers of Scotland .......
Prisons of Reformers and Covenanters ....
The King's Confession, or Covenant of i 580-1
Preserved in the Advocates' Library, Edinburgh.
Churches famous in the Covenanting Age
Scottish Reformers and Covenanters ....
Famous Politicians .......
Alexander Henderson ......
From a Portrait at Yester House supposed to be by Vandyke. —
By the permission of the Marquis of Tweeddale.
The National Covenant of 1638 .....
Subscribed in Greyfriars Church, Edinburgh ; preserved in the
Museum of the Corporation of Edinburgh.
Subscribing the Covenant in Greyfriars Churchyard in 1638
From a Drawing by George Cattermole.
The Covenant of 1638 ......
Preserved in the National Museum of Antiquities, Edinburgh.
The Covenant of 1638. Subscribed in 1639
Preserved in the Advocates' Library, Edinburgh.
The Solemn League and Covenant of 1643
Subscribed in the Universities of Glasgow and St. Andrews.
Letter of King Charles II. ... .
Portrait of George Gillespie ....
From a Painting in the New College Hall, Edinburgh.
Prisons of the Covenanters . • . .
. Frontispiece
Titlepage
Facing page 1 2
28
48
» 64
„ I02
» 134
„ 164
,, 208
j> 252
,, 264
„ 360
384
» 432
ERRATA
Page 173, line i.,for ' 3rd May ' read ' 7th May.'
1 73) i) 2, for ' in London ' read ' in the neighbourhood of London.'
213, „ 22, for 'one day after' read 'a fe'w days before.'
213, second rubric, 7^?' ' 8th May ' read ' ist May.'
284, Hne A, for '{1606-1648)' read '(1606-1649).'
319, rubric, /6ir ' (1598-1664) ' read ' (1598-1661).'
451, line i(),for ' Earl of Huntly ' read ' Marquis of Huntly.'
HISTORY OF THE COVENANTERS
CHAPTER I
THE HISTORICAL BEGINNINGS OF THE COVENANTERS
Pre-Reformation writers frequently pictured the Roman Catholic The Roman
Church as a stately ship freighted with costliest merchandise. In g^^jj^j^^j j„
the troublous seas of Scotland its many and perilous voyages were ^557-
wellnigh over in the year of grace 1559. The day of doom dis-
covered it a crazy vessel weltering towards wreck, and, if Mary
Stuart's confessor, Abbot Ninian Winzet, is to be credited, sadly
'blekkit [disfigured] with deformities.'^ According to this frank
reformer within the Church, the officers, long incapable, had become
unmanageable, and were 'unworthy the name we are richt sorry to
say.' His animadversions are corroborated by Pope Paul iv. When
writing to Cardinal Trivulzio, stating how Queen Mary had com-
plained of the lax ecclesiastical discipline of the Scots Church
dignitaries, the looseness of nuns, and the crimes both of regulars
and seculars, the Pope asked him to intervene and have their vices
reformed. The report of the prelate who investigated the scandals
leaves no doubt as to the shameful depravity within the Church.^
The old fabric was about to break up through internal decay, and,
from what of the wreckage as was suitable, those who left the sinking
ship made a new craft, at first rude, but shapely enough and sea-
worthy, to carry the Lord's banner which they had saved. That
these voyagers too were buffeted long in a raging sea is admitted in
* Winzet, Certain Tractates, i. 43, 44, ed. J. K. Hewison, Scot. Text Soc, Edinburgh, 1888.
2 27th Oct. 1557, Papal Negotiatiotts with Mary Queen of Scots, 6, 528, ed. J. H.
Pollen, S.J., Scot. Hist. Soc, Edin., 1901. Cf. Robertson, Concilia Scot., ii. 283, 303 note ;
ibid.. Dr. D. Patrick's Translation, Scot. Hist. Soc, 1907 ; Knox, Works, i. 36 (Edin., 1895).
THE COVENANTERS
Origin of the
Protestant
Church in
Scotland.
Pre-Reforma-
tion evan-
gelicals.
their first Scots Confession of Faith (1560), which declares: ' Bot
sik hes bene the rage of Sathan against us, and against Chryst Jesus
his eternall veritie laitHe borne amangis us, that to this day na tyme
hes bene grantit unto us to cleir our consciencis . . . ; for how we
have been tossit ane haill yeir past, the maist pairt of Europe (as
we suppoise) dois understand.'^ These behigerent reformers of the
Church and of the closely allied State in Scotland were not without
definite designs in what they designated their 'godlie enterprise.'
The quickening doctrines of Wyclif, Huss, Colet, Luther, and
Calvin had turned religious thought into new channels ; the old-
fashioned scholastic methods discredited by incisive exponents of
reason, such as Occam and Peter Ramus, were about to collapse
with the advent of Bacon, Descartes, Locke, and Newton. Through
the wonderful work of the Renaissance, the best intellects in Chris-
tendom were on the alert to welcome views of the truth more modern,
inspiriting, and comforting than past experience had afforded.
Scholars became restless, migratory, and eager to break their mental
fetters so as to be freer for original work. Scotland also felt these
new influences," and welcomed the visit or return of students and
preachers inspired with evangelicalism acquired in Continental
universities. Some of these became martyrs for the faith, and the
smoke of their sacrifice was a far-travellino- incense which attracted
independent minds to the truth for which these suffered.^ The
Bible, long banned and read in secret, was at length printed in
England and legally sanctioned. The Gude and Godlie Ballads, and
stirring pamphlets from foreign centres of Protestantism circulated
with marked effect.^ The districts of Kyle and Cunningham, in
Ayrshire, with their bold proprietors of Carnell, Kinzeancleuch,
* 77/,? Confessione of the fayht and docfrin, etc. Imprinted at Edinburgh by Robert
Lekprewik. Cum privilegio, 1561 : reprint in Knox, Works, ii. 93-120.
2 'The Lollards in Scotland, etc.,' Knox, Works, i. 494-500.
' D. Hay Fleming, The Scottish Refor7nation, 1-28 (Edin., 1904) : a good summary of the
facts.
* The Bible authorised 'in Inglis or .Scottis,' 1542, c. 12 ; Act. Pari. Scot., ii. 415 ; prelates
dissent, 415a; warrant, ^2Sa; Acts contrary repealed, 1560, c. 3, ii. 535 ; 1567, c. 4, iii. 14,
360:; certain householders to get Bible, 1579, c. 10, iii. 139: this ratified, 1581, c. i, iii. 211.
'Ane Compendius Bulk of godlie Psalmes and Spirituall Sangis collectit furthe of sindrie
HISTORICAL BEGINNINGS 3
Ochiltree, Cessnock, Barr, Gadgirth, Teringzean, had long been
imbued with Lollardism, and to this fact may be traced the intensity
of the regard with which Ayrshire men maintained the National
Covenants at all hazards and sacrifices. Montrose, the ports of the
Tay, and other centres of the new spiritual life, gave indications
that Scotland was ripening for a great moral and intellectual change.
None discerned these movements more speedily than the Roman
Catholic clergy, who, responsive to the defensive yet reactionary internal
spirit of the Council of Trent, tried by means of tracts, conventions, ,ef"'ms.
and councils to avert the imminent ruin of their Church.^ Their
efforts were belated. Between Easter and Whitsunday of 1559,
many priests who had performed their sacred duties, without any
indication of dissent, were swept into the ranks of the Reformers by
the wave of enthusiasm created by the return of John Knox to his
native land on 2nd May 1559.'
As far as scanty records enable us to make a calculation, we find
that thirty-five preachers, qualified to administer the sacraments. Lack of
responded to the call of the Reformers during the first year of the ^'^^^^ "^'
existence of the Church — 1560-1.^ In the second year the parochial
ministers increased to sixty, and in 1567 to ninety or more. One
half of the latter number were located in the Lothians and Fifeshire,
and two-thirds were confined to Middle Scotland. The Highland
area and the south-west counties were almost destitute of evangelical
preachers. The following presbyteries do not appear to have had,
for several years after the Reformation, the services of resident
clergy: Dumfries, Annan, Langholm, Lochmaben, Penpont, Kirk-
cudbright, Wigtown, Stranraer, Duns, Chirnside, Earlston, Meigle,
partes of the Scripture. . . . Imprentit at Edinburgh be Johne [Ross] for Henrie Charteris,
MDLXXViii,' contains spiritual songs in circulation between 1542 and 1546, attributed to James,
John, and Robert V^edderburn, Dundee. An earlier edition, 1567, was edited by the late
Professor Mitchell for the Scottish Text Society, 1897. The same Society has published in
1 90 1, Tiie New Testaincnt in Scots, being Purveys Revision of Wy differs version turned into
Scots by Murdoch Nisbet — hitherto a manuscript.
» Robertson, Concilia Scot., ii. 81, 1 18, 146, 147, 288, 296, 297, 299 ; Dempster, Hist. Eccl.,
28 et seq. ; Knox, Works, i. 7.
2 Winzet, i. 53, Scot. Text Soc. edit. ; Knox, Works, i. 291, 318.
^ Scott, Fasti, q.v.
4 THE COVENANTERS
Forfar, Arbroath, Fordoun, Kincardine O'Neil, Alford, Garioch,
Ellon, Weem, Chanonry (the parish was vacant till 1649), Elgin,
Strathbogie, Inveravon, Abernethy, Nairn, Dornoch, Tongue, Caith-
ness, Inverness, Kirkwall, Cairston, North Isles, Lerwick, Burravoe.
Thirty of the reformed clergy had served as seculars or regulars in
the Roman Church, fifteen having been parish priests, nine in the
Aueustinian Order and the remainder in the following Orders, —
Dominican, Franciscan, Carmelite, Cistercian, and Cluniac.^ A
few Anglican preachers and teachers crossed the Borders, and these
were supplemented by students from Geneva. The chances of such
a small phalanx surrounded by the organised hosts of Romanism
were small indeed, had not the laity superadded their weight to
every blow of the Reformers.^
Thus the fomenters of the religious revolution in Scotland were
Reformers not the illiterate cobblers, tanners, and abject persons whom
not illiterate, jyfjcolaus FloHS of Gouda, the Jesuit visitor in Scotland, assured
Pope Pius IV. that they were in 1562.^ The demands of the
Reformers, formulated in masterly documents, and the practical
nature of their successful schemes, indicate a thorough knowledge
of contemporary problems, and a just appreciation of human rights
and aspirations. Perplexing land questions, and the not very honour-
able relations of the landed proprietors with clerical dignitaries, threw
many lords and barons into line with the Reformers.*
The ideas crystallised by Knox and his associates in the Con-
Reform ideas, fession of Faith, Book of Discipline, Book of Common Order, Acts
of General Assemblies, Acts of Parliament, sundry religious and
' Booke of the Universall Kirk, i. 280. Some were learned and distinguished graduates :
Lee, Lectures, i. 227-32.
2 At the time of the Reformation there were 4600 men and women in official positions in
the Church in Scotland — 13 bishops, 60 priors and abbots, 500 parsons, 2000 vicars, and iioo
monks, friars, and nuns : Skelton, Maitlayid of Lethington, 201. In 1572 the Church officials
numbered 252 ministers, 157 exhorters, and 508 readers — in all 917: Y^t\\\ History, iii. 56
note ; Register of Ministers, etc., xxii. 98 (Edin., 1830) ; Misc. Wad. Sac, i. 319-95-
2 Stimmen atts Maria- Laach {P. Goiidanus a7n Hofe Maria Stuarts), \\. xix. i. 96.
(Freiburg, 1880.)
* N., Cardinal de Sermoneta refers to the unchastity of the Orders in Scotland, and to the
illegitimate progeny of the seculars : Pollen, Papal Negotiations, etc., p. 528.
HISTORICAL BEGINNINGS 5
political agreements, and the Covenants — which last were oaths of
allegiance to the doctrines contained in these documents — clearly
express the clamant needs of that miserable age, namely, the Gospel
to be preached to every citizen by a pure clergy of a free, self-
governing Church, and just government by the State, equally free
and independent of the Church. Primarily, the movement for reform
was opposition to Romanism in its worst political and theological
aspects. The masses, downtrodden by clerical and baronial masters,
and over-taxed without having any representation in the legislature,
saw their dreams of emancipation realised in the daring schemes of
the new radical party. So the * rascall multitude,' as Knox desig-
nated those irascible crowds who mistook senseless wreckino- for
reform, constituted themselves into the first bodyguard of the rebel
evangelists. The result of all this was, that the Scottish Reforma-
tion ended in the discarding of time-honoured doctrines and ecclesi-
astical rites, in the abolition of the territorial hierarchy, and in the
destruction of the parasitic establishments of religious devotees.
Many able and cultured priests entered into the Reformed Church,
and thus ensured the success of its ministry, while a large number
of the Regulars, who also threw in their lot with the Reformers,
became readers in the churches of the English Bible and of a new
form of prayers also introduced therein.^
The fundamental principle of the Reformed Scottish Church, Fundamental
namely, 'The Bible only is the religion of Protestants,' which p'^"^';^^^'^ ^
made Chillingworth a Latitudinarian, affected the stern Knox very church,
differently. Acting on ' God's plain Word,' Knox proclaimed, in
1547, that the Pope was an Antichrist, and not a member of Christ's
mystical body. This was no vindictive diatribe of a disaffected
priest, but the earnest conviction of a student of the Gospel who
was willing to sacrifice himself to uphold his faith. This illiberal
theology was popular with the laity, covetous of the wealth of the
1 Booke of the Unive7'sall Kirk, i. 280 : ' Seing the most part of the persons who were
Channons, Monks, and Friars within this realme have made profession of the true religion,
it is therefore thought meet, that it be enjoined to them to pass and serve as readers, etc' —
Act of Ass., Aug. 1573.
6 THE COVENANTERS
Purgative Church. It demanded the repression of all doctrine repugnant to
the^ Reformers. ^^6 Gospcl, the suppression of idolatry, under which the mass, invoca-
tion of the saints, and images were included, and the judicial extir-
pation of ' the shaven sort, the beast's marked men,' because Popery
had brought confusion into the world, so that virtue was neither
commended nor vice punished/ Purgative teaching of this char-
acter countenanced the reckless populace, who seemed to take a
delight in enforcing the old papal laws for cleansing heresy upon
the Papists, now heretics themselves, in wiping out time-hallowed
relics and pleasing rites which are not mentioned in Scripture, and
even in illustrating Holy Writ itself by affording to the sparrow,
nesting in the ruins of abbeys and monasteries, a refuge : —
* Ev'n Thine own altars, where she safe
Her young ones forth may bring.'
Since the Book of Discipline rigidly homologated a Calvinian
interpretation of the Saviour's question, * Are ye not of more value
than many sparrows ? ' these Deformers were in favour of the sparrows.
And, meantime, all that the leaders of the people were anxious to
save out of the disintegrated Church was the sacred edifices suitable
for preaching, and the patrimony of the Church to sustain the
ministry. All the rest might vanish — the Church's once useful
organisations overgrown beyond control, the gorgeous symbols of
truth, its imposing ceremonies, its dread powers, its vast capacities
for beneficence. These passed away, not as by one stroke, but
slowly and naturally, on the realisation of more acceptable doctrines
and practices by people yearning for more light and culture ; and
on the old foundation rose the Scottish Church, Evangelical, Pro-
testant, and Presbyterian.
Many of the Covenanters were descendants of the Lollards of
Standpoint of Kyle. The standpoint of the Covenanters was identical with that
of Knox and his associates. Theirs it was to hold the same field
and to maintain against Pope, King, and Parliament the theological
' First Book of Disdpli7te^ Preamble, chap. i. ; xii. 3, ix. 2. That the clergy neglected their
duty is proved by Statutes 195, 240, 274, 275 : Concilia Scot., i. 288-9.
HISTORICAL BEGINNINGS 7
and political dogmas of this Reformed Church. The Covenant in
its various forms, signed between 1556 and 1689, was simply a defen-
sive bond whereby the members of the Church of Scotland, first as
individuals and secondly as a corporation, both clergy and laity,
bound themselves to conserve, at all hazards, (i) the autonomy of
the Church with a form of government sanctioned by ' God's plain
Word' ; and (2) the absolute authority on civil matters of the State,
acting through a monarch, representative parliament, and constitu-
tionally appointed magistrates, all of whom in spiritual concerns were
to be amenable to the Church. The first Covenant was thus an
inevitable result of the movements for reform in the life, character,
and faith of the people, and was the first fruit of the development
of that spiritual life which quickened anew the sense of personal
responsibility to God. Knowledge of the proper relationship of
creature to Creator had, owing to the ineffective teaching and
example of the priests, practically become moribund in the sixteenth
century.^ In the seventeenth century the Covenant was unhappily
converted into a powerful political instrument, when, by the fatal
mistake of the Stuart kings, whose residence in England had extin-
guished their Scottish spirit, and who claimed complete jurisdiction,
spiritual as well, over the body politic, the State became involved
in conflict with the Church. The history of that momentous and
bloody struggle will now be traced through all its varying scenes,
till the final victory for the independence of the Church was secured
by Acts of Parliament which were the immediate issue of the
Revolution of 1688.
The Covenanters, as members of a new society for the dissemina- origin of
tion of evangelical Protestantism, emerge from obscurity during the ^°^^"^"^^-
latter part of the regency of Mary of Lorraine, widow of James v.
They, as Wycliffites, Lollards, Gospellers, New Testamentars,
Sacramentars, Heretics, had long held themselves together by
' Cf. the extraordinary account given by Con in a work published at Rome with permis-
sion of his superiors. G. Conaeus, De Duplici Statu Religionis apud Scotos, 89-91 : Romae,
1628 ; also cf. Concilia Scot., mitlt. loc.
8 THE COVENANTERS
secret bonds of communion, of which only the faintest traces are
left, since it was illegal in Scotland to enter into * bands,' as these
alliances were called.^ Offensive and defensive leagues of parties
had, for two centuries, been popular and useful, since in 1306
Bruce's three noble comrades — Hay, Campbell, and Seton — entered
into a mutual indenture to defend the Bruce 'to the last of their
blood and fortune,' and craved the divine sanction of their oath as
they partook of the Sacrament in Lindores Abbey. Covenants had
scriptural authority. The energy and eloquence of George Wishart,
Master of Arts, promoted the Reformation and incited earnest men ^
like Sir George Douglas, brother to the Earl of Angus, Cassillis,
Glencairn, and John Erskine of Dun to protect the menaced cause
and preachers of Protestantism. At Ormiston House, in 1546, the
following of Wishart — the lairds of Ormiston, Longniddry, Brun-
stane, and others — entered into a bond for his protection, which
the Earl of Bothwell, on apprehending Wishart there, promised also
to honour and observe by personally keeping him out of the hands
of Cardinal Beaton. He broke that vow. Nothing then could save
Wishart and Wishart from the avenging fires of Beaton on the ist March 1546.^
Beaton, 1546. ^^^le ruthless cardinal and other dignitaries, lolling on cushions within
a luxurious chamber, safe inside the castle of St. Andrews, watched
the smoke of the sacrifice fioat away to infect the now truly incensed
country. Three months afterwards, 29th May, vengeance claimed a
victim, and the slaughtered cardinal was suspended upon the front
of the same castle in a white sheet, as if he did penance in death
for that revolting crime.'' The avengers, with Knox as their chaplain
during part of 1547, held the castle till 29th July of that year, when
it was retaken and its inmates, including Knox, were sent prisoners
into France.'^ Other heretics were hunted into hiding. Although
the Scots Reformers were men imbued with the rude notions of
1 Act. Pari. Scot. {i\2^, c. 5), ii. 7: Privy Council Act against ' Sacramentaris,' 2nd June 1543.
2 'The Confession of Faith of the Churches of Switzerland' was translated by Wishart :
Wodrow Miscell., i. 1-23 ; Row, Historic, 10.
3 Knox, Works, i. 171; Dr. Charles Rogers, Life of George Wishart, 7-12 (Edin., 1876).
* Knox, Works, i. 178.
*» Knox joined the rebels in April 1547 : Lang, Knox, 22 ; Knox, Wo7-ks, \. 185, 205,
HISTORICAL BEGINNINGS 9
a warring age, they were not devoid of the finer characteristics of
chivalry, and there is no proof that the evangeHcal party, who yearned
for freedom to enjoy a pure Gospel, at first contemplated wresting
their rights by the sword. Their defence was based on mental resist-
ance of evil, and they were not prepared to break the injunction of
their Saviour that when persecuted they were to flee from city to city.
Knox approved of the Scots prisoners escaping from Mont St.
Michel, but not if they shed the blood of the guard. He was wont to
declare that the Divine Spirit would protect them in the propagation
of the Gospel, but reckoned it to be no sin to resist, when possible,
an enemy of the truth. Bishop Leslie even acknowledges the for-
bearance of the nobility : * yet the clemency of the heretic nobles must
not be left unmentioned, since at that time they exiled few Catholics
on the score of religion, imprisoned fewer, and put none to death.' ^
John Knox was born at GifTord, near Haddington, about the year John Knox,
1515,-^ took priest's orders, heard Wishart preach, and embraced the ^^'^'^^^'"
reformed doctrines in 1543.^ After Knox was relieved from his
captivity in France in 1549 he sought refuge first in England, then
passed through France to Geneva. At Frankfort-on-Main and at
Geneva he remained some time ministering to other British exiles.
A stern believer in Providence, Knox waited like a consecrated
prophet to take up his role of spiritual deliverer of his native land.
God would call him, he believed. The inward monition was required
by God's soldier and Christ's preacher. This man of commanding
intellect and kind heart was also endowed with an irrepressible
humour.* There was no sourness in his nature.^ A penetrative mind,
varied experience, and positive learning acquired from the most
1 De Origme, bk. x. ; Leslie's translator, Dalrymple (Leslie's Hist, of Scot, part iv. p. 463,
Scot. Text, edit., 1894-5), changes the word 'none' into 'very few.'
- The Bookmaii, September 1905 ; D. Hay Fleming, citing manuscript of Spottis wood's
History. 1505 is the date generally accepted.
^ For biography of Knox, cf. M'Crie, Life, van edit. ; P. Hume Brown, John Knox : a
Biography {'Kd:m., 1895).
* C. J. Guthrie, Oicr Scots Reformers and Covenanters, 13 (Edin., 1902).
^ Knox set his co-religionists the example of both enjoying and chronicling many 'a
meary bourd' (jest). Cf. Works, i. 40 et seq.
lo THE COVENANTERS
cultured foreign teachers made it impossible for him to tolerate a
lie tricked out as truth. His terrible earnestness made him the
most appropriate leader of good men at this crisis. This powerful
generalship well entitled him to be described by Queen Mary as ' the
most dangerous man in all the realm.' Beza reckoned him a new
apostle.
In the autumn of 1555 the growing evangelical party in Scotland,
mostly nobles, owners of small estates, persons of means, and men of
patriotic spirit, induced Knox to leave Geneva, and return to pray,
preach, and plan for the establishment of the reformed faith. At
Dun House, between Montrose and Brechin, the seat of John
Erskine, at Calder House, West Lothian, the home of Sir James
Sandilands, at Finlayston House, Kilmalcolm, a residence of the Earl
of Glencairn, at Castle- Campbell, a seat of Argyll, at Ayr, Barr, Gad-
girth, Kinzeancleuch, and Ochiltree in Ayrshire, Edinburgh, and other
centres, Knox by his eloquence created a marvellous enthusiasm and
devotion which gave heart to his co-religionists at this perilous
juncture, notably to Alexander Cunningham, fifth Earl of Glencairn,
Lord Erskine, afterwards sixth Earl of Mar, Archibald Campbell,
afterwards fifth Earl of Argyll, and Lord James Stewart, afterwards
Regent Moray. Knox narrates that, in the winter of 1555-6, after
preaching at these places, Edinburgh excepted, he went to Dun and
The Dun there ministered 'the Table of the Lord Jesus' to 'gentilmen of the
Covenant, Memsc, who, God be praised, to this day constantlie do remane in
the same doctrin, which then thei professed, to witt, that thei
refuissed all societie with idolatrie and band thame seljis, to the utter-
most of thare poweris, to manteane the trew preaching of the
Evangell of Jesus Christ, as God should offer unto thame prechearis
and oportunitie.'^ The terms of this narrative are explicit enough to
warrant the conclusion arrived at by Dr. M'Crie, that this confedera-
tion originated the first Covenant.^ The instrument itself was not
recorded by Knox, nor is any copy, if it were written, extant. It was
a secret guarantee of good faith among the subscribers, and a natural
' Knox, i. 250 ; writer's italics. ^ M'Crie. Knox^ i. i8i, edit. 1814.
HISTORICAL BEGINNINGS ii
result of the steps which the suspected lay- reformers had to take for
self-protection. They could only meet stealthily. Sometimes they
mustered in armed escorts to guard threatened opponents of the Mass.
Knox, in July 1556, deemed it expedient to retire to Geneva. To
other disaffected citizens the idea of a political revolution, as the only
remedy for the distressed state of the nation, grew more attractive in
their vision of the worldly gains accompanying that desirable consum-
mation. In March 1557 Glencairn, Lome, Erskine, and James
Stewart wrote to Knox craving his return. Their cause was pro-
spering, persecution had abated, they had a ' godly thirst and desire '
for the Gospel, and many of his friends were ' reddy to jeopard lyffis
and goodis in the forward setting of the glorie of God.' ^ The tenor
of the letter implies that the Dun Covenanters had sounded other
opponents of the ecclesiastical system in existence and favourers of
change, and had discovered their willingness to promote a revolution.
Knox, in reply, incited them to a more public boldness. He knew
the influence and armed power of his correspondents, and must have
reckoned that if these nobles undertook to defend the evangelical
party and cause on a fair field, the Roman Catholic faith would be
discarded by his countrymen. They acted on his advice, met in
Edinburgh, and there, on the 3rd December, subscribed 'The The Godly
Common or Godly Band in 1557,' so 'that everie ane should be the ^^J^^^'^ j^^"'
more assured of other.' ^ The original document, or a contemporary
subscribed copy, is preserved in the National Museum of Antiquities
in Edinburgh. It is a small sheet of paper measuring 15^ inches by
20 inches, and, in clear calligraphy, preserves the Covenant in these
terms : —
' We, persaving how Sathan In his membris, the Antechristes of oure tyme,
creweUie dois Raige, seiking to dounetring and to destroye the evangell of
Christ and his Congregatioune : awght, according to oure bownden dewtye, to
stryve in oure Maisters Cawss, even unto the deth : Being certane of the victorye
* Knox, i. 267, 268.
2 Knox, i, 273, 274; vi. 674; Calderwood, i. 326; Keith, i. 154; National MSS. of
Scotland^ iii. plate xl., facsimile. For Rev. James Young's account of this Band, cf Wylie,
Tercentenary of the Scottish Reformation^ etc. (Edin., i860).
12
THE COVENANTERS
Character of
the Godly
Band.
Subscribers to
Edinburgh
Covenant.
in Him : The quhilk our dewtie being weill consydered : We do promis, before the
Maiestie of God, and his Congregatioune : that we (be his grace) sail, with all
diligence continewallie applie our heill [health], power, substaunce, and oure very
lyves, to mentene sett forwarde and establische the Maist Bllssed Worde of God,
and his Congregatioune : And sail lawboure, at oure possibilitie, to haif faithful
ministeres, purelie and trewlie to minister Christes Evangell and Sacramentes to
his Peopill : We sail mentene thame, nwrys [nourish] thame, and defende thame
the haill Congregatioune of Christ, and everye member therof, at oure haill
poweres, and waring of our lyves, against Sathan and all wicked power that dois
intend tyrannye or troubill aganis the forsaid Congregatioune. Onto the quhilk
holie word and Congregatioune we do Joyne Ws : and also dois forsaik and
Renunce the Congregatioune of Sathan with all the superstitioune, abhomina-
tioune, and Idolatrie therof: And mareattour sail declare ourselfues Innemies
tharto : Be this oure faithful promis, before God, testefyit to his Congregatioune,
be oure Subscriptiones at thir presentes. At Edinburgh the — day of December,
The Yere of God ane thowsande fyve hundreth fiftie sevin yeres : God callit to
wytnes. A. Erie of Ergyl, Glencarne, Mortoun, Ar. Lord of Lome, Jhone
Erskyne.'^
Probably several copies of this bond were secretly circulated for
subscription. Knox states that * many otheris ' subscribed this public
testimony of the faithful, now for the first time designated * God's
Congregation,' and ' the Congregation of Christ.' This instrument
is a definite challenge to the Papal System, indicated in the terms
' Satan,' ' Antichrist,' and ' the Congregation of Satan,' and to any
' wicked power ' seeking to trouble the true upholders of the Gospel.
Knox had already warned the subscribers to obey lawful authority
until every legitimate attempt to obtain their just desires had failed.
Consequently it is to be noted that this Covenant does not anticipate
political complications, and is purely a solemn religious compact
binding its acceptors to defend and nourish their own evangelical
ministry, and to induce their countrymen to assist them in their aims.
The warlike character of its promoters removed any dubiety as to the
significance of its warning of ' hands off.'
These promoters were to become still more notable men in
harassed Scotland. All of them were of the Petrine school of
disciples, and were expert with the sword. The two Argylls, father
' Knox, vi. 674-6. The day of the month is not written in, but Knox specified the date,
'the thrid day of December' {ibid., i. 274). A facsimile (reduced) appears in this volume.
■ a £ ' t^i) . t I e
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HISTORICAL BEGINNINGS 13
and son (Archibald, Lord Lome), were men of mettle, and ever
ready, when followed by their brown-shanked, red-haired clansmen,
to battle for personal causes, for power, pay, and patriotism, and,
probably, from the pure Celtic love of the fray, to lead off the
desperate fight for ' Christ's Crown and Covenant.' But death
claimed the fourth Earl of Argyll in autumn 1558, before the
campaign had begun. His son survived Knox less than a year/
Archibald, fifth Earl of Argyll, though willing to reform the The Earl of
Church and compose the discords of the country, was not devoid of ^'^^^""
sins himself, and could not make peace in his own home, which
required the kindly offices of Knox to settle quarrels there. The
latter wrote a characteristic letter to the Earl, telling him that his
behaviour to his wife — the half-sister of the Queen — was * very
offensive unto mony godly,' accusing him of 'filthy pleasure,' and
forecasting damnation. 'The Lord cometh and sail not tarie,' he
prophesied.^ Glencairn — 'the good Earl' some styled this fifth The Eari of
holder of the title — was a man of prayer, of blood and iron too, when ^^^^^y!^^'
needed, not afraid to toy with his two-handed sword when Queen-
Regent Mary and Archbishop James Beaton, on being asked to
consider the concerns of their expiring Church, preferred ' to read a
pasquill ' ; still less afraid, stern iconoclast, to hammer down the idols
in Holyrood Chapel ; but probably happiest at Finlayston or where
* Maxwellton braes are bonnie,' when his grey-goose quill was pre-
serving his satirical poetry. Morton, James Douglas, the fourth The Eaii of
Earl, was 'a simple and fearful man' according to an English con-J^j^^°g' gj
temporary statesman, but according to his own countrymen 'one not
to ride the water with ' ; had the Douglas heart for forward politics
rather than for prayers, the Douglas temper for kicking against
government, and the Douglas energy for many enterprises, godly and
ungodly, for which he forfeited his head in 1581.
John Erskine, proprietor of Dun, in Forfarshire, is honourably
* The fifth Earl of Argyll died on 12th September 1573 : Knox, i. 290 ; ii. 258 note. .
2 Wodro2v MSS. (Glasgow), 'The Life of Mr. John Knox,' App. 27, Letter 7, May 1563 ;
Knox, ii. 377-9.
14 THE COVENANTERS
Erskineof entitled to be considered the first Covenanter (1508-90), having
Dun, 1508- entered into all the movements for practical Church reform. A born
1590. ^
patriot, a friend of martyred Wishart, Erskine, when on the Continent
travelling and studying, had given thought to reform, and at home
had done effective work for it by dispatching a priest. He was
exactly the kind of lay-leader needed for the crisis, being moderate,
scholarly, spiritually-minded, capable, and unflinching. This unique
Scot played many parts in his day — soldier, patron of letters.
Provost of Montrose, diplomatist, ambassador at Mary's marriage,
lay-preacher, exhorter, superintendent of clergy, parish minister,
and Moderator of the General Assembly. All parties in the State
respected him. Queen Mary Stuart herself declared that ' above all
others she would gladly hear the Superintendant of Angus (for he
was a mild and sweet-natured man, with true honesty and upright-
nesse).' ^ With a singular insight, Mary must have perceived in the
* sweet nature ' of Erskine that liberal mind and charitable spirit
which the scheming prelatists of a later day utilised for the deforma-
tion of presbytery itself. It is also satisfactory to learn that among
the Covenanters, who are usually covered with much obloquy, the
prime mover at least had a ' sweet nature,' and was honest and
upright.
Regent Moray, In Lord James Stewart (1531-70), afterwards Regent Moray,
i53i(?)-iS7o. iiiegitiniate son of James v. and Margaret Erskine, daughter of the
fifth Earl of Mar, the Covenanters possessed a tower of strength, a
wise councillor, and a conciliatory ally. It is probable that he did not
approve of the policy of completely sweeping out certain features in
the ancient Church which might have been retained after improve-
ment, and he probably knew better than the clerical reformers that
the new organisations would receive few of the spoils of the old.
While a temperate judgment kept him from joining the extremists,
his personality and labours were acknowledged by Knox to be a
comfort to the Church.
The names of the other subscribers are not preserved. Sir
' Knox, ii. 482.
HISTORICAL BEGINNINGS 15
James Sandilands, senior, of Calder, at whose house Knox dispensed
the Sacrament, was probably one of these, and among those who
waited to choose a definite attitude were Lord Erskine, Governor of
Edinburgh Castle, Earl Marischal, and the Maitlands of Lethington.
The first constructive step of the Congregation, after assuming First church
all the prerogatives and powers of a constituted and organised
Church, was the selection and authorisation of a Confession of Faith
and Directory of Worship. They ordained (i) that in all parish
churches the Common Prayers of the Second Book of King Edward
Sixth, includinor the lessons from the Old and New Testaments con-
tained therein, be read by the curates, or, on their refusal, by the
most qualified persons, on Sundays and Holy-days; (2) that the
Scriptures be taught, preached, and interpreted ' privately in quiet
houses, without great conventions of the people thereto, till afterward
that God move the prince to grant public preaching by faithful and
true ministers.'^ A more reasonable and constitutional resolution was
not possible. It imposed restraint on too eager lords and barons in
the Confederation. Private preachers found shelter in their castles.
The influence of their cause became personal, widespread, and deep-
rooted, so that happily ' everie man beganne to looke more diligently
to his owne salvation.'
The Reformers made another step towards organisation by
establishing ' The Privy Kirk,' wherein the declared sympathisers of
the Protestant cause acknowledged the rule of elders, until preachers
were forthcoming to complete a Court of the Church for each
cono-reg;ation.
In the absence of a regular ministry, Erskine of Dun, David
Forres, Robert Lockhart, Robert Hamilton, and William Harlaw
exhorted their associates.
The first Reformed Congregation met in Dundee in 1558 under the The first
protection of many powerful lairds, Paul Methven being the preacher, conjugation.
At first the suave manner and conciliatory policy of the Queen-
Regent led the Congregation to expect some redress of their
1 Knox, i. 275, 276.
i6
THE COVENANTERS
Martyrdom of
Mill, 1558.
Petition of
Congregation.
Last Council,
1559-
But the burning of Walter Mill, a patriarchal preacher
of eighty-two years of age, at St. Andrews on the 28th April 1558,
was the ultimatum of the irreconcilable Church blasting their hopes.
Knox, too, was burned in eftigy. The doom of Mill, meant to
terrorise the dissentients, only roused them against the priesthood,
and, according to Spottiswood the historian, brought about ' the
very death of Popery,'^ the people binding themselves by oaths,
oral and written, to defend the persecuted with arms.
The elevation of Elizabeth, a Protestant, to the throne of England,
17th November 1558, gave her northern co-religionists fresh hopes.
The Congregation, now realising that 'there abideth nothing for
us but faggot, fire, and sword,' presented to the Queen-Regent and
Parliament a remonstrance with a petition craving for reform in
Church and State, and for liberty to enjoy the private and public
ordinances of religion in the Scots tongue. In reply the Regent
consented to the Congregation meeting and worshipping at a distance
from Edinburgh, a concession which she soon revoked by a pro-
clamation declaring their conventicles illegal. The preachers defied
the injunction. They were cited for trial in Stirling on the loth of
May. The Congregation gathered in Perth, intending to accompany
the accused, but the wily Regent diverted them from their intention,
and had the preachers, who did not compear, declared to be rebels,
and their sureties fined.^
In the meantime the Provincial General Council met for the last
time in Edinburgh, from the ist to the loth of March 1559. Not
realising the temper of the age, far less its needs, it simply emphasised
anew the worn-out doctrines, homologated the fruitless policy, and
honestly testified to the scandalous rottenness of the Roman Catholic
Church by passing reforming Canons far too late.'
On 2nd May 1559 Knox returned to flee no more, to make or
1 .Spottiswood, Hist., 97 fol. ; Knox, i. 308, 360, 550.
- Lang, Knox, Appendix A, p. 275, denies 'Alleged Perfidy of Mary of Guise'; Knox,
i. 309 et seq.
2 Robertson, Concilia Scotiac: Ecclesiae Scoticatiae Statuta . . . 1 225-1 559. 2 vols. Bann.
Club, 1866, q.v. ; Dr. D. Patrick, S/at. of the Scottish Church, Introd., Scot. Hist. Soc, 1907.
HISTORICAL BEGINNINGS 17
mar his fatherland. Proceeding covertly to Dundee and Perth he
began to 'thunder,' as the English ambassador graphically described
his preaching. The lightning was soon to be seen playing in havoc
among the monasteries, nunneries, monuments of idolatry, and other
'popish stuff.' While Erskine's sweet nature was striving to con-
ciliate the Regent, Knox was preparing his firebrands. The influence of
announcement of the treacherous verdict upon the preachers, issued
in Stirling, embittered all the professors of Protestantism and enraged
the populace. It is noticeable, notwithstanding what Mr. Buckle
wrote to the contrary, how early the masses supported the preachers
and politicians in their defiance of their rulers now acting uncon-
stitutionally. An inflammatory sermon from Knox on Thursday
morning, nth May, and, at the same time, the inopportune chastise-
ment of an impudent boy by a priest, whom the imp had irritated
as the priest was opening ' ane glorious tabernacle ' on the high altar
preparatory to the celebration of the Sacrifice, in the parish church
of St. John the Baptist in Perth, infuriated first the onlookers and Risingin
thereafter the townspeople beyond control. Like a lake which has
burst the barriers of its pent-up waters, the mob, if not encouraged,
certainly not prevented by the ' brethren,' roared along into the sacred
buildings, sweeping down the offending altars, crucifixes, pictures,
enrichments, and surged away to carry off the riches of the
Dominicans, Franciscans, and Carthusians, before their houses were
given to the flames.^
Knox and the other leaders of the Reform party have been often
blamed for not stopping this senseless, widespread devastation. But
if the many contemporary accusations that ' the filthie life . . . main-
tained amongst that rable of preests, friers, monks, etc. . . . cannot
be expressed,' were only half true, it must have been a joy as well
as a duty of all good men to watch the flames wiping out those lewd
bagnios and scattering their lazy and scandalous tenantry. That
every effort was exerted to preserve the churches intact is proved
by the subsequent edicts of the General Assembly.
^ Knox, i. 321-3 ; Calderwood, Hist.^ i. 441.
C
i8 THE COVENANTERS
Threats of Hearing of this riot, the angry Regent, relying on her French
Queen- egen . Qj_j^j.^^g^ threatened to turn Perth into a wilderness, sown with salt,
and to exterminate the * professors ' of the new faith. The Guise
hatred of the Huguenots was roused. The Reformers retaliated.
They, styling themselves ' The Faithfull Congregation of Christ
Jesus in Scotland,' on 22nd May addressed to her an ultimatum
to the effect that unless her cruelty was stopped they would be
compelled to take up arms against those persecuting them for matters
of religion and conscience.^ They next appealed to the nobility to
act, no longer as oppressors, but as arbiters in the cause which they
were willing to dispute, Bible in hand. Their final appeal — it also
contained a threat of excommunication — was thus to the highest
authority. While they warned the prelates and priests, as murderers,
and enemies of God and man, of the doom of the Canaanites, they
summoned their own secret sympathisers to arms and prayer.
Remonstrances were also addressed to the French officers in the
service of the Regent. Their pitiful supplication in this peril is
Prayer of recorded in Knox's Liturgy : ' But now, O Lord, the dangers which
appeare and the trouble w^hich increaseth by the cruel tyrannic of
forsworn straingers compelleth us to complaine before the throne
of thy mercy, and to crave of thee protection and defence against
their most unjust persecution. That nation, O Lord, for whose
pleasure and for defence of whome, we have offended thy majestie,
and violated our faith, oft breaking the leagues of unitie and concorde,
which our kings and governors have contracted with our neighbours,
that nation, O Lord, for whose Aliance our fathers and predecessors
shead their blood, and we (whome now by tyrrannie they oppress) have
oft susteined the hasard of battell, that nation, finally to whom
always we have bene faithful, now after this long practised deceit, by
manifest tyranny, do seke our destruction.' This bitter plaint against
France, more like a proclamation than a prayer, ends with calling
upon the God that drowned Pharaoh, devoured Amalek, repulsed
Sennacherib, and plagued Herod, to protect the Congregation from
' Lang, Knox^ 115-16 ; Knox, i. 326.
HISTORICAL BEGINNINGS 19
those French persecutors. The French troops lay in Auchterarder
threatening a descent on Perth on 24th May,
The friends of the Congregation in the shires of Perth, Angus, Congregation
Mearns, and Fife, took arms and marched to the vicinity of Perth. ^" '"'"'^'
The Ayrshire contingent, under Glencairn, Ochiltree, Boyd, and
Campbell, who were accompanied by the preacher, John Willock,
hurried to the scene of action. Argyll and Lord James Stewart, who
accompanied and had not yet broken with the Queen-Regent, averted
the imminent conflict. A truce was agreed on, whereby the Reformers
in Perth obtained an amnesty for their recent iconoclasm, and pro-
vision was made for the removal of the French soldiers. Before
leaving the town, the Regent's envoys appear to have considered
that the Regent had broken the terms of the compact, and they
publicly associated themselves with the Congregation and their leaders,
who subscribed the following Covenant at the time of the evacuation : —
' At Perth, the last day of Maij, the yeir of God Jm Vc fiftie nyne yeiris, Perth Cove-
the Congregationis of the West Cuntrey, with the Congregationis of Fyfe, Perth, "a"t> 3ist
Dundie, Anguss, Mearnis, and Munross, being conveaned in the town of Perth, in ^^^ '559-
the name of Jesus Christ, for furthsetting of his glorie ; understanding nathing mair
necessar for the samin than to keep ane constant amitie, unitie, and fellowschipe
togidder, according as they ar commanded be God, ar confederat, and become
bundin [bound] and obleast [obHged] in the presence of God, to concur and
assist together in doing all thingis required of God in his Scripture, that may be to
his glorie ; and at thair haill [whole] poweris to distroy and away put all thingis
that dois dishonour to his name, so that God may be trewlie and puirelie wir-
schipped : And in case that any truble beis [be] intended aganis the saidis Con-
gregationis, or ony part or member thairof, the haill Congregatioun shall concur, assist,
and conveane togidder, to the defence of the samin Congregatioun, or persone
trubled; and shall nocht spair labouris, goodis, substancis, bodyis, and lyves, in
manteaning the libertie of the haill Congregatioun, and everie member thairof, aganis
whatsomevir power that shall intend the said trubill for caus of religioun, or ony uther
caus dependand thairupon, or lay to thair charge under pretence thairof, althocht it
happin to be coloured with ony uther outward caus. In witnessing and testimony
of the quhilkis, the haill Congregationis foirsaidis hes ordayned and appointit the
Noblemen and personis underwrittin to subscrive thir presentis. (Sic subscribitur) —
ARCH. ERGYLE. GLENCARNE.
JAMES STEWART. R. LORD BOYD.
MATHOW CAMPBELL of Teringland. UCHILTRIE.'i
* Knox, i. 344, 345 ; vi. 24 ; Calderwood, Hist.^ i. 458 ; Lang, Knox, 121. Original is lost.
20
THE COVENANTERS
Stipulations of
Perth Cove-
nant.
Supporters
of the
Congregation.
This Covenant stipulated (i) to maintain their evangelical con-
federation, (2) to do all things required by God in Scripture, (3) to
observe pure worship, and (4) tp preserve the liberty of the Con-
gregation and each member of it. As yet there was no hint of
discarding the episcopal polity of the Church. Among the many
influential persons who now publicly threw in their lot with these
rebellious evangelicals were young Argyll, Lord James Stewart,
Robert, fourth Lord Boyd, a masterful man of affairs, Andrew
Stewart, Lord Ochiltree, afterwards father-in-law of Knox, and
Matthew Campbell of Teringzean, Cumnock, eldest son of Sir Hew
Campbell of Loudoun, Sheriff of Ayr.
Argyll and Lord James Stewart joined with the Earl of Ruthven,
the Earl of Menteith, and the laird of Tullibardine in a mutual bond to
defend themselves if interfered with in the exercise of their religion,
and to support the Congregation. Their accession gave new heart
to the movement. Argyll and Lord James invited Knox and other
leaders of the party to meet in consultation at St. Andrews. They
responded and brought three thousand men-at-arms with them on
3rd June. Knox came, and, although they were menaced by the
Regent and her French Guards in the vicinity, as well as by the
bishop and his armed supporters, he still determined to preach in
the city.^ For four days in the parish church, nth to 14th June,
he held his fiery mission. In a jubilant letter dispatched by Knox
to Mrs. Anna Lock, among other reasons for satisfaction, he
mentions that ' Diverse Channons of Sanct Andrews have given
notable Confessions, and have declared themselves manifest enemies
to the Pope, to the Masse, and to all superstition.'^ The primatial
city fitly became the nursery of the Reformed Church, and
the parish church witnessed many priests making renunciation of the
old faith and profession of the new doctrines. No fewer than
twenty-one ' maisters ' in St. Andrews were mentioned in the first
General Assembly as qualified 'in St Androes for ministreing and
' Knox, vi. 25.
^ Ibid., vi. 26: 'From Sanct Andrewes, the 23d of June 1559.'
HISTORICAL BEGINNINGS 21
teaching.'^ The populace was stirred and the magistrates yielded to
their demand for the destruction of the offending ' monuments of
idolatry.' Of them they made a bonfire on the spot where the east
wind scattered the ashes of Walter Mill. The houses of the Black
and Grey Friars were gutted out. Knox must have been satisfied ,
to find his sermon on Christ's cleansing of the Temple having so
practical and salutary effect, and so soon."
It was the signal for a religious crusade. Yet no punishment a religions
was inflicted upon sayers or hearers of the Mass. The mobs required ""^^ ^'
no hints, and long before the * Lords of the Congregation' or any
official leaders of the Reformation came to countenance the purgation,
many churches and religious houses had been robbed and wrecked.
The opposition of the Regent led to the mobilisation of her opponents
on Cupar Muir and to their capture of Perth. Under their eye the
abbeys of Lindores and Scone were reformed, but the irate mob
could not be restrained from firing the lovely edifices at Scone.
Elsewhere the woeful work proceeded apparently with little restraint,
and altars, images, paintings, carvings, screens, relics of saints and
martyrs enshrined in gold and adorned with precious stones, vest-
ments, books, liturgies, ancient crosses, bells, and even architectural
adornments, were smashed in the sacred buildings, stolen, or carried
out to bonfires.^ The chastest symbols were effaced as out of date
and Satanic, as the enemies of liberty and manhood — the ' deckings of
eternal ruin.' The sacrilegious mob imagined that they had now
1 The Register, p. ii, under date 3rd Feb. 1559, gives the names of eighteen priests who
of ' ther auin fre motyve willis ' gave this public testimony. Cf. Lee, Lectures, i. 227-32 ;
Booke of the U. Kirk, i. 4 ; Register, Preface, vii.
2 Knox, i. 349.
2 In many districts of Scotland the violence of the Reformers was restrained, and rude
hands were only laid on the more offensive symbols. In the West Highlands, the Celtic
Crosses were left unmolested. The beautiful Cross of Ruth well survived intact till 1642.
Images of Christ, St. Cuthbert, and St. Bride (?) are preserved in Melrose Abbey. The image
of the Virgin, ' Our Lady of Aberdeen,' after romantic travels reached Brussels, where it now
is {Saint Andrew's Cross, i. 221. With illustrations). In 1613 Lundie parish church still had
its 'paintrie.' The internal decorations, screen, etc., of Elgin remained till 1640; those of
Leuchars till 1648. Cf. Fasti, iv. 449; v. 151 ; vi. 717 ; Brodie, Diary, xvii. The head of
a statue of Christ was discovered in the excavations of the Priory of St. Andrews : Lang,
Knox, 123 ; Trans. Scot. Eccles. Sac, i. pt. iii. 247.
22 THE COVENANTERS
reached that advanced stage of intellect and grace when the eternal
verities directly inspired them without the aid of symbol, veil, or
trapping. But, strange to say, on some churches the lewdest
carvings were left intact to be objects for vulgar laughter, or
illustrations of an obscenity which defied reform.^ The spoliation
nearly equalled the ravages of the armies of Henry viii., which made
a cruel tale of ruined churches, abbeys, and religious houses, for
whose destruction Knox is unjustly blamed. The Cathedral and other
churches of St. Andrews were cleansed but not injured ; Lindores and
Balmerino were swept and rummaged ; Scone Abbey and Palace fired ;
the monasteries in Stirling destroyed ; Linlithgow Church wrecked,
and the monastery of the Carmelites pulled down; Holyrood House,
Abbey, and its royal sepulchres rifled; Glasgow Cathedral stripped;
and, while four or five churches were cast down, hundreds of parish
churches were cleared of their consecrated paraphernalia. It can be
easily proved that English soldiery, not Scottish reformers, together
with neglect and decay, ruined the noblest edifices in the land.^
Nevertheless, at this time the houses of monks, nuns, hospitallers, and
other pious pensioners were gutted by pilfering hands and ruthless
flames. The mobs would not be stayed, and for that the Con-
gregation is not entirely to be blamed ; for, according to Carlyle,
Aim of Knox. ' Knox wanted no pulling down of stone edifices; he wanted leprosy
and darkness to be thrown out of the lives of men.' If Knox did
not actually say 'the sure way to banish the rookes was to pull
down their nests,' he must have approved of the application of
the principle to the doomed Church, if his sermons conveyed any
meaning.
After proceeding to Edinburgh, whence the Queen-Regent fled on
29th June, the Crusaders came back by Linlithgow to Stirling. The
Regent marched and countermarched her French and Scots supporters
against the insurgents, but never dared strike even a tentative
blow. Her party dwindled while theirs increased. In vain did the
' E.^. Roslin Chapel.
Robertson, Scottish Abbeys and Cathedrals^ 88-93 (Aberdeen, 1891).
HISTORICAL BEGINNINGS 23
Catholic party try every wile to circumvent the Congregation, and Negotiations
used every equivocation and promise to dissolve their allegiance to cathdks
their sacred cause and to one another. While the Congregation lay ^^^ ^^^
. , . Congregation.
in Edinburgh watching the turn of affairs, two Commissioners, Wishart
of Pittaro and Cunningham of Cunninghamhead, were sent to the
Regent to explain the position and demands of the Congregation,
while answering her recent damaging proclamation — that they were
traitors in rebellion against the Crown. She received the deputation
graciously, but desired to treat with others of higher rank in the party,
and the Congregation complied by sending Glencairn, Ruthven,
Ochiltree, and Wishart on a futile errand. She was parleying to win
time. They again defended their compatriots ' compelled to seak
the extreme remedie . . . whare thai nather fand fidelitie nor treuth.'^
These conventions, broken off on 12th July, were afterwards resumed
at Preston, where a whole day was spent in debating the questions at
issue how the Regent could give liberty of religion as she promised
while demanding the silence of the Protestant preachers and the
maintenance of the Mass. In the Preston conference, Chatelherault,
Huntly, Erskine, Sommervell, and other royalists were confronted by
Argyll, Lord James Stewart, and the above-mentioned Commissioners.
No settlement was arrived at, further than the dispatch of an ulti-
matum to the effect that the Congregation were willing to be loyal,
provided their preachers were submitted to a proper academic test in
presence of the Regent, and themselves were summoned to a lawful
parliament eliminated of the bishops — ' the party accused and our
plane ennemeis.' The Regent, however, had gained what she aimed
at, the dispersal of the armed supporters of the Congregation, who
'war compelled to skaill for lack of expenssis.'^' While these
negotiations proceeded, the Lords and Barons entered into another
defensive Covenant for the maintenance of their Protestant cause and
the abolition of popery, which was subscribed at Edinburgh on 13th
July 1559. Strange to say, Knox, Calderwood, and other con-
temporary chroniclers omit this ' band,' which, however, is engrossed in
' Knox, i. 366, 367. ^ /^zV/., i, 369.
24 THE COVENANTERS
the Register of the Christian Congregation of St. Andrews. There
we find it subscribed by the magistrates of St. Andrews — ' Patrick
Lermonth of Darsy, Provest ; Maister Alane Lairmonth, Johne
Muffatt, bailHes' — and 328 men on the 22nd November 1559.^ The
terms of the Edinburgh Covenant are as follows : —
Edinburgh 'THE TENNOUR OF THE LETTRES CONTEYNAND THE NAMES OF ALL THEM THAT
Covenant, ARE ADJOYNET TO THE CONGREGATIOUN WITHIN THIS CIETIE.
'We quhais names ar underwrittin juness us in all thinges conforme to the
Generall Band maid betuix the Lordis and Baronis of Congregatioun, at Edinburgh,
the xiij day oijulii, anno, etc. lix, to the Congregatioun and memberis therof, to
assist in mutuall support with the said Congregatioun, with our bodies, geir and
force, for maynteyning of the trew religioun of Christe, and downe putting of all
superstitioun and idolatrie, conforme to the said Band, quherof the tennour followis
and is this : —
* WE QUHAIS names ar underwrittin, quhilkis hes subscrivit thir presentes
with our handis, haifand respect to our dewties in setting fordwart the glorie of
God, and knawand alswa that we are commandit to June ourselfis togiddir as
memberis of ane body, for the furtherance of the samyn, dois, in the name of
Christe Jesus, unite ourselfis, that we, in ane mynde and ane spirite, may endivour
us, with our haill power and diligence, to walk fordwart in the waiis of the Lord,
laboring to destroy and put downe all idolatrie, abhominationess, superstitioness,
and quhatsumever thing dois exalte the self against the majestie of our God, and
maynteyn and sett up the trew religioun of Christe, his Word and sacramentes, and
alswa assist and defend the trew ministeris therof. And as we be sones of ane
Father, parttakeris of ane Spirite, and heyris of ane kingdome, swa sail we maist
hartlie, faythfuUie and trewlie concur togiddir, nocht onlie in the materis of religioun,
bot sail lykewise, at our utter poweris to the waring of our labouris, substance and
lyves, assist, defend and maynteyne every ane ane uthir, against quhatsumever that
troubles, persewis or invades us, or ony ane of us, in our lyves, landis, gudeis,
heretageis, offices, benefices, pensiones, or uthir thinges quhatsumever, praesentlie
in our possessioness, or quhilkis justlie we possesset at the begynning of thir
praesent trowblis for the religioun, or ony uthir causs praetendit upoun religioun,
or persewit under praetenss of the samyn. And, for observing of the premissis,
we bind and obliss ourselfis, in the praesence of our God, of his Sone Jesus
Christe, caUing for the Haly Spirite to strenth us to performe the samyn. At
Edinburgh the xiij of Julii, the yeir of God, j'" v'^' fifty nyne yeris. Quhilk band
we approve in all pointtis, and adgoynis ourselfis for mutuall defenss to the haill
adheraris therto.
1 Register, 6, 7. The Register begins on 27th October 1559. In 1559 Adam Heriot,
assisted by many elders and deacons, engaged in the parochial work of reformation in
St. Andrews. Cf. D. Hay Fleming's excellent Preface, vii. ; cf. also Knox, vi. 680, 682;
Maitland Misc., iii. 211.
HISTORICAL BEGINNINGS 25
In all likelihood Knox, who was elected minister of Edinburgh on
7th July, took a part in preparing this document. He was then
acting as Secretary to the Lords of the Congregation.^
The purgation of 'popish stuff' in the Carse of Stirling went
merrily on, and even Cambuskenneth Abbey with its royal tombs
was devastated.
The national cause had progressed beyond the limits of ' sweet
nature.' Unchecked success had developed the ancient, bold, high-
minded temper of the days of the Bruce in the multitude, and they,
arms in hand, were strung up to such a pitch of excitement that they
were ready to defy the Government. Protestantism felt strong
enough to ban Romanism. The resolution of the hour was expressed
in the Covenant signed at Stirling to this effect : —
* We foirseing the craft and slycht of our adversaries, tending all manner of Stirling
wayis to circumvene us, and be [by] prevy meanis intendis to assailzie everie ane Covenant,
of us particularlie be fair hechtis [offers] and promisses, thairthrow to separat ane ^^'^ August
of us from ane uther, to oure utter rewyne and destructioun : for remedy heirof we
faythfullie and trewlie byndis us in the presence of God, and as we tender the
mentenance of trew Religioun, that nane of us sail in tymeis cuming pas to the
Queneis Grace Dowriare, to talk or commun with hir for any letter [or] message
send be hir unto us, or yitt to be send, without consent of the rest, and commone
consultatioun thairupoun. And quhowsone that ather message or writt sail cum
fro hir unto us, with utter diligence we sail notifie the same ane to ane uther ; swa
that nathing sail proceid heirin without comune consent of us all. At Striveling
the first day of August 1559.'^
This Covenant was meant to guard against any perfidious dis-
sensions among those now so strongly confederated for the main-
tenance of true religion. The Church was anxiously endeavouring
to mitigate the grievances complained of, to purge away the vices
of its officials, and to win back the disaffected. Their efforts were
futile. Preaching, so long punishable by law, was a common occur-
rence, and terrible denunciations were hurled against Antichrist —
the shaveling prelates, and priests. Scottish blood was afire with
the spirit and energy of a Joel. Knox laboured night and day,
' St. Giles, Old or Great Church ; Knox, vi. 43, notes 2, 3 ; Scott, Fasti, i. 3.
^ Knox, i. 382 ; Calderwood, i. 489. The original is lost.
D
26 THE COVENANTERS
travelling throughout the realm, to rouse, educate, and convert the
lieges, and sounding the gospel trumpet. Yet by the autumn of
1559 there were only eight established pastorates, with constituted
kirk-sessions probably associated with all of them — in Edinburgh,
St. Andrews, Dundee, Perth, Brechin, Montrose, Stirling, and Ayr.^
The intelligent laity welcomed the opportunity for overthrowing
the ecclesiastical tyranny which had so long suppressed the popular
aspirations for personal freedom and education. The Bible was
seen to assure every one of spiritual independence. To get and
retain that, the Covenanters buckled swords as well as Bibles to
their belts, and put ' pots ' of steel upon their heads as safe symbols
of the helmet of salvation. Unhappily, and despite themselves,
these pious patriots became associated with a powerful set of mean
landgrabbers, whose real aim was to obtain the territorial wealth of
the Church, which was diverted from 'pious uses,' without benefiting
the spoilers very much.
Mary Stuart's The last hope of the Romanist party lay in France. The
marriage,
1558. marriage of Mary Stuart to the Dauphin, on the 24th April 1558,
created in the hearts of her co-religionists at home the devout
assurance that the arms of France would extinofuish the northern
heresy. A Scots party, headed by Lord James Stewart, leagued
themselves against the possible results of this alliance. The death
of Mary Tudor, and the accession of the Protestant Elizabeth,
completely changed the aspect of English affairs. The Covenanter's
arena got a wider, brighter horizon. The personal element in the
contest was forgotten in the larger issue of national freedom. A
political cry was heard for the displacement of the 'monsieurs,'
'pestilences,' 'cut-throats,' as the Court and their French Guard were
called, especially after these troops had issued from the citadel at
Leith to butcher women, children, and craven men, some of whose
bodies they afterwards dangled over the breastworks, to form what
the Regent, with the light heart of her race, termed ' a pleasing
' The Register of the Kirk Session of St. Andrews, part i., 1559-82, edit. D. Hay Fleming,
Scot. Hist. Soc, 1888, Preface.
HISTORICAL BEGINNINGS 27
tapestry ' — a bloody fresco to be often avenged, swore the gospellers
with the Bibles in their sword-belts. The Congregation made bold
to announce their deposition of the Queen-Regent in October. The
French troops continued to harass the land.
Queen Elizabeth and her Council had dynastic as well as religious Elizabeth's
"^ r 1 • 1 r- • 1 T> • help, February
reasons for sending armed support to the Scottish rrotestants entering ,360.
on civil war. Elizabeth was the bete noire of the Catholics, who
looked upon her as 'a tyrant more ferocious than any heathen
persecutor.'^ It is a commonplace established by the State papers
of the day — English, French, Spanish, and Venetian — that the
destruction of Scottish Protestantism was to be the prelude to the
dethroning of Elizabeth, and the elevation of Mary Stuart to
the English throne. By the Treaty of Berwick, 27th February 1560,
Elizabeth undertook to preserve the freedom of Scotland, which in
return was to aid England if molested by France. The alliance
guaranteed Protestantism. The stakes dependent upon that conflict
were clearly set forth in a bond agreed upon by the Scots party —
Covenanters and political patriots — when the united Protestant
troops of England and Scotland lay before Leith besieging the
French there in April 1560. This is the first Covenant which
combined political resolutions in conjunction with theological and
ecclesiastical demands. And it indicates how the northern Reforma-
tion was assisted to an earlier consummation by the opportune
interference of the alien French on the one hand, and by the counter-
balancing intervention of the English on the other. The terms of
the Leith Covenant are as follow : —
' Ane Contract of the Lords and Barons to defend the Liberty of the Evangell Leith Cove-
of Christ. ^""^^'j ^7t^h
'At Edinburgh t, the xxvij day of Aprile, the yeir of God ane thousand fyve P" ^5 o-
hundreth threescoir yeiris : We, quheis namis ar underwrittin, haif promittit and
oblist oure selffis faithfullie in the presens of oure God, and be thir presentis
promittis that we altogidder in generall, and euery ane of us in special, be him
selff, with oure bodeis, guidis, freyndis, and all that we may do, sail sett fordwart
the Reformatioun of Religioun, according to Goddes word; and procure, be all
means possibill, that the treuth of Goddes word may haif free passage within this
1 Hallam, Const. Hist., i. 149.
28 THE COVENANTERS
Realme, with due administratioun of the sacramentis, and all thingis depending
upoun the said word; And siclik, deiplie weying with oure selfis the misbehavour
of the Frenche Ministeris heir; the intolerabill oppressiouns committit be the
Frenche men of weir upon the poore subjectis of this Realme, by meyntenance of
the Quene Dowager, under cullour and pretence of authoritie ; the tyrannye of
thair Capitanis and leadaris; and manifest danger of conqueist, in quhilk this
countrey presentlie standis, be reasoun of dyverse fortificatiouns upoune the sea-
coast; and uther novelties of lait attemptit be thame; promittis, that We sail, als
Weill every ane with uther, as altogidder, with the Quene of Englandis armie,
presentlie cumit in for oure delyverance, eflfectuallie concur and joyne togidder,
talking anefald plane pairt, for expulsioun of the said strangeris, oppressouris of
oure libertie, furth of this Realme, and recovery of oure ancient fredomis and
liberties ; to the end, that in tyme cuming. we may, under the obedience of the
Kyng and Quene our Soveranis, be onlie rewllit be the lawis and customeis of the
Cuntrey, and borne men of the land : And that never ane of us sail haif pryvey
intelligence be writting, message, or communicatioun with ony of oure saidis
ennemeis or adversareis in this cause, bot be the advise of the rest (at least of
fyve) of the Counsale. Attour, that we sail tender the commun cause, as gif it
war the cause of everie ane of us now joinit togidder, being leiful and honest, sail
be all oure causes in generall : And he that is ennemy to the caussis foirsaid, sail
be ennemy to us all : in sa far, that quhatsoever persone will planelie resist thir
oure godlie interpryseis, and will not concur as ane guid and trew member of this
Common weill, we sail fortifie the auctoritie of the Counsale, to reduce thame to
thair dewitie, Lyke as we sail fortifie the auctoritie foirsaid of the Counsale, in all
thyngis tending to the furtherance of the saidis causses : And gif ony particular
debait, quarrell, or contraversie, sail arryse, for quhatsoever cause, bygane, present
or to cum, betwix ony of us (as God forbid,) in that caise, we sail submit our selfis
and oure saidis questionis, to the decisioun of the Counsale, or to arbitratouris to
be namit be thame. And providing alwayis, that this be not prejudiciall to the
ordinarie jurisdictioun of Judgeis, but that men may persew thair actiouns by
ordour of law civilie or criminallie, before the Judges Ordinaris gif thai please.
* In wytnes of the quhilk we have subscrivit this present Band with our hands,
day, zeir, and place above wryttine.
James. James Stewart.
James Hammylton. Jhon Monteyt.
Huntley. Ruthwen.
Ar<i Argill. R. Boyd.
Glencarn. Ogylwye.
Rothes. Vchiltree.
Mortoun. Jhon'' Maxvell,
A. Gordoun. Patryk Lyndsay.
James Stewart [Johnson in Knox], Jhon M[aister] Phorbes.
Appara7id of Elphistoun. Lord Somerwell.
Patryk Douglas. James Halyburton.
Robert Campbell. Alex»" Dunbar of Cumiwk.
i;^-':
"^
'//^"
ys
''-/'• f.l,^
^^^(^
o
^yreJ-e^r^-^d --^/T?.
yz^m^^^^^97iy A7J^./:^<
HISTORICAL BEGINNINGS
29
Andrew Jhonson.
Robyn Car.
Jhon Gordon of Finlatter.
Alex*" Seton, Younger of Meldrum.
Henry Grahame, Youngar of
Morphy.
Alex^ Gordon of Abyrzelde.
Drumlaynryk.
Faunhaus [Andro Kcr of Fau-
donside?].
Craynston of that J Ik.
Wedderburn.
Alexr. Hume.
Jhonson.
Graytly.
W™ Douglas of Whyttingeym.
George Hwme of Spott.
George Nysbyt, with my Iiand at my pen.
Cunnynghaymhyd.
Leslye of Bowquhane.
Jhon Innes of that Ilk.
Arthur Phorbes.
W"^ Lesley, Youngar of Wardes.
Jhon Wishart.
Drumloyghie.
Cesfuird.
Hundhill.
Mark Kar.' '
The bond might not be so menacing as the array of signatures
made it appear, for Huntly, still the acknowledged chief of the popish
party, had also appended his name. Nevertheless, the inspection of
this bond opened the eyes of the Oueen-Dowager to her perilous
position, surrounded as her feeble executive was by such influential
opponents. Of the forty-nine powerful laymen and landholders who
subscribed this patriotic bond, only a few appear afterwards in the
first General Assemblies of the Church, from which we must conclude
that the long-suffering laity were now roused, and that their latest
bond was the proclamation of a war committee, with more in view
than the restoration of a pure gospel. The Leith Covenant pro- Doctrines in
mulgated two substantial doctrines, novel in Scotland and irreconcil- n^nt.
able with the principles of Hildebrand and the practice of the Church
of Rome, namely, (i) that the people are the custodiers of the Word
of God; and (2) that the people of Scotland are the rightful con-
servators of their own ancient ' freedoms and liberties,' among which
is government by native sovereigns and magistrates, according to
use, wont, and the will of the governed. The perilous doctrine of
governing by majorities was implied, and that of ruling by force was
asserted. Altogether it is a remarkable document, evincing the
realisation of the principle of personal responsibility, and indicating
1 Knox, ii. 64. The original of this Covenant is preserved in the Hamilton archives.
Cf. Hist. MSS. Com., xi. vi. 42 (88). A facsimile (reduced) is inserted in this volume.
30
THE COVENANTERS
Queen-
Dowager dies,
loth June
1560.
Parliament,
August 1560.
Confession of
Faith, 1560.
the growth of a sane patriotism based upon the ' self-respect of race.
The trend of affairs was democratic. The masses were asfainst a
Crown guarded by foreigners. The French in Leith were in straits.
The poHtical position was changed by the unmourned death of
the Queen-Dowager on the loth June. The Treaty of Edinburgh,
6th July, ended the French occupation. The wearied combatants
found peace on the withdrawal of the alien soldiery in July. The
Scots Reform party now found themselves predominant at home,
and for ever relieved of the incubus of the papacy and its tyrannical
agents. With a discredited Church, defeated foe, dead Regent, and
absent sovereign, it was not difficult for the Congregation to have the
Reformed Faith legally recognised by the Estates of the Kingdom
in Parliament assembled at Edinburgh in July. After adjournment
it continued sitting between the first and twenty-fourth day of August.
Of the 188 members present, the lay Protestant element predominated,
more than two-thirds being country gentry and burgesses, with six pre-
lates and twenty-one heads of religious houses. The clerical Reformers,
having presented a petition to Parliament craving recognition of their
principles and policy, were invited to formulate the doctrines which
they, as spiritual leaders of the Congregation, were desirous to have
legally sanctioned. This they had in hands, having been charged to
prepare a Creed in April, after the signing of the Leith Covenant.
Thereupon they proffered ' The Confession of fayth professed and
beleved be the protestantis within the Realme of Scotland, publischeit be
thame in Parliament, and be the estaitis thairof ratifeit and apprevit, as
hailsome and sound doctrine groundit vpoun the infallibill trewth of
godis word.' ^ ' Our confession was publicly read," wrote Knox, ' first in
audience of the Lords of the Articles, and after, in audience of the whole
Parliament.' ' Not till it was read a second time, article by article, and
1 Act. Pari. Scot., ii. 526 ; Knox, ii. 92-122 ; Keith, i. 311-22 ; iii. 4-7 ; Dunlop, A Collection
of Confessions, ii. 13 ; Calderwood, ii. 15, 37. 'The Confessione,' printed by R. Lekprewik in
1 561, was sold at the Scott Library sale in 1905 for ^126, the 1649 Elzevir edition was
also sold for ;^36. The variations on the title-pages are noteworthy.
2 Acts of Parliament relative to the Confession of Faith : 1560, Act. Pari. Scot., ii. S26b,
ratification ; 1560, ii. 527-34, recorded in full ; 1560, c. 3, ii. 535, acts contrary annulled ; 1567,
HISTORICAL BEGINNINGS 31
voted upon was this standard accepted and formally sanctioned by Par-
liament on the 17th August, a few members dissenting. Subsequent
diets were occupied in passing disestablishment acts, which abolished
every vestige of papal authority. On the 24th of August it was enacted, Disestabiish-
(i) that the jurisdiction and authority of the Bishop of Rome, called the ^,g"J^'^^^'
Pope, as well as of the bishops and prelates commissioned by him,
were abolished 1(2) that all former acts directed against the ' professors
of the Word,' and now contrary to the Confession of Faith, were
revoked ; and (3) that since * the papistical Kirk ' had abused the
sacraments of Baptism and the Lord's Supper, no person shall say or
hear Mass, or without authority publicly administer any sacrament,
under the penalty of confiscation of goods and bodily punishment for
the first offence, banishment for the second, and execution for the
third. The intolerance of this doom of death for religious belief,
which seems harsh even for a rude age, is not to be credited to the
Reformers, it being a layman's punishment, and the ordinary penalty
then for those who shot at wild geese and other game.^
Besides the eager interest in the national situation evinced by the
commonalty, as represented by barons and burgesses, the notable
feature of this Parliament was the presence of the Primate (Hamilton)
and five bishops and other Church dignitaries, whose silence was Bishops assent
. , 1 1 r 1 « A 1 1 11 '° disestablisli-
tantamount to leavmg their case to go by default.- Although these ,^ent.
radical acts never received royal sanction they operated instantane-
ously. The pastors, teachers, public officials, loyal to the old regime,
were summarily ejected from position and home. Soon the reign of
c. 4, iii. 14, zbab, acts contrary annulled ; 1567, c. 6, § i, iii. 23, 36, gainsayers unchurched ;
1581, c. I, iii. 210^, again ratified ; 1640, c. 18, v. 270, to be subscribed by all ; 1649, c. 58,
vi. ii. 161, King to accept ratifying acts at coronation {i.e. Westminster Confession); 1649,
c. 59, vi, ii. 161, again ratified; 1681, viii. 244^^, supp. 44(J, officials to accept (1567) Confes-
sion; 1690, ix. 117^-131^, recorded in full; 1690, c. 7, ix. 133, app. 147^, ratified; 1693, c.
38, ix. 303 ; 1702, c. 3, xi. 16 ; 1703, c. 2, xi. 104, ratified ; 1707, c. 6, xi. 402, 413^5 ; 1693, c.
38, ix. 303, ministers to subscribe ; 1690, c. 25, ix. 164a ; 1707, xi. 403^, 414a ; 1700, x. app.
48rt, professors and teachers to subscribe.
1 Russell, 'The Scottish Parliament of 1560,' U. F. Church Magazine, June 1906, p. 37,
gives a good account of this Parliament.
'^ The bishops of Galloway, Caithness, and Orkney associated themselves with the Re-
form party : .Scot, Apologetical Narration, 4.
32 THE COVENANTERS
Romanism was over. Evangelical religion had overthrown its
incubus.
The new ship took time to get under way. The Church
reformed was in reality a new creation. It is commonly asserted that
the Presbyterian Church of Scotland, established by law, is identical
with the national Roman Catholic Church after the latter had been
lopped of its absurd and useless excrescences of doctrine, worship, and
Continuity of poHty, and can boast of an unbroken continuity. These assertions are
""^^ ■ not in harmony with historical facts. All that the Congregation
received and utilised out of the disestablished Church were the parish
churches, in most instances tawdry, seatless, dilapidated, and the
questionable title to a share of the ancient patrimony — the latter a mere
prospect. Everything else was discarded — Pope, hierarchy, charac-
teristic doctrines, official language in Latin, canon law, monastic orders
and rules, traditions, symbols, civil powers, honours, ceremonies,
festivals, missal, gradual, ordinal, ' pilgrimages, pardons, and other sic
baggage,' as Knox wrote, and also the Vulgate translation of the Bible
in Latin. So thorough was this effacement of the Church and its
apparatus of worship in every respect, that it was necessary for nine-
teen years to import the English Bible, and care was taken to announce
that it was translated out of the original Hebrew and Greek tongues.^
Nothing was left of a once errand institution but stone and lime to
o o
which clung very mixed traditions. The disuse of the imposition of
hands in the ordination of ministers gives irrefragable proof that
Knox and his associates put no value upon the alleged virtue of
apostolical succession. The continuity of the Church cannot justly be
argued from the fact that some priests, discrediting their former pro-
fessions, enrolled themselves with Wycliffites, Lutherans, and other
anti-Romanist sectaries, with jurists and college professors turned
preachers, with laymen, with homeless regulars appointed to be lay-
readers of a brand-new prayer-book and psalter, and called themselves
and their followers The Church. The Reformers' strongest reason
1 'The Bible and Holy Scriptures, etc. . . . (Bassandyne, 1576) .... Edinburgh be
Alexander Arbuthnet 1579.'
HISTORICAL BEGINNINGS 33
for their revolt was that the Church of Rome was no Church at all, Church of
inasmuch as it had failed to preach the gospel purely, to administer ch^rch"°
the sacraments scripturally, and to exercise discipline justly. In con-
sequence of this oft-declared opinion, they proceeded to institute a
Church de novo, taking for a model the primitive Church of apostolic
times. The Enorlish Bible — not the Scots vernacular — was the
foundation-stone, and John Knox fitly laid it.^
The manner in which the first General Assembly was convened Birthday of
, , , , ^ ..11. . ^ the Protestant
IS not known, but m its first session it took the wise precaution to church.
give to its strongest member, Knox, probably the moderator on that
occasion, the power to call all subsequent meetings in troublous times.^
The Assembly of 1563 confirmed this appointment. The right of the
Church to indict its own Assemblies was from the first maintained by
the Reformers to be organic and inherent in its independent consti-
tution ; Knox clearly expressing that principle thus : ' Tack from us
the fredome of Assemblies, and tack from us the Evangell : for without
Assemblies, how shall good ordour and unitie in doctrine be keapt? '^
That first Assembly fixed the birthday of the Protestant Church as
a legislative and administrative Council and Court of the Scottish
realm.
The first Assembly, righdy designated by Row 'the first Nationall First General
Assemblie,' ^ numbering six ministers '' and thirty-six lay commissioners '^^^^^ ^'
from Congregations, met in Edinburgh on the 20th December 1560.
The next meeting, of which the sederunt remains 28th June 1562, was
attended by sixteen ministers and an equal number of lay commis-
sioners, together with five superintendents.*^ They met in ' Mr.
Hendrie Land's house' at Edinburgh. Lay influence was prominent
^ The Puritans', People's, Genevan, or Breeches Bible was used in Scotland from 1560
till after 161 1. The first Scots edition was the Bassandyne-Arbuthnet 1576-9 Edin. edit.
2 Booke of the U. Kirk, i. 3, 38, 39. ^ Knox, ii. 296. ^ Row, History, 13.
^ John Knox, minister at Edinburgh (St. Giles) ; Christopher Goodman, St. Andrews ;
John Row, Perth ; David Lindesay, Leith ; William Harlaw, St. Cuthbert's, Edinburgh ; Wil-
liam Christesone, Dundee.
« John Spottiswood for Lothian, John Wynram for Fife, John Willock for Glasgow, John
Erskine for Angus, John Carswell for Argyll. John Row was afterwards appointed commis-
sioner (1570) for Nithsdale and Galloway.
Church.
34 THE COVENANTERS
in the Reformed Church since its commencement, and to the laity the
leaders of the Church looked for the maintenance of the Faith. Their
sane policy of trusting to a democratic government within the Church,
their avowed interest in the temporal and spiritual welfare of every
citizen, and the new privileges they had to offer, resulted in what they
expected — the goodwill of the people in general. The best illustra-
tion of the regard with which these earnest leaders esteemed their
fellows is afforded in the ' Order of Excommunication and of Public
Repentance.'^ Knox composed it out of the works of John Alasco.
It would not have surprised us to have found therein expressed an
Tolerance 01 intolerant spirit condemnatory of sinners, impious or repentant. In-
stead, its appeals, rebukes, and admonitions breathe anxiety and pity
for the erring. And the final act, when the minister, elders, and
deacons take the reconciled brother by the hand before embracing
him in the face of the whole congregation, forms a picture which it is
hard to reconcile with the untrue portrait of Knox, as a vulgar, rude,
choleric, heartless, irreconcilable fanatic.^' So far from Knox being
unchristianly violent to his popish opponents, he appears generous at
the first General Assembly, when it was enacted : ' That all sik as hes
bein in the ministrie of the Pope's Kirk, good and well conditioned
persones, that they sail live upon the almes of the Kirk, with the
number of the poore.'^ Knox and his covenanting associates main-
tained that it was righteous procedure on the part of the State to adopt,
and to see that the subjects accepted, a religion. But the difference
between the Reformed and the Romanist position was this, that the
acceptor in the latter case had to accept and say nothing, in the former,
the believer had the right to appeal directly to the Holy Writ as the
sole authority on matters of faith. This privilege itself contributed to
the advancement of a benighted population. It at least assumed their
possession of intelligence ; it augured the growth of liberty of thought ;
it broke the keys of Rome.
To oroanise a new institution is more arduous than to deform an
t)
' Knox, vi. 447-70; Aldis, IJst^ No. 57, edit. J 569. - Knox, vi. 470.
' Booke of tlie U. Kirk, i. 5, 27th Dec. 1560.
HISTORICAL BEGINNINGS 35
old. To equip a church or preaching station and a school in each of Needs of new
a thousand parishes, to provide stipends for pastors and teachers from ^^"'^^^•
tithes already in other hands, to outroot time-hallowed superstitions,
to fortify authority, to out-manoeuvre undermining Jesuitry, to
manage slippery nobles at the head of angry mobs, the Congregation
of Christ needed to be entrenched behind the strong bulwarks of the
' Confession of Faith ' and of * The First Book of Discipline, or the
Policie and Discipline of the Church.'^ These epoch-making
treatises were the production of six famous Johns — Knox, Spottis-
wood, Wynram, Willock, Row, and Douglas. These scholars were
men of brains, character, and personal influence. Knox and Spottis-
wood had not the academic distinctions of their associates : Wynram
was a doctor of theology ; Willock a doctor of medicine ; Row an
advocate and doctor of laws ; and Douglas a schoolman. All of them
were mature in age and had held honourable offices in the Church
they had abandoned.
Spottiswood (1510-85), a graduate of Glasgow, after residing in Spottiswood,
England under the patronage of Archbishop Cranmer settled as the ^^^°'^^ ^'
parson of Calder and became the first Superintendent of Lothian and
the Eastern Marches. A mild, gentle, and wise disposition made his
councils weighty." Wynram (1492-1582), a Fifeshire man, also a Wynram,
graduate, who lived in the cultured atmosphere of St. Andrews all ^'^^^'^^ ^•
his days, entered the Augustinian monastery there, became its sub-
prior, took part in the assize on the martyrs Wishart and Mill, and
became a Protestant in 1560. He was the first Superintendent of
Fife, approved of the Leith Convention, assisted in compiling the
Second Book of Discipline, inaugurated Douglas as Archbishop of
St. Andrews, held on to his priorship of Portmoak, and died in 1582
at the venerable age of ninety. Willock, an Ayrshire man and monk wiiiock,
exiled for his reforming opinions from Scotland and England, fled to ^' ^^ ^'
the Continent, where he practised medicine, returned to Ayrshire in
1558 and proclaimed the new evangel under the protection of the
Lollard landlords. He was appointed Superintendent of Glasgow and
1 Edin., 1560 : Knox, ii. 183-260. - Cf. Life, prefaced to Spottiswood's //istorj, fol.
2,6 THE COVENANTERS
the West, and was five times Moderator of the General Assembly. He
has the unique distinction of being the only English cleric who sat in
the Moderator's chair — Willock holding the rectory of Loughborough
till his death in 1585. A liberal mind and a spirit less obtrusive than
that of Knox made him a more popular disputant with the Catholics.
Row, 1526- Row of Row, near Stirling (1526-80), another graduate of St. Andrews,
^^ °' first became an advocate, was appointed procurator for the Scots
clergy at Rome, obtained a doctorate of laws at Padua, and returned
as a papal nuncio to investigate and suggest methods for uprooting
the northern heresy. He joined the heretics, was four times appointed
their Moderator, became Superintendent of Galloway, helped to
compile the Books of Discipline, became minister of Kennoway, and
died minister of Perth in 1580. His knowledge of canon and civil
law and of the forms of juridical procedure was of great service to the
Douglas, Reform party in the reorganisation of the Church.^ Douglas (1494-
1574), Provost of St. Mary's and Rector of the University of St.
Andrews, has often been confounded with another Douglas who was
a preacher protected by Argyll. His office was scholastic until
Regent Morton appointed him first Protestant Archbishop of St.
Andrews. His educational experience was useful in the preparation
of the Standards of the Church. Although only two score of earnest
preachers and adherents of Protestantism rallied round the flag of the
Covenant in the first General Assembly (1560), these six scholars
pre-eminently had the qualifications required for the making of the
position, creed, practice, and policy of the Church clear, emphatic,
logical, and scriptural. They had an admirable pattern in ' The
Confession of Faith used in the English Congregation at Geneva :
Received and approved by the Church of Scotland in the Beginning
of the Reformation.' In four chapters it deals concisely with the
doctrines of the Father, Son, Holy Spirit, and the Church."
Confession of The Confession of Faith and Doctrine, embodied in twenty-five
articles, states lucidly the evangelical doctrines current among the
' Cf. Row, 77ic Historic of the Kirk, etc., Wodrow Society edit., 1842, Pref., vii-lxii.
2 Knox, i. 159 note ; vi. 547 ; Diinlop, A Collection of Confessio7is, ii.3 ; Wodrow Misc., i. 1-23.
Faith, 1560.
HISTORICAL BEGINNINGS Z7
Reformed Churches abroad, in sharp definition and in contrast with
the dogmas then discarded.^ These twenty-five chapters treat of
God ; Creation of Man ; Original Sin ; Revelation of the Promise ;
the Growth of the Church ; the Incarnation ; the God-Man ; Election;
Christ's Mortality; Resurrection; Ascension; Faith in the Holy
Ghost ; Good Works ; Works good before God ; Perfect Law and
Imperfect Man ; The Church ; Immortality ; The Church, true and
false ; Authority of Scriptures ; General Councils ; Sacraments ; their
right administration; their application; Civil Magistrate; Bequests
to Church. This Confession is substantially based upon the Calvinistic
Confessions and shows traces of the teaching of Calvin and Alasco.
While emphasising the invincible authority of the Old and New
Testaments, it promulgates a liberal theology of which the key-note Keynote of
is justification by faith and personal sanctification through the Holy
Spirit. Infallibility, admitted to belong to the Bible but not to a
confessedly fallible Church, is associated, as in the First Book of
Discipline, with a clear principle of toleration, thus : ' If any man will
note in this our Confession any article or sentence repugning to God's
Holy Word, if it would please him of his gentleness and for Christian
charity's sake to admonish us of the same in writing, and we of our
honour and fidelity do promise unto him satisfaction from the mouth
of God (i.e. from His Holy Scriptures), or else reformation of that
which he shall prove to be amiss.' ^' It differentiates a true Church i^"'^^'''"^^ of
the Confession.
from a ' filthy synagogue,' in that the former preaches the gospel,
administers the sacraments, and executes discipline as prescribed in
Scripture. The Holy Spirit alone is the infallible interpreter of
revelation. Church councils, while expedient, have no power to
invent decrees not specified in the Word. It acknowledges 'twa
chief Sacramentis onlie ' ; that is, Baptism and the Lord's Supper.^
Denying the doctrine of transubstantiation and discarding the view
* Aldis, List, No. 31 (Lekprewik) ; No. 32 (Scot.), edit. 1561 ; 77ie Coftfessione, etc.;
Knox, ii. 93-121 ; Calderwood, ii. 15-37 ; Dunlop, A Collection of Confessioirs of Faith^ ii. 3, 13
(Edin., 1722).
"^ Co7tfesston, Preface. For the other references, cf. §§ 18-22.
'•' Winzet, Tractates, i. 81, Scot. Text Soc. edit.
38 THE COVENANTERS
of Zwingli as to the merely memorial significance of the bread and
wine, the Confession accepts the teaching of Calvin as to the mystical
conjunction of the Redeemer and the believer in the communing act.
It repudiates the priests as not lawful ministers because they per-
mitted women to baptize, had adulterated the sacraments by impure
additions, withheld the cup from laymen, and, in offering propitiatory
sacrifices for the sins of the quick and the dead, had set themselves up
as mediators. It approves of obedience to civil magistrates, who are
God's vicegerents, to whom are intrusted the suppression of idolatry
and superstition ; but it concedes no sovereignty or headship over the
Church to any civil ruler or to any single individual.
First Book of The First Book of Discipline is a practical supplement to the
iscip ine. Confession, an exhibition of the function of the Church and a manual
of Church policy for clergy and laity. It was prepared along with the
Confession and in 1564 was revised by George Buchanan and others.^
It is based on foreign models, Douglas probably shaping its educational
sections, and Knox drafting the body of the work with the aid of the
ordinances of the Lutheran and the Calvinistic Churches. Unfortu-
nately it was not passed into law. The General Assembly met on the
15th January 1561, and two days afterwards the Privy Council, to the
number of thirty-two, including Chatelherault, Arran, Argyll, Stewart
(Moray), Rothes, Marischal, Morton, Glencairn, the Bishop of
Galloway, and others, subscribed the document, with this proviso, that
the beneficed clergy who had transferred their allegiance to ' tts ' {i.e.
the supporters of the Reformation) should enjoy their benefices till
death, on their making provision for the new ministry of the gospel.
The confusion of ecclesiastical and baronial interests in land-owner-
ship made this condition imperative. The General Assembly in May
was content with this ratification, since the legislators were not
prepared to convert into statute the proposals of the Assembly which
referred to questionable charters of land which some proprietors had
got after improper marriage alliances."
' Books of the U. Kirk, i. 41 ; Dunlop, A Collcctio7i of Confessions^ ii. 515; Knox, ii.
183-258. •'' Bookcofthc U. Kirk, i. 8.
HISTORICAL BFXtINNINGS 39
The Book of Discipline contains nine articles on Doctrine, Sacra- Book of
ments, Idolatry, Ministers and Readers, Stipends and Church °'^^'p'*"^-
possessions payable for religion and education, Church Patrimony,
Discipline, Elders and Deacons, and the Policy of the Church
(including marriage, burial, profanity, etc.). This book offers the
most comprehensive and statesmanlike scheme for the complete
o-overnment of the Church, promotion of parochial and university
education, and the relief of the poor. One of its most remarkable
features is that while it asserts that the Church has unchallengeable
authority in the spiritual sphere, yet, with Luther, it does not con-
template handing over religious offenders to punitive magistrates,
but deprives them of Church privileges, isolates them from the
well-behaved, causes them to be proclaimed * infamous ' and held as
spiritually dead until they are repentant. Their only privilege
reserved was hearing of the gospel. At the same time their
opponents — 'the shaven sort, the beast's marked men,' as Catholics
were called, being considered enemies of the commonwealth rather
than religious adversaries or dissenters — were to be transferred to
the magistrates for severe, even capital, punishment, under fear of
God's curse. Among the rights it confers are these : ministers and
idlers are to go where sent by their respective governments ; congre-
ofations are to elect their own office-bearers — the elders and deacons
annually ; the Church is to appoint ten superintendents instead of the
bishops — it does not expressly condemn diocesan bishops, but gives
them no place in the new polity ; the preacher must confess an inward
call of the Holy Spirit and ask for trial as a minister ; the Church is
to judge his qualifications and his hearers his style and acceptability.
The Book recognises the scriptural warrant for the ministry, eldership,
and diaconate which are permanent offices, and the expediency of
having superintendents and readers who were temporary officials.
The readers might also be 'exhorters,' exercising the duties of the
ministry, without, however, dispensing the sacraments. Readers and
exhorters were expected to teach the young. The neglect of these
wise provisions resulted in the intolerable infringements of the liberties
40
THE COVENANTERS
Provisions of
Book of
Discipline.
of the Church and the people, and the subsequent dismemberment of
the Church in 1843. Non-intrusion was a fundamental principle in
1560. Consequently this Book calls upon the civil ruler to free the
Church from devourers and oppressors. The question of the State
beino- bound to maintain a pastorate by means of taxation had not
emero-ed, because the Church patrimony was available for stipends.
The patrimony then consisted of primitive reclamations of land
handed down from time immemorial, special bequests, and legalised
tithes. The Reformers rightly demanded the ' godly use ' of the
patrimony for the ' poor ' — who were defined to be poor ministers,
teachers, and needy persons. The compilers of the Discipline, seeing
that the tithe was not sufficient to maintain the ministers, very
improperly arranged to divert and utilise the benefactions ' doted to
hospitality.' That the exigencies of their case made these Reformers
into voluntaries is indicated by the articles, that * merchants and rich
craftsmen in free burghs, having nothing to do with the manuring of
the ground, must make some provision in their cities, towns, and
dwelling-places, for to support the need of the Kirk,' and that in the
larger churches the worshippers should contribute to the repair of the
edifices.^ The heE^rers of the gospel were also expected to maintain
the preachers and public readers of it^ Other office-bearers were not
paid salaries.^ The grand aim was to make it easy for all to hear the
gospel, for every child to be educated, for every clever youth to
^ Book of Discipline^ chap. viii. §6 ; xv. § i (edit. 1830, in Compendium of the Acts, etc.).
2 Knox, ii. 538 ; Booke of the U. Kii-k^ i. 46. In 1592, when Edinburgh was divided into
eight parishes, the Kirk and Council ordered the ' godly and honest men ' of the town
to provide stipends till they were available out of the Common Good : Bruce, Sermons,
32, Wodrow edit.
^ .Stipends : —
.Superintendent : 6 chalders here, 9 chalders meal, 3 chalders oats, 500 merks in
money.
Minister : 40 bolls meal, 26 bolls malt, merks, according to ability of con-
gregation.
Reader (and Exhorter) : 100 merks.
Reader (ordinary) : 40 merks.
These quantities are equivalent to ;^296, ^63, ^5, us. 3d., and £;i, 4s. 5d, sterling respec-
tively at the present average prices (1907). Nothing like these salaries was actually paid.
Cf ' Register of Ministers,' Wodrow MisccU., i. 319-96.
HISTORICAL BEGINNINGS 41
proceed to college, for the honest poor to find bread, and for the
magistrates to repress idlers and vicious persons. The magnanimity
and Christian sympathy displayed in the Book of Discipline, in its
demand for comfort to the poor and elevation of the masses, tempted
the Reformers into a practical error in appointing deacons to gather
in and account for the profits and rents arising out of the patrimony.
To administer poor relief and education was clearly a duty of the
civil ruler, and although the Reformers' scheme stands unequalled,
it was bound to fail in its application to a poor ministry. However Results of
impracticable in many respects, trenching upon vested interests and Discipline,
raising delicate questions, the ideas and spirit of this admirable policy
soon permeated the life, moulded the character, and reached the heart
of the people. It created among a rude populace a healthy interest
in themselves, by which, through the instrumentality of the Church,
now based on the popular will, they were made into a theocratic
nation. The Book of Discipline, in arranging rules for the organisa-
tion of the Church, referred to a manual entitled ' The Booke of the
Common Order, called "the Order of Geneva.'"^ This compilation Book of
is a directory of public worship and of religious rites. In its order,
remodelled form it is also styled Knox's Liturgy, and was in use as
a guide * for helpe and direction ' till 1645.^
This Order begins with ' The Confession of Faith used in the
Englishe Congregation at Geneva,' and is divided into thirteen
sections dealing with Ministers and their election ; Elders ; Deacons ;
Weekly Assembly of Ministers, Elders, and Deacons; Superin-
tendents ; Order of Discipline ; Order of Excommunication and Public
Repentance ; Visitation of Sick ; Order of Public Worship (including
' Dunlop, A Colleciion, ii. 383 ; Knox, vi. 275-333, 361-80.
2 'The Forme of Prayers and Ministration of the Sacraments, etc., vsed in the Englishe
Congregation at Geneua ; and approued by the famous and godly learned man, John
Caluyn.' 8vo. Geneva, 1556; Edin., Lekprevvik, 1562. 'The Form, etc., approved and
received by the Church of Scotland, whereunto besides that was in the former books are also
added sundry other Prayers, with the whole Psalms of David in English Metre ' ; Edin., 1564.
The Book of Common Order, reprint, Dr. Sprott's edit., Edin., 1901. The Assembly of
December 1566 approved of the Second Confession of Helvetia, with the exception of Holy
Days, Scot, ApoL Narr., 19. For John Carswell's Gaelic Translation, <:.{. ■postca.
42 THE COVENANTERS
thirteen prayers) ; Manner of the Lord's Supper ; Form of Marriage ;
Baptism; Fasting (1565) ; Form of Prayers (twelve in number) for
FamiHes.
This manual was also of foreign origin, being based upon the
forms of divine service used in the reformed churches in Strassburg,
Frankfort, and Geneva, and it bears evidences of the skill, taste, and
teaching of Farel, Calvin, and Polanus. Prayers relative to Scottish
needs were added. It was not till 1564 that the General Assembly
enacted that ' everie minister, exhorter, and reader sail have one of the
Psalme Bookes latelie printed in Edinburgh, and use the Order con-
tained therein in prayers, marriage, and ministration of Sacraments.'
The musical notation accompanied the text of the metrical Psalms and
made up a compendious directory — The Order and the Psalms.
The Psalter. At first the Psaltcr contained only forty-four of Sternhold and
Hopkins's version of the Psalms, augmented to fifty-one by Whit-
tingham, then to eighty-seven, to form the Genevan Psalm Book of
1 561. This latter was enlarged to one hundred and fifty by selections
from the English Psalter of 1562, and from Paraphrases by the
Edinburgh ministers Pont and Craig. To it were added some
scriptural canticles or doxologies, the Ten Commandments, Lord's
Prayer, Veni Creator, Njinc Dimittis, the Twelve Articles of the
Christian Faith, and the Magnificat, all in metre. These metrical
songs were excised from the 1564 edition of the complete metrical
Psalter.-
Was the Order Authorities still differ as to the exact character and authority of
' urgy ^^^ Order. Principal Story referred to it as ' the National Prayer-
Book,' and. 'the authorised liturgy of the Scottish Church.'^ Dr.
Leishman denies that it was a provisional compilation intended for
use only till the day of untrained readers and half-trained ministers
was past, leading evidence to show that ' it was accepted then and
' Booke of the U. Kirk, i. 54 : ' Forme of prayers . . . psalmes . . . (The Catechisme).' 8vo.
Lekprewik, 1564, also 1565. Some churches had organs : Fleming, Scot. Reform., no.
2 Dr. Neil Livingston, The Scottish Metrical Psalter, 2-71 (Edin., 1864).
^ Apostolic Ministry, p. 285 (Edin., 1897); Reforjiicd Ritual in ScotUmd, p. 13 (Edin.,
1886). Dr. D. Laing said it was 'a guide or directory': Knox, vi. 281.
HISTORICAL BEGINNINGS 43
long afterwards as a liturgy.'^ Grub held the opposite view : 'even
the form, such as it was, partook more of the character of a directory
than of a liturgy,' ^ and that the minister was not restricted to the
words of the book. Professor Mitchell concluded that there was no
reason for maintaining: that it was reg^arded ' as more than a o^uide or
model, at least to the ordained ministers ... far less was observed
as a rigid liturgy, every word of which must be repeated unvaryingly
by the officiating minister.'"
I concur with Dr. Grub and Professor Mitchell. The aim of the
Reformers was to obtemper literally the Word of God. The Con-
fession repudiates all constitutions and articles invented by men and
not ' expressit in His- Word,' while it declares that 'ane Polecie and
ane Ordour in Ceremonies . . . are bot temporal.'* The Book of
Discipline, although it does not mention in this connection the
Liturgy, condemns ' as damnable to man's salvation ' any imposition
upon the consciences of men, which is not expressly commanded in
Scripture.^ The Liturgy rested upon no 'express Commandment.' The Order
Knox, who believed that the English Prayer-book was a device 'for"°'^ i^rg}.
upholding of massing priests,' and 'any jote whereof will I never
counsell any man to use,' could not consistently authorise the book for
any other purpose than as a guide. The Book of Discipline itself
states the object of the Order, it being ' sufficient to instruct the
diligent reader,' i.e. not merely the church reader, but any reader.*^
The function of the public reader was to read the Common Prayers
in church and to teach children reading by means of that lesson-book.
When the Book of Discipline indicates what is necessary to retain the
church in good order, it includes ' Common prayers publicly made ' —
not read', and, in the next paragraph, the danger of oft-repeating 'the
Common Prayeris,' that is, out of the Order, is pointed out thus :
* What day the public sermon is, we can neither require nor greatly
approve that the Common Prayers be publicly used, lest that we
^ Leishman, Moulding of Scottish Refer/nation, p. loo (Edin., 1897).
2 Hist., ii. 100. 3 77^^ Scottish Reformation, p. 133 (Edin., 1899).
^ Art. 'General Counsallis,' Knox, ii. 112.
^ First Book of Discipline, chap. i. '' Ibid., chap. v. § 5 ; Knox, ii. 186.
44 THE COVENANTERS
should either foster the people in superstition, who come to prayers as
they come to the masse.' ^ Its title, The Form, indicates the purpose
of the work.
The Order The continuous and imperative use of a liturgy was unharmonious
only a model. ^.^^ ^^ s^ixlx. of the Reformers, who relied upon the inspiration of
the Holy Spirit in prayer. The half-educated substitutes for ministers
did require such mental crutches, as the Book of Discipline admitted,
' till they grow to greater perfection.' The intention of the manual
was conformity of practice, but not literal conformity. Alexander
Henderson of Leuchars, in his Orde^- and Government of the Church
of Scotland, refers to the Form of Prayers as that 'to which ministers
are to conform themselves, . . . although they be not tied to set
forms and words, yet are they not left at randome, but, for testifying
their consent and keeping unity, they have their directory and
prescribed order.'' In similar terms, the well-informed Calderwood
the historian states : ' none are tyed to the prayers of that book ; but
the prayers are set down as samplers.'^ Still more convincing is his
testimony in his famous Altare Damasceniim to this effect : * We also,
it is true, have in our Church "Agenda" and an order to be kept in
sacred services ; but no one is bound to the prayers or exhortations of
our liturgy. They are set forth only as models by which the contents
and the forms of prayers or exhortations are as to substantial pointed
out, but not that the ministers should be tied to the very words. Never
in the thirteen years of my ministry have I, either in the observance of
sacraments or other sacred offices, made use of the exhortations or
prayers contained in our " Agenda." The same has been the case
with very many others, and it is free even to every one to do likewise.
Moreover, as it seems to me, it is childish to do otherwise.''^
Calvin's The Book of Discipline also enjoined the teaching of children the
' Catechisme or Manner to Teach Children ... by John Calvin,'
which was bound up with the Book of Common Order!*
* First Book of Discipline, xi. §§ 1,2, edit. 1830. ^ Address to Reader, 1641.
3 History, p. 25, edit. 1670. ' lOdit. 1623, p. 613 ; edit. 1708, p. 453.
* Knox, ii. 210, 239 ; Dunlop, A Collection, ii. 139 ; Aldis, List, No. 43, edit, of 1564.
Catechism.
HISTORICAL BEGINNINGS 45
Some writers have asserted that Knox and his early associates
did not differentiate the presbyter from the» diocesan bishop, and,
indeed, approved of the diocesan system by appointing superinten-
dents of the clergy. One goes so far as to hold that Presbyterianism
* was unknown in Scotland for fully fifteen years after the Reforma-
tion.' ^ The answer to this mistake is afforded by Grub, who rightly
states that Superintendency ' bore only a faint resemblance to hier-
archy. Unordained themselves, the superintendents could not ordain
others ; appointed by ministers and people and liable to be deposed
by them, they neither possessed nor claimed distinct, independent
jurisdiction.'^ The form of service used by Knox on his setting
apart John Spottiswood to the ' chief care ' of the churches in Lothian,
in 1 56 1, reminded him, as a pastor ' subject to the wholesome discipline
of the Church ' to ' usurp not dominion, nor tyrannical authority over
thy brethren.'^
The First Book of Discipline recognised three functions within the Chmch office-
Church, namely, the pastorate, eldership, and diaconate, and one with-
out, that of the Church schoolmaster.^ The Second Book added the
office of the ' Doctor, quha also maybe callit Prophet, Bischop, Elder,
Catechizar, that is, teicher of the Catechisme, and rudiments of religione. '
The reader was merely a temporary substitute for a minister.^ The
superintendent was a temporary overseer of the Church in the course
of organisation— ' most expedient at this time.' His duties made him
^ Dunbar, Epochs of Scot. Church Hist., p. 36 (Edin., 1897).
^ Grub, Hist.., ii. 99.
^ Order of Gejieva, Sprott's reprint, 1901, pp. 20-27.
* In the Book of Cotnmon Order, in the section ' Of the Deacons,' it is stated, ' v.c are not
ignorant that the Scriptures make mention of a fourth kind of Ministers left to the Church of
Christ, which also are very profitable, where time and place do permit. These Ministers are
called " Teachers " or "Doctors," whose office is to instruct, etc' Cf. M'Crie, Knox, ii.,
notes 281-7, edit. 1814. In November 1596 the reader in Perth was permitted to
baptize on Sabbaths ' betwixt the second and third bell ' : Fittis, Eccl. Annals of
Perth, 116.
^ A reader with higher qualifications was permitted to exhort the people. Sometimes
the exhorter became an 'expectant,' and, after training, a 'licentiate.' The Assembly in 1576
prohibited readers, ' except sick as hes the words of exhortation,' administering the Sacra-
ment : Booke of the U. Kirk, i. 372. The Assembly in 1581 abolished the reader. The office,
however, long survived this edict, and readers continued discharging their duties : Fergusson,
Alexander Hnvte, 296.
46 THE COVENANTERS
Church Courts, a perambulating inspector, and reporter of delinquencies to the local
and provincial assemblies of ministers and elders, to whose censure
the overseer himself was subject.^ The government of the Church
was similar in form to that then obtaining in Calvinistic churches
abroad. The General Assembly, or ' The haill Kirk convenit,' met
twice annually to exercise jurisdiction over all the congregations in
the land. All the clergy and one commissioner from every church
formed the membership. The Provincial Synod had jurisdiction over
a defined area. The Kirk-Session, composed of a minister, elders,
and deacons, had oversight of a parochial congregation and district.^
The Presbytery, as a distinct Court, developed out of the Weekly
Exercise. This Exercise was a weekly convocation of pastor, elders,
and flock, at which any one possessing spiritual gifts was at liberty
to edify the brethren by interpreting Scripture and by prayer.
Having spoken, he retired. The audience criticised his views, and,
on his recall, publicly expressed their opinions upon his services.
The Presbytery, representing several congregations, was recognised
as a judicatory higher than the Kirk-Session in 1581, but some years
elapsed before the whole Church was divided territorially into
presbyteries.
In this manner and by these agencies, the covenanted Reformers,
despite the powers of popes and kings, organised and made into a
practical institution, on the primitive model, the Scottish Church.
Theoretically it was democratic, because the theocratic ideal upon
which it was founded equalised all its members before its sole Divine
Head, Jesus Christ. Practically it was democratic and independent of
civil rule, because its discipline made all persons alike amenable to the
Word of God, its membership embraced all ranks without distinction,
its gifts of preaching and teaching were available to all in the land,
and its patronage, no longer private, was exercised by the people in
their religious congregations.
' First Book of Discifilhie, v. §3; vi. 3, § 9. Visitors or Coinmissioners had the same
function as sujicrintendents : Ptookc of tJic (J. Kirk, i. 357.
- The Kirk-Session was also called 'the Consistorie of the kirk,' a name still applied to
that Court in Geneva,
HISTORICAL BEGINNINGS 47
Afterwards reviewing the events of that critical period and the
incidents of Saint Johnston, Cupar Moor, and the Craigs of Edin-
burgh, where * in your most extreame daingearis I have been with
you,' Knox, in 1563, might well boast: * Thair is nott one of you
against whom was death and destructioun threatned, perished in that
danger.' ^
^ Knox, ii. 384.
48 THE COVENANTERS
CHAPTER II
MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS AND THE ROMANIST REACTION
Queen Mary Mary Stuart, the widowcd Quccn of France, a girl of eighteen
Stuart, 1561. ygg^j-g^ returned from France on the 19th August 1561, to assume the
sovereignty of perturbed Scotland, and to make Romanist hopes
revive.^ A strange ' weird ' hung over the beautiful child, whose
advent was heralded by a tempest, and whose return was accompanied
by a mist as mirk as midnight, which made Knox presage the arrival
of 'sorrow, dolour, darkness, and all impietie.' From the first the
Covenanters had formed a bad impression of their Queen, Scotland
was in close communication with France. The Scots must have
known how her glistering, star-like eyes, made only for love (* vos
yeux estoilez, deux beaux logls d'amour ') had, the year before,
watched the royal sports in Amboise, where the heads of Huguenots
rolled off the doomster's block like ruddy apples from a ripened tree.
Her boy-husband, Francis, had informed Parliament that no existing
punishment was adequate for those sinister ghouls, for whom the
Church's doom of death, damnation, and hell created no terror. She
came warm from the caresses of ' The Tiger of France ' and of
Catherine de Medici, whose career of massacre was to blossom red
on St. Bartholomew's day. No ruler ever mounted the Scots throne
with such antecedents. Had Mary not been the tool of the Cardinal
of Lorraine, said George Buchanan, she would have been ' the fore-
most woman of her age.' The young Queen, ' with beautie eneuch to
mak a world to dote,' possessed another charm dearer to her dis-
credited co-religionists in the unwavering resolution to resuscitate the
1 D. Hay Fleming, Mary Queen of Scots, 44, 253, notes (Lond., 1897).
James vi.
Cromwell
Mary, Queen of Scots
Charles II.
James 1 1.
RULERS OF SCOTLAND
QUEEN MARY AND THE ROMANIST REACTION 49
faith of her fathers — a holy vow rewarded by the anxious Pope by the
coveted gift of 'The Golden Rose.'^ But the contrast between leafy
Fontainebleau with its gibbets for Lutheran gospellers, between the
sluggish Loire with the black corpses of the Huguenots floating like Edinburgh in
buoys on a fisherman's net, and the musty House of Holyrood, stand-
ing under the misty crags, close to the evil-smelling streets of the
thatched capital, and surrounded by psalm-singing fanatics, by festive
burgesses churning out native ditties to the accompaniment of rude
instruments, and by armed hordes of fierce clansmen of variegated
aspect marshalling to the northern pipes and borderers' drums, was
striking, suggestive, and alarming. According to Randolph, the
English ambassador, the deeds of her shoeless lieges made her prettily
to weep, and so to advance her cause.
It was natural that the Catholic Queen should order the dese-
crated Church of Holyrood to be garnished again for her worship, and
that, as Randolph reported to Cecil, the evangelical party should look
askance at this innovation.^ The staunchest of the Catholic aristo-
cracy had rallied round the Court, but Mary soon saw that the
Covenanters were of sterner stuff than the Huguenots. On her
triumphal entry to the gay capital, the Reformers paraded effigies,
depicting Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, the idolaters, which were
afterwards burned in public, and also presented to her a Bible and
Psalter, not to indicate their joy at her return but their gladness
at the abolition of priests and their masses. Their joy was short- The iioiyrood
lived. The altar-lights were rekindled at Holyrood, and became a ''^^'^'^"*
beacon to guide the banned priests out of many undiscovered re-
treats. Mary boldly seized the situation.
Before a week had passed the Queen had cast a spell over the Edict of
Privy Council and induced them to enact an Edict of Toleration, for- 2 "^ August
bidding party recriminations and interference with the worship of her 1561.
Court, under pain of death, and announcing that Parliament and the
1 Concilia Scot., Pref. clxvi ; M'Crie, Knox, App., note U.U. (Edin., 1884).
2 Winzet, Tractates, i. 113; Baillie, True Information, 24; Reg. Privy Counc, i.
266, 267 ; Cal. State Pap. {For., Eliz.), iv. 296 ; Selections illustrating Reign of Queen Mary,
96 (Mait. Club) ; D. Hay Fleming, Mary Queen of Scots, 46, 257.
^0
THE COVENANTERS
Nicolaus
Floris.
The Jesuit
policy.
English
Protestantism.
Queen were to consider the state of religion.^ More roused than
ever, Knox and his friends assailed this Toleration so extravagantly
that the less suspicious flouted their fears as vaporous imaginings.
But mysterious messengers flitted about the Court, like fearful birds
which migrate only by night ; and a papal agent, disguised as a
money-broker's assistant, appeared ostensibly to dun the bankrupt
bishops. The tolerance of the Queen was in reality a reactionary
movement guided by Jesuits, subsidised by gold from Rome, and
unwittingly supported by the Privy Council. The report of the
nuncio himself, Nicolaus Floris of Gouda, in 1562, is our authority.^
He brought to the Queen from Pope Paul iv. a loving letter urging
her to purge her realm of heresies, and to let no difficulties deter her,
' for it is the cause of God thou workest.' Nicolaus reported to his
Superior that the ancient religion was but partially subverted in
Scotland, that a majority still favoured its restoration, and that there
was 'good hope that this kingdom may be freed from heretical
bondage.' He sneered at the preachers as tradesmen, illiterate, with-
out influence, and 'confident in the arms of the English.' This
Jesuit sketched out a masterly policy, matrimonial, political, and
ecclesiastical. If Mary would marry a Catholic able to coerce the
rebels, appoint Catholic advisers, obtain earnest clergy, establish a
Catholic college, be guided by papal legates, and be supported by
Philip of Spain, then the Church would rise from its ruins, and
flourish again.
The Queen, then helpless, could only parley and feign a detest-
able tolerance, till what she styled ' the malignity of the time '
vanished, and an opportunity occurred to make the scheme
practicable. The English politicians realised that England held
the balance of power between contending parties in Europe.
Elizabeth held it for Protestantism.^ English Protestantism was the
1 Reg. Privy Counc, i. 266, 267 ; J. K. Hewison, ' Queen Mary and the Scots Church,'
The Scots Magazine, vi. 36, 410 ; vii. 37, 29.
2 Stitnmen aus Maria-Laach, vi. xix. i. 83-108.
' Elizabeth wrote ist July 1561 adjuringthe Scots Estates to be true to Protestantism and
assuring them of her sympathy : Cal. State Pap. {For., Eliz.), iv. 167.
QUEEN MARY AND THE ROMANIST REACTION 51
natural ally of French Huguenotism, and the latter had many
characteristics as well as the name identical with those of the system
of the Covenanters/ The crisis which leagued Mary and the Pope
against heretical England allied Elizabeth and the Scots against
idolatrous Rome. The influence of Knox and Lord James Stewart,
soon to be Earl of Moray, who voiced the peril of the State, and the
feuds of jealous nobles, prevented Mary gathering a strong party
capable of effecting a C02ip cCdtat} Moray, at first desirous of
national peace, concurred in promoting toleration, probably dreaming
that the old faith might be purified and again made popular. Knox
was not to be deceived. He steeled himself against Mary's enchant-
ments, so that their meetings ended with her tears. His opinions
represented those of powerful land-owners, tenantry, squatters
on the Church-lands, as well as of many clergy. The uneducated
masses had been excited into that expectant condition wherein
changes are lightsome, and revolutionary schemes exhilarating and
remunerative.
The giddy Queen became giddier. The sedate Scot has always The giddy
taken pleasure sadly. When 'the mad world,' prophesied by
Randolph, appeared at Holyrood, in the form of masses sung and
said, fetes, sports, dances, and fooleries practised on Sabbaths, the
Covenanters believed that the devil was running loose in the land.
Royal cares vanished in frivolity. By day the anxious Queen might
hold tearful levees with churlish preachers and rude cavaliers, who
clamoured for a settled religion ; by night, she loved to dance, even
in male attire, to play the galliard, to sweep through the dark alleys
and streets as a masked mummer, and to play cards till break of
morn.^ One might imagine that Queen Mary sat for the picture of
the Flesh, in that Good and Godly Ballad entitled ' The Flesche and
the Spirit,' where the Flesh confesses : —
^ Huguenots = Eidgenossen = Covenanters.
2 Lord James had the gift of the earldom on 30th January 1562: Reg. Privy Seal,
xxxi. 45 ; created Earl of Mar, 7th February 1562 : ibid., xxxi. 2.
3 Cal. State Pap. {For., Eliz.),\\\. 227, 230, 231, 348; Knox, ii. 368; D. Hay Fleming,
Mary Queen 0/ Scots, 275, 276.
52 THE COVENANTERS
* To wacht gude wyne, fresche, cald and brycht,
And tak my plesour day and nycht,
With singing, playing, and to dance.
And set on sax and sevin the chance.'
She was not the nervous, timorous girl, cowering at the sight of
haggard Knox, as some conclude. Her letters prove that she
possessed the courage of the Stewart race, and the invincible fidelity
of a Joan of Arc consecrated to a holy mission. From ' France
comes her whole counsel,' according to Randolph.^ She played, how-
ever, at sixes and sevens with her ' chance.'
Few Catholic priests lifted up their voices in the death-struggle
of their Church. The discussions, in public and in print, of the
questions at issue, by Black, Kennedy, Winzet, Tyrie, Hay, and
others had no palpable result. The Queen's French confessor, Rene
Rene Benoist. Benoist, an eloquent preacher, entered into the lists with Knox and
the preachers in Edinburgh, who assailed Romanism daily. This
' pastime,' as Randolph wittily described this interlude, soon ended
when the Frenchman sought safety at home, leaving the Queen in
' the imminent peril of her situation.' ^
Abbot Quintin Quintiu Kennedy, Abbot of Crossraguel in Ayrshire, was a
2o"iq6 champion capable of restating and defending the principles at stake.
A son of the Earl of Cassillis, he had studied at St. Andrews and
Paris, and succeeded his brother in the vicarage of Penpont. His
scholarship and family influence lent distinction to his efforts for
internal reform. In 1558 he published ' Ane Compendius Tractive,'
in order to show how a Christian conscience could be established
amid the disputes of the age. This work was deemed so important
as to require an answer, in 1563, from John Davidson, Principal of
the College of Glasgow. Under the protection of the Kennedys, the
abbot and the priests of Maybole, Girvan, Kirkoswald, and Dailly,
continued the Mass, and came under the threat of the General
Assembly in 1560. In an oration (1562), replying to Knox's
' Sermon agains the Mess,' Kennedy warned the congregation
' Randolph to Cecil, 12th October 1561 : Cal. State Pap. {For.., Eliz.), iv. 296 note.
- Narr. Scot. Cath., 74.
QUEEN MARY AND THE ROMANIST REACTION 53
against deception by the preachers, and the sacrilege of destroying
sacred buildings and monuments of the Faith. ^
When Knox was traversing Ayrshire consolidating the Reform
party, in order to resist a rumoured coalition in favour of the
Queen's projects, in the autumn of 1562, Kennedy challenged Knox.
A three-days' disputation took place in Maybole, and was conducted Disputation in
with perfect good-feeling and dialectic skill. The only practical September"
result of the conference was that the abbot remained in his office '562.
till his death, two years later. '^
Ninian Winzet (1518-92), teacher in Linlithgow, was less fortun- Ninian winzet,
ate in the issue of his contendings.^ Like Kennedy, he did not hide ^^' ■'^^^'
the vices of clergy and laity. He wrote three Tractates in 1562, to
rectify error, spread truth, appeal for tolerance, and correct Knox.
Knox remained silent. Another treatise, afterwards printed, entitled
'The Buke of Four Scoir Thre Questions,' was a dogmatical answer
to the ' Confession of Faith.' It breathes a fine spirit and is dignified
by the honesty of purpose of its genial author, in whom Knox found
an opponent difficult to gainsay. When the Magistrates of Edinburgh
learned that Scot the printer had in the press, in July, another
treatise, ' The Last Blast of the Trumpet of God's Word against
the usurpit auctoritie of Johne Knox and his Calviniane Brether,' by
Winzet, they tried to seize the author. Winzet, accompanied by the
Jesuit, Nicolaus Floris, escaped to Antwerp. Thirty years after-
wards, Winzet died, Abbot of Ratisbon.*
The Reformed Church leaders now saw it was high time that the Policy of
Government carried out the royal proclamation, which forbade any
interference with the state of religion existing on the arrival of the
Queen, and insisted on the prosecution of forty-eight prominent Catholic
offenders. Thereafter Jesuit plots had to be hatched more covertly.
One upon whom the Queen on her arrival looked as a main-
^ Cal. State Pap. {For., Eliz.), iv. 539 ; Wodrow Miscell., i. 89-277.
^ Knox, ii. 351 ; Leslie, Hist. (Dalrymple's Trans.), bk. x. 469.
2 He records that he 'wes expellit and schott out of that my kindly town, by the minister
Kinloquhy, for refusing to subscrive their phantasie and factioun of faith ' : Tractates, i. 49.
* Cf. Life in Certain Tractates of N. PV., edit. Hewison (Scot. Text Soc), Edin., 1888.
54
THE COVENANTERS
Fight at
Corrichie,
28th October
1562.
Ayr Covenant,
4 th September
1562.
Stay, George Gordon, fourth Earl of Huntly, at heart a Catholic,
had so long coquetted with the contending parties that neither relied
on his adherence.^ His vast estates, stretching from Aberdeen to
Inverness (including lands granted to his rival Moray), and his
Chancellorship made him more like a prince of the blood than a
highland chief. To humiliate Huntly, to quell a feud then raging
between the Gordons and the Ogilvies, and to establish Moray in
his earldom, the Queen undertook a royal progress in the north.
Huntly, fearing treachery, openly rebelled, and in trying conclusions
with the royal army perished, with many of his clan, on the slopes of
Corrichie near Aberdeen. One of Huntly's sons was executed and
another sent to prison. The rebels were attainted and their lands
reverted to the Crown. While this severe judgment satisfied Pro-
testant Churchmen and gratified the Stewart spirit of absolutism, at the
same time it was merely the sacrifice of a pawn in the intricate game
which the Pope had set Mary to play. The Scots Protestants were
suspicious of this royal progress, and while the Queen was in the
north, Knox was in the west disputing and thundering upon popish
dangers and coming wars. Nearly all the influential men of Ayrshire
congregated to his eloquence, and in September 1562 the nobles,
gentlemen, and burgesses of that county, to the number of seventy-
eight, subscribed the following Covenant : —
'We, whais Names are underwritten, do promesse, in the presence of God, and
in the presence of his Sone, our Lord Jesus Christ, that we, and everie ane of us,
shall and will manteane and assist the preaching of his holy Evangell, now of his
mear mercy, offered unto this Realme ; and also will manteane the ministeris of
the same against all personis, power, and authoritie, that will oppone the self to the
doctrin proponed, and by us receaved. And farther, with the same solempnitie, we
protest and promesse, that every ane of us shall assist otheris ; yea, and the hoill
body of the Protestantis within this Realme, in all lauchfull and just actionis,
against all personis ; so that whosoever shall hurt, molest, or truble any of our body,
shalbe reaputed ennemye to the hoill, except that the offender will be content to
submit self to the judgement of the Kirk, now establissed amangis us. And this
we do, as we desire to be accepted and favoured of the Lord Jesus, and reaccompted
worthy of credyte and honestie in the presence of the godlie. At the Brough of
Air, the ferd day of September, the year of God, Jm Vc threscoir twa zeiris.
Cal. State Pap. {For,^ Eliz.\ iv. 91.
QUEEN MARY AND THE ROMANIST REACTION 55
' Subscrivit by all these with thair handis, as followis :
M' Michaell Wallace Provest of Air, Glencarne,
James Lockart [Lee ?], Ro. Boyd [4th Lord],
Williame Montgomery, R. Failfurd.
Johnne Craufurd of Wolstoun, Matthew Campbell of Lowden,
Johne Mure in Wole, knycht,'
and sixty-nine others/
The other subscribers were the most influential men in Ayrshire,
especially of the part imbued with Lollardism, including those of
Ochiltree, Gadgirth, Craigie, Stair, Rowallan, Barr, Kersland, Kin-
zeancleuch. This bond was, in the first instance, a practical protest
against the conduct of the Earls of Eglinton and Cassillis, who were
active supporters of the Queen. These Covenanters were not Rising in
content with a statement of their intentions, but, ignoring the ^^^ "^'
Toleration, began to purge the hitherto protected churches and
religious houses in the south-west. Mary sent for Knox to Loch-
leven and appealed to him to curb the rising. Knox accused her of
winking at illegal worship and declared that their assumption of
magisterial power was the result of her ignoring it.
In July 1562 the Assembly petitioned the Government for redress Legislation in
of the publio wrongs and for stipends to the preachers, who, it was '^ ^'
stated, 'live but a beggar's life.' The first Parliament did pass some
ecclesiastical acts which only ridiculed the helplessness of the Church.-
Knox thereupon accused the Estates of betraying Christ's cause in
agreeing with the Queen ' in the devill,' and in treating the Church as
an illegal object. He startled them by publishing the rumour that a
Papist would soon be a consort on the throne. At this time royal
galliards were sending billets doux from many quarters. Mary loved
marrying. Even the Earl of Bothwell, who had lately escaped from
ward in Edinburgh Castle, ugly and beggared as he was — simius in
purpura, an ape in purple — was daring to leer from under his shaggy,
red eyebrows upon the lovely face of the Queen. This villain had
1 Knox, ii. 348-50. Some of their descendants were prominent supporters of the
Covenants in the later times of persecution.
'•^ Act. Pari. Scot., ii. 535.
Knox on the
situation.
The Queen's
unalterable
faith.
Holyrood
riot.
56 THE COVENANTERS
only one recommendation — a trivial one : he was a nominal Pro-
testant.
Knox adjured Parliament that if they acknowledged that 'an
infidell shalbe head of your Soveran, ye do so far as in ye lyeth to
banishe Christ Jesus from this Real me ; ye bring Goddis vengeance
upoun the countrey, a plague upon your self, and perchaunse ye shall
do small conforte to your Soverane.' Mary was wroth. She cited
Knox to appear and see her tears again. His gentle companion,
Erskine of Dun, soothed her with compliments on that beauty which
made their Queen so captivating a match. In a break of her
'yowling' (weeping aloud), the immovable Knox justified his policy
thus : ' I man [must] sustean (albeit unwillinglie) your Majestie's
tearis, rather than I dar hurte my conscience, or betray the Common-
wealth through my silence.'^ These bold words indicate that Knox
acted as the accredited Head of the new Commonwealth of the
Church. He clearly realised that Mary's pretended tolerance was
mere subterfuge, and that the Guise policy of sufferance was only a
parley to gain time in order to strike a surer blow.
In January 1563 the Queen wrote to her uncle, the Cardinal,
assuring him that she would rather die than give up . her faith or
encourage heresy, and that she would concert measures to observe
the decrees of the Council of Trent.^ On the arrival of these decrees
she wrote to the persecuting Pope, Pius iv., that she would make her
subjects obey them, ' if God, by His Grace, is able to reduce and
destroy the heresies.'^ In her royal progresses she observed Catholic
public worship, thus stultifying her own proclamation. In her absence
from Holyrood, her servants, while observing the Catholic rites,
were interrupted, and a riot ensued. The Protestant ringleaders were
summoned to trial. Knox, reckoning this a menace-to the Church, in
the exercise of his convenership, called the Covenanters, from far and
near, to the capital, to witness their trial on the 24th October. This
* Knox, ii. 384-90.
^ Labanoff, Lettres
Sftiarf, 142.
2 Charles, Cardinal of Lorraine, 1524-74.
de Marie Siuarf, i. 175-8; vi. 6, 7; TurnbuU, Letters of Mary
QUEEN MARY AND THE ROMANIST REACTION 57
is the first instance (after 1560) of the Church assembling to assert its
separate jurisdiction as a regality co-equal with the Civil Estate of
the realm, Knox was called to account for this alleged act of treason,
but despite the efforts of Secretary Maitland, who, priding himself on
his dialectic skill and eloquence, tried to involve the Convener in a
criminal act, Knox was acquitted by the Privy Council — the Queen
and Maitland dissenting/
William Maitland, younger of Lethington, Secretary of State, was Maitland of
chief fugleman to the Queen — a man of useless shifts, in Knox's i528(?)-i573.
opinion ; as changeful as the chameleon, according to Buchanan ; one
of the most unreliable and dangerous flatterers whom the unfortunate
sovereign could have confided in. Maitland was an embodiment of
subtlety, deceit, and craft ; a temporising schemer, whose winning
ways and acute intellect made him a ready adviser among unscrupu-
lous intriguers. Knox's accusation, that Lethington was an atheist,
best explains his devious policies and that fearlessness in which,
according to the gossip of his contemporaries, he died a suicide.
At length Mary chose for her husband her cousin, Henry Stewart, Mary marries
Lord Darnley, eldest son of the Earl of Lennox, the useless ' cockerel,' juiy 1565.
as the Cardinal of Lorraine described him. Darnley had not yet
arrived at his majority, and was an incapable, petulant youth, pos-
sessed of no masterful qualities. Pope Pius iv. granted a dispensa-
tion for Mary's marriage to Darnley on the promise that they should
defend the Roman Catholic religion? His profession of the old
faith, and his marriage according to Catholic rites, in the Chapel
Royal of Holyrood, on 29th July, were considered menaces to the
Protestant cause.^ He also was an heir to the English crown.
Panic seized the Lords of the Congregation. The chief Protestants,
Chatelherault, Moray, Argyll, Glencairn, Rothes, Boyd, Ochiltree,
Kirkcaldy of Grange, and many others, rose in rebellion as a protest
against the alliance. The ministers waged war with their uncon-
1 Knox, ii. 393-412.
2 Raynald, Ann. Ecd., xv. 544, 545 ; Pollen, Papal Negoiiations, 191-231 ; Scot. Hist.
Rev., iv. 15, 241.
3 Knox, ii. 495 ; Diurnal of Occurrents, 80.
H
58
THE COVENANTERS
General
Assembly,
1565.
Mary defiant.
trollable tongues. The Queen, herself in arms at the head of a
mobile force, chased the insurgents into England and had them
declared outlaws. After this bold step there rallied round the throne
an influential Catholic party, under whose wing the banned priests
found shelter and worked for the revival of their lost jurisdiction.
Christmas Day, 1565, was a sad day for the meeting of the
General Assembly. The Lords who had struggled for the Reforma-
tion were in exile, and the deliberations of that Supreme Court were
furthered by suspicious advisers in the persons of Morton, Mar, and
Maitland, who were not averse to the temporising policy of the
Crown. The previous Assembly had petitioned for redress and now
received the answer out of the mailed hand of the Sovereign, con-
scious of her strength. They were emphatically informed that the
Queen would not ratify the Act establishing the Protestant Church,
nor abjure her own, nor suppress idolatry, nor interfere with the
benefices — in a word, she would do nothing to please the beggared
pastors. The Congregation now realised the meaning of the Queen's
stereotyped phrase — ' the maintenance of the state of religion found
on her arrival.' Protestantism was in danger. The Assembly en-
joined a general fast to be held, and prepared a form of divine
service to which was added a pitiful appeal to the faithful to observe
the exercise of prayer and abstinence, so as to avert ' God's fearefull
threateninges.' An appeal for the prayers of foreign Protestants was
also dispatched.^
Fortunately enough for imperilled Protestantism, there were other
influences at work which created a third party — it would be difficult
to say whether it was a patriotic or a mere Court party — who did not
relish the influence, intimacy, and secret understanding of the Italian
secretary, 'dowbill Davie' Rizzio, with the Queen.^ No unprejudiced
reader of relevant State documents and accounts of this juncture can
doubt that Darnley had lost his charm, that Rizzio was an able
instrument of mischief, and that Bothwell was growing in favour with
the Queen. This third party, led by Morton, Lord Ruthven, Lord
1 Knox, vi. 391-446 : 'The Ordour and Doctrine,' etc. ^ Dowbill = treacherous.
QUEEN MARY AND THE ROMANIST REACTION 59
Lindsay, and accompanied by a large following, surrounded Holy-
rood on the night of the 9th March 1566, when Rizzio was in the
presence of the Queen. The assassins dragged him out and poniarded Rizzio slain,
him to death in the palace. From that moment Mary's policy was '^
one of revenge — her fatal mistake. Knox, or his editor, defined the
incident as 'a marvellous tragedy,' to which he ascribed the salvation
of Scottish Protestantism.^ It occurred while the general fast was
being observed. From the manner in which Knox himself described
the detestable crime, the reader might almost infer that the author
imagined that Providence personally drove those daggers home.^
The Covenanters had long been standing upon the defensive and had
lost influence at Court, while Mary's schemes had so far developed
that she had planned a parliamentary coup, in April 1566, when, by
the aid of a restored hierarchy, she would do ' some good anent
restoring the old religion,' in accordance with her vow given on her
obtaining the dispensation of the Pope permitting her to marry
Darnley.^ On 12th May Pius v. wrote congratulating Mary on her
constancy and promising her a subsidy/
Angry jealousy inspired the vicious weakling Darnley, who had
been refused the crown-matrimonial, with a paroxysm of strength of
mind which expended itself in destructive courses. He made over-
tures to the exiled Lords of the Congregation, wherein he promised to
support their projects and defend their interests, in return for their
aid against 'this villain David.' Bonds were exchanged. The safety
of the Protestant Faith was one of the articles. Moray, Argyll,
Glencairn, Rothes, Boyd, Ochiltree, and other accomplices of Darnley
signed their bond at Newcastle on the 2nd March 1566. The Newcastle
stipulation as to religion is as follows : ' As to the religion established °" ' ^^
by the Queen's Majesty since her arrival into this Realm, whereupon
Proclamations and Edicts were made, that they and every one of
them shall fortify and maintain the same at their uttermost power.'
On the other part, Darnley agreed : 'As to the said Earls . . .
^ Knox, ii. 520-4 ; i. 235. ^ Ibid., i. 235.
' LabanoflF, Lettres . . . de M. Stuart, i. 342-50. * Pollen, Papal Negotiations, 237.
6o THE COVENANTERS
their religion, we are contented and consent that they use the
same. . . . And after their return upon their adhering and good
service to be done to us, we, the said noble prince, shall consent, aid,
and assist to the establishing the religion now profest, and concur
with them, if any power shall withstand them.'^ This mutual contract
indicated how the Lords of the Congregation and the clergy realised
the necessity for the royal ratification of the Act establishing the
Protestant religion, which was not yet secured and beyond danger
from Jesuitical intriguers.
Startling events chase each other on the diurnals of the time with
extraordinary rapidity. The body of Rizzio was scarcely cold when
Moray and his associates came * soonding through the toon.' It was
Knox on a Strange coincidence. Knox was right in calling the last dispatch a
marvellous tragedy. A man so upright, as Knox undoubtedly was,
might not have been accessory to the assassination, of which he after-
wards approved, but he must have been singularly obtuse if rumours
of the intended removal of Mary's obstructive secretary did not reach
his ears, as they did reach others less likely to have heard.^ If he
did hear, there must be a presumption that he believed that the warn-
ings often given to evil-doers had been sufficient, and to Knox so
satisfactory, that he saw no justification for his personal interference
in the closure of a reptilious career, when the cause of freedom and
morality was to be a gainer through an illegal judgment.
Return of The exiles had returned to Edinburgh to stand their trial. In
their pockets was the invitation of their would-be king. Instead of
coming to a doom supposed to be settled, they found that Queen Mary
at Holyrood was under restraint by the new conspirators, who had
threatened to cut her sacred person into ' collops ' if she became unduly
demonstrative. With ready observation of scriptural precedent, she
welcomed Moray, her half-brother, with a kiss, and, with a practical
illustration of biblical precept, by overt love hoodwinked her husband,
' Keith, Hist., iii. 262, 263, Appendix ; Maitland Club MiscelL, iii. 188-91 ; Hist MSS.
Com. Rep., vi., App. 641.
^ Randolph to Leicester, I3lh February 1566 : D. Hay Fleming, Mary Queen of Scots, 126
and notes, 43, 44,45 ; P. Hume V>xo\sx\.,John Knox, ii. App. 304-10.
exiles.
QUEEN MARY AND THE ROMANIST REACTION 6i
and by his aid escaped, almost over the grave of Rizzio, to rally round
her a friendly host who marched back and dispersed her adversaries.^ .
On this unexpected collapse of the Protestant party, Knox, cha- Collapse of
.- I'l jr rrj* Reform Party,
grined to the verge of despair, retired irom his charge and trom h-din- ^J^Y^ ^arch
burgh.^ The slayers of Rizzio also fled the same day. But, wearied, ^566.
worried, wanton Mary was not in a condition to follow up her advan-
tage. These dangerous enterprises, the birth of Prince James on 19th
June, a serious illness, and a desire to await a happier opportunity for
executing her fixed design, made the Queen appear now most tolerant,
indeed, even careful of and kind to the Church and its pastors, for
whose comfort and sustentation the Privy Council passed some
practical edicts. Notwithstanding, the tenderest touch could not
conceal the cold gauntlet beneath the velvet glove. Had not Mary
also joined the infamous Catholic League of the Pope, Emperor, King The CathoUc
of Spain, Duke of Savoy, and others, for the extirpation of ^^^ yI^S^IIy is66.
heretics, said they, and had she not met a temporary check ?^
Darnley too had failed her, and was now a stumbling-block, as well
to her as to her antagonists. By both he, having disavowed his
former allies, was esteemed a traitor, liar, and mischief-maker. He
had not shaped himself into the coercive councillor conceived in the
subtle brain of the Jesuit Nicolaus. Therefore he must depart — the
next victim of intrigue. The Queen had always protected and
encouraged the disconsolate hierarchy, till she gave its primus a
fresh inducement to fidelity by restoring the Consistorial Court on
23rd December 1566. A few days later the General Assembly pro-
tested against this imperious act, not knowing that this useful judi-
catory would soon be needed to confirm Bothwell's divorce. Darnley
loved to hunt alone; Mary, in couples, and preferably now with
Bothwell. There could only be one result of Mary's estrangement
from her consort. There was little surprise when Darnley was mur- Damiey's
dered on the loth February 1567, and still less, when three months
^ Knox, ii. 523-5.
2 /did., vi. 483, 484 ; Diurnal of Occurrents, 94.
3 Father Pollen says there exist no documents to prove that there was a Catholic League
for suppressing Protestantism in 1566 : Papal Negotiations with Queen Mary, Pref. xxxviii.
62
THE COVENANTERS
Scheme of
Nicolaus
Floris.
Mary marries later, 15th May, the Quceii married 'the ape in purple,' the alleged
regicide, Bothwell, with a shameless haste.^ Mary had neither heart
nor time to mourn. The fixed design survived all departures, till the
lovely casket enshrining it rolled from the bloody block at Fotherin-
gay. At Darnley's death a shudder of loathing traversed the land
and made the very throne to shake. To this feeling we owe the
inaccurate tradition that Bothwell was in ugliness a rival to deformed
Rizzio, whereas it was his conduct which made him appear bestial to
offended Scottish sentiment.
This question arises here, Was the well-conceived scheme of Jesuit
Nicolaus being worked out, so that the strait-laced heretics might
obtain a suitably coercive governor, even although he was a regicide,
a nominal Protestant, and a temporary slave of the votive Queen ?
The Queen explained her abduction by and wedding to Bothwell
with ingenious diversity. To her acrid, spinster-cousin, Elizabeth of
England, she declared Bothwell to be a paragon, and that ' so fasseous '
a people ' wald nocht weill digest a foreyn husband.' To the Holy
Father in Rome she wrote that Bothwell was a vile ravisher. To
her superstitious subjects, yearning for some indication of her spiritual
amendment, she announced that she wished to * compleit the band of
matrimony with the noble and potent Prince, James Duke of Orkney
... in face of Haly Kirk.' To her confessor she said that, as the
handmaid of the Church, she desired to settle religion, and this, read
in the light of the scheme of Nicolaus, was probably a true confession."
Mary's latest wifely joy was short-lived. The nobility would not
brook as their governor the Queen's 'potent prince,' who was their
inferior in most respects, and, led by Argyll and Boyd, who became
recalcitrant, Atholl, Morton, Mar, Glencairn, they bound themselves
to free their sovereign, to protect Prince James, and to extirpate the
murderers of Darnley. The fugitive pair were nearly captured by
the insurgents. At Gladsmuir, in Haddingtonshire, Mary caused her
' Knox, ii. 549-55.
2 Cone. Scot., clxxiii. ; Hewison, ' Queen Mary and the Scots Church,' in Scots Magastne,
vi. 36, 410 ; vii. 37, 29.
OUEEN MARY AND THE ROMANIST REACTION 6
o
opponents to be proclaimed traitors, and having gathered 4000 sym-
pathisers, marched to Carberry Hill, near Musselburgh. Barring her Carbeny Hiii,
way stood a host of enraged lieges, over whom floated a banner de- |S-^""^
picting the murdered Darnley, and her helpless infant crying 'Judge,
and revenge my caus, O Lord.' At Mary's entreaty, Bothwell, with
currish cowardice, gladly took flight, while she calmly marched over
to her opponents and surrendered.
Clad in a short petticoat all bespattered with mud, more like a
Gypsy than a Venus, Mary, again beaten but not broken, afforded a
pitiable spectacle. Hooted by the soldiery, and jeered at by the foul-
mouthed rabble — far from choice in their epithets descriptive of a
light-of-skirts — she was led like a criminal to the residence of the
Provost in Edinburgh. Thence she was smuggled away to Lochleven Mary, in
Castle. In that water-girdled keep, watched by her father's paramour, J'bdicates"2 th
the Queen of Scots was interned, and her proud spirit harassed ; till, July 1567-
at length, broken into ostensible compliance, she demitted crown and
office in favour of Prince James, who was to reign through the
Regency of Moray. ^
Unbounded joy took possession of the Congregation at this
' most miraculous victory and overthrow.' Remembering some clear
precedents left by Moses, the more unbending of the Covenanters
would have put Mary to death as an adulteress, and as one possessed of
the devil. The white heat into which Scotland had been worked can
be gauged from the pastoral letter issued in May 1568 to Lothian by
the gentle and amiable Superintendent, John Spottiswood, wherein
he traced the causes of God's wrath to this unrighteous mercy shown
to his Queen: 'If she had suffered, according as God's law com-
mandeth murderers and adulterers to die the death . . . the plague
should have ceased. . . . For albeit the Devil himself be loosed (as
no doubt he was) in the person of that most wicked woman.' ^ The
Covenanters, perceiving that they had escaped by the skin of their
teeth, now that Mary ceased from troubling, made haste to have the
^ D. Hay Fleming, Mary Queen of Scots, chap. xiii.
^ Wodrow, Collections, i. 85, 86.
64 THE COVENANTERS
Joy of the Church established bylaw. The next General Assembly communi-
in°i568. cated their satisfaction to their faithful associate, Willock, in his
English rectory of Loughborough, that the tempest and storm were
over, and ' our Ship is receaved, and placed in a most happy and
blessed port ; our enemies, praised be God, are dashed ; religion
established, sufficient provision made for ministers . . . and above
all, a godly magistrate ' appointed. Still, they said, they stood on
watch.
If it was * Satanam sicut fulgur de coelo cadentem' whom the
joyful Covenanters saw disappearing into the lone prison of Loch-
leven, as they said, there he was soon transformed into a Venus in
silken chains, whom the stoniest-hearted gaolers could not refrain
from pitying, adoring, aiding — her embittered mistress, who too
should have been a queen, excepted — so that soon her witcheries
purchased freedom for a few more sad and hapless days. It was vain
for loyal cavaliers to rally round their ill-fated Queen. Fortune
again deserted Mary on the battlefield of Langside, on the 13th May.
Battle of She sought safety, and found a prison, in England. The papal plans,
mT^iVs ^^^ ^^^ after another, had miscarried. The Church was freed. The
Covenanters triumphantly had illustrated their threat : ' He that is
enemy to the causes foresaid shall be enemy to us all.^^
^ For an excellent account of the condition of Scotland at this time, cf. Professor P. Hume
Brown's Scotland in the Time of Qiieen Mary (Lond., 1904).
Blackness Castle
Drumlanritr Castle
Stirling Castle
St. Andrews Castle
lidinLuti/h Castli.
Uuniliaituii Ca^tl
Morton Castle
PRISONS OF REFORMERS AND COVENANTERS
ESTABLISHMENT OF THE CHURCH BY LAW 65
CHAPTER I II
THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE CHURCH BY LAW
When the first Parliament of King James the Sixth met in
Edinburgh on the 15th December 1567, a National Church of
Scotland as such no longer existed. For seven years the Christian
religion as interpreted in the Confession of Faith had been estab-
lished by Parliament, with the tacit assent of probably a majority of
the people, but this unconstitutional agreement had not been ratified,
although it had been tolerated by the Queen.^ Under a reign of
creed, rather than by the laws of a Church possessing jurisdiction. Establishment
the masses were being spiritually governed. The first Assembly at ° "^^ '^'°"'
Edinburgh of the representatives of the individual Reformed Con-
gregations, at which the amalgamation of these churches was agreed
to, simply aggregated the Congregations into a Church i7i Scotland.^
The Confession of Faith, which was the instrument by which the
unification was accomplished, and was the only bond uniting the
disjecta membra of the disintegrated Church, makes no reference to
a Church of Scotland. Consequently, the indispensable characteristics
of a national Church, namely, jurisdiction, active authority, and legal
subsidy, all of which requirements had been withheld by the legis-
lature, were for seven years non-existent. The beggared ministry
were supported from voluntary doles or by the fruits of their own
^ Keith, Hist.^ iii. 211, App.
2 <In 1567 there were about 1080 churches under the charge of 257 ordained ministers,
151 exhorters, and 455 readers ; and the places of 12 ministers and 53 readers are marked as
being vacant, making in all 924 persons, besides the 5 superintendents': Misc. Wod. Soc,
i. 326. Argyle and the Isles are not included in this enumeration. In 1581 these were
reduced to 600 churches under 50 presbyteries, 100 receiving 500 marks each, 200 receiving
300, 200 receiving 100 pounds Scots, and 100 receiving 100 marks for stipend annually.
66 THE COVENANTERS
manual labour. The Church could only exercise authority by calling
Voluntaryism, in the aid of illegally armed supporters.^ Voluntaryism as a practical
method was recognised through the constraint of circumstances. The
Reformers would not depend upon intermittent benevolence so long
as the patrimonial endowments of religion existed. They were held
to be inalienable, jure divino. It is worthy of mention that the first
practical effort to relieve the penury of the preachers originated in
December 1561, when the prelates offered to the Queen one fourth
of the value of their benefices, and she gave it to the ministers, who,
by Acts of the Council, became entitled to stipends of the value of
about £\(i sterling each. This provision, however, remained in-
operative. What tithes and rents the former Catholic beneficiaries
could not retain by means of family influence, the land-grabbing
aristocracy meanly seized along with the Church lands. The lay
Covenanters paid themselves for their warfare ; their clerical allies
had to starve. Lord Herries bitterly recorded that ' the great men
gaped after the Church estates, and the commoners were fleshed
with the spoils of abbeys and religious houses.'"
The change of government gave the leaders of the Church their
opportunity. They, finding themselves an influential confederation,
demanded parliamentary recognition of the Church as an institution
of co-equal standing with the civil government, and acknowledg-
ment of the principle of the Headship of Christ over the King in
matters of spiritual government.
Coronation of Consequently the coronation of the infant King at Stirling on the
"IX"^' ' ^9"^ of July 1567 was both a civil and a religious function. Repre-
sentatives of the Church crowned and anointed him.^ Morton, acting
as sponsor, laid his hand upon 'The Book of God,' and, in the name
of the King, took a very remarkable oath to the effect that the King-
would serve God, would ' maintain the true religion of Jesus Christ,
the preaching of the Holy Word, and due and right ministration of
His sacraments now received and practised in this realm, and shall
"' Cf. Summons of Gen. Assembly in 1567 : Booke of the U. Kirk, i. 93-5.
2 Memoirs, 55. ^ John Erskine, Spottiswood, Adam Bothwell.
ESTABLISHMENT OF THE CHURCH BY LAW 67
abolish and gainstand all false religion contrary to the same . . . and
out of my lands and empire I shall be careful to root out all heretics
and enemies to the true worship of God that shall be convicted by the
true Kirk of God of the foresaid crimes.'^ Knox was the deputed
preacher from the Church, but, as a citizen, he asked for a legal
document proving the royal contract between the King and his
subjects. The clerical inspiration of the oath is unmistakable. The
oath was practically homologated by the assenters to the corona-
tion— Morton, Atholl, Glencairn, Mar, Menteith, Hume, Lyndsay,
Ruthven, Ochiltree, Sempill, Sandilands, Maitland, Erskine of Dun,
and other influential men of various factions, who now as ' King's
Lords ' joined together to establish a popular Protestant government
and Church.^ The 'Queen's Lords' — Hamiltons, Argyll, Huntly,
Herries, and others — held aloof from the regnant party until Moray
returned from France. In him the ' King's Lords ' trusted as the one
man capable of uniting the distracted parties, settling a lasting peace,
and guarding the freedom they had obtained by the sword. Moray Moray Regent,
accepted the Regency and took the oath to maintain the Reformed j^g^ "^"^
Church.
Ten days after Mary's surrender at Carberry the General Assembly Assembly in
T-> • • 1 r o T J' Edinburgh,
met and appointed George Buchanan, then Prmcipal of St. Leonard s 25th June
College, St. Andrews, to be the Moderator. The design in making ^567.
this appointment of a layman, they explained, was ' for eschewing of
confusion in reasoning ' ; and, as the leaders of the Church had
determined to leave no loophole for the return of Popery, they chose
their ablest jurist to fix the safeguards of the new Establishment.
This remarkable meeting in the Nether Tolbooth showed to what
extent the laity were the promoters and guardians of the Reformation.
Its first business was to submit the proposed articles of Establishment
to the Privy Council for approval, and thereafter by letter to issue
a special invitation to all friendly landholders and 'other true pro-
fessors of all estates and degrees,' convening them to a special
1 Keith, Hist., ii. 772 note.
2 Wodrow, Collections^ i. 2 1 .
68 THE COVENANTERS
Edinburgh Assembly on 20th July to consider the situation, and to take means
Assemblies, f^^ establishing^ the liberty of the Church, the maintenance of the
June and July a j
1567. clergy, and the unification of the reformed members against their
enemies.^ This ecclesiastical missive practically summoned a folk-
mote. Argyll would not trust himself to this armed muster and
wrote excusing himself, on the ground that this appearance in arms
was an innovation.'^ The Assembly itself reckoned all such abstainers
to be ' hinderers of this godlie purpose,' ' dissimulat brethren,' and
'unworthie to be esteimit heirafter of Christ's flocke.' The 'Queen's
Lords' and other waverers were among the absentees, but the
Assembly realising its own strength and influence proceeded on
Edinburgh 25th July to ratify and subscribe a series of ten articles which had
Covenant, been prepared by a special committee. This Covenant was signed
by the earls, lords, barons, and other commissioners present —
Morton, Glencairn, Mar, Hume, Ruthven, Sanquhar, Lindsay,
Ochiltree, Drumlanrig, Tullibardine, fifty barons, and sixteen com-
missioners of burghs. It expressed approval of the demands of the
ministers for the thirds of the benefices, restoration of the patrimony,
relief of poor labourers, punishment of crime, especially of the
murderers of Darnley, maintenance of the King, appointment of a
Protestant coronation-oath, and the annihilation of the Mass and
idolatry. The subscribers bound themselves, with ' their power and
forces,' to obstruct parliamentary legislation, until ' the faithfull Kirk
of Jesus Chryst profest within this realm salbe put in full libertie of
the patrimonie of the Kirk . . . the matters of the Kirk forsaid be
first considerit, approvit and establischit.' They took a bolder step
and agreed to march over the land and obliterate every trace of
Popery, while they established * the true religion ' by planting super-
intendents, ministers, and other officials, and also reforming all
A holy educational institutions. Theirs was a holy crusade in earnest.^
Yet some of these Covenanters were aware of the plot against
^ Knox, Row, Craig, Erskine of Dun, Spottiswood, and Douglas— the six Johns — signed
the missive : Booke of the U. Kirk, i. 94, 95.
2 Ibid., i. loi.
2 Calderwood, ii. 378-83 ; Booke of the U. Kirk, i. 106-10.
crusade.
ESTABLISHMENT OF THE CHURCH BY LAW 69
Darnley. It is also noteworthy that these legislators designated
themselves 'this present Assemblie of the Kirk of God.'^
Of Moray's first Parliament, which met on the 15th December, Moray's
so many had subscribed the last Covenant and previous bonds off^^'^™^"*'
similar import, that the acceptance of the articles of Establishment
was assured.^ This Parliament began its legislative labours by
ratifying Queen Mary's demission, Moray's appointment, and the
previous abolition (in 1560) of papal jurisdiction and of the persecut-
ing Acts.^
This cleared the way for the re-enactment of the Confession of
Faith, and for the passing of eleven Acts as follows : On the abolition
of the Mass ; on the true Church and Churchmen ; on presentees to
churches ; on the coronation-oath ; on public officials ; on thirds of
benefices; on schoolmasters; on Church jurisdiction; on bursaries;
on benefices ; on privileges of Churchmen.
The tenor of these Acts shows the thoroughgoing nature of the Tenor of the
revolution which had been accomplished and the foundations on statutes, 1567.
which civil and spiritual government was to rest. The 'reformed
Churches of this realm ' are declared, in Act 6, ' to be the only true
and holy Church of Jesus Christ within this realm ' ; while persons
who do not accept the Reformed Confession, subscribe the articles
of religion, and take the sacraments, are not members of the Church.
The settlement of pastors pertained to the Church only (Act 7),
The coronation-oath was made imperative (Act 8). Public officials
were to acknowledge the Reformed Church (Act 9). The tenth Act
asserts the legal right of the Church to the ' proper patrimony which
is the teinds,' and ordains 'the thirds' to be paid to the 'long-
defrauded ' ministers. The twelfth Act established the just jurisdiction
of the Church — ' the immaculate spouse of Jesus Christ.' * Parliament,
* Booke of the U. Kirk, i. io6. This Covenant is preserved in Glasgow University Library.
Cf. Appendix.
- Among the 83 members were i bishop, 2 ex-bishops, i titular bishop, 14 lay-abbots, and
30 commissioners of burghs.
3 Acts r, 2, 3, 4, James vi., 1567 : Act. Pari. Scot., iii. 11 -14.
* Ibid., iii. 22-32 ; spelling modernised.
70
THE COVENANTERS
Church self-
organised.
Reaction in
1570.
not understanding what 'jurisdiction' implied, appointed a committee
of jurists to define the province of the Church. Meantime it was
acknowledged that the Church possessed organic jurisdiction for
authorising preaching of the true Gospel, correction of manners, and
administration of sacraments ; 'and that there be no other jurisdiction
ecclesiastical acknowledged within this Realm, other than that which
is and shall be within the same Church.' The First Book of
Discipline was not mentioned in these statutes.
In this way Scottish Protestantism had developed, organised
itself, and set up its own autonomous government ; and, only after it
had asserted its freedom to act independently within its own sphere,
asked the civil power to recognise its separate existence.^ Magis-
terial recognition, indicated by the mutual acceptance of a Creed,
obviously limited that independence. Nevertheless, neither King nor
Parliament could justly claim to have conferred on the National
Church an authority which is inherent, whereas, in England, the
jurisdiction of the Church is accepted as a gift from the Crown
(Article xxxvii.), while it is held to be of divine appointment at the
same time.
The Church of Scotland, established by law, began its honourable
career with two instruments of power only — the Bible and the Con-
fession of Faith. It anxiously began its theocratic reign by casting
out ' Satan and his ministers,' settling pastors, collecting and disburs-
ing the patrimony, curbing the bishops and other insolent oppressors,
and dismissing the whole professoriate of Aberdeen for their defiant
nonconformity.
The reactionary faction was still lively. Want of opportunity
prevented the outlawed Hamiltons, whose influence preponderated in
St. Andrews University, and other malcontents, from wrecking the
new regime. A conspiracy to remove the Regent Moray was not
unharmonious with the temper of the time and with the dissolute
character of Hamilton, Archbishop of St. Andrews. The murderous
bullet of Hamilton of Bothwellhauorh ended the career of Recent
* Booke of the U. Kirk, i. 93, 106.
ESTABLISHMENT OF THE CHURCH BY LAW 71
Moray — the most valuable life in Scotland, on the 23rd January Murder of
1570.^ The far-seeing intellect of this prudent and practical states- ^^^^"' ^°'^'''
23rd January
man realised the perils menacing his distracted country ; and by 1570-
settling the Church as an independent government he fixed the
foundations of a freedom which saved the people from the tyranny
of Roman and English prelacy and from the worse slavery of the
barons. The vindictive hanging of Archbishop Hamilton made poor Hanging of
atonement for the national disaster in Moray's death, to which that "^'"^''<^"» ^^^
prelate was accessory. Moray's loss was felt still more because the
Church was ready with a report upon Jurisdiction, drawn up in six
articles by Knox, Pont, and Row, in which Jurisdiction was defined
to be the right of the Church to judge religion in every relation — the
ministry, morality, ecclesiastical disputes, patrimony, marriage, and
divorce." The inclusion of patrimony is noticeable.^ The previous
sympathy of Moray had led the Church to expect that it would
now be freed from the interference of the civil ruler — an interfer-
ence then worst felt in the unjustifiable mismanagement of the
patrimony.
The fall of Moray was a signal for dissension, pillage, and Distractions
prelatic intrigue. Knox, tottering with paralysis, was too feeble ^^'^ ^^'^°''^"'^'
to stand in the breach. Two opposing Parliaments fulminated
against each other. The Parliament of August 1571, under the
presidency of Regent Mar, was browbeaten by the masterful Morton,
whose ready tongue fell like a scourge on the petitioning clergy.
* Proud knaves,' he exclaimed, ' he sould lay their pride, and putt
order to them.' John Douglas, a man of base birth, was appointed
to the Primate's chair and to his seat in Parliament. John Winram,
a determined Presbyterian, inhibited him from acting as a legislator
until he had the sanction of the Church. Morton threatened the
doubting prelate with a charge of treason if he did not take his
position, whatever the Church had to say. This little incident
* Record Office, London, Gen. Ser. {Barberini MSS.)^ xxxii. 210, 23 ; M'Crie, Knox, ii. 172 ;
Calderwood, Hist., ii. 510; Spottiswood, Hist., 233.
2 Booke of the U. Kirk, i. 187.
^ The General Assembly in 1576 held patrimony to be '■ ex jure divino'' : ibid., 360.
72 THE COVENANTERS
indicated that there was a party averse to the aboHtion of the old
episcopal dignity, because the hierarchy might condone their
* chopping and changing with benefices,' which were as needful to
the aristocracy as to the preachers, and some of the latter were
averred to be dying on the street, in a famine-struck land.^ Nor
was the example of the regnant party over the borders lost upon
Morton. The religious question was by no means settled in
England, where two great nonconforming parties existed. Elizabeth,
far more concerned for her crown and prerogative (13 Eliz. c. 2) than
for the Cross of Christ, used rigorous measures equally against the
papists and the other nonconformists to the established form of
episcopacy, reckoning the former to be traitors and the latter to be
disloyal recalcitrants. In the latter part of her reign the rack in
the Tower was rarely idle. Many Catholics were martyred, and the
Puritans were sorely persecuted.
English counsellors had advised the northern lay-Reformers to
hold by the real estate of the Church, since it was the best guarantee
against their opponents, and was an easily realised asset. By
scandalous trafficking with the presentees to benefices these lay-
impropriators entered into illegal possession of the patrimony, leaving
the honour of office to the pastors. In this way Morton was to
enjoy the revenues of Archbishop Hamilton, all but a pittance.
Ostensibly to settle these distractions, Mar invited a select number,
sixty-two in all, of superintendents, commissioners, and pastors, many
of whom were favourable to a compromise between episcopacy and
LeithConven- presbytery, to meet in Leith on the 12th January 1572.^ Some
writers have imagined that the liberal-minded John Erskine had
induced his kinsman Mar to take this retrograde step, but Erskine's
opinion is given in a letter to Mar in November to this effect :
' Bishops as such have no office and jurisdiction ... for they enter
not by the dore, but by another way, and therefore are not pastors,
as saith Christ, but thieves and robbers.' Wodrow was probably
* Buckle, Hist, of Civil., iii. 91 ; Knox, ii. 529.
2 M'Crie, Knox, ii. 199 ; Calderwood, Hist., iii. 168.
ESTABLISHMENT OF THE CHURCH BY LAW n
nearer the truth when tracing Mar's move to Patrick Adamson, the
protdgd and chaplain of Morton.^ This irregular Assembly appointed ..
eight members — John Erskine, Wynram, Lundie, Hay, Lindsay,
Pont, Craig, and Adam Fullerton — to confer with eight nominees
of the Regent and Council — Morton, Ruthven, Bishop Bothwell,
Pitcairn, MakGill, Bellenden, Lundie, and Glenorchy, and to report to
next Assembly in St. Andrews on 6th March. The Andrew Hay
referred to above had seen service in the Catholic Church, was
Rector of Glasgow University and Minister of Renfrew. He
favoured presbytery. David Lindsay, a pre- Reformation student, David
Minister of South Leith, six times Moderator of Assembly, after- i33o!'^6i3.
wards Bishop of Ross, was a pastor of wide influence and inclined ^
to prelacy. Robert Pont (1524- 1606), jurist, poet. Minister of St.
Cuthbert's, Edinburgh, Provost of Trinity College, Senator of the
College of Justice, came through the turmoil of the Reformation into
influence in the Church of which he was Moderator five times. He
was a promoter of the Second Book of Discipline and a thorough
Presbyterian. Another Presbyterian was John Craig, the learned, John Craig,
fearless colleague of John Knox. Ruthven, afterwards first Earl of
Gowrie, notorious for the ' Raid of Ruthven,' a man engaged in many
dangerous enterprises, was a Protestant, unreliable and superstitious.
Adam Bothwell, Bishop of Orkney, was one of the four bishops
who joined the Reformers. He celebrated the marriage of Mary
and Bothwell. MakGill and Bellenden were Lords of Session, and
the latter was favourable to Morton's policy.
This joint-committee agreed upon a Concordat, on the 1 6th Leith Con-
V ... . cordat, 1572.
January 1572. Its provisions in brief were : —
I. That archbishops and bishops have charge of the former dioceses; be chosen
from quaUfied preachers ; not less than thirty years of age, and ' indewed with
the qualities specifeitin the Epistles of Paule to Timothe and Tytus'; exercise
the functions of superintendents meantime ; be subject to the Assembly in
spiritual matters, to the King in temporal ; be consecrated ; be elected and
assisted by a chapter of pastors ; and resume their benefices and their seats
in Parliament.
1 Wodrow, Collections^ i. 27.
K
74 THE COVENANTERS
2. That conventual houses be maintained; their superiors to be examined
before institution by the bishops ; their benefices to be first applied to the
local pastors,
3. That benefices, having cure of souls attached, be given to preachers, found to
be qualified by bishops or superintendents, after they have subscribed the
Confession, taken the oath of fidelity to the Crown, and been ordained.
4. That other benefices be applied to education. ^
The gist of this insidious scheme is found in the paragraphs
settHng 'The maner of creating of a Bishop,' where it provides : ' We
[i.e. the Crown] haue thocht gude ... to name and recommend him
to you to be chosin to the said bishoprick.' Thus the initiative was
with the King. This was not its worst feature. The bishop's oath
was : —
' I confesse to have and hald the said bishoprik and possessionis of the same,
under God, only of youre Maiestie and Crown Royale . . . and for the saidis
possessionis I do my homage presentlie to youre Maiestie . . .'
By this old form of fealty, the bishop became the King's man, and
the clergy would soon be bishops' men. Never was designed a more
impudent illustration of Erastianism than this scheme, which was
intended to convert the Church into a department of the State, and
the Bride of Christ, robbed of her rich heritage and dowry, into a
paramour of the King. The regal jurisdiction was defined very
cunningly in the oath to be taken by the bishops : ' Youre Maiestie is
the only lauchfull and supreme Governour of this realme, as well in
things temperall, as in the conservatioun and purgatioun of the
religion.'" This was a prerogative somewhat less than the ecclesi-
astical jurisdiction afterwards claimed. The celerity and apparent
harmony with which this remarkable agreement was executed create
the suspicion that it embodied terms previously arranged to satisfy
the self-aggrandising holders of the Church lands, and that it was
agreed to by the clerics in desperation.
Viewed in relation to the principles of the Church, the Concordat
was retrogressive, but in relation to the patrimony, it was advanta-
geous. Who can wonder that the Church in her impecunious and
^ Booie of the U. Kirk, i. 207-36. ^ Ibid., i. 220.
ESTABLISHMENT OF THE CHURCH BY LAW 75
distracted condition accepted the settlement as a foretaste of better
times ? A feeble corporation, including not more than two hundred
and fifty pastors and six hundred lay-readers and exhorters, had little
influence with selfish barons armed to the teeth/ Almost every
minister was in charge of four large parishes.
If discord made misery in the Church it also was ruining the
State. The Queen's party still held Edinburgh Castle against the
King's men, who had fortified their camp in Leith. While lying
there, distrust of each other rather than pious feeling constrained
them to subscribe another Covenant, on the 2nd July, to this effect : —
* We wha haue subscryvit this vnderwrytin wryting, vnderstanding the grit Leith Cove-
mercies of God, vttered and schawin to us sen the plantin of his Evangle within "^^*' ^"^ J"'y
this realme, and speciallie within the burghe of Edinburgh . . . promittis, bindis, ^^'^"
and obleissis us faithfully, that we in all tymes heirefter with our lyves, landis, and
guidis, and all that we may make, shall sett fordward, and promote the blessed
Evangle of our Lord Jesus Christ professit be us within this realme with his true
and faithfull ministeris, preacheris theirof, and menteane with the Kingis Maiestie
our Soverane lordis auctoritie, his Regent, and nobilities, assistaris to his
Grace. . . . ^
This Covenant also expressed gratitude for the emancipation of
the country from anti-Christ and the French soldiers, and signified
the Intention of the subscribers to submit themselves to the discipline
of the covenanted brethren or of the magistrates of Edinburo^h. It is
evident that the Leith Covenanters were anxious until their ill-
favoured scheme obtained the ratification of an Assembly. Mean-
while, the Church was taking it 'ad avizandum.' An Assembly,
convened in Perth, on 6th August, John Erskine being Moderator, Perth interim,
accepted the Concordat but discarded the titles of the officials of the ^''"
Church, in so far as they savoured of Popery, and protested ' that the
saids heids and articles aggriet upon be only receivit as ane Interim,
untill farder and more perfyte ordour be obtainit at the hands of the
King's Majesties Regent and Nobilitie.'^
Knox, who had refused to take a part in the enthronisation of
Douglas in the see of St. Andrews, sent a letter (enclosing some
* Wodrow Miscell.y i. 319. - Bannatyne, Memor.^ 247-9 (Bann. Club).
3 Booke of the U. Kirk, i. 246.
1^
THE COVENANTERS
Knox's final
blast, 1572.
Death of
Knox, 157:
definite articles) to the Perth Assembly, in which he recommended
the appointment of qualified bishops. Knox's acquiescence in the
Concordat does not imply that he favoured diocesan episcopacy,
because the Concordat defined bishops to be of the primitive Pauline
type, with a jurisdiction like that of the superintendents, and an office
derivative from the Church. Knox never stultified his own Book of
Discipline.^ His letter, coming as 'The Last Blast of the Trumpet'
of dying Knox, was a parting rally for the ministry of the primitive
type, for a non-intruded pastorate, for a free and self-governing
Church in Scotland. Its telling point appeared in this advice:
'Above all things, preserue the Kirk from the bondage of the
Universities . . . subject never the pulpit to their Judgment, neither
yet exempt them from your Jurisdiction.'^
The news of the massacre of the Huguenots on St. Bartholomew's
Day created the next sensation. Soon afterwards Regent Mar died.
The while the enfeebled Knox painfully tried to preach, with
attenuated voice to produce his now far-distant 'thunder,' and to
guide the people with a senile intellect which had begun to play the
tricks of forgetfulness upon his enthusiasm. The account of his
passing, upon the 24th November, affords details for a picture of the
dissolution of humanity when seen in its most worthy aspects, and
of the unloosing of a spirit as great as it was lovable. Groups of
clerical and political comrades thronged his bedchamber. The sad
kirk-session dutifully coming to read from his Liturgy prayers for
the sick, found him not morose, but ready to pledge another glass of
wine from a newly pierced hogshead, and to make a joyful parting
with the presbyters. Then, after confessions, warnings, visions, and
sweet memories of old Geneva, listening to the reading by his wife of
his favourite chapter where he ' first cast anchor ' — St. John xvii., and
the chapter on immortality, in the Epistle to the Corinthians — the
Reformer lifted the almost vanished hand that was wont to make
^ Hallam {Cotist. Hist., i. 214 note) quoting Neal, 398, states that the English Puritans did
not object to the episcopal office, provided that the bishop was only the head of the
presbyters, and acted in conjunction with them.
* Booke of the U. Kirk, i. 247.
ESTABLISHMENT OF THE CHURCH BY LAW ^^
princes and people ' to grew and tremble,' and this was the sign that
the bravest man in the city had departed, and the • brycht licht of
Scotland ' had gone out.^ Two days later he was laid to rest in the
churchyard behind the church of St. Giles, where a small stone,
with the letters 'I. K. 1572' inlaid in bronze, marks his supposed
grave.
The national Church had lost its strongest bulwark, and although
able ministers, such as Erskine, Spottiswood, Row, Craig, Davidson,
Lindsay, Fergusson, and Pont were left, these had not the grasp nor
impressive personality of Knox, and were unable to keep the Church
out of dangerous courses. Lamenting this incapacity, John Davidson,
the witty minister of Prestonpans, in verses which drew on him the
wrath of Regent Morton, declared : —
* Had gude John Knox not yit bene deid,
It had not cum unto this heid.'
That day Knox expired, Morton rose to the height of his ambition. Rise of Regent
being elected Regent in preference to Glencairn, who was a con-
sistent Reformer and a blameless politician. The staggering Church,
realising that Morton was no friend, discovered the loss of two
leaders. After all it was a trivial compensation that, with masterful
energy, Morton soon reduced Edinburgh Castle, executed its gallant
defender for Mary — Kirkcaldy of Grange — announced the extinction
of the crafty secretary, Maitland, conciliated barons long at feud with
each other, and confederated under his own leadership political
factions hitherto heterogeneous. The Douglas love of power, rather
than piety, urged Morton to force Church and State into subjection
to the supreme ruler — himself. With a zeal worthy of Mohammed, Act of Uni-
. . - . f. , . 1 formity, 26th
he got a statute passed ordammg uniformity of worship, upon the j^^^^^y 1573.
direction of archbishops, bishops, superintendents, and other officials
of the Church. Another Act was passed entitled 'That the ad-
1 M'Crie, Knox, ii. 231 ; Calderwood, Hist., iii. 237 ; Lang, Knox, 273. For last hours of
Knox, cf. account by Pierre de la Roque, Amsterdam, 1706, in the Wodrow MSS., 1. 90;
Jac. V. I. 14. For portrait, cf. Wodrozv MSS., fol. viii. Rob. iii. 2. 8 ; Carlyle, 'The Hero as
Priest,' Works, xiii. 133-41 ; P. Hume Brov/n, /o/in Knox, ii. App. 320.
78 THE COVENANTERS
versaries of Christ's Evangel shall not enjoy the Patrimony of the
Kirk,' and this ordained every one in the ministry, or enjoying benefit
from Church property, to subscribe the Confession and the relative
statutes.^ Another Act against 'disobedients ' compelled the lieges
to support the Gospel and the preachers, otherwise they would be
deemed traitors liable to excommunication,^
Confession of These are early examples of legislation, by which the Confession
Faith made a - . , ...
test. was converted from a standard mto a test, and it is noteworthy that
the demand for subscription originated with the civil ruler, whose
action was an infringement of the liberties of the Church. A cunning
purpose lay under these statutes. They dispossessed the Catholics
of all Church lands which they held, afforded patrons of benefices a
legal method of impoverishing the Church and enriching the Crown,
and virtually established the worst form of episcopacy. Results were
immediate. The vacant sees were speedily filled with unsuitable
persons, puerile, senile, ignorant, incapable, or immoral. Few had
Pauline qualifications, as the Minutes of Assembly, accusing them of
various offences, indicate. 'These Bishops,' says Calderwood, 'were
Tuichan called "Tulchan Bishops." A Tulchan is a calve's skin stuffed with
Bishops.
straw, to caus the kow give milke. For the lords gott the benefices,
and presented such a man as would be content with the least com-
moditie, and sett the rest in fewes, tacks, pensions, to them or
theirs.'^ Some parish ministers also became tulchan preachers, by
becoming collectors of the rents and dues from benefices on behalf of
the bishops. About ten per cent, of the pastors did not reside in
their parishes.* A considerable number of pastors had no congrega-
tions because the faithful were afraid to assemble for worship through
terror of factions and feuds.^ In remote districts the fact of the
Reformation was still unknown.
' Act 1572, c. 3 : Act. Pari. Scot., iii. 72. By Act 1567, c. 6, gainsayers of the Confession
were unchurched ; by Act 1572, c. 2, abstainers from the true religion were excommunicated.
2 Act. Part. Scot., iii. 71-7.
3 The Tulchan plan is credited to Patrick Adamson, whom Calderwood styled 'the knave
of all knaves' ; Wodrow, Collections, i. 27 ; Calderwood, History, iii. 207, 416.
* Booke of the U. Kirk, i. 336.
^ Ibid., i. 361.
ESTABLISHMENT OF THE CHURCH BY LAW 79
The General Assembly, which sat in August 1574, was representa-
tive of all estates, classes, and interests. The Regent, as ' a member
of Christ's body ' — the Church — was pressed to attend it. The wily
politician replied that he was too busy. The representative nature
of this Assembly, which could not be browbeaten by imperious clerics,
indicates what value must be put on the early enactments regarding
the ministry, patrimony, and policy of the Church ; as, for example,
when this and other Assemblies asserted, in face of the Reoent's
appointments to bishoprics, the Assembly's right to try the presentee ;
that a bishop is only the pastor of one flock ; that the patrimony is
ex jure divino, and its dilapidation a punishable offence.^ Leoisla-
tion of this character proves that the laity were as anxious as the
clergy to establish a religious system founded upon the Gospel and
reason, and were as averse to statecraft as to priestcraft.
Morton's aim was to crush the crippled Church and bend the Regent
ministers to his absolute will. He evaded his duty under the Leith ^^"""^on's
. policy.
Convention. The country was not planted with churches. The
royal exchequer managed the property of the Church to the hurt of
the stipendiaries, and, in many instances, paid a single stipend to a
pastor in charge of two, three, or more churches." A thorough
Erastian, Morton challenged the right of the Church to hold As-
semblies, and urged his presentees, such as Patrick Adamson, to
defy the Assembly. The Regent's immoral life, surly manners, and
grudge against the ministers, who had had ample cause for reproving
him, made the leaddfrs of the Church apprehensive of danger at his
hand.
In place of the light of Knox extinguished, a bright compen-
sating flame was fanned in Geneva after the arrival of those fugitive
Huguenots who had escaped the barbarities of St. Bartholomew's
Day in Paris and other French cities. In Geneva fresh enthusiasm
for evangelical religion and Protestant politics was roused by these
eminent professors, preachers, and teachers.
Andrew Melvin or Melville, a typical Scot abroad, caught the
^ Booke of ike U. Kirk^ i. 246, 326, 342, 360. - Reg. Privy Counc.^ ii. 310.
8o
THE COVENANTERS
Andrew new fervour. Melville, born at Baldovy near Montrose, on the
e VI e, 15/4. jg^ August 1 545, entered St. Mary's College, St. Andrews, in
1559.^ A pilgrim from college to college in search of truth — Paris,
Poictiers, Geneva, Lausanne — Melville was, from 1569 till 1574,
tarrying as a professor of Humanity, and a student of everything, in
the Academy of Geneva. He attended Beza's prelections. Exact
learning — theological, philosophical, legal, linguistic, scientific —
guided his encyclopaedic mind in its revolt against the enslaving
tendencies of effete theology and decadent science. He hated papal
politics. He saw through the absurdities of the common religion.
His almost incredible accomplishments secured for him a stead-
fast position on the bedrock of facts, upon which experience, vast
for a man of nine-and-twenty, and an acute, incisive judgment of
lightning speed, together with a sternly disciplined moral nature,
equipped Melville, above all his Scottish contemporaries, for wrest-
ling with the difficulties of the times. Having the pure, decided
principles of^ Calvin rooted in him by his learned preceptor,
Beza — himself ' Calvino calvinior ' — Melville was the man for the
hour.
Calvin had been a theological and social reformer ; Beza, though
following Calvin's logical method and approving of his punitive
sternness, was a studious diplomatist, so that Melville was even
more diversely trained than Knox was to handle weapons furbished
against open or covert attacks of despotism, both ecclesiastical and
secular.
Melville arrived in Scotland, in the midsummer of 1574, in the
company of Alexander Campbell, the young titular Bishop of Brechin,
and of the bishop's tutor.- Morton angled in vain for Melville's in-
fluence. He was soon appointed Principal of the moribund College
of Glasgow, liis animating power was in the inverse ratio of his
diminutive person, so that soon that school of learning rose from
its own ashes. The syllabus of his professorial work creates surprise,
Calvin and
Beza.
Melville in
Glasgow.
' M'Crie, Life of Andrew Melville^ 2, new edit. (Edin., 1899).
- Calderwood, Hist.^ iii. 328 : 'a little before Lambmesse.'
ESTABLISHMENT OF THE CHURCH BY LAW 8i
being large enough for a complete professoriate — embracing living
and dead languages, living and dead divinity, logic, philosophy,
rhetoric, history, calligraphy, geometry, geography, physics, politics,
and to these his biographer adds ' et cetera.' His fame spread
over the kingdom and soon the University was crowded to
overflowing. As Principal he had a seat in the Assembly, which
appointed him one of a committee to inspect publications, examine
bishops, revise the Discipline, and treat with the Regent.^
Melville, on his return, found the ecclesiastical system to be a Scots church
curious amalgam — a Church with a presbytero-episcopo-popish "" ^"^ '" '^^'^'
polity. An illogical, intolerable state of matters prevailed. The
ministry was a Pauline presbyterate. The superintendents were
detective overseers and were practically meddlers with the pastors
and congreorational officials. The Leith and Perth Concordat had
re-established thirteen bishops, some titular, others operative, with
partial dioceses and jurisdiction. Several deaneries, canonries, and
prebends retained Catholic beneficiaries. Remote parishes had
parish priests. Laymen, with and without a faith, enjoyed the patri-
mony. Surely a comprehensive genius was needed to handle this
ecclesiastical hodge-podge — everything and nothing.
The clear and experienced intellect of Melville could not fail to
conclude that Protestantism in Scotland would quickly disintegrate
under so many forces destructive of its fundamental principles, unless
a binding creed, an authoritative policy, and a legalised establish-
ment were mutually agreed upon by Church and State. With great
shrewdness he realised that episcopacy was not democratic enough,
and, by its past history, too menacing to a freedom dearly bought
by the Protestants. He saw the last state of prelacy worse than the
first, when the Lord- Bishop — the overseer of pastors and flocks-
was himself led about by a tutor as the titular of Brechin had been.^
To Melville, the Church true and free was an organisation Mdviiie's
founded upon a broad basis of principles enunciated in the Word ''^''^"
1 Bool^e of the U. Kirk, \. 310 et seq. : 7th August 1574.
2 Calderwood, Hist., iii. 368.
L
82 THE COVENANTERS
of God from which all standards of the Church were to be deduced.
With erudite proofs he taught that Presbyterianism wa^s jure divino ;
that the term ' bishop ' was, according to the Gospel in Greek
and to patristic writers, synonymous with ' presbyter ' and ' pastor ' ;
and that the hierarchy, being unauthorised by the Word of God,
was essentially dangerous. Melville also boldly maintained the
|)rinciple — which had stimulated Knox and the first Covenanters,
and which George Buchanan, at this very time, was illustrating
in his stirring treatise entitled De Jure Regni apud Scotos — that
the people are the only source of governmental power, and that
the king or governor is merely the subject of his subjects, the law
of the people speaking {'Rex, lex loquens'). The corollary of this
principle, namely, that it is lawful for any one to slay a ruler or
private individual, when he becomes a * public enemy,' was the
dano-erous idea which roused and stiffened the later Covenanters in
their opposition to the kings who broke the National Covenant.
In the Assembly of 1575 and subsequent conventions Melville
found the proper arena where his convincing polemical spirit could
carry his propositions into the field of practical politics.^ Joint-
committees appointed by Council and Assembly had failed to agree
Debate on upon a manual of Church government. In the Assembly, held in
episcopacy, August 1575, Johu DuHe, inspired by Melville, advanced the proposi-
tion that the episcopal function is not authorised by Scripture."
Melville followed and cited the authority of Calvin, Beza, and the
Swiss Churchmen in support of scriptural opposition to episcopacy.
A clerical committee was appointed to report if the diocesan system
then prevailing was intolerable. The committee prepared a consensus
declaring that a bishop was a pastor of one flock only, but might be
appointed an overseer and have certain duties given to him by his
co-presbyters. The next Assembly in April homologated this opinion
and ordered each of the bishops to select and enter on a pastorate.
1 Booke of the U. Kirk, i. 325, 337, etc. Spottiswood, fol. 275, said he was 'hot and
eager upon anything he went about, labouring with a burning desire to bring into this Church
the Presbyterial discipline of Geneva.'
^ Booke of the U. Kirk, i. 331 ; Calderwood, Hist., iii. 347.
ESTABLISHMENT OF THE CHURCH BY LAW 83
None of the six bishops present dissented from the finding/ It was
more difficult to convince the Regent, and afterwards the King. The
Church held a fast. But the obstinate spirits would not come forth
even 'by prayer and fasting.' The General Assembly in April 1576 General
appointed an influential committee of twenty members, including the ^^^^""^'y'
Bishop of Glasgow, Andrew Melville, John Erskine, John Row, John
Craig, Robert Pont, to consider the policy and jurisdiction of the
Church in pursuance of the recent deliverance regarding the episcopal
office, and to report to the next Assembly on 24th October 1576.
The committee duly reported from time to time, and in April 1577
had ' the heids of the Policie collectit in ordour, and digestit in one
bodie.' Again they were requested to revise it and present it
complete to the Assembly convened on 25th October. This they did.^
A few days later, after being 'proponit,' ' entreatit ' and 'disputit,' the
oft-revised Manual of Church Government, entitled 'The Heids of the
Policie and Jurisdiction of the Kirk,' was read in the Assembly, was
thought good, and was ordered to be presented to the Regent for
approval.^ At a conference with Morton on the subject Melville
pursued his arguments with relentless logic, which irritated the over-
bearing Regent so much that he exclaimed, * There will never be
quietness in this country till half a dozen of you be hanged or
banished the country.' 'Tush, sir,' retorted Melville; 'threaten
your courtiers after that manner. It is the same to me whether I rot
in the air or in the ground. The earth is the Lord's, Patria est
ubicunque est bene. I have been ready to give my life where it would
not have been half so well wared [spent] at the pleasure of my God.
I have lived out of your country ten years as well as in it. Let God
be glorified ; it will not be in your power to hang or exile His truth.' *
Brave little ' Episcopomastix ' — scourge of bishops — would not be King reigns-
browbeaten, far less cowed, even by a vindictive Douglas. In a few j^^g
months the flouted ministers saw the unpopular Regent compelled to
1 Booke of the U. Kirk, i. 352 : 24th April 1576.
2 Ibid., \. 362, 365, n-:,, 383, I'il, 391, 393, 397-
' Ibid., \. 397 ; ii. 409. * M'Crie, Melville, 6g.
84 THE COVENANTERS
resign in favour of the King and a Council of twelve. Melville had
the satisfaction of presiding at the Assembly held in the Mary
Magdalene Chapel, Edinburgh, on the 24th April 1578, when it was
ordained that bishops and other ecclesiastical dignitaries should be
addressed by their own names or as ' brethren,' that no more bishops
should be elected until next Assembly, and that all persons ' suspect in
religion ' should sign the Confession and become communicants in
parish churches.^ At the same time the Book of Policy was approved
of without dissent.- Fourteen years elapsed before the Policy
obtained the force of statute law in the Act (8, 1592) abolishing
'Acts contrary to the true Religion,' where it is referred to without
being specified.^ In 1581 it was fully engrossed in the Minutes of
Assembly, and presbyteries were ordered to get copies of it.*
Second Book This Sccoud Book of Discipline differs so little from the First Book
iscip ine. ^j^^^ j^ ^^^ ^^ considered its complement. The characteristics of the
Policy are : the acknowledgment of the Bible as the source of the
revelation that God hath appointed Christ to be the sole head of
the Church and of the State ; the declaration that the Bible is the
final court of appeal for the truth ; the assertion that presbyters are
the only pastors divinely sanctioned ; and the statement that civil
government is an authority founded on the law of God's Word. The
exposition of these four dogmas displays a beautiful picture of the
Christian commonwealth with the Redeemer at its head — a common-
wealth in two inseparable, yet distinct, parts. These parts are a pure
Church, founded on revealed truth, and consisting of pastors and
people, who are free ' according to the Word ' as found in the English
Bible ; and, on the same plane, a free State comprising godly
magistrates and the same people — the godly King being the chief
magistrate. The ideal is a theocracy — ImperiiiTn cum Imperio ; two
independent co-ordinated governments, both of God, having one
' authority, ground, and final cause ' for the purpose of advancing
^ Booke of the U. Kirk, ii. 403-11. 2 ifjid^^ ii, 408.
^ Act. Pari. Scot., iii. 541 : ' Anent the haill jurisdiction and discipline.'
* ' Headis and Conclusionis of the Policie of the Kirk' : Booke of the U. Kirk, part ii. 488-
512, 24th April 1 58 1, Session 9 ; Dunlop, A Collection, Art. 17.
ESTABLISHMENT OF THE CHURCH BY LAW 85
God's glory and making godly and good subjects. Government is
representative. The people, at the command of their invisible Head,
Jesus Christ, ' call ' or appoint their own governors, but the Church
has no temporal Head.
Table Illustrating Relation of Church and State to God.
God the Father = Christ the Head.
The Word of God.
The Christian Commonwealth.
I. Church.
[ I. Pastors or Bishops, Ministers, Seniors.
{Doctors or Prophets, Teachers,
Bishops, Elders, Catechisers.
Elders or Presidents, Governors, -
Deacons.
The Masses I ^'"S^ ^^ Princes,
ine Masses I Magistrates, People.
rKines or Princes. i.>
Magistrates.
iThe Masses
f Clergy.
iLa
>U. State.
aity.
The Second Book of Discipline consists of 209 paragraphs con-
tained under 13 heads treating of — Church and Policy compared
with Civil Policy, ecclesiastical functionaries, admission to office,
pastors and ministers, doctors and schools, elders, assemblies and
discipline, deacons, patrimony, magistrate in Church, Church reforms,
special heads of Reformation, utility following this Reformation.
The Church is defined to be the congregation of ' thame that Function of
professis the Evangell of Jesus Christ,' who subject themselves to
spiritual rulers. The State is this identical society governed in civil
matters by Christian magistrates, who nourish and defend the Church
without trespassing on its spiritual function. Their spheres of action
are distinct. Unfortunately no neutral zone was designated, and
hence arose the interminable conflicts on the borders between the
State and the Church. The Book is confused in the definition of
prerogatives. The pastors are to teach the magistrates how civil
jurisdiction is to be exercised according to the Scriptures (i. § 21).
The magistrates, on the other hand, are to command the pastors to
The ideal
clergy.
86 * THE COVENANTERS
exercise their office according to the same Word (i. § 17.) The
magistrate must thus have a spiritual function if he is to judge his own
duty by a reference to the Word, and is more than an executor. If
he makes laws to benefit the Church, he must be capable of judging
when any offender is a person referred to in the law. This last pre-
rogative is the crux of the matter.
Hildebrand prepared no more powerful lever to elevate the Pope,
Cromwell none more effective to abase the King, the Assembly none
better calculated to remove itself, than this claim to teach the King
and other godly rulers to reverence the voice of every pulpiteer, ' as
the majestie of the Sone of God speiking be thame [by them].'
The idealists of the Melvinian school contemplated no stupidity
in the ministry, and never dreamed that democratic impertinence might
obtain a sacred prerogative to be exercised to the hurt of many. The
ideal of the pastorate is high : what higher than the living voice of
Christ's Majesty ? To save souls the pastor is * a messenger and
herald betwixt God and the people.' There is no hierarchy nor
gradation of holy officers. If the pastor should prefer the name of
'bishop,' the choice is indifferent; to the term 'bishop' recollection
added no hallowing dignity, faith lent no power, and this Book confers
no distinction more than to pastor, minister, or presbyter. Any dis-
tinction the preacher has arises from his lawful election, by the people,
to be the pastor of one flock only, because ' true bishops should not
usurp lordship over their brethren and over the inheritance of Christ.'
Intrusion was a sacrilege not to be brooked.^ Every parish was to
obtain a treasure in Christ's holy preacher — no hireling, false teacher,
dumb dog, idle-belly, nor what savoured worst of all — an * ambitious
titular.' This nerative method of delineatino the Christ-like character
renders it doubtful that these stern covenanting logicians rightly
appreciated the tender traits of the Good Shepherd, who led, undriven,
all His flock, and carried the weakest in His bosom.
If jealousy for a pure ministry, on the one hand, prevented a
1 Alexander Henderson was passed through a window in Leuchars Church on his
intrusion there.
ESTABLISHMENT OF THE CHURCH BY LAW 87
pastor becoming a diocesan bishop, a judge, or, as was wittily said, a Pastors, not
' pantry-man,' that is, any other functionary than the dispenser of the p^"'''^-"^^"-
Bread and Water of Life to sinners; on the other hand, it also resented
uncompromisingly all State-interferenCe with the Church, unless when
the magistrate was invited to punish any adversary of the Gospel.
In this request was a dangerous acknowledgment of a stronger power
which might act with intolerance in other circumstances and never
heed the remonstrances of the injured Church.
The Book further teaches that the clergy are not the Church, but Church
are officers of it along with elders, deacons, and doctors. Pastors '^ "^''^ ^'
only can preach, administer sacraments, and solemnise marriage.
Doctors can teach the Word and help the elders in spiritual govern-
ment. Elders (of whom the minister is one) watch diligently over
the flock, and admonish those who are bad. Deacons receive and
distribute the income of the Church. The superintendent is not
mentioned. The patrimony is property lawfully given to the Church,
the alienation of which is sacrilege. In 1576 the Assembly declared
the patrimony to be ex jure divino — the property of the Church
only.^
The Assemblies are Universal, National, Provincial, and Parochial Origin of
urcsLivt cries.
— the latter being the Eldership of one congregation or more, with a
moderator to preside over each assembly. The ' Presbytery,' or
district assembly, developed out of the meeting of elders attending
the weekly ' Exercise ' of one congregation or of several congrega-
tions. The 'Exercise' is not referred to in this Book. This
' Eldership ' was not generally differentiated in two parts, the
parochial or sessional and the presbyterial, till, after 1592, the
Church, with parliamentary approval mapped out Scotland into
districts called presbyteries. The lesser presbytery remained as
the congregational kirk-session, made up of the pastor and the
elders of his pastorate; the greater presbytery, or classical assembly,
with the name of The Presbytery, had spiritual jurisdiction over a
defined area, embracing several parishes.
1 Booke of the U. Kirk, i. 360.
88 THE COVENANTERS
Practical work The Church, in endeavouring to realise the noble office of render-
of the Church, j^^ ^-^^ voice of 'the majesty of the Son of God' audible, welcome,
and authoritative, often demeaned its dignity when dealing with
adversaries. The accused had no right of immediate reply to the
sacred preacher. The security of the pulpit gave intolerant speakers
an inquisitional tone. Indeed, ' the quality of mercy ' was more than
strained when this Book declared that * the spiritual ruler judges both
inward affections and external action in respect of conscience by the
Word.' The clause ' by the Word ' does not imply toleration.
Though every individual, in disagreement with the Church, could
appeal to the Word (in English), and this was an advance from
inquisitional methods, yet the Church, in its Assembly, was the final
interpreter of that Word. If the magistrate refused to punish a
delinquent, the Church utilised the pulpit for fulminating a final
verdict on both. There was thus in store for the godly common-
wealth the worst of perils — narrow-mindedness, bigotry, and hypocrisy
— when thus the herald of the Gospel became an officious detective
ferreting out ' inward affections.' The Church government was
impartial, since kings, judges, magistrates, nobles, and citizens were
all compelled to submit themselves to the one discipline. And it is
also to be noticed that neither Book of Discipline places any part of
ecclesiastical jurisdiction in the power of one individual — king or priest.
A book of this character could not afford palatable doctrine to
rulers of the type of the Stuart kings, who assumed a Divine right
to do what they pleased.^ Not only was this code founded on God's
Word, it was fortified by the will of the people. It secured the
interest of the masses by making ' Christian brethren ' the main factor
of power, next to God, appraising them at divine, not royal or
baronial value, and commanding them to have their children, as
children of God — ' heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ ' — vir-
tuously educated. The printing of the Bible in 1576 and 1579 in
Edinburgh made the true rule of life a treasured possession in every
' /.e. the sovereigns after Mary Stimrt^ designated Stuarts, in contradistinction to the
Steivarts before Mary.
ESTABLISHMENT OF THE CHURCH BY LAW 89
pious home, and gave an irresistible impetus to the covenanted work The Scots
of religion in Scotland.^ This reproduction of the Genevan English ^'^'^"
Bible is a credit to the Scottish press of Alexander Arbuthnet and
Thomas Bassandyne. It is a magnificent folio, the Old Testament in
504 pages, the New Testament in 126 pages, the text in double
columns adorned with illustrations, and fully interpreted by notes on
the edges. A calendar, historical tables, and index complete this
very valuable work. The Preface by the General Assembly, dated
loth July 1579, gives King James the credit of publishing this Bible.
The New Testament bears the imprint of Bassandyne in 1576, the
Old Testament that of A. Arbuthnet in 1579. The annotations are
most valuable and original, and display a knowledge of theological
science with which the Reformers and Covenanters are not generally
credited. It has long been a stock argument among geologists that
the unscientific Church believed in the creation of the world in six
ordinary days. The annotators of this fine Bible drew a distinction
between the cosmic day and the twenty-four-hour day and night.
The marginal note on the third verse of the first chapter of Genesis
states : ' The light was made before either sun or moon was created,
therefore we most [must] not attribute that to the creatures that are
God's instrument which only apperteineith to God.' Another note
on the word 'day,' in the fourteenth verse, is, 'which is the artificial
day from the sunne rising to the going down.' On many other
points there are notes anticipating modern criticisms of the Bible.
The Second Book of Discipline made the principles of the Covenanters
intelligible, popular, and uniform.^
A dreamy day out of Paradise had suddenly dawned upon the rude Personal
denizens of the dark wynds and alleys of Edinburgh and other towns,
and more especially upon the wilder caterans who lived in leathern
jackets or war-tattered kilts, and were ever ready to desert the plough
for the sword at the call of imperious barons, when they heard the
1 Bassandyne and Arbuthnet's Genevan Version in English, ed. 1576, 1579; Aldis, List,
Nos. 145, 154.
2 Mitchell, The Scottish Reformation, chap, x., 214-38.
M
90 THE COVENANTERS
new pulpiteers everywhere declaring from this Book, that every man
must seek his own salvation, that the monarch, who ruled from
Dunedin's castled rock, was, just as any peasant, but a liegeman to
the Church — Andrew Melville even designated him ' God's sillie
[weak] vassal ' — and that every preacher, when in the pulpit, had
the right to flout monarch or merry-andrew with his sins, even as
Knox had retorted to Queen Mary : ' I am called to a public
function within the Church of God, and am appointed by God to
rebuke the sins and vices of all.' This view of civil magistracy is
identical with the teaching of the contemporary English exponent of
Presbyterianism, Thomas Cartwright, the Lady Margaret Professor
of Divinity at Cambridge. He stated that the magistrates must
govern the Church according to the Word of God, and ' must submit
their sceptres, throw down their crowns before the Church, yea, as
the prophet speaketh, lick the dust off the feet of the Church.'^
The new Things had changed. The commonwealth of Scotland was Christian,
common- ^^ theory at least. This was the truth which, as Melville defiantly
wealth. iq\^ Mortou, could uot and was not to be exiled from Scotland.
' Hallam, Co7ist. Hist., i. 187, quoting Madox, Viiiduation . . . agai7isl Neal, 122.
THE KING'S CONFESSION 91
CHAPTER IV
THE KING S CONFESSION
During the last thirty years of the sixteenth century picturesquely Tragedies in
tragical events followed each other with startling frequency. They centu^^^
reappear in visions bound with links of ruby hue, and pass, each
carried upon a stream of blood. This current, redder than the rest,
redder than Rizzio's, Darnley's, Moray's, Hamilton's, Lennox's,
Morton's, Ruthven's, than all others, splashing from the headsman's
axe, is the blood-royal itself, flowing ' in the auld enemy's land,' and
ceasing not till many men and things are tinged with it. Everywhere
the distracted cried out of the depths, ' Who will show us any good ? '
And many found it at the gallows-foot when embracing the execu-
tioner, whom they euphemistically called their 'good-man.'
In 1580 one sanctuary still unstained was the new-born Church.^
Elsewhere was a smell of blood. Still two parties strained against
each other — the Protestant holding sway, the Catholic striving for it.
They played a game of chess with living pieces, armed from plume
to spur — each party having a King and a Queen, defended by over-
reaching knights, obliquely moving bishops, unstable castles, and
unfortunate pawns.
The Catholic party had the stronger king in the Pope
(Gregory xiii., 1572-85, and his successor, Sixtus v., 1585-90)
and the weaker Queen in Mary Stuart, who lay in check in an
English prison. The Covenanters laid aside their brazen crown and
sceptre when the genuine national emblems of power were placed
1 The sanguinary measures left on the statute book were a heritage from the Roman
Catholic past. The story of the Scottish Reformation is unique in being a bloodless record.
92
THE COVENANTERS
Origin of the
National
Covenant of
1 580- 1.
on James's head and were guaranteed by Queen Elizabeth. The
political moves were many and engrossing, many the designs
balked, many the pieces pushed off the board by stronger Hands
than those of the players. The Pope, boasted king of this world,
had the King of Kings against him, and found perpetual check.
The movements which gave rise to the first National Covenant,
that of 1 58 1, were these. The efforts of Rome to undo the
Reformation, made by Jesuits, eminent teachers and preachers,
carrying out the programme of the Council of Trent, succeeded
abroad, so that the Protestants began to see themselves cornered
within a very few States in Europe, and being gripped in the
tightening grasp of the absolute Pope. The intellectual forces of
The Jesuits, the Jesuits — Scholarship, diplomacy, and obedience — were more
effective in weakening the unconsolidated Reformed Church than
the clumsier weapons of the punitive priesthood — sword, fire, and
rope. Young Scottish exiles were lovingly subsidised by Queen
Mary, at Douay College, and, with English refugees at Rome,
under the learned Dr. Allen, were equipped for a Holy Crusade.
The dispensations which Mary's servants in her prison obtained
to hide their creed were procurable by all opponents of heresy.
Hence it was difficult to discover the real character of devotees
attending meetings of Protestants, the while their hearts sadly
damped down an unswerving love for the Pope. A secret Mass
was their unsigned Covenant. English society was honeycombed
with pious traitors. Little Scotland was better watched. Ireland
was still an emerald in the papal crown. The strongholds of the
Protestant faith began to give indications of instability. England
was the one troublesome spot which the Pope would purge at any
price — gold, blood, and life. His design was of the craftiest. With
the crowns of Rome, Spain, and France in combination, England
might be won. The plan of Jesuit Nicolaus to rescue Mary and
marry her to a coercive husband, like Don John of Austria, or any
other Don with sacrificial intentions at Hymen's altar, was ludicrous
in its impracticable simplicity. Mary's acrid spinster-cousin, Eliza-
THE KING'S CONFESSION 93
beth, with virginal propriety, judged that three times at Hymen's
altar were enough for any sinner or saint; and, in 1587, she gave F^ite of Queen
up her lovely rival Queen as a sacrifice to justice on the bloody altar
of Fotheringay.
In the loyalty of Ireland Pope Gregory xiii. vainly imagined Papal plans,
that he possessed a lever to upset England. But this once gay
lawyer from the buoyant air of Bologna did not know the sad
Celtic pulse. His 'Peter's Pence' affording the sinews of war, in
1579, were thrown away. The arrival of the papal troops in Ireland
merely afforded their English destroyers another opportunity for
discreditable butchery. The instigators at home grew terrified as
the crusaders abroad became bolder, and filled their stirring appeals
with recitations of English atrocities. A Catholic triumph appeared
imminent, when the doom of Mary startled Europe, as no other
fact, save that of St. Bartholomew's Day, had ever done. It steeled
Pope Sixtus v. against further apathy or delay. He would crush
England with the Spanish soldiers of the Almighty. So Philip the
Second's Armada sailed, and sank, in 1588. A storm, with Providence The Armada,
directing it, destroyed the crusaders. The Pope had lost the game.^
Such were the leading movements which Andrew Melville, the
successor of Knox, and his Covenanting compatriots opposed, in
this Reign of Terror. The pastors and religious laymen who had
guided the new Church through every danger till now, were
eminent and bold exponents of root-principles in politics, sociology,
and morality, which were as little practised as understood in those
days. At the time when the Church required to be established for Reason for
political reasons, namely, after 1588, the nobles and land-owners
were not so intimately associated with the Church as before, and did
not attend its Assemblies. The Church was left to clerical guides.
Internecine quarrels sprang up between families, whose chiefs, such
as Glencairn and Eglinton, had supported the Reformation, and
these the presbyteries were called upon to settle.
^ For a concise account of the Reformation in Scotland and England, cf. Principal T. M.
Lindsay, A History of the Reformation, ii. 274-41S (Eciin., 1907).
94
THE COVENANTERS
Deaths of
Church
leaders.
The disagreeable, interfering activity of the King himself damped
the interest of the Presbyterian aristocracy in practical politics, and
ultra- Protestants became chary of attendance upon Court and Council.
John Erskine of Dun died in 1590, before he saw the dream of
his youth realised in a securely guarded Establishment.^ Nor did
his compatriot John Spottiswood see that consummation. It is
to be noted that the Principals of the Universities — Arbuthnot of
Aberdeen, Smeton of Glasgow, and Rollock of Edinburgh — died in
middle age, the former two not seeing the triumph of presbytery.
Otherwise, those Church leaders who had strenuously promulgated
democracy in opposition to royal absolutism, died ripe in years, when,
like Simeon, their eyes had seen the Salvation of Israel ; notably,
David Fergusson in 1598, John Durie in 1600, John Craig in 1600,
John Duncanson in 1601, John Davidson in 1604, David Lindsay in
1613, James Melville in 1614, Andrew Melville in 1622, and Robert
Bruce in 1631.^ These men brought the controversy between
Church and State to a clear issue, and the prolonged conflict
resulted in the triumph of democracy and presbytery. The four
Stuart monarchs were able to harass the Protestant Church for a
century, but they could not obliterate the national demand for
personal liberty in matters concerning religion and politics, any
more than the English Edwards could. The hyper-sensitiveness
of Scotsmen regarding freedom and religion has been mainly
generated through the action of English rulers, Anglo-Scottish
legislators, and southern teachers, who in vain attempted to reduce
the Scots to uniformity in nationality, law, and religion. Well-
grounded fears, and sad memories of the failures, sins, and tyrannical
crimes of the Catholic dignitaries, stiffened these early leaders
against any compromise with Romanism, or any system which was
deemed to be its counterfeit. Some, broader-minded or less appre-
hensive than the rest, might have given a modified episcopacy a fair
trial, yet no one could brook either a titular bishop or an imperious
* 22nd March 1590 : Misc. Spald. Clul\ iv., pp. Ixxvii, Ixxviii.
- 27tli July 1 63 1. Life by Wodrow, prefaced to Sct7nons (Edin., 1843).
THE KING'S CONFESSION 95
lordiing. Who could expect toleration of the discarded Faith from Toleration
men who, having escaped martyrdom by the skin of their own teeth, ""p°^^'^'^-
heard still of the torture of heretics abroad by rack, boots, ' turkas '
(flesh-pincers), ' dogs ' (thumbscrews), and fire, and who felt that the
oppressors' swords were not far from their own throats?^ In these
days exhausted combatants parleyed by means of toleration, as cynics
now do from mental indifference.
Although General Assemblies, before 1580, had levelled bishops
to the status of congregational pastors, these dignitaries, considering
that they had their honours direct from the Crown, refused to resign
their office, their seats in Parliament, and their estates, in exchange
for the miserable meal emoluments of the preachers, until they were
hunted into humility and equality, as was the persistent Patrick
Adamson, Archbishop of St. Andrews. King James, on his first
appearance in Parliament, on 24th October 1579, ratified the Act
(1567) establishing the Church in a statute declaring 'there is na
uther face of Kirk, nor uther face of religion.' The six bishops
present with the King did not comprehend its import. When, how-
ever, on the 1 2th July 1580, the Assembly met in Dundee, James Dundee
Lawson being Moderator, Andrew Melville, Professor of Logic, gave ^^^^^ ^'
them a lesson in the lost art of reasoning. Through his influence an
Act was passed finding the office of bishop to have neither warrant
nor hint in Holy Writ, and to be a foolish, corrupt, destructive
invention. The bishops were enjoined to demit their function, cease
ministerial duties, and seek re-admission as simple pastors, under pain
of excommunication." The finishing stroke to diocesan episcopacy
was delivered when the Churchmen began to turn the code of the
Book of Discipline to practical account, and to designate presbyteries
out of the weekly ' Exercises.' Nevertheless, with the King's
approval, the royal bishops greedily clung to their posts and
patrimony, to the scandal and injury of the Church.
^ R. D. Melville, TAe Use and Forms of Judicial Torture in England and Scotland., with
illustrations; Scot. Hist. Rev.., ii. 7, 225.
■^ Booke of the U. Kirk, ii. 453 ; Calderwood, iii. 469 ; Spottiswood, fol. 311.
96
THE COVENANTERS
D'Aubigny,
1579-
Terror for
Frenchmen.
Duke of
Lennox.
The arrival in Edinburgh of some gay Frenchmen in September
1579 made Churchmen needlessly nervous regarding their visibly
active and undermining enemies — the Catholics. The city-ministers,
advised by spies in France, gave ' loud and tymous warning ' of the
advent from France of Esme Stuart, Monsieur d'Aubigny, to whom
the magistrates extended a princely welcome to the capital. Esme was
of the Lennox Stuarts, and the King's cousin-once-removed. ' Not
removed enough,' cried many, who correctly surmised that he was an
agent of the Pope and of the bloody Guises — a man too courtly
to be honest, and too brilliant to be genuine. Not credulous, but
suspicious, was the time.
From Edinburgh, where public opinion was fabricated, there flew
to the country the wildest gossip regarding papal gold sent to buy
the nobles, concerning the conspirators, whom the modern Antichrist,
the Duke of Guise, had conveyed to their ship, and about some
dreadful plots. In parish pulpits, round rural hearths, and wherever
men met, the blood-curdling memories of St. Bartholomew's Day
were recalled with terror, and any traveller who had returned from
France, or had witnessed the butchery in Paris, was made to wash
his hands of complicity in presence of the worshippers assembled in
Church. The gay French visitors, probably made more festive,
noisy, and pot-valiant by the northern vm de pays, were eyed askant
as those very assassins from Paris. Balcanqual, a preacher,
denounced them ' become now so bold as to draw their bloody sword
upon the calsey [causeway] of Edinburgh to shed the blood of the
professors of religion.'
The first to succumb to the new diplomacy was Regent Morton,
hated by his peers for his insolence, by the clergy for contempt of
their cause. He sought revenge in intrigues with England, which
resulted in his ruin. Into Morton's place stepped D'Aubigny, soon
created Duke of Lennox and Lord High Chamberlain. This fasci-
nating courtier, some thirty years old, a Catholic of flexible principles
and easy morals, whose role, or mission, was to save King James from
the perdition of Protestantism, must have appeared in the eyes of
THE KING'S CONFESSION 97
the simple boy-monarch as ' Hyperion to a Satyr,' when compared
with the rude drill-sergeants of his youth — those sad-visaged
Calvinistic expounders of the perfect truth. D'Aubigny had become
a Protestant so easily that the stern Covenanters, born again as
Christians and as patriots through the painful throes of blood and
tribulation, rightly distrusted his sincerity.
Captain James Stewart, heir of his uncle, Chatelherault, soon to Eari of Arran.
be Earl of Arran, brother-in-law of John Knox, a mercenary and a
profligate scoundrel, divided with Lennox the royal favour and the
Church's patrimony. The developing corruption of the young King
was seen, even by worldlings, to be a peril to Crown, Church, and
country, which called for resistance. A still more alarming danger
was suspected — probably divulged to the watchful Covenanters — in a
Catholic plot to convert or depose the King, and to murder Queen
Elizabeth, in which Lennox was believed to be implicated.
The pulpit was still the impregnable citadel where 'God's Lieu- Power of the
tenant,' the preacher, held sway. Everywhere the preachers stirred ^'" ^' '
the people with fears of the loss of freedom. Two fearless shepherds
of the capital, Walter Balcanqual and John Durie, in December
1580, made the Church of St. Giles ring with denunciations of
Papists, French ruffians, imported diseases, and the iniquities of
Sodom generally. Balcanqual declaimed how banished Catholics
'swarm home from all places like locusts,' having access to Court
('the Frenche Court,' he contemptuously styled it), to kirk-sessions,
and to Assemblies, and how Parisian quarrels were settled on the
streets of Edinburoh. For this outburst the Kino^ harassed his
critics and dismissed Durie from the city. The people believed
the preachers.
The news that St. Andrews University was infected with Catholic
Catholicism, and that in rural parishes contemptuous Papists said
requiem masses for the decadent ministry, incensed the determined
pastors. Doubtless, gossip exaggerated the facts of the case. It
was true, however, that when the minister of Lochwinnoch's mare
died on the road near Paisley, three blasphemers from that town
N
98 THE COVENANTERS
appeared, offered to the carcase ale and corpse-meats, sang the dirge,
and danced round the mare, as the symbol of the Reformed Church.^
Another gleeful Papist, followed by some armed reprobates, entered
the churchyard of Neilston, in the same quarter, to the sound of bag-
pipes, and while public worship proceeded piped, danced, and
screamed for the 'hert-blude' of the reader, who wisely remained in
the sacred buildine and was safe there — such was the indelible
superstition of those profane ruffians.
Queen Elizabeth's ambassador at Court kept up the scare till
Elizabeth and the Prince of Orange gave James the alarm of con-
spiracy. Some dispensations permitting the Catholics to pose as
Protestants so long as * they did use their diligence to advance in
secret the Romane Faith' were intercepted." James could no longer
be in doubt, especially when he learned that his alleged perversion
was subject of common gossip. In 1580 the King converted his
household into a regular congregation or pastorate, and ordained
that the Church was to have full jurisdiction in his palaces. John
John Craig. Craig was appointed one of his chaplains — a remarkable preferment,
since Craig was one of the most outspoken of the original leaders.
Experience as a monk, travel in Catholic lands, and a grasp of the
situation gained through his pastoral work in St. Giles, Montrose,
and Aberdeen, and through his association with the compilers of the
Church Standards, made Craig a bulwark of strength. It is con-
ceivable that the impressionable King even felt gratitude towards the
bold preacher who protested against Mary's marriage to Bothwell,
and who stayed in the city when the other pastors fled from her
wrath. Craig had the King's confidence, and it does not transpire
that the King consulted Council, Parliament, or Assembly, before
authorising Craig to draft a Confession of Faith, which would afford
a test of the fidelity of the lieges to Crown and Church. It is not
unlikely that, since Lennox and his gay comrades on subscribing this
Confession were somewhat relieved of grave suspicion, Lennox may
have suggested the test to James. But historical data do not indicate
' Reg. Privy Connc.^ iii. 209, 215. ^ Spottiswood, fol. 308.
THE KING'S CONFESSION 99
that the plot to restore Mary and Catholicism was so imminent as the
preachers said it was in 1580.
On 28th January 1581 the King and his household subscribed The King's
the Confession, afterwards designated 'The King's Confession,' 'The 1581.
Covenant,' 'The National Covenant,' 'The Second Confession of
Faith,' and 'The Negative Confession.' Row aptly describes this
Covenant as 'a touchstone to try and discern Papists from Protes-
tants.'^
(i) It affirms that true religion is revealed in the Gospel, is
preached by certain 'notable kirks,' chiefly the Kirk of Scotland, and
is interpreted in the Confession of Faith confirmed by Acts of
Parliament.
(2) It abjures all contrary religion, i.e. popish doctrine, law, and
ceremonies wherein these are unscriptural.
(3) It binds the subscribers to obedience to and defence of the
'doctrine and discipline ' of ' this true Reformed Kirk' of Scotland.
(4) It asserts that this Confession is honest and not an in-
dulgence.
(5) It binds the subscribers to defend the King, himself the
Defender of the Church and of the liberties of his people.
A remarkable feature of this Covenant is the apparently studied
absence of any reference to diocesan episcopacy, or to presbytery as
established by statute, in its fulmination against Papistry with all its
rites and ceremonies alleged to be erroneous, blasphemous, and un-
scriptural. Nor is the Liturgy catalogued among the things detested
and removed. The particular references to the form of religion
established in Scotland in 1581 are found in these terms: ' Kyrk of
Scotland ' ; 'the Confession of owre Fayth, stablished and publictly
confirmed by sindrie Actis of Perlamentis, and now of a long tyme
hath bene openly professed by the Kingis Maiestie, and whole body of
this Realme ... To the whilk Confession and Forme of Religion we
willingly agree in owre conscience in all poyntis ' ; ' this true reformed
1 The original document is preserved in the Advocates' Library, Edinburgh. Cf.
Appendix. A reduced facsimile appears in this volume.
loo THE COVENANTERS
Kyrk ; to the quhilk we joyne owreselues willingly, in doctrine, fayth,
religion, discipline, and wse of the holie Sacramentis.'
The Covenant of 1581 interpreted by its own terms cannot be
said to do more than ignore episcopacy, at least in its diocesan form.
It does not openly abjure it. But, read in the light of the then
practice of presbyterial form of government in its purity, of the
King's letter to Glasgow Assembly, 1581, agreeing to the erection
of presbyteries, and to the ratification of the Book of Policy,
together with the Act of that Assembly, passed immediately after
receiving this approval, acknowledging the same King's Confession or
Covenant to be a Christian Confession, this Covenant of 1581 placed
prelacy beyond the field of practical politics. Nor did King James,
in the subsequent Covenant of 1589, disturb that position of matters.
The signature of the King is followed by that of Lennox and that
of Morton — by this time a prisoner in Edinburgh Castle. The King's
chaplains, Craig and Duncanson (Sub-dean of the Chapel Royal), and
the King's preceptor, Peter Young, also signed. On the 2nd March
the King commanded all ministers and commissioners to cause all
parishioners to subscribe, and enacted that refusers should be
Glasgow punished. This course the Glasgow Assembly on the 28th April,
after registering the Second Book of Discipline, approved of; thus, by
mistake, putting the imprimatur of the Church upon an Act arising
out of the King's absolutism and assumed headship of the Church.^
This easy acquiescence and official declaration of the manifesto to be
' ane true and Christian Confessioun ' was readily obtained after the
King's promised liberality and approval of the erection of presbyteries.
Glasgow When the framers of the Covenant in 1638 interpreted the bearing
le-s"^ ^' ^^ ^^^^ Confession upon the subject of episcopacy, Robert Baillie,
minister of Kilwinning, was the only dissentient from the view that it
discouraged episcopacy. The Confession of 1581 itself is clear in de-
claring the determination of the subscribers to maintain the ' discipline
of this Kirk,' and yet there might have remained a loophole for the
crafty, inasmuch as the Book of Discipline, though operative, had no
^ Booke of the U. Kirk, ii. 477, 512.
Assembly,
1581
i
THE KING'S CONFESSION loi
«
parliamentary sanction for years afterwards. Everywhere this Cove-
nant was subscribed with enthusiasm. Printed copies were in circu-
lation/ It was translated into many tongues. One permanent Result of
,1 1 • 1 • /^ r • 1 ..•a Confession.
result of the Kmg s alarm expressed m his Confession was the ratifi-
cation by Parliament, in November 1581, of the liberty of the Church
guaranteed in previous statutes, notably that of 1567. The tenor of
the Kine's Confession is as follows : —
(Ane short and general Confessione of the true Christiane Fayth arad ReHgione, The King's
according to Godis Vorde, and Actis of our Perlament, subscryued by the Kingis Confession,
Maiestie and his Houshold, with sindrie otheris, to the glorie of God, and good ^5
example of all men att Edinburgh!, the 28 day of Januare 1580, and 14 yeare of
his Maiesties reigne.)
We all, and ewerie one of ws wndervritten, protest, that after long and dew-
examination of owre Consciences in matteris of true and false religioun, are now
throchly resolued in the trueth, by the Worde and Sprit of God :
And therefore we beleue with owre heartis, confesse with owre mouthes, subscrywe
with owre handis, and constantly affirme before God and the whole world, That
this onely is the true Christiane Fayth and Religion, pleasing God and bringing salua-
tion to man,whilk is now, by the mercy of God, reweled to the world by the preach-
ing of the blessed Ewangell ; and is receaued, beleued, and defended by manie and
sindrie notable Kyrkis and realmes ; but chiefly by the Kyrk of Scotland, the
Kingis Maiestie, and three Estatis of this Realme, as Godis eternall trueth and onely
ground of our Saluation, as more particulerly is expressed in the Confession of
owre Fayth, stablished and publictly confirmed by sindrie Actis of Perlamentis,
and now of a long tyme hath bene openly professed by the Kingis Maiestie, and
whole body of this Realme, both in brught and land : To the whilk Confession and
Forme of Religion we willingly agree in owre conscience in all poyntis, as wnto
Godis wndoubted trueth and weritie, grounded onely wpon his written Worde :
And therefore we abhorre and detest all contrarie religion and doctrine; but
cheifly all kynd of papistrie in generall, and particular headis, ewen as they are now
damned and confuted by the Worde of God, and Kirk of Scotland : But in specale
we detest and refuse the usurped authoritie of that Romane Antichrist wpon the
Scriptures of God, wpon the Kirk, the Ciwill Magistrate and conscience of men :
all his tyrranous lawes made wpon indifferent thinges agaynst owre Christiane
libertie ; his erroneous doctrine agaynst the sufificiencie of His written Worde, the
perfection of the Lawe, the office of Christ and his blessed Ewangell ; his corrupted
doctrine concernyng originall synne, owre naturall inabilitie and rebellion to
godliness, owre justificatioun by fayth onely, owre imperfect sanctification and
obedience to the Law ; the nature number and wse of the holie Sacramentis ; his
fywe bastard Sacramentis, with all his ritis, ceremoneis and false doctrine, added to
» Row, Hist., 73, and note: 'At London by Robert Waldegrave, 1581, small 8vo, and
many other editions' ; Aldis, Ltsl^ No. 211 ; printed with Craig's Catechism (1581).
I02 THE COVENANTERS
The King's the ministration of the true Sacramentis without the W'orde of God ; his cruell judge-
Lonfession, ment agayiist infantis deperting without the Sacrament ; his absolute necessitie of
baptisme ; his blasphemous opinion of transsubstantiation, or reall presence of
Christs body in the Elements, and receawing of the same by the wicked, or bodeis
of men ; his dispensationeis with solemnes othes, periuries, and degreis of mariage
forbidden in the Worde ; his crueltie agaynst the innocent deuorced ; his diwilishe
Mes ; his blasphemous preisthood ; his prophane sacrifice for the synnes of the
dead and the quyck ; his canonization of men, calling wpon angelis or sainctis
deperted ; worshiping of imagreis, reliques and croces ; dedicating of kyrkis,
altaris, dayis ; woues [vows] to creatures ; his purgatorie, prayeris for the dead,
praying or speaking in a strange langwage ; with his processioneis and blasphe-
mous letanie, and multitude of aduocatis or mediatoreis ; his manifold ordoures ;
auricular confession ; his despered and wncertayne repentance ; his generall and
doubtsome fayth ; satisfactioneis of men for theyr synnes ; his justification by
workes, his opus operatum, workes of supererogation, meritis, pardones, perigrina-
tioneis, and stationeis ; his holy water, baptisyng of bellis, cungering of spritis,
crocing, saning, anoynting, coniuring, hallowing of Godis good creatures, with
the superstitious opinion joyned therewith ; his worldlie monarchic, and wicked
hierarchic ; his three solemne woues [vows], with all his shawelingis of syndrie
sortes, his erroneous and bloodie decretes made at Trent, with all
the subscryweris and approweris of that cruell and bloodie band, coniured
agaynst the Kyrk of God. And finally, we detest all his wane allegories, ritis,
signes, and traditioneis broght in the Kyrk, without or agaynst the Worde of God,
and doctrine of this true reformed Kyrk ; to the quhilk we joyne owreselues
willingly, in doctrine, fayth, religion, discipline, and wse of the holie Sacramentis,
as lyuely memberis of the same in Christ owre Head : promising and suearing by
the great name of the Lord owre God, That we shall continue in the obedience of
the doctrine and discipline of this Kyrk, and shall defend the same according to
owre wocation and pouer, all the dayes of owre lyues, wnder the paines contained
in the Law, and danger both of body and saule in the day of Godis fearfull judge-
ment. And seing that manie are styrred wp by Satan, and that Romane Anti-
christ, to promise sueare, subscryue, and for a tyme wse the holie Sacramentis in
the Kyrk deceatfully, agaynst there owne conscience, mynding heireby, fyrst, wnder
the externall clok of the Religion, to corrupt and subuert secretly Godis true
religion within the Kirk ; and afterward when tyme may serue, to become open
enemeis and persecutoris of the same, wnder wane hope of the Papis dispensation
diuised agaynst the Vorde of God, to his greater confusion and theyre dowble
condemnation in the day of the Lord Jesus : We therefore willing to take away all
suspition of hypocrisie, and of syk dowble dealing with God and his Kirk, protest
and call the Searcher of all heartis for witnes, that owre myndis and heartis do
fullely agree with this owre Confession, promise, othe, and subscription ; so that we
are not moved for any worldly respect, bot are perswaded onely in owre conscience,
throught the knawledge and loue of Godis true religion, prented in owre heartis by
the Holy Sprit, as we shall answer to Him in the day, when the secretis of all
heartis shalbe disclosed. And because we perceaue that the quietnes and stabilitie
of owre Religion and Kirk depend wpon the sawetie and good behaviour of the
c
THE KING'S CONFESSION
lo-
Kyngis MaiestiCj as wpon ane comfortable instrument of Godis mercy graunted to
this cowntrey, for the mainteining of his Kyrk, and ministration of Justice amongis
ws ; We protest and promise solemnetly with oure heartis, vnder the same othe,
hand writ and panes, that we shall defend his persone and authoritie with owre
geyr, bodyes and lyues, in the defence of Christis Euangell, libertie of owre
cowntrey, ministration of justice, and punishment of iniquitie, agaynst all enemeis
within this realme or without, as we desyre owre God to be a strong and mercyfull
defender to ws, in the day of owre death, and coming of oure Lord Jesus Christ :
To whome, with the Father and the Holie Sprit, be all honour and glorie
eternally. Amen.
James R.
M'" Johne Crag.
Jhon Duncanson.
Michaell Elphinstoun.
P. Yowng.
Robert Erskyne.
James Elphinstoun.
S. Borthik vithe hand and hart.
Welzame Crag.
Jhone Mordo.
James Coluill of Est Wemes.
George Douglas.
Alex"" Durem.
Walter Steuart Pryore of
Blantyre.
Villiam Ruthen off Ballandane.
Jhon Scrymgeour Yownger off
Glaswall.
William Morray.
Dauid Murray.
James Frasser.
Lenox.
Mortoune.
Bothwell.
Argyll.
Ruthven,
Robert Stewart.
Seton.
R. Dunfermling.
P. Mr of Gray.
Cathcart.
James Halyburtoun.
James L. Ogiluy.
Allane L. Cathcartt.
Villiam Schaw.
James Steuart.
AlP Seytown.
J. Chishle.
Richard Heriot.
Maister Thomas Hamilton.
Waltir Kyer.i
Subscribers to
the Confes-
sion.
When the Covenant of 1581 was being subscribed the administra-
tion of Regent Morton had ended, and by the machinations of his
rival, Lennox, he lay in prison awaiting trial and a foregone doom.
At length, on 2nd June, the head of that detested noble became a
' Corrected from the original in the Advocates' Library. The parchment is indorsed
thus : 'Covenant subscryved be King James of worthie memorie and his houshold, 28 Jan.
1 580. Sent frome Somer in France be Monseur ... to my Lord Scottistarvett in August
1641 ' ; Booke of the U. Kirk, \\. 515-18.
A copy of this Covenant is recorded in the Anstruther Kirk-Session Record, with 743
subscriptions of the parishioners of Anstruther, Pittenweem, and Abercromby : .M'Crie,
Melville, 81 note.
Lord Scotstarvet restored the original document to the General Assembly in 1646 and got
'an order of thanks': Peterkin, Records, 453. The parchment measures about 18A inches
square. A facsimile appears in Nat. MSS. 0/ Scotla?id, iii. Ixx.
I04
THE COVENANTERS
Fall of
Morton.
Glasgow
Assembly,
1581.
grizzly finial on the gable of the Tolbooth of Edinburgh, warning
every pedlar below of treason and every politician of the ingratitude
of autocrats. Had haughty Morton heeded the frenzy of old skipper
Lindsay, a shaggy prophet in St. Andrews, who foretold his fate, then
the Marian partisans now boldly returning from exile or hiding,
jocund Papists like Fernihirst, and the bedizened courtiers crowd-
ing the windows of High Street to see him die, would have been
less merry in viewing 'The Heart of Midlothian ' that day. But a
breezy soothsayer, ' all rough with haire ... a great tufte of haire
upon his brows and als great a tufte upon the neb of his nose,' was
scarcely the Jeremiah to force conviction upon the baronial instincts
of a Douglas.^ Although the Covenanters did not grieve at Morton's
fate, till they fell upon worse governors, they did not desert their fallen
persecutor. The city pastors attended him to the block — the Maiden
and by the application of threat and comfort constrained the criminal
to turn his gruesome execution into a satisfying spectacle for faithful
professors, who joyfully came to see him in the hysterics of a fearful
faith oTovelling and leaping about the scaffold, before he rose to
peaceably offer his soiled soul to his Redeemer."
The Glasgow Assembly, on 25th April 1581, disposed of an
ambiguity existing in an Act of Dundee Assembly in 1580 abolishing
episcopacy, and declared that ' they meanit haillelie [wholly] to con-
demne the estate of Bischops as they are now in Scotland.' The
office of reader was also discountenanced.^ This Assembly approved
of a scheme of ecclesiastical divisions under one Assembly, eighteen
synods, fifty presbyteries, and six hundred parishes (instead of the
924 old parishes) ; of graduated annual stipends of one hundred to
five hundred merks (i.e. £s, us. id. to ^27, 15s. 5d.); and of the
settlement of the patrimony, and of Catholic stipendiaries who were
actual or titular officials.
> Calclerwood, Hist., iii. 462 ; Melville, Autobiography, 81 (Wodrow Soc).
- Bannatyne, Me}7torialcs, 320-31. He was buried in Greyfriars Churchyard, and his
grave marked with a stone inscribed with the letters 'J. E. M.' His head was, by the
King's orders, removed and buried, 8th Dec. 1 582.
3 Bookc of the U. Kirk, 474, 479, 5>3-
THE KING'S CONFESSION 105
Just on the inauguration of these sensible arrangements, as mis-
fortune would have it, James Boyd, titular Archbishop of Glasgow,
died in June. Lennox saw an opportunity for peculation of the fat
revenues of the diocese, and made a successful search for a simoniac
among the threadbare clergy. In Robert Montgomery, then minister Archbishop
of Stirling, he found a knave willing to dispone the wealth for the ^ °^^s°™^'^y'
throne of a bishop, together with ^83, 6s. 8d., 'some horse-corn and
poultry' thrown in annually — a mere moiety, and yet not a bad
bargain after all for a lay-preacher, who during a strange vagabond
ministry, since the Reformation, had but ^16 of stipend, or thereby.
Montgomery, like Boyd, was an Ayrshire man. In his early days he
was a stiff dissenter of the Lollard type, able to preach in 1560, and
to fare well on 'horse-corn and poultry.' Court favour, probably
episcopal leanings, and elastic principles made him suitable for
invitation to the Leith Convention in 1572.^
King James, conforming to the Leith Concordat, conferred the
see of Glasgow upon this choice of Lennox — Montgomery. The
Glasgow presbyters refused to implement the appointment. The
case was remitted to the General Assembly, which met in Edin-
burgh on the 17th October. It duly homologated the action of
the inferior court and interposed itself, as a party in the case, against
the King.- One cannot now doubt that here the Church made an The Mont-
initial mistake in forgetting that the Assembly had not the power, ^"^""^'^ '^^^^■
without consent of the other party to the contract, to set aside the
Settlement of Leith, and that Consensus facit jus. The same error
led to the Ten Years' Conflict and to the ultimate disruption of
the Scottish Church in 1843, when irascible, headstrong ecclesiastics
ignored the time-honoured maxim of jurisprudence : ' Nemo potest
rmttare consilium simm in alterius injuria7n'
The subsequent procedure of the Church was proper when the Montgomery
menaced Assembly, defying the King, proceeded at the instance of
Andrew Melville to libel Montgomery for grotesque teaching,
^ ' A stolid asse and arrogant ' : Scot, Apol. Narr., 49.
2 Booke of the U. Kirk, ii. 522-47.
O
io6 THE COVENANTERS
erroneous doctrine, slander, and some venialities, a course which
even the King declared to be conform to their jurisdiction.^ But
so long as the Concordat remained unrepealed, interim though it
was, the spiritual courts acted ultra vires in doing anything more
than trying Montgomery as a 'qualified pastor,' even although
the Act of Assembly, 1580, abolished episcopacy.
The refusal of the Church to implement the terms of the Con-
cordat brought into play the jus devolutiwi, whereby the King, in
April 1582, claimed the disposal of the bishopric and its spiritual
office, as well as the right to restrain the ecclesiastical courts from
troubling his nominee. On the other hand, the Assembly pro-
hibited the bishop-elect from leaving Stirling and intruding himself
upon the plasgow pastorate on pain of excommunication. Now
suspended from the ministry, Montgomery, pretending ignorance of
these proceedings, continued officiating. Clerical blood was fired.
Assembly in Montgomery was summoned to an Assembly in St. Andrews in April,
St. Andrews ai tx/ti-ii ••!• o ry^^ r- i r i
in April 1582. Andrew Melville presidmg." The respondent, defiant, left the
meeting. Immediately thereafter a messenger-at-arms walked into
the reverend court and discharged the brethren from further inter-
ference with the prelate, under pain of being proclaimed rebels.
Unmoved by this threat, Melville urged the Assembly to execute its
decree of deprivation and excommunication, unless the accused
submitted. Terrified, Montgomery did submit. But the vicious,
bibulous creature, incited by his patrons, proceeded to Glasgow,
and, in company of the magistrates, invaded a meeting of pres-
bytery, the result of which was the imprisonment of the moderator
and a bloody riot of students seeking revenge for this insult. In
terms of a remit of the Assembly, the prelate was excommunicated
in Liberton Church by Davidson, minister of Prestonpans, on the
loth June.2
As a Roland for an Oliver, the King and Council, angry beyond
measure at the triumph of clerical rebelliousness, summoned a trio
' Booke of the U. Kirk, ii. 533, ei q.v. ^ Ibid., ii. 557-75.
2 Scot, Apol. Nnrr., 49 ; Row, Hist., 97 ; Melville, Autobiog.., 128-31.
THE KING'S CONFESSION 107
of city ministers, John Durie, James Lawson, and Walter
Balcanqual, to answer for their impertinent comments on the
case in the pulpit. The still more impertinent bodyguard of citizens
who accompanied their pastors to the inquiry was a good reason for
the dismissal of the trio. But the incorrigible Durie, who appears
to have been a perfect spitfire of vituperation, was ordered out of
Edinburgh for an example to the rest. His friend James Melville
declared he 'was a verie guid fallow,' but of 'small literature.'^
Durie had cause to hate prelatic tyranny. In his youth he John Durie,
was condemned to be built up in a wall for heresy. Now he was ^^^"^'^ °°'
the well-known pastor of St. Giles, one of those commanding
leaders of men, difficult to browbeat, who occupied the popular
eye and ear as he thundered against the sins and craft of the day.
A picturesque character, too, was he, when, with an iron corslet
for a cassock and a hagbut (musket) for a pastoral staff, this beau-
ideal of the Church militant marched down the Nor' Loch banks in
search of small game. When he was silenced, Lindsay of Leith
and others filled the churches with jeremiads. The Church taking
action against the abettors of Montgomery made matters worse.
A General Assembly met in Edinburgh on the 27th June, when An angry
Melville, the Moderator, gave an impassioned discourse on the
subject : ' We both labour and suffer reproach because we trust
in the living God.' He declaimed against the tyrannical inter-
ference of the Crown in Church concerns, which he designated the
' bludie gullie ' (bloody knife) of absolute authority, whereby men
intended to pull the crown off Christ's head and to wring the sceptre
out of His hand." But clerical provocation, broken contracts, and
misapplied jurisdiction were not entered into the reckoning as a
set-off. A strong committee, bearing fourteen complaints, was sent
to interview the King and Council. The reply of the Crown on
2nd July was a proclamation at the Cross, instituting Montgomery
in the bishopric and declaring his excommunication null.
Scotland now witnessed in the most exalted arena a pitiful
1 Autobiog.^ 78. '^ Calderwood, iii. 622.
io8 THE COVENANTERS
illustration of the love of Christians for each other, as King and
clergy contended for spiritual supremacy, and peaceable citizens
were thrown into opposing factions. The unhappy creature for
whom all this turmoil was raised sneaked about Holyrood House,
or ' scooted ' down the darkest alleys of the capital, well pelted with
those unsavoury, missiles which have been popular with mobs of
Scottish freemen from time immemorial, and was banned by the
more sedate for being a drunken son of Simon Magus/
The deputation of the Assembly, of whom were Erskine of Dun,
Craig, Duncanson, Pont, James Lawson, Thomas Smeton, Andrew
Hay, David Lindsay, Andrew Polwart, Peter Blackburn, Patrick
Galloway, William Christison, David Fergusson, Thomas Buchanan,
John Brand, Patrick Gillespie, John Porterfield, James Melville, and
Perth Conven- Andrew Melville, repaired to Perth, on 6th July 1582, to a Conven-
tion, 1582. |.}qj^ qjP ^YiQ King and nobility. They bore a complaint, which was in
substance an indictment of the King and Council for interfering
with the Church, refusing to execute the laws, and encouraging
profligate citizens.
Foremost in the Convention was the insolent Earl of Arran,
not a whit abashed by his recent seat upon the stool of repentance
in church for his carnal conduct. When the complaint was pro-
duced, Arran contemptuously inquired : ' Who darre subscrive these
treasonable articles?* Instantly the Principal of the New College
of St. Andrews, Andrew Melville, stepped forward, and taking the
quill out of clerk Hay's hand, wrote his signature, the while say-
ing with emphasis : ' We darre ; and will subscrive them, and rander
our lives in the caus.'" When the Convention saw the whole
deputation signing, they imagined that it was no act of temerity, but
one of assurance, founded on a warranted strength of armed supporters
at hand, and deemed it prudent to dismiss the deputation with a tem-
porising reply. Yet at this juncture the Church was not buttressed
by the most influential laymen, and had to rely on a strong band of
clergy and staunch elders, who made the incoherent sections of the
' Caldervvood, iii. 634. 2 M'Crie, Melville, 85.
THE KING'S CONFESSION 109
Church gravitate into one body, compacted for the purpose of pre-
serving Presbyterianism and freedom. Any poh'tical compHcations in
which the clerical leaders became entangled were of subsidiary import-
ance, and were considered obstacles in the way of preventing the ' free
reign of Christ.' The close relationship of secular and spiritual matters
tended to the entanglement of diverse factions. Consequently the Poiky of
Covenanters clearly saw that their only hope of peace from Popery ^°^^"^"^^'^s.
and of redress now lay in the elimination of the corrupting elements
at the source of power, and in the displacement from office of Lennox,
Arran, and other inimical courtiers, who encouraged the inbred wilful-
ness, pandered to the King's mean instincts, and acquiesced in the
dangerous notions of absolutism already held by him.
The ministers made life miserable for Montgomery and his
abettors.
James Lawson, the colleague of John Durie in Edinburgh, worried Attitude of
their characters to destruction, and inflamed an already rude, irascible, Edi^nburgh.
and intolerant crowd to the verge of rebellion. These defiant pietists
formed themselves into a bodyguard for the popular city pastors, set
posts at their manses at sunset, and, with other rough-throated pilgrims,
filled the night-watches with plaintive singing of psalms, as they had
done on the advent of Queen Mary.
The political opponents of the unsettling Lennox- Arran Govern- Gowrie Bond
r • ^ 11 rill • ^nd Raid of
ment, consistmg 01 eight nobles, two score ot landed proprietors, some R„thven, 1582.
representatives of burghs, and several stiff Presbyterians — nearly all
being of the anti- Marian party — entered into a bond to kidnap the King
and arrange a new Council.^ This was effected by that practised
conspirator whose dagger drew Rizzio's blood, the young Ruthven,
recently created Earl of Gowrie, who invited the King to Ruthven
Castle, near Perth, for the sport of the chase. Next morning, 23rd
August 1582, the King found the Castle surrounded by the Earl of
Mar, the Master of Glamis, and their armed associates, who appeared
with no small effrontery to ask their sovereign to suppress his ' mervell
1 Wodrow MSS. (Edin.), xliii. fol. 3, 16, 18, 27; Calderwood, iii. 637, 644 ('The Copie of a
Band,' etc.) ; Spottiswood, Hist.^ 320.
no THE COVENANTERS
at this our honest, lawful!, necessary, and most godlie enterprise.'
This cool manner of illustrating Scottish methods of rectitude was not
surpassed by a border-reiver, who swore, under the hempen tow, that
of all things in the world he loved nothing more, ' I will daur say it,
than honesty.'
Gowrie GowHe was appointed treasurer and virtually head of the rebel
government, which continued directing affairs for ten months, without
the aid of Parliament, and keeping hold of the King. Although King
James was coerced into publicly approving of his detention, he sulked
and endeavoured to escape their thrall, which was not easy with stern
guardians like the Master of Glamis, who said, * better bairns greet
[weep] than bearded men.'^
Politics in The leaders of the Church who had already experienced the
instability of their position and the uncertain future of the Reformed
cause, hailed the raid as a godsend, and the raiders as very deliverers,
as they declared themselves to be, both of the country and of the
Church of Scotland.^ The raid did more than the new Covenant to
extinguish the hopes of the Romanist faction. With that resilience
so remarkable among suppressed parties in Scotland, the exulting
Covenanters used this opportunity to demonstrate their power and
prerogative, and, in so doing, ill-advisedly entangled both in political
meshes. The evolution of the Church into a political organisation
created its instability, even although it was founded on the will of the
people.
Durie returns. The exiled Durie was recalled to Edinburgh, and returned, corslet,
hagbut, unruly tongue, and all, more like a laurelled general from
victory than a needy gospeller, while two thousand defiant throats
made the 124th metrical psalm in 'proud swelling waves' of music
roll along the oak-gabled fronts of the old Dutch tenements on the
High Street, whose indwellers, craning their necks over every
window, bole, and balcony, rang back the grand antiphony : —
* Spottiswood, Hist., 320.
- Among those who subscribed the Ruthven bond for maintaining themselves, the King)
the Reformed religion, and morality generally, were liothwell, Mar, Glencairn, Gowrie, March,
Lords Lindsay and Doyd, Cesfurd, P'adoimside, Glamis, etc. : Caldcrwood, iii. 644, 645.
THE KING'S CONFESSION iii
* But bless'd be God,
who doth us safely keep,
And hath not giv'n
us for a living prey
Unto their teeth,
and bloody cruelty.' ^
When Lennox, who was in the city, heard this glorious paean of Flight of
the redeemed, this triumphant hosanna of Presbytery, rising into the ^rr^^ '^ ^°
welkin, he rent his beard and ran away. Arran also sought seclusion.
The King grew cunning. Notwithstanding the tirades of Craig
and other preachers, who made him weep and swear, he assiduously
observed the Presbyterian worship, and watched for an opportunity
to regain his freedom.
The General Assembly met and formally approved of the Ruthven Alarm in
Raid and ordained all ministers to explain it favourably and gratefully
to rural congregations. Still, peace and felicity were not restored to
Zion. There was war in the camp. Montgomery and other titular
bishops hung on to the flanks of the vexed Church militant, while an
imported enemy appeared on its front. More gay Frenchmen had
arrived, and the ambassador from the French Court was thought to
be staying too long to have good intentions. Matters were looking
ominous when, on Maundy Thursday, these foreign visitors engaged
in the harmless piety of feet-washing, a rite scriptural enough, but
quite unfashionable among the Scots, who had surceased the practical
idolatry of water — even in private, generally speaking. Gossip also
ran that one Jesuit was netted alive, and that the defiant bishops were
still following sinuous ways. Nevertheless, the covenanted Church-
men were stayed with the hope that Cowrie's revolutionary Govern-
ment would finally establish the Church, as an absolutely independent
sovereignty — an hnperium cum Imperio — when the worst clap of
misfortune fell on them. After beincr ten months under surveillance
of the confederated Lords, the wily King, now eighteen years old,
escaped the toils, and, on 27th June, was able in the safety of the
' Melville, Autobiog., 134.
112 THE COVENANTERS
Castle of St. Andrews, with his own raucous voice, to re-echo the
psalm of Durie : —
' Ev'n as a bird
out of the fowler's snare
Escapes away,
so is our soul set free :
Broke are their nets,
and thus escaped we.'
Death of Through death in Edinburgh on 28th September 1582, George
S'th's^'tem- Buchanan, in a ripe old age, happily escaped from the increasing
ber 15S2. turmoils of the time, in which he had been so conspicuous a
personality.^ The products of his incisive intellect, the trenchant
Detectio of Queen Mary, the De Jure Regni apud Scotos, the History
of Scots affairs, no less than his scathing satire on the Franciscans,
were important factors in the moulding of the Scottish Reformation.
His practical sagacity, as much as his erudition, made him an
influential member of that powerful oligarchy of patriots who were
warring for the purer and holier life in Church and State, and who
acknowledged his rare gifts by electing Buchanan as the Moderator
of the Assembly at a most critical juncture. How the old humanist
would have fared with his headstrong pupil, James, can only be
conjectured. So persistent has the reputation of Buchanan been
that it was only in recent years that it was deemed necessary to
erect a monument to him in Greyfriars Churchyard, Edinburgh,
near to the supposed place of his burial.
' Melville, Autobiog., 120, 121 ; P. Hume Brown, George Buchanan^ etc. (1890), q.v.
THE FIGHT FOR PREROGATIVE 113
CHAPTER V
THE FIGHT FOR PREROGATIVE
The little manhood King James possessed was as apparent in his Character of
eighteenth year as in any subsequent period. His emancipation '"S James,
brought out an unsuspected virility of character, petulant but
dogged, obstinate but cunning, impulsive but mean, far-seeing but
focussed to low levels, which enabled him, at a beck, to bring his
newly chosen, unscrupulous advisers — namely, vicious Arran, sickly
Argyll, quarrelsome Marischal, and others of similar type — into
harmony with his views. For a ruler James exhibited the meanest James's person,
presentment. The Homeric Agamemnon had no counterpart in him.
His mother's beauty was to die with her. Like Richard the Third, he
was 'scarce half made up.' A squat, ungainly trunk sat ill-balanced
on crooked legs. Ill-shapen clothes, to all appearances taken at
random from some duddery, yet cunningly designed as defensive
armour, and too seldom changed, could not conceal the personal
deficiencies of the man. A slobbering tongue and loud voice, too
seldom restrained, expressed his palaver, which he esteemed to be
divine law. Wonder is that James was not more despicable. The
unnatural upbringing of the orphaned boy, nauseated with pedantic
instilments, would have spoiled a nobler nature. His education
fostered strange dispositions which found vent in splenetic words and
unkingly actions. His intellect was strained rather than cultivated
by Buchanan, who was a preceptor better fitted to restrain a mob
than to teach a hysterical child, and the result of this governance
was the conversion of James into a scholarly prig.
The moral side, by heredity infirm, was too long fretted with His nature.
the joyless restraints of a then necessary Calvinism to be able to
p
114 THE COVENANTERS
save the liberated King from a rebound into folly, poltroonery,
and latterly, intemperance, when opportunity occurred. Discipline
developed dissimulation.^ A courtier might find the arms of the
King around his neck at night, and in the morning those of the
hangman, so rapid were the moods of the Scottish Solomon.
His spiritual nature displayed the Stuart instinct for the solace
of religion of an artistic type, a quality which, however, did not
check his enjoyment of the lewd sallies of his debauched associates,
and of their vile oaths, which no moss-trooper could dash out so
glibly as himself. A sinister superstition warped his mind regard-
ing second-sight, devilish possession, and witchcraft. Under this
spell he satisfied himself and the law by witnessing the torture, by
means abhorrent to nature, of old females suspected of dealing in the
black arts. And what remained a mystery to him was the Devil's
preference for old crones to buxom wenches. In proximity to peril
to himself James quivered like an aspen leaf; a witness of danger
to others, he found nerves like whipcords.
Fontenay's Monsieur Fontenay, a secret agent of Queen Mary in 1584, gives
a description of the King, whom he considered the most learned
man in Scotland. ' He dislikes dances and music ... he speaks,
eats, dresses, and plays like a boor ... he is prodigiously con-
ceited ... is too much given to pleasure . . . and he could
do five things at once.'" He was such a man as Shakespeare
portrayed : —
' The man that hath no music in himself,
Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds,
Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils.'
Armed solely with the doctrine of the Divine Right of Kings, a
principle satisfactory enough to case-hardened parasites, this irre-
pressible youth was determined to render Scottish citizencraft as
defunct as the treatise De Jure Regni ap2id Scotos, in which his tutor,
Buchanan, proved its divine sanction, and to make his own ' king-
' 'James, however, was all his life rather a bold liar than a good dissembler' : Hallam,
Const. Hist., i. 297 note.
2 Quoted by Froude, Hist., xi. 664, edit. Lond., 1870.
portrait.
THE FIGHT FOR PREROGATIVE 115
craft ' the palladium of the country. Up to this date the Church was
the embodiment of citizencraft. The King's evil. genius would not
put his idol within the Church, but the Church within the idol.
The King had no small pluck to undertake to govern his turbulent Scotland in
Scots. The country in 1584 was doleful, harassed, impoverished, and '^ ^-
if any national spirit existed, apart from that maintained by the
Covenanters, James was not in harmony with it.
The royalist factions supporting him were taunted by the popular
opposition as ' men of base lineage not born to a footbreadth of
ground,' which at least was true of some ' beggarlie fellows re-
plenished with all vice,' who tried to extinguish 'the beauty and
flowre of the nobilitie ' at Court.
The Kine be^an with a hiah hand. The Ruthven raiders,
Angus, Mar, Glamis, Hume, Wedderburn, Cesfurd, and others, were
expatriated. Their former leader, Gowrie, trusting to a worthless
pardon, was as soon as possible to afford at the block another triumph
of royal dissimulation. Arran was recalled to his tricks. The Anan recalled,
unrestrainable preacher of the capital, Durie, for vindicating the
detention of the King, was sent into less influential surroundings in
Montrose. Other preachers of Sabbath philippics on Court scandal
were ordered outside the capital, and to preserve the unity of the
marriage bond, their wives were dispatched after them to gossip else-
where. Plague threatened to turn the towns into mortuaries. In
Edinburgh there would soon be no clergy left to compose the
fearful.
At such a critical juncture it would have fared badly for the King Letter from
o t. 1, J ■«-<■ James to the
had it been known that, on the 19th February 1584, he had written p^p^
secretly to the Pope, declaring : ' I have as yet deserved nothing at
your hands, but it shall not be always thus,' and promising to be
advised by his 'dear cousin of Guise,' and to satisfy his ' Holiness m
all other things.' ^ Even Durie might have been tempted to level his
hagbut at royal game. A sinister report spread that Parliament was
about to assemble and to enthrone the King, where Christ was wont
1 Quoted by Froude, Hist, xi. 638-40, from Simanca MSS.
ii6
THE COVENANTERS
Archbishop
Adamson,
1537-1592.
Andrew
Melville's case
to be, at the head of the Church, to restore the spiritual lords, and
thus to undo the Reformation.
Having broken with Presbyterianism, James had resolved to
institute a pliable clerical order, to limit personal freedom, and to
destroy all jurisdictions save his own. With Arran and Archbishops
Adamson and Montgomery as his instruments, he imagined himself
equipped for upsetting a system which he had sworn to uphold.
Patrick Constyne, or Constan, now called Adamson, the Primate, a
man of humble origin, a scholar, sharp, unscrupulous, and subservient,
seems to have been the draughtsman of the royal plans. The fact
that his enemies credited him with trafficking with witches and with
keeping one who was actually tried and burned, indicates the subtlety
of the King's counsellor. This diplomate had quietly remained in his
palace at St. Andrews till he was wanted, the while Andrew Melville
imagined that the ' tod [fox] in his hole ' was sufficiently well watched.
His opportunity to do mischief had now arrived.^
The first move of the royalists was to silence Melville, Principal of
the New College, and thus terrorise the more timid clergy, who
would not oppose the new policy.- In the pulpit Melville had
repeatedly referred with contempt to the 'Frenchified, Italianized,
joly gentlemen ' around the throne, and with directness to the King
himself. A detective soon formulated a case of slander. Melville
was summoned to the Privy Council and charged with comparing
James to worthless rulers like Nebuchadnezzar and Belshazzar.
Over these biblical metaphors the hottest wrangles ensued. Melville,
having studied under the most famous jurists in Paris and Geneva,
was no tyro in dealing with legal principles.
First, the accused took up constitutional ground, the only ground
consistent with the status of the established Church as set forth in the
Book of Discipline, and he declined the jurisdiction of the civil ruler,
because spiritual doctrine was involved in his case, which necessarily
fell to be tried first in the ecclesiastical courts. This defence did not
imply the pretentious claim of the Roman clergy to be independent of
» Melville, Auiobiog., 137. 2 Melville installed in St. Andrews, December 1580.
THE FIGHT FOR PREROGATIVE 117
all magisterial jurisdiction, as Adamson believed it did, but was the
simple assertion of the right of a minister, under the statutes ratifying
Church discipline, to be tried by the Church for offences against
religion, before he was handed to a punitive judge. Nevertheless,
the demand of Melville could not bar the contention of the Crown, Crown pleas,
that unwarrantable personalities, shot from pulpit to pew, in this
instance against the King, were beyond the sphere of religion and the
category of doctrine. The Crown also asserted the absolute authority
of the King, as tiltimus judex, to deal with any alleged illegality.
Melville as proudly answered that the Council ' presumed over boldlie
to controll the ambassadors and messengers of a King \i.e. Christ]
and Counsell greater nor they and far above them.' This was a
relevant reply if the premiss be granted that in an autonomous
Church every preacher conscientiously vituperating is the messenger
of Christ — a magnifical assumption indeed. The Church claimed the Assumptions
prerogative to teach the State its duty without acknowledging t^g of*«<^'^"'^<= •
equal right of the State to define the position of the Church ; and, in
consequence, the preachers were possessed of a fatuous imagination
that Christ's heralds were inviolable and might use either liberty or
licence in the pulpit. The preachers made a blind mistake in
demanding alone to interpret the terms of the contract uniting Church
and State. They also acted upon the indefensible principle that the
Church or Congregation was a court of religion and morality, in
which the pastor was established as a spiritual Lord of Justice, and
authorised, indeed bound, to utter in the pulpit verdicts on men and
events, these often ex paide, which could only be reversed in the
higher courts, Presbytery, Synod, and Assembly. This conception
grossly failed to recognise the elementary canon of justice, that the
accused should first be heard in defence before any public anim-
adversion on him should be pronounced. This weak spot the King
pointed out. But the obstinate preachers believed that their pro-
nouncements, inspired by the Spirit of God, were infallible and final,
since they had been called from on High to be exponents of public
opinion, the guardians of freedom, and the * voices of God speaking,'
ii8
THE COVENANTERS
Melville's
boldness.
Melville's
flight to
England, 1584
and that their sacred judgments and decrees were not venal, as those
of Parliament and of the College of Justice were.
It is difficult to understand how an acute thinker like Melville
could have argued ' that it is the duty of ministers to apply examples
of divine mercy and judgment to kings, princes, and people, and the
nearer the persons are to us, the more applicable is the example.' In
the heart of the debate, Melville, to emphasise his contentions,
unsluno- his Hebrew Bible from his belt and clanked it down on the
table, exclaiming : ' That ye may see youre weakeness, oversight, and
rashnesse, in taking upon you that which nather you ought nor can
do, there is my instructions and warrant. Let see which of you can
judge them, or controll me therein, that I have past by my injunc-
tions.' Thereupon Arran, ' the graceless loon,' as Balcanqual styled
him, lifted the book, and noticing the unintelligible characters of the
Hebrew text, handed it to the King, remarking, ' Sir, he skornes your
Majestie and Counsall.' ' Na, my Lord,' retorted Melville, * I skorn
not, bot with all ernestness, zeall, and gravitie, I stand for the cause of
Jesus Chryst and his Kirk.'^ This brag was needless before men
who could discover the injunctions of religion from the Church's own
authorised translation of the Bible. The King might as theatrically
have displayed his Mosaic temper by clanking down the Sword of
State as a symbol of his judgeship in Israel.
The Council's verdict on Melville was, that for his treason,
irreverence, and contempt, he should be put in ward in Blackness
Castle. This degradation he escaped by flight into England, on the
17th February 1584.^ There he joined the Ruthven raiders, who,
after a fruitless military diversion, had also sought refuge over the
borders. It was now clear that the King believed that he had the
power of the keys as well as of the sword, and that, since the Re-
formation, he came in place of the Pope, as the jurists of the reign of
Charles the Second, such as Sir George Mackenzie, taught.
Early in 1584 the Edinburgh pastors had an interlude caused by
' Calderwood, Hist., iv. lo ; M'Crie, Melville, 91-4 ; Melville, Auiobiog., 142.
2 Reg. Privy Cottnc, iii. 632 ; Calderwood, iv. 3-18 ; J. Mt\\\\\&, Aulobiog., 143-5.
THE FIGHT FOR PREROGATIVE 119
the arrival from Dundee and St. Andrews of a small coterie of
English sectaries, called Brownists, who had lately come from The Brownists,
Flanders under the guidance of Robert Brown, their founder. For ^^^'*'
criticising the discipline of the Scottish Church regarding baptism,
Brown found himself under the surveillance of the Edinburgh
Presbytery, jealous of its honour.^
As soon as Gowrie perished on the block at Stirling, Arran, the Execution of
hero of the repentance-stool, became the King's confidant and scourge ^^^^1%T
of the Church. James lost no time in summoning a Parliament to
avenge the raid, bridle the clergy, and restrain all other * master-
less and unanswerable men.' The King, eight bishops, thirteen
abbots, twenty-five lords, and twenty-three representatives of burghs,
sat on the 19th and 20th May 1584, and passed forty-nine Acts.' The The Black
first Act authorised the preaching of the True Word according to the ^"^^^"^ ° ^^ ^'
Confession of Faith. The second Act confirmed the King's power
over all estates and persons, and declared those who declined
magisterial jurisdiction, such as Melville, to be traitors. The
freedom of the pulpit was now at the mercy of the Crown. The
third Act re-established the authority of the Three Estates, making
it treason to impugn the dignity, or diminish the authority, of any
estate. In this simple way the bishops were restored and were
guarded from their Presbyterian critics. The fourth Act declared
all jurisdictions and judgments not approved by Parliament, and all
meetings not convened with the royal licence, to be unlawful. This
sweeping Act wiped out the autonomy of the Church, and converted
the Church into a department of James's Government, which licensed
its assemblies and reviewed its edicts. Thus the axe was laid at
the root of the Church, more especially when the next Act provided
for the deposition of any pastor for any kind of offence, by the
bishop or royal commissioner. Preachers were to confine themselves
to their emasculated office and to discuss disputable subjects with
caution. On the other hand, the prelates, no longer to be subject to
the Assembly, were to act in all ecclesiastical cases, and as patrons
' Calderwood, iv, i. ^ Acf. Pari. Scot., iii. 290-325.
I20
THE COVENANTERS
of colleges and benefices (Act 20). The excommunication of
Montgomery was rendered null on the ground that ' it appertenis
cheiflie to his [the King's] princelie cair to see that the sam
[excommunication] be not abusit to further the indiscrete appetite
^ of ony men under quhat cullour or pretext so euir.'^ The Ruthven
raiders were attainted and their lands seized by the Crown. Had
Parliament gone one step further and announced that the King
was privileged to dispense the Sacraments, to ordain clergy, and to
The Scottish absolve the penitent, Scotland would have had its own pope, native
P°P^' and infallible. Virtually James was pope to a servile hierarchy,
who simply relieved him of his public, pontifical, and pastoral cares.
It was practically a 'bull' which he gave to Patrick Adamson,
authorising him 'to use his archiepiscopal office within the Kirk
and his diocese.' More forcible was the only induction service which
Rutherford had upon his entering the pastorate of St. Andrews, if
this speech of the King be rightly reported : ' Shame fall thee, and
the Devill receive thee too, if thou doe it [his duty] not ; goe
thy way.'
ActofUni- Only one other Act was necessary to humiliate the Church and
A^usl'1584' break the spirits of the pastors. And this statute Parliament framed
in the 'Act of Uniformity,' which ordained pastors, readers, and
teachers to subscribe these foregoing Acts (then known as ' the Black
Acts of 1584'), as well as an oath of obedience to the bishops and
King's commissioners, on pain of loss of function and benefice.^
A subsequent edict of Council deprived those who would not sub-
scribe of all benefit of law.^ Magistrates were commanded to
imprison any minister who adversely criticised the Black Acts.'^ As
by magic, the Church of Knox became the mere tool of Arran,
Knox's unreformed brother-in-law, afterwards Chancellor of the
realm.
The effect of this inquisitional policy was electrical. Professors,
1 Act. Pari. Scot, iii. 311, 312 ; Calderwood, iv. 64 ; Melville, Autobiog.., 237, 241.
2 Act. Pari. Scot., iii. 347 (Act 2). For terms of oath, cf. Calderwood, iv. 210.
3 Privy Counc. Rec, iii. 712. * Calderwood, iv. 64.
THE FIGHT FOR PREROGATIVE 121
ministers, students, and suspects, panic-struck, fled to England and
Ireland. The guileless attempt of David Lindsay, minister of Leith,
a man of moderate views, to interview the King at Holyrood before
these Acts were published, was rudely repulsed, and he was instantly
removed to Blackness. Pastors Lawson and Balcanqual made the
usual protest at the Cross of the Capital, as a parting shot, before they
hied hurriedly over the Borders, lest Arran should effect his threat : Aran's
'If Lawson's head was as great as a haystacke he would cause it^^'^^""^"
leape from his hawse [neck].' For associating with them, Robert
Pont was deprived of his office in the College of Justice. Gradually
the ministers, anticipating nothing but persecution, starvation, and
ruin, submitted to this tyranny. When stern Covenanters, such as
John Craig, John Duncanson, John Brand, Erskine of Dun, and
Durie sought peace by subscription, the less violent were easily
handled in the toils. ^ For daring to correspond with his uncle
Andrew, James Melville had to flee. A non-subscriber, Nicol
Dalgleish, one of the ministers of St. Cuthbert's Church, Edinburgh,
prayed for the afflicted brethren. 'Afflicted,' said the irate King, 'if
they be afflicted I am the afflicter, and so am a persecutor.' To have
this puerile syllogism tested, Dalgleish was committed for trial. The
Court acquitted Dalgleish of treason, but condemned him for reading
the letter of an exile to the exile's own wife. Dalgleish was thrown
into the loathsome cell kept for felons awaiting execution, and, at the
alleged instigation of Primate Adamson, was immured there a long
time in direct view of the gallows, from which he escaped.^
The Church was paralysed. Since public meetings and signing Paralysis of
of Covenants were forbidden, the disaffected held secret conventicles, g^^ "^"^ '
The Kirk Sessions of Edinburgh dared not meet to disburse alms
to the poor until they had a licence signed by the primate and
countersigned by the King. Without doubt, the impolitic vitupera-
tions of many preachers soured the King and gave him a distaste
1 Calderwood, iv. 246. Craig, Duncanson, and Brand, in subscribing allegiance, appended
the conscience-clause — 'according to the Word of God.'
- Calderwood, iv. 244 ; Melville, Autobiog.^ 218.
122 THE COVENANTERS
to Presbyterian parity. No man, however vulgar, could brook com-
parison with an idiot or Jeroboam, and the dubbing of his associates
as ' infamous,' 'monsters,' and ' idols.' These were the politest taunts
thrown from the pulpit. Queen Elizabeth's correspondents in
Scotland reported to her their belief that James was being secretly
influenced by his imprisoned mother.
'The Party of the banished Lords,' including some ministers and
barons inimical to the Arran regime, waited patiently in London,
Newcastle, and other English towns for the turn of the tide. ' They
keeped a verie earnest exercise of humiliation, where many teares
were poured out before the Lord.' To the faithful in Geneva
Andrew Melville unbosomed his disappointed soul. Lawson and
Balcanqual wrote to their flocks pious and comforting pastorals
which were really acrid indictments of the Government. Primate
The Primate's Adamson at this juncture resided in Edinburgh, in order to suppress
Presbyterianism at its source. He framed a biting reply, which he
forced the doleful flock to sign, in which their ministers were accused
as runaways, ' unquiett spirits, yea wolves and not pastors.' Satirical
verses flew around on dirty wings. The mettled wives of the
ministers bravely retorted in defence of their absent husbands, and
styled the Primate an ' envennomed vespe [wasp] ' for daring to leave
his 'puddel of corruption' in order 'to put his huick [hook] into
another man's corn,' and for ' scalding his lippes in other men's kaile.'
The wives also published the intolerable heresy that there were no
more ranks among ministers than among bailiffs. Vengeance was
swift. These ladies, Jonet Guthrie and Margaret Marjoribanks and
John Durie's wife, were compelled to sell off their household effects
and quit their manses. To stamp out similar insults the King made
the heads of families punishable for the offences of any of their
household. A reign of terror had begun.
Meanwhile, in a lane off Cheapside, within 'a fierie furnace of
affliction,' lay James Lawson, mortally needing the tenderest offices
of his heroic, heretical spouse, Jonet Guthrie. The sufferer was still
young, but a man stone-broke, as his will confesses, ' after all my
THE FIGHT FOR PREROGATIVE 123
irksome travells, wherewith I am broken.' Travels many, travails
more, had Lawson for freedom and for us. Then came the final
* travell,' the last throw with death, the pilgrim's last ejection from
a stranger's home, and with no fearless wife at hand to fend him from
the fellest heresiarch of all. Only kind Mistress Vanoll will do it for
one angel-piece, bequeathed to her as a sad ' memento mori ' ; and
some rebel Scots, Balcanqual, Andrew Melville, Carmichael, and
Davidson, will do it for poor Scotland's sake. Some curious English,
in a neighbourly way, peep in and hear the exile's delirious preach-
ings. Never 'more moving,' said former hearers, than in the twilight
of his luminosity, this clearing hour before the dawn, was this brilliant
herald of the Cross, robed in a white tabard, with sunken eyes
piercing a dreamer's heaven, with emaciated hands gesticulating to
a vanishing earth, with clarion voice making concord with God and
man. He changes his vision with a psalm ; lifts aloft the Hundred
and Third canticle, that song of many passing saints, ' My soul give
laud unto the Lord,' — lifts it until his voice will no longer carry the old
French melody but fades into silence, while his lips sing on noiseless,
yet singing in the Spirit, which makes the onlookers audibly continue
the psalm. Thus the minister of St. Giles sang himself into Paradise, Lawson dies,
leaving behind a heart that broke because his enemies called him j^g.
a hireling and prevented him preaching for his true Master ; also
bequeathing as a heritage the memory of a man of learning, a preacher
of power, and a martyr for the Presbyterian faith. ^
Scenes like these, and comforting messages from Queen Elizabeth,
made the exiles take courage. In Scotland pest and tempest so
raged that the saddened, maddened populace viewed these visitations
as Divine judgments for the vices of Arran, and clamoured for the
return of the ostracised. During the sorrow of his lieges the callous
King was merrily clinking verses and composing the ' Essayes of
a Prentise in the Divine Art of Poesie,'
An antipapal league, arranged between England and Scotland,
1 Calderwood, iv. 201 ; cf. his last will and testament, ibid. ; Wodrow Miscell., i. 447 ;
Melville, ^/^/^(5/c^., 219.
124
THE COVENANTERS
made the return of the banished Presbyterians of easier accomplish-
St. Andrews ment. At a Convention of Estates, held in St. Andrews on 31st
1585"^°' J^ly 15S5, the King introduced the subject and a Covenant entitled
' Band anent the trew Relligion.' Its tenor is :
' We the Nobilitie and esteatis presentlie conuenit Vndirstanding the course
of the present procedings in foreyne partis and that diverse princes and potentatis
terming thame selffis Catholikis haue Jonit thame selffis vndir the Fappis auctoritie
in a maist vnchristeane confederacie aganis the trew relligioun and professouris
thairof with full intent to prosequute that vngodlie resolutioun with all severitie.
... It is necessar that a general league and Christeane confederacie of all princes
and staittis sincerlie professing the evangell were opponit to the vngodlie Con-
spiracie of the Inemies of Gods treuth and specialie that the twa Crownis of
Scotland and England . . . were inseperablie vnited be mair firm and strict
leaguue then hes bene heirtofoir ... for the bettir maintenance of the trew
auncient and Christeane relligioun quhilk thai now professe.'^
The document proceeds to entrust the King with authority to con-
clude the league, while the subscribers promise to ratify the new
Covenant in the next Parliament and to maintain it with their lives
and estates. Arran was the first subscriber, and was followed by
nobility, bishops, and others. Yet on the 30th July Arran was
Fall of Arran. incarcerated in the Castle of St. Andrews, charged with 'act and part'
in a cruel Border murder. This charge eclipsed his glory and ended
his influence. The banished Lords swooped down on Stirling and
captured the King on 4th November 1585.^ They treated the
coward, whose first stipulation was for his life, with a superfluity of
allegiance and mercy which he pharasaically attributed to * the mighty
hand of God.' Had he then received the Cromwellian treatment he
deserved, or been relegated like his mother to a harmless life and
meditation on common-sense, these patriots, by this juster treatment,
would have saved their country from tears, pain, and blood. Whereas
their toleration — a possession much to be wondered at in so inflam-
mable an age, and based on that false view of the sacredness of a
King's person, which also the later Covenanters down to near the
time of the Restoration generally maintained — only increased the
'■ Act. Pari. Scot., iii. 423, 424; Privy Counc. Rec, iii. 760; Wodro7i/ MSS., xliii. 31 ;
Calderwood, iv. 375. 2 Calderwood, iv. 392.
Capture of
King James
1585.
THE FIGHT FOR PREROGATIVE 125
wilful perversity, encouraged the equivocal palaver, and justified
the vindictive policy of the stubborn youth. Men whose names as
traitors were not erased from the doomster's roll — John, Lord
Hamilton, Angus, Mar, Glamis, and others, were appointed to be his
compulsory councillors.
These favourers of the Ruthven policy saw their every attempt to
undo the Arran maladministration largely frustrated by the King,
backed by the prelatic element in the Privy Council. The Church,
having petitioned Parliament for the repeal of the ' black Acts ' of
1584 in a memorial entitled 'Animadversions of Offences conceived
upon the Acts, etc.,' was met by the opposition of the King, who
interpreted the Acts with a sophistry so satisfactory to the nobility
that they left the Acts on the Statute Book. Archbishop Adamson
had been employed to explain their worst features away, but his very
partial manifesto made matters worse by claiming absolute power for Adamson's
the King, by accusing the Presbyterians of the Popish crime of non- '
allegiance in spiritual affairs, by defending Prelacy on scriptural
grounds, and by declaring the King's intention as to tolerating
assemblies and obliterating presbyteries. Andrew Melville's ' Answer'
only theoretically pulverised Adamson's declaration. In December
1585 the King answered the 'Animadversions' in a clever, cunning
Irenicon, in which he hinted at assembling the whole Church to a Royal
choose its polity, at refraining from punishing for spiritual offences, 'g^^ "'
and at abiding by the Word of God. The King maintained that
a bishop was his civil servant whom the Church had the liberty to
ordain and install, and that he, the chief magistrate, was the sole
judge, whether or not Episcopacy was in accordance with God's
Word. The only benefit from Arran's fall was the recall of the exiled
ministers and a relaxation of persecution.
With a vulgarity scarcely credible, the King personally worried
the frank clergy, such as Gibson, Howison, and Watson, before
sending them to prison, and even interrupted Walter Balcanqual
while preaching by shouting dissents over the loft of St. Giles.^ A
' Calderwood, iv. 491.
126
THE COVENANTERS
Melville's
'trek.'
Adamson's
case.
Holyrood
Assembly,
1586.
fierce winter scattered the Parliament-men to their homes, and bit
the threadbare clergy severely. Andrew Melville, ' a sore traiked
man,' rested in Glasgow, after a religious ' trek ' over all the country,
rousing the people to resist the ' bludie gullie ' which he saw still
hanging over the Church. Adamson sat enthroned, an arch-inquisitor,
at the source of all the sorrows of the Covenanters, and Melville
deemed his displacement imperative. Andrew had a faithful hench-
man in his nephew, James Melville, Professor of Oriental Languages
in St. Andrews. When the Synod of Fife met in St. Andrews, in
April 1586, Professor Melville preached to the Synod from the text:
' Every man that is among you [is] not to think of himself more
highly than he ought to think,' and Adamson was a hearer.^ With-
out a moment's warning he plunged into a practical application, and
advised the brethren to act as faithful surgeons, and lop off 'that
most corrupt member and monstrous ' — Adamson. The accused
replied in vain. The Synod gave him a few days in which to render
obedience, which he refused, and thereafter they pronounced him ' an
ethnick or publican,' before proceeding to his excommunication.
Adamson retaliated by excommunicating the Melvilles and their
party. He also appealed to the civil powers. James Melville and
Calderwood amusingly narrate how the mock-valiant Archbishop
ventured into the Parish Church of St. Andrews to preach, but
hearing that a crowd had assembled, and were coming to drag him
from the pulpit, he and his jackmen sought safety in the church
tower. Meantime a wandering hare fled timorously down 'the High
Street,' followed by the amused citizens, who imagined it was the
devil's double of the scared prelate.^
Adamson's case reached the Assembly in May 1586.^ The King,
itching to meddle in its business, invited the members to convene in
the Chapel Royal, Holyrood, and personally proposed as Moderator
the quondam traitor and peace-making prisoner of Blackness, Pastor
1 Melville, Autobiog.^ 245.
2 Calderwood, iv. 503. Calderwood thus specifies the street.
3 Melville, Autobiog., 247 ; Booke of the U. Kirk, ii. 655 et seq. ; Calderwood, iv. 548.
THE FIGHT FOR PREROGATIVE 127
Lindsay of Leith/ The King's aim was to cajole the Assembly into
accepting Episcopacy, covered with a mask of popular Presbytery.
The intermediary was the flexible Adamson, who submitted to his
co-equal brethren, and was reponed as a bishop of the Pauline type.
This shift, planned by the King, kept 'the tod in his hole,' and
secured stipends to the ministers. The subterfuge was easily
discerned.
This Assembly mapped out the territorial jurisdictions of sessions,
presbyteries, and synods, while the King agreed to license an annual
Assembly.^ All this trifling with the fixed principles of Presby-
terianism vexed the Melville party. The King executed a clever
ruse to rid Adamson of his invincible opponent, Principal Melville,
and to place the latter in peril, by commanding Melville to go north
and hound the Jesuits into orthodoxy.
The avenging Armada of Philip was being prepared. On 8th Execution of
February 1587 Mary Queen of Scots was executed as a practical jV^^-^'^ ^^'
rejoinder to Papal threats and plots. True to their idiosyncrasies,
the Scots, with the exception of the ultra-Protestants, viewed the
bold act of Elizabeth as a national insult. ■ While danger menaced
his mother, the King ordered prayers after a set form to be made
publicly for her. This form afforded a grievance to the ministers,
who, with the exception of the royal chaplains, Craig, Duncanson,
and Lindsay, refused to use that prepared prayer, and thus irritated
the King. The delirious ecstasy in the pulpit of a probationer
named Coupar troubled the Sovereign as much as his mother's
death. At the time of his majority in June, a happier state of
feeling, however, subsisted between the Crown and clergy, at least
for a short period.
Successive Assemblies had racy entertainment in baiting Adamson,
now for fleecing poor ministers, anon for peculating communion
wine, and again for marrying the papist Huntly, and otherwise
using his episcopal office, ' damned in diverse other assemblies.'
Once more excommunicated, then recanting, deserted by his ungrate-
' Calderwood, iv. 548. ^ Hid., 555. ,
128 THE COVENANTERS
ful King, fallen into want which was reHeved by his fierce accusers,
Fate of Adam the Melvilles, the wretched, friendless primate died in 1592.^ The
son, 1592. ^^^^ ^^ ^ luckless poet was his ; a fine poet, too, whose subtle spirit
shackled itself with earthly bonds instead of trusting to its own
native pinions, which would have carried him to a higher throne
than that on which man-made bishops sit in purple and fine linen.
Similar hardships befell the other bishops.
Parliament, The Parliament in 1587 ratified the * Liberty of the Kirk,' and
^^^^' passed an Act (No. 8) annexing the temporalities of benefices to the
Crown, with the exception of teinds, glebes, and manses in every
parish, and the mansions of titular dignitaries.^ This radical statute
swept away the patrimony, and made the bishops paid officers of
the Crown. Poverty was fast lowering the carnal standpoint of the
presbyters, and a little more stress upon their Church establishment
would have refined it out of existence. Happily, a dogged faith fed
on a little oatmeal saved Church and country from the spoliations
and absolutism of the King. As a compensation for that ruinous
statute the same Parliament passed a Franchise Act which, conferring
Parliamentary representation upon the small owners of land, made for
greater popular power and freedom.
In 1588 Britain anxiously expected the Spanish invasion, and had
preachings, fastings, musters, warlike plans innumerable for outwitting
the 'myrmidons of Antichrist ' from abroad, and native Jeroboams at
home. During this crisis King James had a wise councillor in the
Chancellor, Sir John Maitland of Thirlestane, a brother of Queen
Mary's Secretary. The Assembly convened in February 1588
pressed the parish ministers to persuade nobles, barons, and gentle-
men to subscribe the Confession of Faith.^
' A Convention of the maist wacryff and cearfull of the brethren '
* Calderwood, v. 6, loo, ii8, 124, 147, 753 ; M'Crie, Melville, 146.
- Act. Pari. Scot., iii. 431.
^ A copy of the Covenant, dated 25th February 1587-8, was preserved by the Maxwells
of Pollok. Cf. Collection oj Confessions, ii. 106 (Edin., 1722). Edinburgh University signed
the 1581 Covenant in 1585 and 1587-8. The King 'and divers of his Esteatis' subscribed
before 27th July 1588 : Fleming, Story of the Scottish Covenant, xxii.
THE FIGHT FOR PREROGATIVE 129
met in Edinburgh in January 1589, Andrew Melville being moderator,
and his nephew James acting as clerk. Their business was * the
readiest remedies of thir dangers appearand.' At the summons of
this General Assembly, the people as a whole and the Universities
again accepted the National Covenant of 1581, and about the same
time the Estates and also the lieges subscribed another Covenant
specially directed against the Holy League. This document,
commonly called ' The General Band,' is entitled : * The Band
tuiching the Maintenance of the true Religioun, the King's Majestie's
person and estat, severallie to be subscribed by all noble men, barons,
gentle men, and others, according to the tenor of the Act of Secreit
Counsell (6th March 1590) and Commissions therin conteaned.'^
The tenor of the Covenant is :
' Wee, undersubscriving, considering . . . that detestable conspiracie against Covenant of
Christ and his Evangell, called The Holie League . . . and finding in his Majestic i590-
a most honourable and Christian resolution to manifest himself unto the world that
zealous and religious prince which he hath hitherto professed . . . with his
Majestie's authorizing and allowance . . . sweare and promise to take a true,
effald, and plain parte with his Majestic among ourselves for diverting of the
present danger threatned to the said religioun and his Majestie's estat and standing
depending therupon by whatsoever forces or intestine plotts or preparatiouns . . .
and bind and oblige us to others to conveene and assemble ourselves publictlie
with our freinds in arms or in quiet maner . . . against . . . Papists and their
partakers ... to expone and hazard our lives, lands, and goods ... in the
defence of the said true and Christian Religioun and his Majestie's person and
estat, against whatsomever Jesuits and Seminarie or mass preests ... to their utter
wracke and exterminion. . . .'
So earnest were the subscribers that they also agreed to cease
feuds and to refer their variances to arbiters selected by the King,
so that there might be a united front of power to exterminate the
' condemned enemies to God and his Majestic.' This Covenant was
gall to the Catholics so long cherished by the King. Now he, as
rogues often do, turned from danger to theology, if not to piety, and
composed sermons upon the Book of Revelation and upon the
^ Reg. Privy Counc, iv. 254 note, 467 note ; Calderwood, iv. 672, v. 49 ; Booke of the U.
Kirk, ii, 759. The original document was formerly preserved in Glasgow University Library :
Large Declaration, 143.
R
I30 THE COVENANTERS
Spaniards. In autumn came the joyful news that the Armada had
been destroyed, and the country rang with jubilations. To extinguish
the Popish abettors of Philip was the King's next enterprise, after
which he took leisure to study wedlock, a subject which he mastered
in fifteen days without help, as he proudly announced to the citizens.
Condition of Scotlaud in 1588 was in a lamentably vicious condition, according
peopeinis . j.^ ^^^ iudictmeuts of the Church courts and the processes of the
magistracy. Many of the aristocracy were rude ruffians and irascible
shedders of blood, attended by retainers barbarous to the verge of
heathenism. Thirty years of the Gospel had done nothing more
than illuminate the borders of the darkest places. To stop bloody
quarrels in churches and graveyards on Sabbaths, Parliament in
1592 passed a statute (Act 12) against resetters of criminals, in
which the following almost incredible statement occurs : * Forsamekle
as crueltie and bluidsched is cumit to sik ane heicht within the land
that the House of the Lord and His sanctuary is not fre but filthely
polluted . . . and deidlie feidis [deadly feuds] is now execute in
kirkis and kirkyairdis at the time appoyntit to the service of God . . .
quhairby diverse personis for feir of thair lyffes dar not resort to the
preaching of the Gospell.' This statement harmonises with the
declaration of the Assembly in August 1588, that ' vniversallie
throuchout this realme, ther is neither religioun nor discipline with
the poore, bot the most part lives in filthie adulterie, [incest], forni-
cation, [their] bairnes unbaptisit, and themselves never resorts to
Kirk, nor participat [in] the sacraments.'^ Rural districts swarmed
with beggars, gipsies, and ' masterless ' vagabonds. Many parishes^
had no ministers ; a few retained their priests ; and very few had
public schools. Burghs were better equipped, but civilisation showed
itself in drinking and gaming, and justice was not always even-
handed. Notwithstanding these facts, the masses behaved well
during the absence of the King in Norway and Denmark, no doubt
1 Boo/ce of the U. Kirk, ii. 731.
2 jhid,^ iii 863 In ^5g5 cjj^g bounds of Nithesdaill, Annandaill, and Galloway are des-
titute of pastors.'
THE FIGHT FOR PREROGATIVE 131
on account of the masterly arrangements instituted by Chancellor
Maitlancl, and of the oversight of the clergy, notably Robert Bruce
of Edinburgh, whom the King specially chose to represent himself.
During the King's absence the Privy Council, in view of warlike
rumours, on 6th March 1590 appointed Commissioners to obtain
subscriptions both to the Confession of 1581 and the Band of 1588.
The two Covenants conjoined were specially prepared for the
purpose by Waldegrave the printer in 1590/
At Oslo, in Norway, on the 24th November 1589, James wedded Marriage of
Anne, Princess of Denmark, and David Lindsay, sometime of Black-
ness Gaol, officiated.^ After a merry winter's wassail 'in the auld
manner ' — a manner that was not over-nice — the bridegroom grew
facetious and wrote genially to pastor Bruce about what he styled
his ' new rib ' ; then he turned blasphemous and compared his return
home from 'so drunken a country as this is,' to the Second Advent
of the Redeemer. To the Queen's coronation in Holyrood, on the
17th May 1590, the Presbyterian ministers were invited, and Bruce,
whom James afterwards banished, anointed Queen Anne, then a
Lutheran. The Church had received its final honours. Next Sabbath
the King rose in the royal pew in St. Giles, and in a harangue to the
congregation promised to be ' more stayed.' This was nothing com-
pared with the scene in the Assembly in August after James Melville,
in the opening sermon, had rasped on the old strings — discipline,
freedom, ' that poysonfull and venomous Psyllus hatching a cocka-
trice Ggg — Mr. Patrick Adamson,' Papists and stipends. Then up rose
the Sovereign, with bared head, to exhibit a gracious loquacity. The
wily wassailer 'in the auld manner' outshone himself in dissimulation
as he thanked God for his birth in Scotland in such a happy time
(there was no mention of murders in churches), and for the Presby-
terian Church — ' suche a Kirk, the sincerest Kirk in the world.'
1 Privy Counc. Rec. Cf. No. 211, Aldis, List of Books Printed; cf. 4to examples in
libraries of Universities of St. Andrews and Edinburgh. In Wodrow MSS. (Adv.) Ixiv. 75,
is a copy of the Getteral Band, ' signet at Edinburgh the sext of March and of our reigne the
23 year 1589 alias 1590.' Cf. Appendix.
- For Anne's admission to Roman Catholic Church in 1601, cf. 153 note.
132 THE COVENANTERS
Vows of King Even Geneva, with its festivals, was not pure, said he ; and as for * the
James, 1590. neighbour kirk in England, it is an evill said masse in English,
wanting nothing but the liftings,' that is, the elevation of the host.
He then adjured his spellbound listeners, whom he styled 'my good
people,' to retain this purity, and by imitating himself to ' mainteane
the same against all deidlie.' The Assembly rang loud and long with
praises and prayers for such a Majesty.^ The harmless doves trusted
him. As soon as he crossed the Tweed the deceiver asseverated,
' That bishops ought to be in the Church, I ever maintained as an
apostolike institution, and so the ordinance of God ; so was I ever an
enemie to the confused anarchie or parity of the Puritans.'
The King The Church enjoyed extended privileges during the hymeneal
at work. humour of the King, and in 1590 the Assembly ordained that all the
ministers should subscribe the Second Book of Discipline.^ The
unmitip"ated conceit of Tames, who reckoned himself infallible, was a
compensation for being born among such malcontents and such
exasperating evangelists. While James was abroad, witchcraft and
sorcery broke out, so that in the winter of 1590 he was busy seeing
these deluded or suspected persons worried, in his intervals of in-
specting processions of bloody shirts carried by mourners demanding
vengeance for murdered kinsfolk, of scuttling down shady alleys out
of street brawls, of heading traitors, of chasing Earl Bothwell guilty
of blood and battery, or anon of fleeing from the armed rabble of
that maniac, of bridling the ministers, and of doing any despicable
business at hand.
State of T\\it. pulpit became insufferable to him. Every questionable
parties, 1592. theme from ' dowbill Davie Rizzio ' (a hint at his father) to the
' scumme about Court ' was raked up by railing preachers. The
royal pair were exhorted to their face in church ; if absent they were
criticised ; and stirring themes, such as ' Could the King be excom-
municated?' enlarged upon. The King found vantage-ground between
the opposing parties, each of which had lost its most diplomatic
leaders: A damson no longer out-manoeuvring the Church, and aged
1 Bookc of the U. Kirk, ii. 771. ^ Ibid., T]^.
THE FIGHT FOR PREROGATIVE 133
Erskine of Dun no longer baffling the Court, both having found
surcease to the strife/ Bewitched Bothwell careered everywhere,
keeping in terror the superstitious King, who believed Bothwell was
in leacrue with evil spirits. Huntly meanly dispatched 'the bonnie
Earl of Moray,' on the 7th February 1592. In the midst of all this
chaos the bewildered Sovereign, on the advice of astute Maitland, was
glad to seek alliance with the leaders of the Church, which now
realised its growing influence. Seeing its opportunity, the Assembly
of May 1592 demanded the abolition of the 'black acts' of 1584; the
restoration of the patrimony, privileges, and powers of the Church ;
the removal of titled ecclesiastics from Parliament ; the cleansing
of the land from idolatry and bloodshed, and representation by
ministers in Parliament. The last demand was a stroke of diplomacy
fraught with important issues.
The next Parliament was an ecclesiastical one in its results. On Parliament of
5th June the Charter of Freedom was restored to the Church by the ^^^^'
eighth statute, entitled ' Act for the abolisheing of the Actis contrary
the trew religion.'^ On this statute, as ratified by Act 1690, c. 7,
and Act 1706-7, c. 6 (which statute is an essential condition of the
Union of the two Kingdoms and Parliaments), the Church of Scotland
stands established by law with Courts recognised as independent
judicatories of the realm.
The provisions of Act 1592, c. 8, are these :
1. It ratifies and approves of all the liberties, privileges, and immunities granted
to the Church by Acts 1579, c. 6, 7 ; 1581, c. i, and others.
2. It sanctions General Assemblies, convened by the Church, once yearly, ox pro
re natd, as occasion requires, provided the King or his Commissioners be
present at the instant of dissolution to nominate the time and place of the
next Assembly. In his absence the Assembly can fix the next meeting.
3. It sanctions synodal, provincial, presbyterial, sessional Assemblies, with the The Church's
whole jurisdiction and discipline of the Church. It does not specify * The Magna Charta,
Second Book of Discipline,' which the Assembly had made into a test in "592.
1590, but this statute quotes the substance of Chapter vn. of the Book on the
^ Adamson died on 19th February 1592.
2 Act. Pari. Scot.^ iii. 541, 542 : for repeal, cf. 1612, c. i ; ibid.^ iv. 469 : for revival 1640,
c. 7 (Act Rescissorie) ; ibid., v. 298.
134 THE COVENANTERS
subject of Provincial Assemblies, Presbyteries, and meetings of particular
kirks. The statute plainly acknowledges the inherent right of the Church to
make ordinances and constitutions for the spiritual sphere, and confines the
royal power given in Act 1584, c. 2, to temporal affairs.
4. It repeals all Acts favourable to 'the papistical kirk,' and prejudicial to the now*
true Church, notably the statutes of 1443, 1469, 1483, 1551, 1584; and it
authorises presbyteries to take the place of the bishops in receiving and
collating in benefices all qualified ministers presented by the King and the
lay-patrons.
The parochial The Act 1 592, c. 8, thus re-established the Protestant, Presby-
system. terian, and parochial system of reHgion in Scotland. Other Acts
were passed, one of which gave to presbyteries the right to remove
unqualified beneficiaries, and another secured to ministers their
manses, and glebes of four acres each in extent, together with an
assignation of teinds. The clergy emerged from the national turmoils
happy in their prospects of peace and prosperity, but the King and
the 'mass-saying contemners of the Kirk,' who were ordered to be
prosecuted without delay, were thoroughly dissatisfied with the turn
affairs had taken.
The King himself issued an ' irrevocable edict ' calling upon his
subjects to join the Church or emigrate. It was merely an illustra-
tion of king-craft. He had already informed Huntly that he was
'moved to dissemble.' He had already exemplified that deceit by
sending Lord Maxwell to prison in 1586 for having mass in Lin-
cluden Abbey, and then dismissing him soon afterwards. Thus he
appears coquetting with the Catholics "while the stern presbyteries
were hunting them down with vigilance committees ; and he even
rated his choicest friends, Bruce and Lindsay, * for breeding of
mutinies and rebellioun in our rude countrie,' because they inter-
viewed him regarding a simmering Popish plot. The capture in
The 'Spanish Cumbrae of a spy carrying papers, known as the 'Spanish Blanks,'
signed by the rebels, led to the unmasking of a conspiracy for an
invasion of Western Scotland by the Spanish.^ The Pope had many
' Caldervvood, v. 192-214; Span. State Papers^ iv. 603-6. Cf. Aldis, List, p. 8, for
A Discouerie . . . Conspiracie of Scottish Papists, 1592-3 (Edin., Waldegrave) ; Melville,
Autobiog.^ 306 et seq.\ Pitcairn, Crim. Trials^ i. 310 et seq. ; Law, Collected Essays, 244.
Blanks.
Leuchai's Church
Aiiwoth Church
Grcyfricirs Church, Stirhnr
The Cathedral, Glasgow
'Ihe Cathedral, St. Andrew,'
Church of St. Giles, Edinburgh
CHURCHES FAMOUS IN THE COVENANTING AGE
THE FIGHT FOR PREROGATIVE 135
supporters in the north, in whose treacherous designs Huntly,
Angus, Errol, the Master of Gray, Gordon of Auchindoune, and
many others were implicated. The alert ministers helped to unravel
the plot.
In March the King proceeded to Aberdeen, marshalling 162 Aberdeen
loyal landholders by the way, who subscribed a defensive leao-ue for *^"^'^"^"''
. . . . ^^ '593-
the maintenance of the liberty of religion, crown, and country from
' thraldome of conscience, conqueisch [conquest], and slaverie of
strangers,' and for subduing the above-named traitors.^ The tenor
of the Aberdeen Covenant was to the effect that the subscribers,
among whom were Lennox, Atholl, Mar, Marischal, Lord Lindsay,
Lord Inverness, Ochiltree, Tullibardine, the Master of Forbes, and
others, would not ' ryde, assist, show favour, give counsell, or take part
with the saids Erles, Jesuits, nor others forsaids.' The King's luke-
warmness and unwarrantable toleration confirmed the suspicion that
he dallied with the established faith and was in secret leaeue with the
rebels who refused to disarm. The Church leaders, Melville, Rollock,
Balcanqual, and others, accused the King of causing the national
misery and the decay of religion. He waited his time for revenge.
The Synod of Fife came to the rescue by excommunicating the
conspirators, a judgment which the King tried to make the Assembly
set aside by his publishing an Act of Oblivion. That supreme Court
was not to be cajoled. Their verdict increased his perversity. Perversity of
James never respected the parish ministers, except when he asked ^^"^^'''
them to relieve him of monetary embarrassments, to stay his bank-
ruptcy, to redeem a pawned jewel, and to place the grace of the
Church between him and the persecuting witches. He imagined
that the threat of coercion would make them drop this excom-
munication. Far otherwise ; the Church promptly commanded all
presbyteries to excommunicate all nonconformists and to censure
absentees from the Communion table, in accordance with the law.
The defeat of Argyll's semi-official army at Glenlivet by the rebels
1 Booke of ike U. Kirk, iii. 821, 822 ; it was subscribed between the ist and 13th March.
Wodrow MSS., fol. .\liii. 43 ; Calderwood, v. 233-5, 773-5-
136 THE COVENANTERS
brought the King to his senses ; and leading north a superior force,
he dissipated the insurgents and reduced their strongholds.
Although the Church had theoretically 'come to her perfection,'
as Calderwood euphemistically narrated, the practical efforts of the
pastors to spread morality and religion were futile so long as statutes
against crime remained inoperative. Many districts still had no
churches, ministers, manses, and stipends. Some pastors had only
nominal stipends. Many pious men were almost broken-hearted with
the paganism of the time, as indicated in the minutes of Assembly.^
Sabbath was a day for labour, for marketing in graveyards, open-air
Miseryin 1596. plays, pastimcs, and local brawls. Even in 1596 the Assembly
declared that ' the most part of the parish kirks of Scotland are
altogether destituted of all exercise of religion,' and, inasmuch as the
terms of fellowship agreed upon by the Church were only ' ane
feeling of sin and apprehension of mercy,' the sacred edifices might
be crowded, while Christian virtues were of the rarest.- Opiniona-
tive preachers, revelling in unjustifiable personalities, political allusions,
and rude reproofs, in the pulpit, and spending the week with broken
heads, neither mollified the indurate masses, nor soothed the galled
King who had determined to muzzle the ministers, among whom
John Davidson, that veteran critic and master of invective, and ex-
senator Pont, had long been chartered libertines with their tongues.
David Black's David Black, the newly appointed minister of St. Andrews, a
student of that city, a favourite of the Melvilles, claimed his manse,
then in the possession of William Balfour of Burley, who refused to quit
at the minister's bidding, so that the usual remedy was imperative —
a sermon. Any sarcastic preacher had an improving text in this
scandalous appropriator and his wicked relatives. But the burly
layman had sweetest revenge by filling the King's ear with a sinister
report of Black's slanders upon the memory of Queen Mary, and the
minister was cited to appear before King and Council. To this
meeting the Melvilles and Balfour came. Black, evidently primed,
used Melville's plea of no jurisdiction of a Civil Court composed of
1 Bopke of the U. Kirk, iii. 803, 878. ^ Jtid., 879.
case
THE FIGHT FOR PREROGATIVE 137
laymen and clergy. As the case proceeded, Andrew Melville
unbidden entered and broke out.^ He reminded James that 'there
were two kings in Scotland, two kingdoms, and two jurisdictions,
Christ's and his,' and that if, instead of molesting Black, * the faith-
full servant of God,' he only did justice to Balfour, the accuser, the
traitor, burglar, ravisher, resetter of rebels — meantime, in the torrent
of Melville's oratory, Balfour had sunk to his knees as a suppliant
for mercy — then Christ would be saved the necessity of bringing a
judgment upon the King. Swiftly discomfited, the King was glad
to patch up the peace, and with a jest he added that Melville and
himself 'were both little men and their heart was at their mouth.'
But this intrusion could not be forgotten by a vindictive spirit which
bided its time.
A melancholy Assembly met in Edinburgh, on the 24th March Edinburgh
1596, and took thirteen sessions to discuss the threatening Spaniards j^^^g"" ^'
and the national corruption.^ It was demonstrated that nobody was
good, nothing was right. The penniless King himself compeared and
'granted he was a sinner,' too, but of a mild type. His loving
brethren, not to be outdone by this ingenuousness, reminded him
of other trivial shortcomings — that he omitted grace at meat, did not
go often enough to church, was 'blotted with banning and swearing,'
kept bad company, tolerated criminals, and winked at revelries at
Court.^ The clergy acknowledged with equal honesty that, while
they themselves needed remodelling and cleansing, the laity required
thorough purgation, and the judges of the Court of Session, who
were 'the worst men advanced,' and were bribed to sell justice, could
not be improved and were ripe for deposition. It was proposed that,
in order to avoid the judgment of God, the suspect landlords should
give up their heirs as pledges for their loyalty, the laity should stand
to arms in parochial musters monthly, and that the repentant ministers
should enter into a New Covenant with God.
^ M'Crie, Melville, 174, 175 ; Calderwood, v. 376 et seq.; Privy Council Reg., v., g.v.;
Melville, Aiitobiog., 323 et seq.
2 Booke of the U. Kirk, iii. 857. ^ Ibid., 872.
S
138
THE COVENANTERS
Davidson's
jeremiad.
John Davidson, who beHeved that the Devil envied his successful
ministry, produced, as requested, 'a particular catalogue of the chief
offences and corruptions in all estates.' The Assembly well knew
that this zealot, the excommunicator of Montgomery, could stir up
the most case-hardened of the crowd of 'choice professors,' who to
the number of four hundred sat listening to his jeremiad. For four
hours he bombarded them with prophetic denunciations, until, broken
into penitence, they burst into ' sighes and sobbes with shedding of
tears.' After this bitter humiliation the versatile orator raised up
the choice professors by some staying reflections on the text, ' Take
no thought for your life what ye shall eat or what ye shall drink ' —
a bitter morsel to starving men — until, of these four hundred, only
one stony heart remained unmelted.^ According to a quaint con-
temporary, the owner of that hardened organ obtained his just
deserts afterwards when he was trailed to death by a horse. The
result of all this yearning for self-reformation and national edification
was that the Assembly recommended the clergy assembled then, and
to be assembled in synods and presbyteries, to humble themselves,
enter into a new league with God, become diligent, and set up
effective kirk sessions to execute the discipline. This deliverance,
no doubt, was tantamount to an order that the existing laws should
be observed ; and, as subscription of the Covenant was imperative,
Dr. M'Crie may be right in stating that one result of this Assembly
signed, 1596. was the renewal of the Covenant in 1596.^
From a fiscal point of view the country was in a deplorable
condition, arising out of the many rebellions which ended in the
forfeiture and new infeftments of many landed estates. The law was
scarcely strong enough to protect the new, favoured acceptors of the
gifts of the Crown. The confused state of the teinds and other
Church patrimony also created constant friction with holders and
tenants of these. ^ By the death of Chancellor Maitland, in October
1 Booke of the U. Kirk, 869.
- M'Crie, Mehnl/e, 176, quoting James Melville, Autobiog., 353.
2 The Assembly of 1596 considered 'The New and Constant Plat of planting all the Kirks
of Scotland ' : Booke 0/ the U. Kirk, 878-88.
Covenant
THE FIGHT FOR PREROGATIVE 139
1595. the King had lost his trustiest adviser, and in his perplexity The Chanceiioi
began the new year badly by appointing a Commission of eight ^^^^l ^"""^ ^'^'^
persons, known as ' The Octavians,' to unravel the complications in
the Exchequer. Of these eight judges, parsons, and gentlemen,
Alexander Seton— Lord Urquhart — President of the Court of Session,
was a Catholic, educated in Rome, became prior of Pluscardyn, and
was the agebt who arranged the recall of the exiled Popish nobles.
The officials and parasites about Court, known as 'The Cubiculars,' Octavians and
resenting any intrusion upon their vested interests, and the ministers
suspicious of ulterior designs, brought about the dissolution of this
necessary Committee, which might have reorganised the finances of
Church and State and made both solvent at this period.
Now it was whispered that the Popish exiles, trusting to the Falkland
King's leniency, had returned. The Covenanters were excited. 1555.
While a Convention was sitting in Falkland to consider the advis-
ability of the recall of these banished traitors, Andrew Melville
intruded himself upon the meeting and severely chided the King for
his perilous policy, and for his pains was summarily ejected. From
this time onwards a Committee of Assembly, similar to * The Tables '
of forty years later, which sat permanently in cases of emergency
watching the trend of political affairs, is found looking after Church
interests. This Committee convened a meeting of ultra-Protestant
friends, clerical and lay, in Cupar, sufficiently near Falkland Palace
to permit a deputation of their number to go and interview the King
when in residence there, and to return to the meeting. James
Melville, a gentle character, noted for speaking ' in a mild and
smooth manner,' was their mouthpiece. But his perfervid, choleric
uncle, Andrew, remained outside the chamber door as a ready
mainstay. Professor James had not well begun his mild address
when the testy King proceeded to rate the pastors for meeting in
Cupar without his licence, and for fomenting sedition, till the high
words reached the ears of the irascible eavesdropper, who burst in,
gave the King a broadside, ' bore him down and uttered the Com-
mission as from the mighty God.' Text and oath flew across each
I40 THE COVENANTERS
other, but the eloquent Principal, frenzied with his one idea of the
Roman dainger, was not to be silenced. Drawing closer to the person
of the Sovereign, he gripped the sleeve of the King's coat and styled
him 'but God's sillie vassall [merely God's weak servant].' Melville
Melville proceeded to declare that Christ, in spite of His enemies, reigned
KinSmls!^ when King James was only in baby-clouts ; that the Protestants were
the buttresses of the throne ; and that the devilish advisers of the
Crown were hindering Christ's servants, who were the most faithful
subjects in the realm. No garrulous interruption could silence his
final outburst : * Sir, as diverse tymes before, so now again I must
tell you there arc two kings and two kingdoms in Scotland ; there is
Christ Jesus, and His Kingdome the Kirk, whose subject King
James the Sixt is, and of whose Kingdome he is not a king, nor
a head, nor a lord, but a member ; and they whom Christ has called,
and commanded to watch over His kirk and governe His spirituall
kingdome, have sufficient power of Him and authoritie so to doe,
both together and severallie, the which no Christian King nor prince
sould controll and discharge, but fortifie and assist, otherwise, not
faithfull subjects, not members of Christ.'^ Thus the prerogatives
of the Church were never so clearly formulated, and the pretensions
of a tyrant never so manfully assailed. Melville would have been
thrown out of doors for this affront by a less cowardly opponent.
Policy made the King to cool, and to trust to his kingcraft to outwit
his antagronists.
Committee The Committee on Church Interests continued sitting in Edin-
^1^6^°''^"'^" burgh, and drew up complaints which the Crown answered. The
Crown demanded that the ministers should leave regal matters alone
and attend to their own spiritual business in the pulpit. The King
announced that he would convene assemblies when needed, and ratify
Church edicts if found agreeable. During these negotiations, one of
the King's sapient remarks touched the quick in Scotland's ecclesi-
astical sore, thus, ' there could be no good agreement betwixt the
ministers and him till the marches of their jurisdiction were redd
> M'Crie, Melville, i8i ; Melville, Auiobiog., 324-6.
THE FIGHT FOR PREROGATIVE 141
[i.e. cleared] up.' That is the whole case in a nutshell. The want of
boundaries has caused the worst dissensions in the Scottish Church.
But the Stuart mode of redding the marches was both treacherous
and high-handed, as the gay galliard, Johnie Armstrong of Gilnockie,
said he found before he was hanged at Carlinrigg :
' To seik het water beneith cauld ice,
Surelie it is a greit folic.
I haue asked grace at a graceless face,
But there is nane for my men and me.'
The Melville party, and indeed the Covenanters generally, were
worse treated than the thievish Armstrongs, and received less ' grace
at a graceless face,' as the sequel shows.
David Black again got into trouble. He was accused, apparently Black's second
on slender grounds, but ostensibly at the instance of the English ^^
Ambassador, of having preached that all kings were children of the
devil. Queen Elizabeth was an atheist, the nobles were godless
enemies of the Church, and the Privy Council were ' holiglassis and
gormorantis' (buffoons and cormorants) of no religion. Black com-
peared before the Council on i8th November, and declined the
jurisdiction of any civil Court, if his offence was deemed ecclesiastical.
In his able defence he was assisted by the city pastors, Bruce and
Pont, while the Church Committee accepted Black's declinature as
a declinature for the whole Church. Not to be baffled. King and
Council, on 24th November, banished Black beyond Tay water,
discharged the Commission of the Church, ordered the sixteen
members of it to their homes, and forbade them meeting in similar
conventions.^
Church and State were now in close grips, and soon the King Emeute in
,..,, ,^ Edinburgh,
found a pretext for overthrowmg the Melville party and lor arrogat- December
ing to himself absolute supremacy. It happened thus. On the 17th ' 596.
December, after Walter Balcanqual, preaching in St. Giles, had
concluded a week-day discourse which was an unfavourable review
of the Black case, he convened in the chancel a meeting of hearers
1 Privy Counc. Rec, v. 326-42.
142 THE COVENANTERS
who agreed with his views, to resolve on what steps should be taken.
Robert Bruce, his colleague, dilated upon the danger to the Church.
They knew that the King was sitting in the Courts of Law but a few
yards away, and the meeting determined to send to him a deputation
of eight persons, representative of the Three Estates and of the city,
who should there and then ask for the dismissal of those who advised
the recall of the Popish rebels. Bruce, in his double capacity of
preacher and proprietor of Kinnaird, a man of commanding appear-
ance, was chosen as spokesman. The King flamed into fury and
demanded how they dared meet under his eyes without his liberty.
' Meet,' replied Lord Lindsay, with the brave scorn native in his
house, ' we dare do more than that, and will not suffer religion to be
overthrown.' A glance might convince the Sovereign that his inter-
viewers had no Mosaic views of a Stuart theocracy, and he rushed
from the Tolbooth in order to command that the doors of the Court-
house should be closed against the intruders. Rumour soon caught
and exaggerated the incident. The streets rang with cries *to arms,'
and quickly the burgesses threw themselves into military gear and
clanked up the High Street asking what the mad pother meant.
Wild with rage, the King magnified the panic into an insurrection,
blamed the ministers as * bounders out ' of a mob seeking his blood.
Royal and issued a proclamation declaring the rising treasonable, ordering
strangers to their homes, and commanding all officials of the law to
leave a city so polluted as to be unfit to be a seat for dispensing
justice. King James fled to Linlithgow Palace. Warrants for the
arrests of the city pastors, Balcanqual, Bruce, Balfour, and Watson,
were issued. They escaped. Gossip now had it that the King had
permitted the Border reavers to march and sack the capital, of which
he intended to leave no vestige save a tombstone. The terrified
magistrates besought an audience of the King, which was refused
until they came as suppliant rebels to grovel at his feet, to be snarled
at, and to promise that they would apprehend and expel any preacher
at the King's pleasure. The populace, resigned to their fate, pre-
pared themselves for the grave with a comforting fast.
Proclamation.
THE FIGHT FOR PREROGATIVE 143
At this unhappy juncture, John Welsh, then minister in Kirkcud-
bright, a son-in-law of John Knox, a zealot for pure Presbytery,
preached in St. Giles. If Spottiswood's account of his sermon is
credible, his evangel could not have possessed that gracious flavour
which made Samuel Rutherford style Welsh 'that heavenly, pro-
phetical, and apostolic man of God.' He 'did pitifully rail against Weish rails.
the King, saying "He was possessed with a Devil ; and one Devil
being put out seven worse were entered in place. And that the
subjects might lawfully rise and take the sword out of his hand," '
just as the children and servants of a madman might bind him to
keep him from violence,^ If the clergy were impolitic in the conduct
of their case, the King was resolute in stamping out their freedom.
This he proved by the Act of Linlithgow, 21st December 1596 — Linlithgow
a test ordaining ministers to subscribe a bond acknowledging the^^*"'' '5^^'
King's authority in civil and criminal causes, on pain of loss of
stipend." Dreading extermination, the ministers dispatched David
Lindsay to woo the King back to his old hymeneal love for the
Church. The autocrat was soothed, and re-entered Edinburgh with
a strong escort of troops on New Year's Day 1597. The deserted,
lifeless streets were as silent as those of Pompeii. Kingcraft had won
a notable triumph. The reaction against Presbyterianism was unmis-
takable.
The King once again appeared in St. Giles, and made a public
vow that he meant no alteration of the national religion, and only
intended its securer establishment. He, of course, was the sole
judge of what religion and its establishment denoted. The Privy
Council soon gave legal expression to the royal displeasure by pro-
nouncing the petitioners of the Tolbooth to be traitors, by ordaining The Xoibooth
the ministry to acknowledge the King's jurisdiction, by commanding ^^,'^1^^"^'"
magistrates to arrest distasteful preachers, by forbidding assemblies
in Edinburgh, and by ostracising four ministers of the capital. The
1 Spottiswood, 430 ; cf. Life and Letters, Wodroiu MiscelL, i. 543 ; Life, W^odrow, Select
Biog., i. I -61.
^ Privy CouJic. Rec, v. 352.
144
THE COVENANTERS
The King's
new scheme,
1597.
Perth Assem-
bly, 1597.
manses of these pastors v/ere seized on the plea that they were
'scenes of conspiracies,' but, according to some, because their
proximity to Parliament and the Courts made them suitable for the
King to dine in. For the part the citizens took in the Tolbooth
petition, the city was fined 20,000 merks (^loio, iis. 8d.), and the
unpopular Octavian, Lord Urquhart, was created Provost.
The King now acted upon the supposition that the national
Church as a corporation might be weaker than its zealots imagined,
and that the majority of its preachers and members who did not
frequent wrangling assemblies might, for the sake of peace, be more
flexible and amenable to his views than the leaders were. As head
of the Church, he resolved personally, following the example of early
Christian emperors, to convene an effective assembly, in order to
clear up the vexed question of spiritual jurisdiction, the manner of
applying doctrine, and the policy of the Church. Perth was chosen
as a suitable centre, because the northern Scots were still half-
converted Catholics and lukewarm Covenanters. Romanism had
deepest roots in Highland glens, where the uneducated clans,
naturally superstitious and religious, hated progress and change, and
yet slavishly obeyed their chiefs, who were more easily brought into
reverence of the royal will. Distance from the seat of government
kept them ignorant of nice distinctions in jurisprudence, and of those
scandals of the Court, which afforded fruitful texts to the railing
' Popes of Edinburgh.' The Assembly met in Perth, on 29th
February 1597, and this action was quite within the King's right.
His edict embraced fifty-five sensible questions, prepared by the
King's clever secretary, Lindsay, regarding the points at issue that
day. The Covenanting extremists, at the outset, maintained that the
meeting was not an assembly properly convened, but this motion
was easily defeated, and this adverse vote turned the tide into the
channels James had prepared, so that the substance of his thirteen
demands was accepted by the Assembly. It was agreed that the
King might in General Assembly propose for reform any matter of
external government ; that no civil legislation be condemned until
THE FIGHT FOR PREROGATIVE 145
first constitutional means had been taken for its reform ; that no
citizen be publicly rebuked for any supposed offence except proved
or notorious crime ; that no General Assemblies should meet, nor
pastors in cities be appointed, without the consent of the Kino-.
Kingcraft had scored another victory. While the constitutional
party held that this Assembly was merely an informal palaver, neither
cited nor held properly, being without moderator, clerk, investing
prayer, and customary sermon, the King was satisfied with obtaining
a basis upon which to build up his own system of Church government
which permitted no clerical intrusion in the civil sphere.
The Perth meeting forestalled the regular Assembly, indicted at
St. Andrews on 27th April, to which few members came. The
business was postponed to the King's next convention, summoned
to Dundee on loth May, and the interests of the Church were
protected by formal protests.^
Robert Rollock, Principal of the newly founded University of Dundee
Edinburgh, a learned, guileless man, was moderator of the Dundee 15^7, ' ^'
Assembly which ratified the proceedings at Perth, assoilzied the rebel
Earls, and agreed to a new proposal by the King.^ This was the
appointment of nineteen ecclesiastical commissioners — some of them
afterwards became bishops — who w^ere to get access to the King for
advice, to approach Parliament with schemes of reform, to plant and
maintain ministers, and to try cases where the Crown was aggrieved
by churchmen : in a word, an Inquisition whose head was King
James — a 'Star Chamber' wherein persecution was conceived.
Thus dexterously the Church had been inveigled into appointing a
perpetual lay-moderator, a civil Pope who graciously declared that he
did not enjoy seeing his pastors stand like mendicants at the door
of Parliament and outside its deliberations. The constitutional party,
on the other hand, were right in stating that this subtle move was
'the verie needle which drew in the threed [thread] of the bishops.'
With the reconciled Papists and the bridled clergy, the country
^ Booke of the U. Kirk, iii. 9i3._
- Cf. Life in Seleci Works of Rollock (Wodrovv Soc, 1849).
146 THE COVENANTERS
obtained a summer of peace.^ That Parliamentary representation
which previous Assembfies had requested was now to be given in a
way very few expected.^ The Reform Commissioners, doubtless with
royal approval, petitioned Parliament for some seats in the legislature
for clergy. The Parliament-men, not relishing a pastoral element
chosen by the clergy — no doubt having visions of Knox, Melville,
Black, and other railers — and knowing the King's favour for the
Parliament, discarded prelatic estate, resolved that a voice in Parliament would
1597. ^^^"^ ^ ^^ conferred on any bishop, abbot, or prelate appointed by the
Sovereign. Things looked ominous when Parliament began to belittle
the Church and give mere titulars and favourites of the King the
positions of the mitred hierarchy of old, and the zealots were no more
angry at the fraud than moderate presbyters were. The same Parlia-
ment restored the Popish lords — Huntly, Errol, and Angus.
The Synod of Fife considered the subject in a lively discussion
wherein the two Melvilles fulminated, and the hoary minister of
Dunfermline, David Fergusson, whose long life had been a fight for
liberty, emitted some of his jocund wit. He it was who dubbed the
titulars ' tulchans,' or calf-skin bishops, and now he compared the
new proposal to the artifice for taking Troy, aptly quoting the line of
Virgil: ' Equo ne credite, Teucri/ The less classical but bolder wit,
John Davidson, of excommunication fame, invited merriment by
describing the clerical Parliament-man thus : ' Busk [dress or adorn]
busk, busk him als bonilie as yee can, and bring him in as fairlie as
ye will, we see him weill eneugh ; we see the homes of his mytre.'
The opportune appearance of an eclipse confirmed both the
suspicious and the superstitious in their sinister forebodings that the
Prince of Darkness was about to make his advent. Supported by
commissioners, who raced with each other for episcopal thrones. King
James had no qualms in silencing fearless pastors like Bruce and
Black, in appointing partisans to vacant charges, and in extinguishing
clerical meetings.
' Confessing apostasy from the papacy, Angus, Huntly, and Errol subscribed the Con-
fession in the Old Kirk of Aberdeen, on 2Sth. June 1597, and got absolution.
- Act. Pari. Scot., iv. 130. ,
THE FIGHT FOR PREROGATIVE 147
Andrew Melville had not ceased hurling divine judgments at the Dundee
throne, and had been deprived of some of his academic rights and '^^g^'l, ^'
forbidden to attend assemblies. But before the King could trust an
Assembly to meet again in Dundee, in order to accept the Restora-
tion Act, he found it necessary to evict Melville. The assembled
brethren, on 7th March 1598, accepted the King's proposal that fifty-
one ministers representative of the Church should form what was
formerly the First Estate and have votes in Parliament, but not without
strenuous opposition on the part of the constitutionalists, who had
the courage to demand that the Church should have some say as to '
the nominees and their clerical office, and also to appoint Commis-
sioners to discuss these points with the King.^ By a majority of ten,
the Highland Host carried the day, the voting having been begun by
Mr. Gilbert Body, whom Calderwood the historian designates 'a
drunken Orkney asse.'^
An act passed in this Assembly directing the number of Commis-
sioners to be sent to every Assembly became of paramount im-
portance in the contest with King Charles at the indiction of the
Glasgow Assembly in 1638. 'The Tables' directed presbyteries to
procure and act upon this law enjoining presbyteries to send three of
their number — one layman representative of the barons, and one
layman representative of each burgh, to every General Assembly.
Every session was enjoined to send a lay-elder to the presbytery to
form the elective ' Eldership,' or Presbytery. No scandalous person
was to be chosen Commissioner, nor was the Moderator to be
chosen a Commissioner without due election. In the event of either
of these events occurring, the brethren were to compear and protest
at the Assembly. The observance of this statute made the General
Assembly in Glasgow the powerful convention it proved itself to be.
The debates which took place at Falkland and Holyrood only Falkland
demonstrated that the King sought one thing, the Assembly another, Jd Hoiyrood
and Parliament a third. Yet, after all, the King's scheme was the Conference.
1 BooAe of the U. Kirk, iii. 934.
^ This minister of Holme, Pomona, was drowned in 1606.
148 THE COVENANTERS
most statesmanlike, in so far as it provided clerical assistance in his
government ; it was, however, too impracticable in a semi-civilised
state, where mobs carried arms and irritable preachers prayed for a
peace they could not brook, when it was to be gained by the aid of
their representatives in Parliament bearing the tabooed name of
bishops. In the manner of its accomplishment, it debauched the
conscience of the Reformed Church and angered the haughty nobles,
whom it demeaned to the level of the starving preachers.
The King's This was only one of many schemes taking shape in the fertile
literary works. ^'^^^ of the King. His literary tastes also found indulgence in the
exciting field of theoretical politics. In early youth he dabbled in
poetry. In September 1598 he essayed to answer the Buchanan
School of democrats in a treatise, entitled TAe Trew Law of Free
Monarchies, or the Reciprock and Mutuall duetie betwixt a free King
and his naturall subjects} Herein he published the simple creed of
paternal government : The King is father of his subjects, a God
upon earth, a ruler by birth, a patron, not a servant of Parliament, an
absolute person not bound to obey the laws of his realm, ' but of his
good will, and for good example giving to his subjects,' who conse-
quently are 'naked of all authority.'^ The Presbyterian politicians
were not slow in resenting this dangerous work — which action
merely incited the King to illustrate, in 1599, his Draconian
philosophy in a more offensive form.
Basiiikon ^o Waldegrave, the King's printer, the royal author had
Doron, or entrusted the manuscript of his new work * BA:SIAIK0N AflPON, or
°^^ ' " His Maiesties instructions to his dearest sonne, Henry, the Prince,'
which was to be privately printed in seven copies.^ Andrew Melville
got a glimpse of it, and made some extracts which he forwarded to
his nephew James, who persuaded John Dykes, minister of Kilrenny,
to bring its teaching before a meeting of the Synod of Fife. Never
was such an impolitic and mistimed effusion prepared by any ruler, as
1 Aldis, List, No. 309 (Waldegrave, 1598), 8vo.
^ King James, Works (Winton's edit., 1616), 194-209.
3 Ibid., pp. 160-75 (original edit. 1599, Edinburgh); Aldis, List, No. 311 (Waldegrave,
4to) ; Melville, Autobiog., 444 et scq.
THE FIGHT FOR PREROGATIVE 149
this revealing the innermost thoughts and aims of James, and his
views of the Covenanters whom he classed with the Puritans. He
hated them because, as he said, they had persecuted him four months
before he was born.^ In stating his propositions regarding the
absolute power of every monarch over his subjects, lay and cleric,
the author described the Puritans as ' brain-sicke and headie preachers
like Anabaptists in contempt of the civil magistrate,' and advised his
son to beware of them as ' verie pestes in the Church and Common-
weill of Scotland, whom, by long experience, I have found no
desserts can oblish [oblige].' He also declared that they were worse
than Highlanders or Borderers; and, as to the Highlanders, he
advised his son to ' thinke no more of them all, than as wolves and
wild boares.' With consummate hypocrisy, the King while pretending
to be interested in the establishment of Presbytery, counselled the
prince to restore Episcopacy, to annul the 'vile act of annexation,'
and to banish ' their conceited paritie . . . which can neither stand
with the order of the Church, nor the peace of a commonweale and
well- ruled monarchic.' This was not all. He was advised to hate James's theory
Puritans, call few Parliaments, make laws for himself, know his own ° government.
craft, and say his own prayers. It is the effect of such teaching upon
himself and upon his young family, notably Prince Charles, which
must be carefully weighed along with the stern actions of the later
Covenanters, who were provoked into being irreconcilables. For
although the King, in reprinting this treatise, trimmed its most
offensive passages, he published enough to open the eyes of non-
conformists to his hatred of their 'conceited paritie.'
The Synod of Fife condemned this teaching as seditious and
pernicious ; and, as if ignorant of its authorship, sent their judgment to
the King for his approval. He proved he was in earnest. He forcibly
illustrated his autocratic principles by proroguing the Montrose
Assembly from October 1599 to i6th March 1600, without consulting
its members, and by compelling the pastors in Edinburgh to apologise
for interfering with his licence to a com.pany of English comedians.
^ Wodroiv MSS.^xWw. 1$.
I50
THE COVENANTERS
Montrose
Assembly,
1600.
Pastors in
Parliament.
Bishops
appointed.
Melville at
Montrose.
The Montrose Assembly ratified the propositions discussed in the
Conferences at Falkland and Holyrood, to this extent, that repre-
sentatives of the Church might sit in Parliament if the King selected
them from a number of nominees agreed upon by the Church, that
they might not initiate Church business in Parliament, nor act without
instructions received from the Assembly, to which Court they were to
report their actings and to demit their office annually/ They might
be called 'Commissioners,' would possess no extra power, and would
remain pastors subject to the judicatories of the Church. In a word,
the new prelate was to be only a clerical reporter in Parliament,
whom the King and legislature permitted to vote there.
Where the carcase was, there the eagles were also. Vacant sees
were promptly filled. That good-humoured Laodicean, Lindsay of
Leith, for his elasticity of character, had a speedy reward in the
bishopric of Ross, and similar honours fell upon Peter Blackburn
of Aberdeen, and George Gledstanes of St. Andrews, who were
elevated to Aberdeen and Caithness. A trice elapsed, and these
three were the deputies selected from the Church Commissioners to
take their seats in the legislature in November. The Sovereign was
managing his Divine Rights admirably, and his craft bore many fruits.
It is not to be supposed that Andrew Melville permitted the
Church to shackle itself without a manly protest. The King had
in person frequented the Assembly in Montrose from which Melville
was debarred, but the indomitable patriot appeared in town and
infused his defiant spirit into the timorous presbyters. When the
galled King angrily demanded of Melville why he was so trouble-
some, 'The said Andro, laying his hand to his heid, said, "Sir, it
is this that ye would haiff! Ye sail haiff it! Tak it! Tak it! or
[rather than] bereave us of the liberties of Jesus Christ and his
Kingdome.'"^ Every turn of affairs tended to deepen the royal
contempt for the Presbyterian cause.
The Gowrie conspiracy to kidnap the King in Perth ended in a
1 Booke of the U. Kirk, iii. 949 ; Hume, Poems (Scot. Text Sec), 170, App. C.
^ Melville, Autobiog., 542.
THE FIGHT FOR PREROGATIVE 151
bloody fiasco on 5th August 1600.^ The young- Earl of Gowrie and Gowrie plot,
a younger brother, sons of the executed raider, Ruthven, in order to ^^°°'
find opportunity to seize, perchance to dispatch, the King, had wiled
him to see a wondrous pot of coined gold. This plot did not belie
the instincts of their bloodstained family, yet it was unlike the
manners the cultured young Earl should have learned in Beza's
home in Geneva, whence he had lately returned. It failed, and
these two enthusiasts or avengers paid for their rashness with their
lives, not without leaving some doubt as to what their real aim was.
The nervous King, however, ordained the pastors in Edinburgh to
convene their flocks without delay, and to praise God for his deliver-
ance. The magistrates and burgesses lustily rang bells, fired cannon,
and lit bonfires, in imagination recalling the vision from Linlithgow,
their tombstone, and their epitaph ; but the more critical city
shepherds, with graceless incivility, not feeling satisfied that the
royal version of the story was canonical enough, delayed obeying
the royal mandate in the meantime.
Judgment was swift. While the two victims were huddled into pastors exiled,
salt to be pickled for their day of trial — such was the ferocity of old '^'^"
Scots justice — the five sceptics, Balcanqual, Hall, Watson, Balfour,
and Robert Bruce were ejected from the Capital, and five royalists,
including ever-ready Lindsay, were placed in their charges. Bruce,
alone of the five, would not purchase his return by submission. He
had long lain under the umbrage of his Sovereign, and the Tolbooth
interview had widened the gulf between them. The edict of the
Perth Assembly (1597), ordaining the imposition of hands upon the
ministry — a rite considered by the less ritualistic churchmen to be
permissible rather than imperative and essential — may have been
intended to strike at the successful lay-ministry of unordained Bruce, persecution
rather than to further the later prelatic scheme by which ordination °^ ^'"''''•
by bishops was made imperative. The stoppage of a pension Bruce
had from a benefice of Arbroath Abbey annexed to the Crown
indicated the meanness of the King, who, when Bruce appealed to
1 Reg. Privy Counc, vi., q.v. ; Act. Pari. Scot., iv. 192,
152 THE COVENANTERS
the Court of Session and obtained a decision against the Crown,
fumed as madly at the uprightness of the judges as at the triumph
of his enemy. At last the Gowrle affair gave James the opportunity
he longed for to destroy the influence of his -fearless and popular
antagonist ; and, despite Bruce's assertion that he did accept the
authorised version of the story of the plot, yet only claimed the right,
and obeyed the royal behest to keep politics out of the pulpit, the
King had Bruce banished to France on 2nd November 1600. On
his return, he was permanently ostracised to his estate in the country,
Kinnaird.^ With strange inconsistency, the lay- Pope, who would not
countenance a lay-ministry, would enforce his creed that ' obedience
to princes, suppose they were wicked, is the word of God.'
Doom of the 0^1 15th November Parliament House witnessed a gruesome
Ruthvens. spectacle when the salt-pickled bodies of the Earl of Gowrle and
his brother were produced for trial, and these were formally doomed,
and sentenced to be hanged, quartered, and distributed as a terror to
traitors and evil-doers. It was also enacted that their names should
be obliterated, their lands and possessions forfeited, and a memorial-
day appointed to keep alive the story of their treason.^ On 19th
November, while this salted sacrifice adorned the market gibbets,
and these once fiery heads dropped from the hangman's axe. Prince
Birth of Prince Charles was bom in Linlithgow Palace — the gossips said, with a
iQtrNovemb r ^^^^^'^^^ ^'^^S around his neck. Ever-ready Lindsay, the bishop,
1600. had the honour of baptizing the hapless prince — another Basilikon
Doron to miserable Scotland.
Burntisland Once again the King, on his own initiative, setting aside the
f^i™^^^' Charter of the Church of 1592, convened an Assembly which met
in Burntisland on 15th May 1601.^ Its members, while mourning
the sins of the age, the paucity of preachers, the presence of Papists,
and the loss of the King's regard for Presbytery, practically
homologated the recent subversive policy, and waived their own
boasted jurisdiction by approving of the enforced translation of the
* Bruce, Life and Sermons, 97, 130 (Wodrow Soc).
2 Act. Pari. Scot., iv. 191-204. ^ ^poke of the U. Kirk., iii. 963.
THE FIGHT FOR PREROGATIVE 153
exiled pastors of Edinburgh to rural charges. The King himself
was present with a tear in his eye, and, before dissolving the
meeting, the Head of the Church held up his hand and vowed he
would defend religion.
A week later this defender of the faith commanded the venerable John Davidson
John Davidson, guilty of writing a characteristic letter which the ^"^'^^'^ •
King easily construed into treasonable reflections upon his own new
regal pontificate, to be confined in Edinburgh Castle. A harsher
fate awaited Andrew Melville. The prolonged struggle in un-
favourable circumstances was making the once bold ministry — no
longer upheld by gallant and pious laymen as Knox was — terror-
stricken and invertebrate, so that they permitted — what they could
scarcely prevent — the intruder on, and conqueror of, their territory
to cross the Rubicon and burn his boats while the sun of Presbytery
was going down. Queen Anne was now a professed Roman
Catholic.^
Another instance of paternal government was afforded in the Hoiyrood
summoning by proclamation of the indicted St. Andrews Assembly to ,602"^ ^'
the Chapel Royal at Hoiyrood, to suit the King, on loth November
1602.^ It was in vain that James Melville protested against the
conversion of the Assembly into a Privy Council of Religion, since
his pliable brethren sat down placidly and approved of the further
disintegration of the National Church. It was agreed that visitors
should be appointed over sixteen districts, practically dioceses,
having inquisitorial powers of examining pastors, presbyteries, and
people ; that private chaplains, practically spies, should be billeted
on the nobles ; and that the aristocratic youth should be prevented
going out of the country for education and travel, until they obtained
passports and gave caution. These were the latest efforts of the
King to re-establish the First Estate, before he left Scotland for
the throne of England.
1 Her letter, dated 31st July 1601, empowering Cardinal Borghese to profess the Catholic
Faith in Rome for her, is in the British Museum : Addl. MSS., 37021, fol. 25. Cf. E/?£^. Hist.
Rev.., XX. 124-7.
- Booke of the U. Kirk, iii. 973, 974.
U
154 THE COVENANTERS
CHAPTER VI
CLERICAL LIFE AND LEARNING AFTER THE REFORMATION
Rudeness after The last forty ycars of the sixteenth century were a period as rude
e oima ion. ^^ ^^^ Other for Several generations. The Reformation did not
compose the perturbed masses as soon as was expected, nor did the
introduction of novel doctrines and of a bold worship by clergy, freed
from one intellectual bondage to be entangled in another, elevate
the people and their leaders with the rapidity which other political
and spiritual movements have shown. Literature is the cream of a
nation's intellectual life : books are the product of brains fertilised by
potent ideas, which are assured of immortality by an inherent law
demanding their reproduction. But this period under review pro-
duced almost nothing new in the fields of pure literature, theology,
poetry and art.^ The infusion of the new life upon the moribund
stock did not relieve its barrenness, save to start a few insignificant
shoots from the undying root. Nor is this to be wondered at.
It is generally believed that the men who ascended to the
National Zion, in order to sacrifice as well as to cleanse the temple
before becoming priests of a reformed order, were all of clean hands
and of pure hearts, who had not lifted up their souls unto vanity nor
Impious sworn deceitfully. The history of Church possessions and teinds
Reformers. ,. • • i i i i i • i
discountenances any supposition that the landowners who seized
the patrimony had any regard, far less devotion, for religion and its
ministry. The continual pressure of and remonstrances against these
rapacious appropriators for seventy years illustrate the sordid motives
1 According to Mr. H. G. Aldis's List of Books printed in Scotland before 1700 (Edin., 1904),
only three hundred and twenty-four printed books, pamphlets, and proclamations printed and
published in the sixteenth century in Scotland are extant.
CLERICAL LIFE AFTER THE REFORMATION 155
which underlay the spirit of reform in these lay disestablishers of the
ancient Church.
An examination into the antecedents of the clergy who flourished Poverty of
in the same period reveals some striking facts regarding the dire*^'^"^^'
impecuniosity of the beneficed pastors, the difficult and dangerous
nature of their sacred office, the ignorance and immorality of many
preachers, and the incapacity as well as want of opportunity of the
educated to produce literary work. The Protestant bishops them-
selves, whom writers such as Buckle supposed to have been gorged
with the wealth of the Roman Church, were continually lamenting
their sad lot. Parish ministers, too, were often in dire straits. A
benefice was not lucrative on account of the difficulty the pastor
had in collecting in kind the legal stipend from landlords, farmers,
beneficed men, or the collector of the Church's part of the ' third$.'
David Fergusson of Dunfermline had to borrow money to feed his
family. John Davidson of Prestonpans preached for years without
remuneration, and at his own expense built the church and furnished
it with a clock, built the manse and offices, gave a glebe, and bought
and endowed a school. Many instances of clerical munificence to
schools are recorded. In 1593 there were still one hundred and seven
churches vacant or unplanted, because there were no stipends pro-
vided; and in 1596 over four hundred charges, not including Argyle
and the Isles, had no pastors. Many ministers received no stipends.^
1 The provision made by statute for the maintenance of the clergy is as follows : In
1560 it was agreed that one-fourth, or, if need be, one-third of the benefices throughout
Scotland be uplifted annually for stipends to the ministry {Ac^. Pari. Scot., ii. 607a). This
proportion being withheld it was necessary in 1567 to pass another Act (cap. 10, Act. Pari.,
iii. 24, 37) enjoining payment of the third until the Church had all the teinds restored to it ;
and lay impropriators of the benefices were ordered to pay this third. The system worked
badly, and new grants of lands, donations, etc., in burghs had to be made for the support of
the ministers. Act 15, 1592 {Act. Pari., iii. 545), gives an account of the modes of provision.
A commission was then appointed to condescend upon reasonable stipends. In 1596 stipends
were not payable to ministers who had not acknowledged the King's authority. In 1617
(c. 3) stipends were raised to five hundred merks or five chalders, and the maximum was fixed
at one thousand merks or ten chalders. In 1627 this quantity was raised to eight chalders ;
in 1649 this being paid in three chalders victual and ^5 money (1649, c. 253 ; Act. Pari. f
Scot., VI. ii. 287). One hundred merks was equivalent to £()6, 13s. 4d. Scots, or £^, lis. i|d.
sterling. For register, cf. Wodrow MiscelL, i. 318 et seq.
156 THE COVENANTERS
Some eked out a precarious livelihood from the voluntary offerings
of their poor flocks, or from the scanty produce of a few acres of
church land, which no one had been sacrilegious enough to seize.
Some kept inns, others served as tapsters of wine and ale, still
others speculated in grain, lent out money to usury, or became
servitors to the nobility and gentry.^ A moiety of them were
scions of the nobility — Lindsays, Grahams, Leslies, Douglases,
Campbells — or younger sons of the barons and substantial burgesses.
These, by reason of their influence, may have fared well, yet none
of them could live sumptuously on their stipends, few of which were
paid in money. Stipends were often paid in butter, wool, hemp,
lint, cheese, fish, wildfowl," lambs, and other live-stock, as well as
in the ordinary cereals.
Hume the A receipt given by Alexander Hume, the poet, minister of
P*^'* Logie, shows the roundabout method of paying stipend In 1600 :
* Received from John Stirling the sum of ^58 for the duty of the
tack [lease] of the teind-sheaves of Logie, assigned to him in
stipend ; ^6 for the price of two bolls of meal, and 50 merks money
in name of pension, according to a precept by Patrick Home of
Polwarth, tacksman of the teinds, discharging the said John Stirling
thereof, and the said Patrick my brother.'^ All this amounted to
about £8 sterling.
Stipends. Stipends averaged less than ;^io sterling, some amounting to
j£i6 sterling, and very few to ^20 sterling annually. In 1574
the stipend of the combined charges of Alvie, Rothiemurchus, and
Kingussie amounted to ^i, 6s. 8d., that of Mordington and Long-
formacus ;^i, 15s., that of Laggan ^2, 4s. 3d., that of Inverkip
^2, 15s. 6d., and that of Tongland (with five dependent churches)
jCs sterling. The reformers inveighed against the amalgamation
of several churches under one parish minister, but the result was
no pecuniary benefit to the pastor, who, in the case of Dunbarney,
1 Booke of the U. K'irk, iii. 866.
"^ The minister of North Berwick draws some solan geese from the Bass Rock.
' Dr. R. M. Fergusson, Alexander Hume, 107 note 2 (Paisley, 1899).
CLERICAL LIFE AFTER THE REFORMATION 157
with six chapels, got only £12, 6s. 8d., and in the case of Scone,
Markinch, and Muthill received £16, 6s. 8d. In 1560 John Row,
in the Old Church, Perth, was paid £16, 13s. 4d. and one hundred
and sixty stones of oats, while his contemporary, Heriot, in Aber-
deen, with the same money stipend, was requited with 'a black
gown, coat, doublet, hose, and bonnet,' for the oats. The situation
was made worse where ministers had neither manses nor glebes. Miseries of
as in Killearnan, Stromness, Walls, Rousay, and other places ; "^'"'^^^'^^•
and preachers made that an excuse for being non-resident and not
exercising their pastoral function. All were not imbued with the
devotion of Bell of Cadder, in 1590, who lived in the steeple for
lack of a manse. If the ministers were harassed, the people w^ere
ill-treated by the Crown and government, which frittered away
the teinds as perquisites to favourites. Andrew Graham, titular
bishop of Dunblane (1594), was accused of not preaching, not dis-
pensing the communion, and not residing in Dunblane for seven
years. The teinds of Farnell were given in 1577 to James Nicolson
for five years to permit him to study abroad, and the church was
kept vacant till his return. At a later date, the parish of Drainie
was neglected for over four years, the benefice having been pre-
sented to Alexander Innes, a mere youth. Many Highland charges
were given to English-speaking preachers — for example, Killearnan
and Laggan ; and, since the pastors were non-resident, the
parishioners were bereft of all ghostly counsel. What churches
existed were tottering from decay. Beath had no church, and the
indwellers, having forgotten there was a Sabbath, used that day
for work and sports. Where ministers and presbyteries were power-
ful enough to compel heritors to provide churches, manses, and
glebes — and many glebes were first provided in the reign of
Charles i., seventy-three years after the Reformation — the acquisi-
tion was obtained not without local vexation, strife, and even blood,
in some instances. In Fordoun the visitation of the Presbytery was
stopped by the armed bands of the landowners, and some of the
Presbytery were struck with a sword by Sir David Wod of Craig.
158
THE COVENANTERS
Debts.
Libraries and
books.
Religion
dangerous.
In such scenes and circumstances it is not surprising that scores
of the clergy died in black debt, as the ministers of Kilspindie did,
and others had such poverty-stricken homes that their household
utensils, sold on their demise, were valued at ^lo Scots only —
less than ^i sterling — as were John Row's in Forgandenny in
1588. This extreme poverty accounts for the rarity of libraries and
the paucity of books in manses. The Assembly of 1562 directed
superintendents to see what books the pastors had ; and, ten years
later, the Assembly ordained collectors of the teinds to give poor
ministers some books. Not till 1602 did the Assembly make certain
books imperative, namely. The Translation of the Old Testament by
Tremellius, The New Testament in Greek by Beza, ' with the vulgar
Inglis translation,' The Common Places of Melanchthon, The Ecclesi-
astical History, published in Basle, The Acts of the Council of Trent,
and some unnamed commentaries. This little parcel must have
been the whole library of John Wynram, Superintendent of Fife,
which was estimated to be worth £\, 13s. 4d. James Melville of
Kilrenny had books worth £1 ; David Fergusson of Dunfermline,
£Z, 6s. 8d. ; Buchanan of Ceres, ^25; Scoogie of Flisk, £zz^
6s. 8d. ; and John Durie of Montrose, in 1600, ;^8, 6s. 8d. Until
the age of the Jacobite bishops, some of whom had large libraries,
none of the sixteenth-century ministers had collections of books
like that of Archbishop Gledstanes, valued at .;^iii, of Bishop
Forbes (1634), valued at ^225, or that of James Nairne of Wemyss
(1678), who left one thousand seven hundred and forty- three volumes
to the University of Edinburgh.
To expect that the badly equipped clergy, fighting for daily
bread, should have produced works similar to those which appeared
in the Elizabethan and Carolan periods, is absurd. The Scottish
brain, starved, could not think, could not even get peace to think.
The pastoral office was not the serene function it is now, when
spiritual leaders trip among their tame, contented flocks, none making
them to be afraid. The causes of the Reformation had made
religion itself dangerous, especially the public exposition of it, and
CLERICAL LIFE AFTER THE REFORMATION 159
irritable factors connected with it. For example — it was no easy
matter to preach to congregations, as fully armed as South Sea
Islanders, gaping for any oratorical indiscretion, lying in wait behind
the tombstones to be avenged of fancied wrongs, and still half-purged
of the old leaven of Roman Catholicism.
An assassin tried to shoot Knox. A soldier of Queen Mary Assaults on
failed to stab John Craig in church. The Assembly of 1577 '"™^*^''^-
witnessed John Anderson, clad in white linen, bending on his knees,
craving the forgiveness of the Church for assaulting Robert Boyd,
minister of Newtyle, to the effusion of blood. Crimes of that
character were common. John Howieson, minister of Cambuslang,
was moderator of Glasgow Presbytery when Bishop Montgomery's
case came up for consideration. The meeting was invaded by
the civil authorities, and the moderator was struck on the face,
pulled by the beard, had a tooth beaten out, and was put in the
Tolbooth by the provost, vSir Matthew Stewart of Minto, and the
bailies with their friends. Another provost of Glasgow, the Earl
of Montrose, dragged David Wemis out of the pulpit in the Cathedral,
in order to introduce Montgomery ; and three years later the reverend
David had to draw his own ' quhingear ' (short sword) and defend
himself against David Cunningham and his son, who, armed with
sword and pistol, had struck him, and called him a liar. At the nick
of time Andrew Hay, parson of Renfrew, arrived and drew his knife,
a 'jocktaleg or langkail gully,' and these two good specimens of the
Church militant made a noble stand there. The clergy then carried
whingers and whittles for self-defence. In this same year, 1587, Sir
James Hamilton of Crawfordjohn struck Archibald Normond, minister
of Stonehouse, in the performance of his duty; and as Thomas
Douglas of Balmerino was retiring from church he was assaulted by
a brother of the chief proprietor there. This Thomas must have
been a stirring missionary, since he stood accused of the murder of
Thomas Crichton. Ministers often invited such castigation. The Ministers
absolute disregard shown by preachers for the feelings of the auditors p''°^°'^^^'^^'
brought down, vengeance sooner than they expected, as when the
i6o THE COVENANTERS
laird of Craigie threw his whinger at the head of Nathan Inglis, the
ugly article falling close to the pulpit, while Inglis (1593) was rebuk-
ing the laird and others for Sabbath-breaking. The danger was
greater still in districts whose inhabitants retained Popish predilec-
tions, so that pastors, as Gilbert Gardin of Cullen in 1595, seldom
went to the pulpit without swords. The minister of Monzie, in the
same year, had been so evilly treated that, becoming unfit for
ministerial duty, he sought a pension from the Crown. Even the
gentle minstrel of Logie (Hume) was 'invaded' with a parishioner's
staff, but two days before the sacrament in 1608. A worse fate
awaited others. Henry Colville of Orphir was done to death by a
Church help- servant of the Master of Orkney. What made the misfortunes of
these defenders of the faith harder to bear was the inability of the
Church to protect them whole, or compensate them when maimed.
Insult was even added by the Church to the injury suffered by John
Cowper, minister of the Collegiate Church of St. Mungo in Glasgow,
whose life was threatened by two men called Bowie, inasmuch as the
offenders were ordered to ask forgiveness on their knees, and the
accuser was 'admonished to be more fervent in study than he has
been heretofore.' Since Cowper's library was worth ^60, the latter
part of the verdict requires explanation ; but the irony of the situa-
tion consisted in the fact that independent pastors were only safe
among their books.
Immoral An appreciable number of the ministers were of unregenerate
character and worthless life, having entered the Church to obtain
a livelihood, or having backslidden into evil. The Reformed Church
had scarcely begun its anxious efforts to purify the people when
attention had to be turned to the immoralities of preachers, of whom
the ministers of Jedburgh and Kilspindie were deposed for scan-
dalous lives. In 1570 John Kello, minister of Spott, executed for
strangling his wife, afforded a racy theme for contemporary
satirists.^ Ballads such as that by Robert Sempill, entitled
The Legend of the Bis chop of St. Androis Lyfe, callit Mr. Patrik
' Aldis, List, No. 84, The Confessioun upon the Scaffold (Lekprewik).
mmisters.
CLERICAL LIFE AFTER THE REFORMATION i6i
Adamsone, alias Cousteaiie, illustrate the Scots maxim, ' A scabbit
scheip wald fane infect the lave ' — one bad character will corrupt a
whole community.^
The records of Church courts reveal pastors, such as Thomas wicked
Kinnear of Crail, 1577, deposed for 'adultery, drunkenness, tuilze- ^^^'°'^^'
sumness [proneness to fight], and selling the sacraments ' ; Andrew
Forrester of Dysart, who killed a tailor, 1571 ; Sir Gideon Murray of
Auchterless, a homicide ; John Kinnaird of Carstairs, slayer of the
laird of Corston in 1575 ; John Mackenzie of Urray, 1593, a resetter
of thieves and destroyer of his neighbours' ploughs ; John Lindesay of
Guthrie, a party to the slaughter of Lord Spynie in 1607 ; and the
belligerent minister of Paisley, Andrew Knox, who made public
repentance in the church, in 1604, ^^r hitting a burgess on the head
with a great key — St. Peter's vindictive key. The notable John
Welsh in his youth was wild, and joined a band of Border reavers.
The old Adam was hard to expel even from the Covenanters. Ministers
The custom, more prevalent a hundred years later, of reponing in '^^°"^ '
the pastorate those found guilty of crimes and ecclesiastical offences,
either before or during their ministry, is illustrated by the cases of
John Wood of Rhynd, and Andrew Keith of Kinedar, who were
deposed and afterwards restored. The very difficulty of procuring
suitable preachers and readers created a charitable feeling among
their judges — themselves guilty of other venial sins, who overlooked
that frailty of the flesh whereby Pastor Balivaird could bequeath his
goods to his natural son.
Although Roman Catholic writers and antagonists of the Cove- The Reformers
. . 1 T-. r -1 • men of culture.
nanters have tried to fix a stigma upon the Relormation by asserting
that the Protestant ministers were of the meanest sort, vile, vicious,
ignoble in birth, vulgar in accomplishment, and of menial trades, the
opposite is nearer the truth. The allegations regarding the vicious,
bewitched lives of Knox and his compatriots are myths not worth
recounting. Even although the preceding paragraphs depict the
worst aspects of clerical life, it can be satisfactorily maintained that
» Satirical Poems of the Time of the Reformation, Scot. Text Soc. edit., Part iv.
X
l62
THE COVENANTERS
Reformers.
the Reformation was borne to its fruition in true-blue Presbytery
by the best blood and quickest intellects in Scotland. A study of the
names of the first ministers shows that many Catholic regulars and
seculars became Reformers ; and other ministers, not designated as
graduates, were laymen of education and apt to teach. Many pastors
were of aristocratic origin and formed in a heroic mould, such as
that redoubtable Trojan, Erskine of Dun, and the dignified Robert
Bruce of Kinnaird. No fewer than eighty per cent, of the ministers
during the whole Covenanting period were graduates of universities,
and this percentage compares favourably with that of any Church
to-day. The exigencies of the case made it imperative for the
Church to appoint officials of intelligence and grace, even although,
like David Fergusson of Dunfermline, David Spens of Monimail,
and other notable men, these had never studied in universities. The
Distinguished leaders of the Church indicated practically what they had learned by
contact with great minds abroad. Richard Melville of Craig studied
under Melanchthon ; Patrick Cockburn of Haddington was a student
of Paris ; Craig, Erskine, Lindsay, Knox, and many others had
travelled over Europe. Some were masters of civil and canonical
law, and illustrated their expertness in framing the admirable
standards and pronouncements of the Church. Alexander Arbuth-
not (1538-83), Principal of King's College, Aberdeen, after he was
licensed to preach, read civil law for five years in Bourges ; John
Row was a doctor of law of Padua ; Willock was a doctor of
medicine ; Robert Pont was so qualified that he acted as a senator
of the College of Justice ; Adamson was an advocate, as was Hume,
the poet-pastor ; and Peter Rollock, who was never a pastor, laid
aside a lawyer's gown for that of the Bishop of Dunkeld, 1585.
A few illiterates did obtain charges, but as soon as their
incapacity was realised their co-presbyters deposed them. In 1585
Patrick Layng of Tulliallan was deposed ' for incapacity to teach and
having no solid knowledge of the grounds of religion ' ; and, for a
similar reason, Adam Marshall was removed from Glendevon. In.
1595 John Rutherford of Kilconquhar was deposed for neglecting his
Famous
graduates in
the ministry
Illiterate
ministers.
CLERICAL LIFE AFTER THE REFORMATION 163
duties, so that his flock spent their Sabbaths in drinking, sports, and
other profanities. As far as the relation of the clergy to their flocks
was concerned, the parishioners of Corstorphine probably stated the
measure of the popular capacity when they petitioned against William
Arthur, because he 'was overleirnit a man for thame.' William
Gray, minister of Logie-Pert, was an Admirable Crichton in another
direction. For, besides his church, he conducted an academy wherein
the youth were ' taught to handle the bow for archerie, the club for goff
[golf], the batons for fencing, also to rin [run], swoom [swim], warsell
[wrestle], and preve pratticks [attempt tricks, or set stratagems].'
The historian cannot appraise too highly the efforts of these Schools.
Covenanting ministers to resuscitate and to found public schools in
every parish, some of them becoming teachers, others building and
endowing schools at their own private expense, and still others incit-
ing the landowners to implement the provisions of the Book of
Discipline and establish a system of national education.
In planting- of churches, preparing of sermons, peregrinating the No makers
. . 1 1 • i_ of books.
country, considering politics, and attending to pastoral duties, the
majority of the ministers had neither time nor opportunity to study
literature or produce works of theology. For two generations few
books were written in Scotland. In parishes contiguous to the three
Universities, Aberdeen, St. Andrews, and Edinburgh, the output of
literary effort was as scanty as in the remotest glens in the west and
south. Setting- aside Bishop Carswell's Gaelic translation of Knox's ' Form of
'^ . . T Prayers.
Liturgy, published in 1567,^ and one book published in Inverness,
no work emanated from the western half of Scotland (the dioceses of
Glasgow and Galloway excluded) for a hundred years after 1560.
Many presbyteries failed to produce a book for a longer period, and
some were so little stirred by all the Covenants as not even to set forth
a pamphlet. A strange lethargy had overcome the Scottish brain. ^
Without doubt, the publications which most influenced Scotland,
^ Aldis, Z/j-/, No. 60, Fotrm na numtvidheadh, 8vo (Lekprewik, Edin., 1567).
- Printed vernacular literature was scanty, and apart from the writings of Dunbar,
Lindsay, Sempill, and older minstrels, there was little popular literature in circulation.
164
THE COVENANTERS
Influential
treatises.
George
Buchanan,
Knox's
History.
and formed for a time the literature occupying the minds of preachers
and their hearers, apart from the Bible, spiritual ballads, and Godlie
Psalmes, were the Confession of Faith (1560), The Book of Common
Order, with Psalm Book, and the two Books of Discipline. The in-
fluence of George Buchanan's earlier poems, satires, tragedies, and
Paraphrase of the Psalms, which were written in such Latin as won
for him the proud merit of being the greatest Latinist of his age, was
transmitted by reflection from preachers and politicians upon the
masses. His ecclesiastico-political treatises definitely formulated
principles and a policy, which the peculiar circumstances of the
country had made acceptable to a people who made them practicable.
Buchanan's Ane Admonitiotm dh'-ect to the trezv Lordis (1571), Ane
Detectioun of the Doingis of Marie Quene of Scottis {i'^y2), and De
ivre Regni apvd Scotos Dialogtis {i^jg), steadied the masses in their
resistance to regal tyranny, and confirmed the popular faith in that
principle never intelligible to the Stuart kings, that all monarchs rule
by consent of their subjects. The influence of Buchanan's posthumous
History of Scotland was not instantaneously felt nor widely spread.^
The literary genius and masterful spirit of John Knox, so manifest
in the Standards of the Church, are also apparent in his History,'^
which, published after his death, has suffered in volume, tone, and
truth through the over-editing of his secretary, Richard Bannatyne,
and probably others, as Archbishop Spottiswood, a contemporary
scholar likely to know, in his own History of the Church of Scotla^id
twice pointed out.^ In one passage Spottiswood asserts that the
History is not the work of Knox, because it is 'more fitting a
comedian than a divine or a minister'; in another, 'A greater injury
could not be done to the fame of that worthy man than to father
upon him the ridiculous toyes and malicious detractions contained in
that work. But this shall serve for his clearing in that particular.'
* Buchanan, Rerum Scoticariim Historia, 1582 ; Aldis, List, Nos. 99, 107, 156, 182, 430.
2 The Historic of the Reforfnatioun of Rcligioun within the Realm of Scotland, 8vo
(London, 1586) ; cf. Laing's edition, published by the Wodrow Society ; and Works, vols. i.
and ii., Thin's reprint (Edin., 1895).
^ Spottiswood, Hist., pp. 85, 267 (London), fol. 1655. ^ Ibid.
George Buchanan
Robert Bruce
Archibald Johnston of Wariston
Samuel Rutherford
SCOTTISH REFORMERS AND COVENANTERS
aiiR's uuthrie
CLERICAL LIFE AFTER THE REFORMATION 165
The influence of Knox was vital, springing from the warm voice out
of thoughts that breathed and words that burned into the memories
of spellbound hearers. He had the contagiousness of enthusiasm.
Knox threw his fire into material which had become inflammable
through being no longer moistened by the dews of heavenly grace,
and it ignited the dried stock which burned away to let fresh verdure
spring over its ashes. And this fiery spiritual life he transmitted
through the standards, organisation, and apparatus of worship in the
Church.
In Christopher Goodman, master of arts and bachelor of divinity, Christopher
an English graduate of Brasenose and Christ Church, and afterwards
Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity, Knox had a scholarly and
strong collaborateur in the production of The Book of Common
Order. He assisted in the translation of Coverdale's Bible, and
wrote a commentary upon Amos. Before coming to Scotland to
enter the second charge at St. Andrews, Goodman had written in
Geneva, in 1558, a little tractate teaching the doctrine of resistance
to rulers : * How Superior Powers ought to be obeyed of their
subjects ; and, wherever they may be lawfully, by God's Word, be
disobeyed and resisted.'
The work of John Craig {15 12- 1600) resembled that of Knox, John Craig.
inasmuch as his pulpit utterances flew like arrows to their mark, and
although the shaft was frequently blunt, the method of delivery
robbed its wound of malignancy. He assisted in composing The
Second Book of Discipline, drew up The Kings Confession in 1581,
and in the same year published A short summe of the whole cate-
chisme . . . for the greater ease of the Commoune people and children.
He issued A form of Examination before the Comnmnion, and to this
versatile preacher are attributed fifteen psalms in the Metrical Psalter,
signed 'J. C
John Row wrote a treatise entitled The Signs of the Sacraments. John Row.
It is no longer extant.
John Davidson, the lively minister of Prestonpans, expressed his John Davidson,
humour and sarcasm in mediocre verse, with sufficient irritation to
i66
THE COVENANTERS
David
Pcrgusson.
Principal
Arbuthnot.
Thomas
Smeton.
Patrick
Adamson.
bring on him the displeasure of the Principal of St. Salvator's College
and of Regent Morton, who caused him to be expatriated. The title
of his telling satire, published in 1574, was Ane Dialog or Mithtall
talking betivix a Cle7^k and ane Court eour Concerning four Kirks till
ane Minister, etc. Davidson also wrote an eulogium upon the
Campbells of Kinzeancleuch, staunch Ayrshire Reformers, Ane Brief
Commendation 'of Upricktness, Some helpes for young Scho tears iii
Christianity, and, in 1590, an answer to Dr. Bancroft's criticism upon
Scots Church Discipline. He is to be distinguished from Principal
Davidson of Glasgow, who wrote The Confitatione of Mr. Quintin
Kennedy s Papisticall Cotmcels in 1563.
Another Reformer who replied to the Catholic polemical writers,
was David Fergusson of Dunfermline, who, in 1563, wrote an Answer
to Renat Benedict,^ and made a ' Collection of Scots Proverbs.' -
John Duncanson, Principal of St. Leonard's, and afterwards Dean of
the Chapel Royal, was a Protestant polemic also.
In Alexander Arbuthnot, Principal of King's College, Aberdeen,
formerly minister of Logie-Buchan (1538-83), the Church had a
counsellor expert in civil law. His Orationes de Origine et Dig-
7titate Juris, and his poems On Luve, The Praises of Women, and
Mise7'ies of a pure Scholar, exhibit his versatility.
Another genius, who died young, was Thomas Smeton (1536-83),
who answered a Dialogue written by Archibald Hamilton, and was
engaged to write, or translate, in Scots a work entitled Ane Method
of Preaching.
Among the gifted men of the age was Patrick Adamson, whose
ill-balanced judgment prevented him discriminating between things
in themselves good and others manifestly inexpedient, so that his
life was one of turmoil and disappointment. Unable to settle in his
ministry in Ceres, he betook himself to France to study and teach,
despite the remonstrances of his fellow-presbyters. He assailed
Popery in his De Papistarum stiperstitiosis Ineptiis, in 1564. A
' Aldis, List, No. 39, Ane Answer to ane Epistle^ etc. (Lekprewik).
- First printed in Edinburgh by Bryson in 1641.
CLERICAL LIFE AFTER THE REFORMATION 167
poetical effusion, hailing James at his birth as the future King of
France — Gendhliacon Jacobi VI. Carmen (Paris, 1566) — brought him
to prison in Paris. His royalism made him a favourite at Court and
a suspect in Presbytery. His talents were suppressed so long as the
clerical censors held sway, until King James had Presbytery under
his heel. The extreme Presbyterians fearing his pen, and taking
advantage of the Act of Assembly 1563, which required all religious
and doctrinal books to be licensed by the superintendent, suppressed
his Commentary upon the Epistles to Timothy, probably because it
promulgated unpalatable views on diocesan Episcopacy. In 1573
Adamson issued a Catechismtis Latino Sermone redditzis, et in libros
quattnor digestus — a Catechism in Latin in four books. ^ He also
translated the Confession of Faith into Latin. Dr. Bancroft was so
delighted with treatises on Job and Revelation, which Adamson
transmitted to him, that he pressed Adamson to seek service in the
Church of England. After his death his son-in-law, Thomas Wilson,
edited Adamson's sacred poems — Poemata Sacra, a tractate on the
pastorate — De sacro pastoris mujiere Tractattis, and a pamphlet on
the Scots Church (1620) — Refutatio Libelli de Regimine Ecclesiae
Scoticanae. There is pathos in the fact that the last learned, yet
mute, appeal which the discarded, broken Primate of Scotland, in
1590, made to his forgetful patron King James, was through the
medium of Latin translations of the books of Jeremiah and Lamenta-
tions. The appeal was in vain. Adamson had served the ingrate's
purpose, and might die in any ditch.
The printing-presses of Lekprewik, Bassandyne, Arbuthnet, Printers.
Charteris, Waldegrave in Edinburgh, and of Scot in St. Andrews,
were less powerful agencies than our similar disseminators of public
facts and opinions in these days, when we have quick methods of
issue and transport to alert, responsive, numerous readers, so that the
influence of controversial and educative writings was indirect and
slow of movement. Verse made a readier vehicle for carrying ideas
down to the masses. Many ministers wrote vernacular and Latin
' Aldis, List, Nos. 42, 122 (St. Andrews, Lekprewik) ; ibid., 175, 552.
i68
THE COVENANTERS
Scots poels.
Andrew
Melville.
James
Melville.
Alexander
Hume,
1 507- 1609.
poems. Andrew Melville was as expert in Latin as his nephew
James was in Scots metres. James Anderson, minister of Collace,
wrote in a favourite Scots stanza a poem entitled The Winter Night,
which dilates on that mental darkness continuing
' Since Adam first did make the misse.
In Paradise that day.'
There were also many nameless pasquil and ballad writers.
For such a marvellous scholar, the literary productions of Andrew
Melville (1545- 1622) were few ; and the observation is proved true —
the Muses cannot be wooed when their admirers occupy themselves
with public contests in the arena. Melville, always in the fight, only
gave the world the intermittent product of a mind hard pressed with
preoccupations. His Latin paraphrases of the Song of Moses, of
passages iromjob (1573), and of the Psahns (1609), and his treatises
on Free Wi// (i^gy), Divine Things (1599). and Things Indifferent —
The Ceremonies (1622), and other books, had an evanescent influence.
Although Melville left many manuscripts of studies in verse and
prose, it is clear that he never found the serene spirit and quiet time
to devote himself to some great literary work commensurate with his
unique talents.
James Melville (1556- 16 14) was a poet of grace and feeling, and
wrote metrical paraphrases of Scriptural themes and The Black
Bastill, or a Lamentation of the Kirk of Scotland (161 1). He is best
known as the author of an interesting Autobiography and Diary ^
giving a vivid picture of the age in which he flourished. He also
wrote a catechism for his flock in Kilrenny, entitled A Spirituall
Propine [present~\ of a Pastour to his people (i^g2>). But Melville's
literary influence was limited.
Alexander Hume of Logie was a poet and hymnologist of no
mean order, inspired with a tender love of Nature, which expressed
itself in Horatian delineations of the changeful landscape, and created
that unmistakable tone found in the refined poems and paraphrases
* Published by Bannatyne Club and Wodrow Society.
CLERICAL LIFE AFTER THE REFORMATION 169
of the hapless bard, John Logan.^ Although happier among the
Ochil hills, watching
' The bells and circles on the weills,
Through lowping of the trouts,'
for which he had deserted the wrangling law-courts, Hume did not
neglect 'the weightier matters of the law.' He is credited with
writing, in 1594, Ane Treatise of Conscience, a treatise on The Felicity
of the World to come, and discourses entitled Praises to God. A
posthumous work styled Ane Afold [honesf] Admonition to the
Ministers of Scotland reveals a conservative regard for Presbytery.
His Hymnes or Sacred Songs illustrate the divine principles of love
and toleration, and how this admirer of charming nature lived up to
his high ideal : ' be benevolent till [to] all men, and patient towards
all, suffering everything patiently for Christ's sake and after His
example.' Waldegrave printed the hymns in 1599; in the same year
he published a work by Patrick Sharp, Principal of the College of Patrick Sharp.
Glasgow, entitled Doctrinae Christianae brevis explicatio, which treats
of the creation, decalogue, creed, eucharist. It obtained no fame.
Few ministers studied themes outside theology. Laymen such
as Alexander Hume the grammarian, Master of Edinburgh High
School, expounded classical subjects. One exception was Andrew-
Duncan, minister of Crail, who published, in quick succession,
Latinae Grammaticae (1595), Appendix Etyniologiae (1595), and
Studiortim Puerilium Clavis (1597). Andrew Simson, minister of Grammarian?.
Dalkeith, was a Latinist, and published the Rudiments of Grammar
in 1587. He was the father of three distinguished authors, William,
Archibald, and Patrick, whose work should be afterwards recorded,
but the novel character of their works induces their mention here,
to emphasise the fact of the barrenness of the Reformation period in
the departments mastered by the Simsons. William Simson, ofxheSimsons.
Dumbarton {d. 1620), wrote a learned treatise on Hebrew accents
entitled De accentibus Hebraicis breves et perspicuae Regulae (London,
^ R. M. Fergusson, Alexander Hume, 1899 ; Alex. Lawson, The Poems of A. Hume, Scot.
Text Soc, 1902.
170
THE COVENANTERS
Robert Pont.
Principal
Rollock.
1 61 7). Archibald (1564- 1624), who succeeded his father in Dalkeith,
was a poet, theologian, and historian. He had a love for the sacred
number seven, and wrote on Christes Testament, or seven words on
the Cross (1620), on the Heptameron — seven days of creation (162 1),
on Samsons Seaven Lockes of H aire (1621), on ^ Sacred Septenarie —
seven penitential psalms (1623), and on Hieroglyphica Animalium —
animals of the Bible (1622-24), also H. Insectoru7n\ NatatiiiMm \
Volatilium. He also left in manuscript Historia Ecclesiastica
Scotoru77i, and Annates Ecclesiae Scoticanae.
Patrick Simson (1556- 1618), of Stirling, wrote A short Co7npend
of the History of the first Te7t Persecutions 77toved against Christians
(161 3- 1 6), and A Treatise 07i the groivth of He7'esies, and other
Sho7^t Co77ipe7ids}
Robert Pont (1526- 1606), so frequently mentioned in these pages,
tried to solve the mysteries of chronology. Like many of his con-
temporaries, Pont published a Parvvs Catechismvs, in Latin iambics
(1573). His translation of the Second Helvetic Confession indicated
his accurate scholarship. He was appointed an inspector of books
proposed for publication, and an editor of the Psalter ; prepared a
calendar for the Bible, and published sermons Agai7ist Sacrilege
(1599)- ^ newe Treatise on the Right Recko7ti7ig of year es a7id ages
of the lVo7^/d a.ppea.rQd from the Edinburgh press in 1599, and was
followed in 1 604 by De u7iione Britanniae . . . dialogus. Two works
on the Sabbath were published posthumously, De Sabbaticoru77i
an7ioru7n periodis (16 19), and Ch7^07iologia de Sabbatis [1626). The
influence of this able lawyer and scholar was great in his day.
Robert Rollock (1555-99), Principal of the University of
Edinburgh, was the most voluminous writer of his time.^ Though
only forty-four years old at his death, he had written many com-
mentaries : on Ephesians (1590), Daniel (1591), Romans (1594),
Thessalonians and Philemon (1598), Seven Psalms (1598), John
(1599), Corinthians (1600), Colossians (1600, posthumous), Galatians
(1602), Hebrews (1605). He also wrote Qicestio7ics . . . de Focdcre
1 Life in Wodrow, Select Biog., i. 63. '' Cf. Rollock's Works, Wodrow Soc. edit.
CLERICAL LIFE AFTER THE REFORMATION 171
Dei et de Sac^'anientis (1596), T^'actatiis de Vocatione Effi,caci, etc.
(1597), Certaine Sermons upon . . . Epistles of Paid (1599), Tract on
Gods Providence and Excommunication (1602), A Treatise on God's
Effectual Calling (translation 1603), Lectures upon the History of
Passion, QX.C. (16 16). Rollock's theology is founded upon the dictum
that the Bible is the only rule of faith and morals, because it is * the
lively voice of God.' He refutes the claim of the Catholic Church
to have its traditions recognised as authoritative. He quotes with
ease the original tongues in which the Bible was written, indicates
a knowledge of Syriac, and supports his contentions with numerous
references to the Fathers and to Continental theologians. With
Carlylean directness, Rollock declared, 'be nature we ar all borne
fuillis [fools], bot [but] malitious fuillis, ay rebelling and displeasing
God,' there being two sorts of fools : ' sum fuilis are silly daft [insane]
fuilis, other fuilis are malitious fuilis.' A beautiful spirit of tolerance
and love pervades his writings, wherein the Crucified, who had
come to wash away sin by His precious blood, is ever held up for
adoration as the only hope of the sinner. So intensely earnest was
this evangelist that he was wont to begin so early as seven in the
morning to preach about the Love of God on the Cross, thus
illustrating what James Melville said of him in a sonnet :
' On Christ thy hart was haillie set and stayit,
Of Christ thou ever thocht, thou spak, and wryte,
With Christ thou wissed all thy warkis arrayit,
In Christ, in life and deid, was thy delyte.'
Although Rollock's amiable nature loved retirement from the
irritating controversies of the time, he was a sound teacher of the Rollock's
cardinal principles of Protestantism. In the homeliest Doric this ^^'^ '"^'
scholar preached to the masses in a manner to have made the critical
Buckle merry. Of Damnation he thus wrote : ' Ane man [I say]
quhom the Lord will send, he will denunce damnation to ane
obstinate and rebellious people ; and he will be bauld [bold] to tak
thee, as it were, be the lug [ear], suppois thou were ane king, and
leid to that tribunall to heir the sentence of damnation pronounced
172 THE COVENANTERS
against thee. . . . Thair is na Lord, bot the Lord Jesus, quha will
tramp down all the Lordis in the eirth and tred upon thair craigis
[necks] at his pleisure. ... As for kingis, queenes, polictickes in the
eirth, all are bot servandis onlie ... of the kirk of Jesus.' He
counsels his hearers not to interfere with the God-given jurisdiction
of the Church, because no monarch nor man ever prospered who
meddled with its jurisdiction : * Thairfor let everie saul bewar to mell
[meddle] with this libertie ; for certainlie that sword that sail be
strikkin at hir, scho [she] sail ding back again [strike back], like the
hammer aff the studie [off the anvil].'
Had the Reformed Church arranged a Calendar of Saints no one
would have been better entitled to an honoured place in the hagiology
Robert Bruce than Robert Bruce, of St. Giles, probably the most eloquent, certainly
' ji • ^^Q most popular, minister in the reign of James. His magnificent
person was adorned with a lofty mind and tender heart. It is our
misfortune that only a few of his powerful discourses were printed,
and their character may be inferred from the title-page of his Sermons
• (1591), which are there described as 'meet to comfort all sik [such]
as are troubled, ather [either] in bodie or mind.' In 1590 he
published five Sermons tipon the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper,
which are as excellent as any to be found, and these breathe a spirit
full of love, grace, and truth, which was not uncommon among these
early despised Covenanters.^ These highly evangelical discourses
prove how thoroughly Bruce understood the ministry of the Holy
Spirit in creating a faith to unite the convert spiritually to God
through Christ. His own soul's true gentleness is testified to by
his earnest appeals to his hearers to love, forgive, and renounce all
rancour against their neighbours. Such laudable teaching suffices to
prove that all the Covenanting preachers and leaders were not the in-
tolerant, irritable, insatiable exponents of a merciless Mosaic code of
justice without love, as they have often been wrongly characterised.
^ These Sermons have been admirably reprinted, with a biography, and edited by
Professor John Laidlaw, in 1901. Scrmojis by Bruce, Wodrow Soc. edit., 1843. D. C.
Macnicol, Master Robert Bruce, Edin. 1907.
THE ERASTIAN KING 173
CHAPTER VI I
THE ERASTIAN KING
Queen Elizabeth died on 24th March 1603, and on 3rd May King King james in
James arrived in London in order to be crowned King of England ^"s^^"^'-
and Ireland on the Coronation Stone, the ancient palladium of
Scotland and alleged pillow of the patriarch Jacob. It would have
been marvellous if this first King of Great Britain had reached this
stone of destiny without publicly exhibiting his inbred despotic spirit.
On his progress southward he caused a cutpurse to be hanged at
Newark without a trial, an act of little moment had it not constituted
an insult to the English sense of fairplay. This 'Jeddart justice'
drew from Sir John Harrington the sarcastic remark, ' Now if the
wind bloweth thus, why may not a man be tried before he hath
offended?' The King could soon answer that and more difficult
questions.^ He came to teach, without intending to be blasphemous,
that to resist the royal wish was to oppose the Divine will ; and that
he was as indisputable as God.
England, accustomed to royal progresses and merry-makings,
made the journey to London like a triumph through a Paradise
adorned by Spring, to a ruler whose experiences had been only of a
vulgar populace in a plague-struck land. At first the King was too
busy enjoying the novel gaiety of the splendid capital, revelling in the
society of a dignified aristocracy, among whom charming men of
culture, letters, travel, and wit — Bacon, Cecil, Sidney, Raleigh, >
Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont, the Fletchers, and scores of
others — were as plentiful as Highland raiders, to trouble himself
1 Hallam (quoting Carte), Const. Hist, i. 296 note : ' By the time he reached London the
admiration of the intelligent was turned into contempt.'
1/4
THE COVENANTERS
English
culture.
Puritanism.
about the racked province from which good fortune had freed him.
He Hved in a joyous dream wherein no mailed gaoler strutted on
guard, no steel glove gripped his throat, no fanatic gospeller hurled
anathemas into the royal pew, no procession of blood-stained shirts
tainted the streets, no sulky mobs hurried through alleys into invisi-
bility, no urgent demands for swearing vexed his soul, and no despair
called for drowniny- in a Danish wassail. He could boast with
Gloster :
' Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths,
Our bruised arms hung up for monuments,
Our stern alarums chang'd to merry meetings,
Our dreadful marches to delightful measures.'
The English Puritans and the Covenanters were soon to experience
the force of Gloster's wicked boast :
' Plots have I laid, inductions dangerous.
By drunken prophecies, libels, and dreams.'
In the north the King scolded assemblies, coerced law-courts,
re-wrote decisions, cooked ecclesiastical minutes, overrode Parliament
to suit his plans ; in the south pettifogging was impossible where
law and religion were observed with stately procedure, and high
officials would not be snarled at in the Doric tongue, so that James
needed time before, in wrath, he dared to tear the Minutes of
the House of Commons into shreds. Besides, the King was intro-
duced to a strong, refined, intellectual life, instinct with a fascinating
sensuousness which harmonised with his own hereditary taste for the
beautiful, and to a courteous and pliable community more likely to
accept the doctrine of passive obedience. He would now mend his
own political potsherds. By experience he knew the plasticity of
bishops whom he might mould into vessels of honour in his Pantheon.
His Court soon lapsed into a 'most disgraceful scene of profligacy.' ^
In England Presbyterianism had never flourished, even under the
leadership of Thomas Cartwright, Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity
at Cambridge: on the other hand, Puritanism, which resembled Scottish
1 Hallam, Const. Hist., i. 332 note.
THE ERASTIAN KING 175
Protestantism, was a strong force not to be dissipated by any designer
of uniformity. Roman Catholicism began to increase through the
toleration of the new Sovereign, and under the patronage of the
Queen, who had become so staunch a Catholic that the Pope specially
blessed her at this juncture/ Discovering that the King would not
punish Papists merely for their religion, one hundred and fifty priests
came into England in 1603; whereas in 1604-5 ^^ fewer than three
hundred Puritan clergy were ejected from their homes.
On James's accession about one thousand Puritan preachers pre- Hampton
sented a petition called the Millenary Petition, craving some reforms gjJ^^"'^^j.°JJ^'^'
in the ceremonies of the Episcopal Church and in the customs of the January 1604.
people, none of them affecting creed or government. The King,
anxious for a disputation in which he might shine, arranged the
Hampton Court Conference, held in January 1604, ^o settle the
matter. Dean Barlow's fulsome narrative of the Conference recounts
how in it the Primate of England, on bended knee, blessed God for
setting over his country a King 'so wise, learned, and judicious,' who
argued 'by the special assistance of God's Spirit.' This dogma of
the new Pope's divine inspiration had already been preceded by the
Bishop of London's Annunciation, that James was 'such a king, as
since Christ's time, the like he thought had not been.' The Puritan
doctors Reynolds, Sparks, Chadderton, and Knewstubs met Arch-
bishop Whitgift and Bishops Bancroft, Bilson, and Rudd — the Prelatists,
in this theatrical debate. The King repeatedly gave voice. When
Dr. Reynolds suggested that the clergy and office-bearers should meet
occasionally to interpret the Scripture, and in passing referred to
Presbyters, the angry King accused the Puritans of desiring ' a
Scottish Presbytery which agreeth as well with a monarchy as God
and the devil,' and proceeded : ' Stay, I pray you, for one seven years
before you demand that of me, and if then you find me pursy and fat,
and my windpipes stuffed, I will perhaps hearken unto you. For
let that government be once up, I am sure, I shall be kept in breath,
then shall we all of us have work enough, both our hands full.'
' Hallam, Const. Hist.^ i. 370, 410.
176
THE COVENANTERS
Uniformity
ordered, 1604.
The Scots
Church.
Archbishop
Spottiswood,
20th July 1603.
Puritanism left the Conference insulted and crippled, the august referee
declaring, ' I shall make them conform themselves, or else do worse. '^
A proclamation doling out some trivial amendments was followed
by another demanding conformity to the official religion on pain of
the utmost penalty of the law. The late upholder of pure Presbytery
was now determined to have 'one doctrine, one discipline, one reli-
gion, in substance and ceremony,' — in fine, Episcopacy. The liberal
theory of Bacon, that unity did not necessarily embrace hierarchy and
discipline, was lost on an autocrat who traded on his own old maxim :
'No Bishop, no King.'^ The dogma, discredited by the Melville
party, that the King was the infallible vicegerent of the Most High,
was now to be thrust upon the English subjects. At the ensuing
Parliament James asserted that Puritans and Novelists were revolu-
tionaries not to be suffered, and among the Novelists were not
included the Roman Catholics, who were to be tolerated if they kept
quiet. But the ultra-Presbyterians were opposed to Bacon's principle
of toleration, as far as Episcopacy was concerned, and would not
conform. On the other hand, a Convocation, convened in Canterbury
in 1604, formulated a deliverance by which the Church of Scotland
was declared to be a member of ' Christ's Holy Catholic Church,'
and, at the same time, the Sovereign was declared to be supreme in
both jurisdictions, spiritual and civil.
Scotland now knew what to expect. John Spottiswood, minister
of Calder, was appointed Archbishop of Glasgow upon the decease
of James Beaton, who, though restored to office, never dared to
return to enjoy it. Spottiswood, son of the well-known superinten-
dent, was a young man of thirty-eight years, learned, courtly, sub-
servient, and willing to deform what his father helped to establish."
Latterly, according to the Marquis of Hamilton and Bishop Burnet,*
* Hallam says James was not decent at this conference {Const. Hist.., i. 181).
2 Neal, History of the Puritans., i. 410 (2nd edit.).
" Burnet, Hist.., i. 39.
* When Spottiswood came to visit Bruce at Kinnaird he asked the infirm man if he did
not recognise him. Bruce replied, ' Sir, I know you to be a traitor to God, and to the Church
of Scotland. I have nothing to do with you : you may begone when you please' : Sermons,
152-3 (Wodrow Soc).
THE ERASTIAN KING 177
he was tainted with an evil life. Among other appointments were
Gledstanes to the primacy, George Graham to the see of Dunblane,
Alexander Forbes to Caithness, Gavin Hamilton to Galloway, James
Law to Orkney, and Andrew Knox to the Isles. Thus within fourteen
years after Scotland had obtained its Presbyterian Magna Charta, a Hierarchy
complete hierarchy was established. They were for the time being
Crown civil servants merely. This anomaly of a secular episcopate
the unrestrainable dictator would soon put away. He began by dis-
couraging the legal conventions of the ministers and postponed the
meetings of Assembly, which crafty breach of faith, upheld by force,
proved to the Presbyterians that their legal rights, liberties, and,
indeed, the root-principles of the Reformation, were menaced.
The ministers determined to meet in a regularly convened Aberdeen
Assembly in Aberdeen on 2nd July 1605, but only nineteen members 1605. ^'
appeared. The King's Commissioner, Straiton of Lauriston, armed
with a letter from the Privy Council prohibiting the meeting and
making no provision for another, also came, John Forbes of Alford
constituted the meeting before opening the missive, and after they
found Straiton obdurate in not nominating another day of Assembly,
adjourned proceedings till September.^ The Commissioner transmitted
a garbled report of the meeting which fixed the King's resolve to
exterminate the rebels. Forbes, John Welsh of Ayr, and several
stiff Presbyters, were immured first in grim Blackness.^ To be
thorough the King ordained presbyteries and preachers to announce
his prerogative, which was none other than the right to break any
law he pleased, and ordered the Blackness prisoners to be tried
under the ' Black Acts ' for objecting to his jurisdiction. The accused
became so popular that the Council, for safety, changed the venue of
the trial to Linlithgow. George, Earl of Dunbar, a trusted courtier, Trial at Lin-
was sent to obtain the appointed verdict of a packed jury. Armed j^j^^°^' jg"^^
royalists thronged the streets. Hamilton, the Lord Advocate,
' Forbes left an account of the proceedings in Certaiiie Records, 386 et seq. (Wodrow
See.) ; Booke of the U. Kirk, iii. 1013.
2 Ibid., 286, 287 ; Forbes, Certaine Records, 406 (Wodrow Soc).
178 THE COVENANTERS
prosecuted, and Thomas Hope, a sprightly junior of French extrac-
tion, afterwards the mainstay of the Covenanters, was counsel for the
defence. The question for the jury was, whether or not the defenders
had repudiated the jurisdiction of the King. After counsel spoke,
Forbes and Welsh justified their action by references to the Bible,
Confessions, and Statutes, all accepted by their judges, showing that
they only repudiated the right of the civil magistrate to interfere with
purely ecclesiastical matters, and prophesied the fate of Saul's family
for those who broke the Covenant. Reason and threat were alike
Six ministers uselcss. The six prisouefs, Forbes, Welsh, Robert Durie of
Anstruther, Andrew Duncan of Crail, John Sharp of Kilmany, and
Alexander Strachan of Creich, were imprisoned during his Majesty's
pleasure.^ An unexpressed feeling of execration became universal.
Tampering with the fountain of justice only made the indomitable
spirit of the people more manifest, and created in the Scottish mind
the suspicion that all innovations are 'inductions dangerous.'
King's designs. Among the spectators of this inquisition was Andrew Melville,
who, with many others, came to encourage the persecuted and
lovingly go with them from post to pillar. Approving of the
Aberdeen Assembly, they petitioned for the prisoners. The King
had a rod in pickle for them, and meantime dissembled. He sent
down to the synods a question : ' Would the ministers agree to
acknowledge his right to summon assemblies and acquiesce in his
desire to recognise bishops ? ' The net was too obvious for old
politicians like James Melville, who, preaching on Christian liberty
(Gal. V. i), declared that ministers who hated pastoral supremacy over
pastors worse than Popery, could never turn to drink from Circe's
dish and be converted from ' men into swyne ' simply ' at a view of an
article from Court.' The artifice having failed, the King next sent a
specious letter, indicating anxiety for the weal of the Church, on 21st
Clergy invited May 1 6o6, to eight ministers inviting them to London for consultation.
1606°"^°"' The unfortunates were the Melvilles, James Balfour, Edinburgh,
' Calderwood, vi. 342-91 ; Spottiswood, //«/., 489 ; Scot, Apol. Nan-., 149 et seq. ;
Forbes, Ceriaitie Records, 455 et seq. ; Melville, Aictobioji^., 620.
THE ERASTIAN KING 179
William Scot, Cupar, John Carmichael, Kilconquhar, Robert Wallace,
Tranent, Adam Colt, Musselburgh, William Watson, Burntisland.'
The archbishops, the bishops of Orkney and Galloway, and James
Nicolson, minister at Meigle, were also summoned.
A greater surprise awaited the Parliament of Perth, in July 1606. The Red
Montrose was Commissioner. Eight nobles, eight prelates, eight j^^^g^'"'^" '
barons, eight burgh representatives, and ten officers of State com-
posed a royalist sederunt. It was styled ' The Red Parliament.' In
all their bravery of silk and velvet the titulars of the Church rode
between the nobility and gentry to the meeting. Behind them
pressed Andrew Melville into the Convention to make protests.
They proceeded to business.^ The first statute, ' Act anent the
Kingis Maiesties prerogative,' declared James to be a paragon and
his jurisdiction to be universal. The second statute, ' Act anent the
restitution of the estates of Bischoppis,' re-established the hierarchy
* as the same was before the Act of Annexation (1587).' The seventh
statute, which provided against dilapidation of benefices, was one of
many which granted privileges to upholders of the royal policy.
Notable were the acts creating the temporal lordships out of the Kirk- Temporal
lands, which with other bribes were the bait catching the greedy °^ ^ ''^'^*
legislators and making them friendly to the restoration of the prelates.
The luckiest favourites were Hamilton (lordship of Aberbrothock),
Loudoun (Kylismure), Murray (Dundrennan), Scone (Scone), Elphin-
stone (Cupar), Balmerino (Balmerino), Mar (Cardross), Lennox (St.
Andrews), Lindores (Lindores), Home (Jedburgh), and Bothwell
( Holyrood-house).
Very little was still required to convert the temporal titulars into Aristocracy
spiritual bishops. Never before had the Church witnessed such a ""^ '^°" ^" '
disfigured Episcopacy as this travesty of it dependent on a regal fiat.
' Act Pari. Scoi., iv. 281.
2 Calderwood, vi. 559 et seq. ; Spottiswood, Hist.., 497 ; Melville, Autobiog., 644-83,
688-700, 705-11 ; M'Crie, Melville., 254. No doubt at this time Archbishop Spottis-
wood was the adviser of the King, and in June he informed his sovereign that Andrew
Melville ' hath begun to raise new stormes with his /Eolic blasts,' but, 'Sir, ye are my Jupiter,
and I, under your hienes, Neptune' {Wodrow MSS., xlii. 56: Edinburgh, 19th June 1606).
Such a conjunction of deities had never before guided Scottish affairs.
i8o
THE COVENANTERS
Conference at
Hampton
Court, 1606.
King James had deluded himself into the belief that only a few
malicious, despicable, radical pastors disapproved of his wish for
uniformity, or affected to ignore the fact that the majority of the
upper classes were 'not only Puritans but malcontents,' as a French
contemporary observer pointed out. He vainly imagined that, with
the restless party of Melville — turbulent opponents of God's vicegerent
— spirited away, the affrighted angel of peace might return to bless
a unified realm and set the seal of divine approval upon his tyranny
over the human conscience.
The eight victims arrived in London, and, be it said, were hand-
somely treated by the archbishops, who probably had no sinister
designs against their sister Reformed Church.
At length the eight ministers were summoned to a grand post-
prandial conference in Hampton Court, on 23rd September.^ The
King presided over a brilliant scene, with Primate Bancroft on his
right hand. Prince Henry on his left, and a crowd of officers of State,
English and Scots nobles, prelates, and Commissioners from the
General Assembly on all sides. In front were the Scottish arch-
bishops, Gledstanes and Spottiswood, with six consenters facing the
eight patriots ; behind the door curtains peeped in the bishops, deans,
and lesser lights of the Church. Patrick Galloway — chaplain at
Holyrood, and afterwards bishop — had a place to report the dazzling
proceedings to envious presbyters at home. The King began by
asking the Scots bishops and Commissioners their opinion of the
Aberdeen Assembly, and got reply : * We ever damned that Assembly
as unlawful.' When Andrew Melville was requested to state his
views with delicious raillery he excused himself as a private person,
who was prevented meddling with Church matters. He proceeded,
with a masterly use of law and gospel, to prove the Assembly legal.
James Melville, in a spirited rejoinder, laid the onus of the affair
on the presbyteries whose servants the pastors were bound to be.
Feigning to be proud of his versatile countrymen the King exclaimed.
* Scot, Ah Apologeiical Narration^ etc., 166
summoned.
et seg. Scot was one of the eight
THE ERASTIAN KING i8i
'God be with you, sirs,' and inquired what might pacify the Church,
to which the eight repHed, 'A free General Assembly.' That night a
warrant made them prisoners. The Scots Privy Council next tried Trials of the
to make them incriminate themselves, and were flouted by Andrew ^'^ ^
Melville with being degenerates from the noble men of eld, who
hazarded all for country and religion. The eight were stiffened in
their resolves by joyful communications they received from the Black-
ness prisoners, and, though marched like criminals to hear Anglican
sermons, never wavered in their fidelity to Presbytery.
St. Michael's festival in the Chapel Royal gave i\ndrew Melville
an opportunity of ridiculing the mummery of the celebrants and the
altar, furnished with two clasped books, two unlit candles, and two
empty basons, in the following Latin epigram :
' Cur stant clausi Anglis, libri duo, regia in ara,
Lumina caeca duo, poUubra sicca duo ?
Num sensum cultumque Dei tenet Anglia clausum
Lumina caeca sua, sorde sepulta sua,
Romano an ritu dum regalem instruit aram ?
Purpuream pingit religiosa lupam.' ^
An old translation runs thus :
' Why stand there on the royal altar hie
Two closed books, blind lights, two basons drie ?
Doth England hold God's mind and worship closs,
Blind of her sight, and buried in her dross ?
Doth she, with Chapel put in Romish dress
The purple whore religiously express ? '
The lines reached the King, who ordered the Privy Council of
England to examine the satirist. Bancroft, with foolhardiness,
interrogated the irascible Scot, who, after reminding the Council of his
nationality, sprang upon Bancroft's past history and called the primate
a traitor and enemy to all the Reformed Churches in Europe, as he
plucked his lawn sleeves and sneered at them as 'Romish rags.'
Melville was first committed to the custody of the Dean of St. Paul's,
and afterwards, upon the King's order, to the Tower as a grave
1 Melville, Autobiog., 682, 683.
182
THE COVENANTERS
Melville's
hardships.
Melville's
death, 1622.
Character of
Melville — the
typical Cove-
nanter.
offender against the Church. This pitiable fight for Hberty was not
lost on the interested English people, who took to heart the object-
lesson of spiritual manliness, and they, after forty-three years of
patient sufferance of tyranny, saw insulted freedom vindicated in the
blood of James's own son, Charles, at Whitehall.
The other prisoners were removed to various wards. For four
years, from May 1607 till April 161 1, Principal Melville languished
in the Tower. Even yet it pains one to think that, while the
heartless, unscrupulous, semi-popish Sovereign was amusing himself
by cock-fighting, hunting dotterels, writing inept pamphlets, and
doing worse, the most finished scholar and brightest intellect of
Scotland was caged in a damp, cold, fireless cell during the bitterest
of winters, 1607 and 1608, with not even a pen to chase out the
weary hours, Melville being forced to engrave his ideas upon the
prison walls with the tongue of his shoe-buckle. The base treachery
of kidnapping the martyrs was only equalled by the approval of the
despicable minions of the Court, who, without a protest, saw Melville
so vilely treated. The most dangerous Covenanter was lost to
Scotland, but the cause of freedom was not lost. At length Melville
was given away, much like a slave, to a French noble, who wished
him to teach theology in Sedan, to which town he retired to end
his warfare in 1622, aged seventy-seven years. ^ He could not kick
against the pricks for ever.
Andrew Melville is the type of the best Scot — a man of perfervid
intelligence, positive, self-reliant, and self-respecting ; kind of heart
to others, yet not to be coerced ; religious, but obedient to revealed
truth only. His whole career illustrates a characteristic of the
first Covenanters, namely, their aversion to revolutionary methods,
their personal submission to their civil rulers, and their almost
fatalistic confidence in the ultimate triumph of Presbyterianism. It
is true that Melville intruded himself upon various judicatories in
order to publish his views, yet as soon as he was evicted he departed
^ M'Crie, Melville^ 339; Melville, Autobiog.^ xxviii., Ivi. His nephew James had also
died in exile at Berwick, on 19th January 1614, in his fifty-ninth year.
THE ERASTIAN KING 183
quietly, he sought no revenge and meditated no armed reprisals.
The reverence of these first Covenanters for a divinely approved
magistracy prevented them carrying their principles to a warrantable
conclusion in the indictment of their governors for breaking the
statutes. Circumstances justified a revolutionary policy, and yet
they refrained from embarking upon it. James Melville was ordered
to reside in Newcastle-on-Tyne, and the other ministers were per-
mitted to return and be confined to certain parishes in Scotland.
While Melville's comrades wandered about in homeless vagrancy. The Blackness
the Blackness convicts were proclaimed to be a ' handfull of the ^^^"^'^ ^'
basest and most ignorant " traitors," who held that contemptuous
conventicle ' at Aberdeen, and for whom public prayer was forbidden.
The doom of expatriation was pronounced against them. By royal
orders, one surly night in November, a ship lay in Leith Roads to
convey them into exile. The skipper tarried ashore, and they, with
their relatives and friends, spent the time in prayer on the sands.
The increasing blast drove the ship and the convicts away in search
of shelter. At length, at two of the chill morning, the ministers
were summoned and huddled into a small boat. Another affsctinsf
prayer arose while the exiles were borne away, and soon the crowd
of onlookers heard in the darkness the suroingf seas swellingf to the
shore with a sweeter strain which was recognised to be the pastoral
psalm, ' He leadeth me the quiet waters by.' The prisoners were
making for France. The rest of their compatriots were removed to
State prisons or confined to barbarous parts of the Highlands,
To complete the history of these martyrs, John Forbes, the
moderator, continued his English ministry in Middleburg and Delft,
and died in Holland in 1634.^ Welsh settled, as a French-speaking
pastor, in St. Jean d'Angely, and, on his health breaking, was
permitted to return to London with his wife Elizabeth — daughter of
John Knox — and their family. To such heroic women, who helped
the Covenanters in their warfare, Scotland owes much.
^ Forbes wrote several works abroad. Cf. his Life prefaced to his Certai7ie Records
(Wodrow Soc). His son Patrick became Bishop of Caithness in 1662.
1 84
THE COVENANTERS
Fate of the
six.
Royal policy
unpopular.
Linlithgow
Convention,
1606.
Constant
Moderators.
It is narrated that Mrs. Welsh pleaded with the King to permit
her pining husband to return and breathe the air of the Scottish hills,
to which the paltry tyrant replied : * He may, if he will conform.'
Lifting up the corners of her apron, the heroine declared, with a
nobility worthy of her father, ' I will sooner kep [catch] his head
there.' And Welsh had to die in exile for conscience sake. Strachan
contracted ' Flanders sickness,' and died in Middleburg. Durie
settled in Leyden, and preached to the Scots there. Duncan went
to Rochelle. Sharp became Professor of Theology in the University
of Die, was banished by Richelieu, returned to Edinburgh, where he
was appointed Professor of Divinity, and died in 1647. Scot was
permitted to return to Scotland in 1607, and died minister of Cupar
in 1642.^
The King, having disposed of his opponents, was on the point
of accomplishing his evolutionary aim of transforming the Pauline
into a Diocesan bishop. In passing, there are two remarkable facts
to be noticed : first, that amid the flood of protests, petitions,
complaints, and pamphlets issued at this time, there was not a single
petition from the people and ministers craving the restoration of the
bishops ; and second, the King never dared ask the Assembly to
transfer the power of the inferior courts to the bishops. The
conclusion is, that Episcopacy was unwelcome among the Scots.
Yet James never swerved from his artful plan. He summoned th^
presbyteries to delegate ministers in sympathy with his policy to
a conference with the nobles, barons, and officers of State at
Linlithgow, on loth December 1606, ostensibly to discuss Popery,
stipends, church-extension, and removal of discords.
The real question for settlement was the King's proposal that
* Constant Moderators ' should preside over the fifty-three presbyteries
and the synods, the better to counteract Popery and restore peace.
Through the diplomacy of Dunbar, the overture, modified so as to
make the ' Constant Moderators ' subject to the Church courts, was
* Cf. his Life prefaced to hxs Apologettcal Narration {W odrow Soc, 1846). His monu-
ment remains in Cupar Churchyard.
THE ERASTIAN KING 185
adopted. The Church reahsed that it was deahng with a trickster,
and the report soon ran that the minute of the Convention had been
cooked, when it transpired that all the bishops had been appointed
' Constant Moderators ' of those thirteen presbyteries, which sur-
rounded their cathedral seats. The meaning of the popular saying —
' the little thief had passed through the window to open the door to
the great thiefes outside ' — was apparent. A slight manipulation
made the thirteen bishops into Constant Moderators of synods, w^hich
were in reality dioceses. Refusal to accept the Moderators was made
penal. At first some presbyteries and synods did refuse. The King
could now convene assemblies and elect presidents paid out of the
bishops' teinds. His next step was to make the Church itself sanction
the Episcopal order, rather than appear to be a creator of bishops.
The Parliament of 1607 restored the chapter in St. Andrews ; New powers
and that of 1609, by restoring the Commissariots, made the prelates
judges of all causes. The Parliament of 1609 also invested the
King with power to regulate the vestments of all officials.^ Personal
and national freedom was slowly evaporating. But the slippery
Neptune of the troubled seas of Scotland, Spottiswood, was happy
on his unstable throne— so happy as to beg leave of his Jupiter to
allow him, 'as first of that dead estait quhilk your Majesty hath
recreate,' to repair to Court, that 'so unworthie ane creature might
both see, blesse, and thank his Earthly Creator.'^ Such syco-
phancy is sickening, although it is quite in keeping with the
Primate's subsequent confession that the bishops were his ' Majesty's
creatures ... for at your Maiesties nodd we either must stand or
fall.'^ To subject the people to the King's spiritual subordinates
two Courts of High Commission — one in each archbishopric —
were erected, on 15th February 16 10.* The Commission sub-
' Act. Pari. Scot., iv. 372, 430-6.
2 Spottiswood to King, nth September 1609. from Stamford : Wodrow MSS., xlii. 62.
3 Spottiswood to King, 31st August 161 2 : H-'otfroiu MSS., ibid. Facts like these justified
Burnet {Hist., i. 7) in saying that 'the great defect of Spottiswood's History is that he dilates
on the rude opposition of the Assemblies to the King, but suppresses the true ground of all
the jealousies.'
* Proclamation, March 1610 : Booke of the U. Kirk, iii. 1078.
2 A
i86 THE COVENANTERS
sequently met in one Court under the presidency of the Primate,
and, though composed of clerical and lay members, developed into
a tribunal controlled by the bishops. Its inquisitorial functionaries
tried all offenders in life or religion. These fishers of men
had a sweeping net of the smallest mesh. A two-edged sword
lay upon the table round which they deliberated over every catch.
The higher clergy were now numerous and powerful enough to make
offences fit the laws. The prelates themselves, however, were
uncomfortable till a General Assembly, after it had ceremoniously
buried Presbyterianism in the grave of departed liberty and thereby
tried to obliterate the fact that the Church was a civil office of the
Crown, had sanctioned the Episcopal ascension.
As soon as the bishops announced that their clergy were cowed, the
King called an Assembly in Glasgow on 8th June 1610. Primate Gled-
stanes, acting as procurer, issued invitations only from ' a special note
of the names of such as we desire at our [the King's] said meeting.' ^
The Angelical Fourteen nobles, thirteen barons, seven commissioners of burghs.
Assembly of ^^^ ^^^g hundred and thirty-three ministers attended." The Royal
Glasgow,
8th June 1610. Commissioners — Dunbar and Gledstanes, the Lord President, and
Secretary of State, went to St. Mungo's Cathedral in state. The
uninvited stayed at home. Spottiswood was moderator. The
letter from the King was read twice, and in it God's Lieutenant
mentions himself fourteen times and the Archbishop once, but never
alludes to God or Christ, in his promises to the Church of peace,
patrimony, and persecution of Papists. As soon as Dunbar began to
circulate the royal largess in the form of gold angel-pieces — which
significantly bore the impress depicting Michael the Archangel
destroying the dragon — the delighted auditors beheld a vision of
possibilities more captivating than contentious dogmas sustained on
intermittent doles of bad oatmeal, and they considered their happy
meeting 'An Angelical Assembly,' as satirists styled it afterwards.
Kingcraft once more succeeded ; the Sovereign was confirmed in
his jurisdiction over the Church ; and the bishops were reinstated
1 King's Letter : noo/:e of the U. Kirk, iii. 1083. "^'Ibid., 1085.
THE ERASTIAN KING 187
in authority over the subjects. The other edicts of this packed
convention were: the declaring the Aberdeen Assembly unlawful ; Results of
acknowledging the right of the Crown to summon yearly assemblies ; ,V° ^^^'""
appointing bishops to be moderators of diocesan synods meeting
twice a year, and who, being forty years of age, were to ratify all
ecclesiastical judgments and patronage, preside over weekly presby-
teries, and to be subject to the General Assembly while holding office
at the King's will. It was also agreed to impose the 1572 Oath of
Allegiance to the King as Head of Church and State, and to the
Ordinary as his servant, which oath stated that all benefices were
held of the Crown. A final resolution forbade the clergy criticising
these decrees and the discarded parity of the brethren. In this
ingenious manner the Presbyterian System, established in 1592, was
put under the taboo, and Prelacy ruled in its stead.
Still the subtle grace of Apostolical Succession was lacking in the Consecration
bishops, who were merely Presbyterian pastors and civil servants, bishops!
To v/eaken the objection raised by the irreconcilable Covenanters
that the King assumed a Pope-ship, James himself suggested that
three Scots bishops should go to London and receive valid trine
consecration, whose potentiality they might transmit to the imperfect
hierarchy at home ; and he commanded Spottiswood to bring south
two ordinaries with himself. This same mean dignitary Spottiswood,
who came prepared to break his vows, ignore the statutes, contemn
the national feeling and National Covenant, and barter away the
freedom and fame of his country, became squeamish at the thought
of the holy touch of the Bishop of York, which might recall the dead
controversy regarding English jurisdiction, and indicate that their free
Church was but a corner in the greater Vineyard of the South. This
obsequious and illogical peacemaker would permit the King to do
anything, elect bishops, banish preaches, invent clothing, call or kill
Papists, but he hesitated to tamper with the geography of the Church.
Ingenious as usual, the King solved the difficulty by setting aside the
dangerous suzerains of York and Canterbury, and calling in the
Bishops of London, Ely, Rochester, and Worcester.
i88 THE COVENANTERS
Bancroft's On Sabbath, 21st October 1610, Spottiswood (Glasgow), Gavin
^°^' Hamilton (Galloway), and Andrew Cant (Brechin), were consecrated
in the chapel of London House by that quartette. While amiability
reigned everywhere, the northern trinity departed with joy to share
their new virtue with their spiritual inferiors, to whom any accession
of supernatural grace should have been a godsend. They brought
nothing else, probably not even the fragrance of the consecrating
unguent, certainly no liturgy, no canons, no 'foolish guyses,' as
obstinate Row styled the imposing rites of the English Church.
The happy Primate of England said it was now time to die, for his
eyes had seen the salvation of the Gentiles.
The case-hardened Scots, however, saw no reason for such grate-
ful sacrifices, realising rather that time-servers had sold their country
and their Church into slavery and misery.
The hierarchy. In May 1611, the Sovereign had the satisfaction of learning that
his native land at last had a valid hierarchy attributing its genesis and
maintenance to the ' Mighty prince James the Sixth . . . and Crown
royal of this realm,' as the oath of their allegiance stated. The
Episcopal bench consisted of George Gledstanes, Primate, and Arch-
bishop of St Andrews, and John Spottiswood, Archbishop of Glasgow ;
and the following ordinaries, Peter Blackburn, Aberdeen ; Andrew
Lamb, Brechin ; Alexander Forbes, Caithness ; George Graham,
Dunblane ; Alexander Lindsay, Dunkeld ; Alexander Douglas, Moray;
James Law, Orkney; David Lindsay, Ross; Neil Campbell, Argyle;
Gavin Hamilton, Galloway ; and Andrew Knox, the Isles.' Their
honours were complete ; their estates were bankrupt. The remain-
ing portion of the patrimony, which the Crown had annexed in 1587,
was already given away or farmed out to landlords who would not
restore it or its rents. Mr. Buckle made a great mistake, when,
following credulous authorities, he declared, 'They [the bishops]
accumulated wealth and made an ostentatious display of it ; which
was the more disgraceful, as the country was miserably poor, and
their fellow-subjects were starving around them.'^
* Hist, of Civil.., iii. 128 (London, 1891).
THE ERASTIAN KING 189
The tenure by which landowners and their tenantry possessed
the Kirk-lands and enjoyed the rents of the Church, after the Refor-
mation, made it impossible for these bishops to reap the same fruits
of their benefices as the previous prelates had done. The Crown
had little say in the matter, having largely alienated its own interest
in the temporal lordships carved out of the Church lands, and winked
at the dilapidation of other benefices by those in possession of them.
A pittance only fell to a presentee. The extant letters of these
Jacobite bishops cdntain complaints regarding their impoverished Poverty of
estates.^ Those land-grabbers who restored any property, on con-
sideration of compensation from the Crown, always took a back-bond
from the bishops, so that, knowing the King to be a slow paymaster,
they might find their ill-got gold somewhere. So Peter was robbed to
pay Paul. Few of the bishops obtained a competency ; some drew
no salaries ; and the Primate, at one period, confessed to be so poor
that, in the event of his death, 'in what case I should leave my
children, if God should visit me. He knows.' The new dignitaries
did not long enjoy their honours : Hamilton died in 161 2, Campbell
in 161 3, Lindsay (from 1560 minister of Leith) in 16 13, Gledstanes
in 161 5, and Blackburn in 1616.
Parliament, in October 161 2, ratified the Acts of the Glasgow
Assembly, and, repealing the Act of 1592, legalised diocesan Epis-
copacy.2 The King, who in 1604 gratified the Puritan disputants in
the Hampton Court Conference by agreeing to their request for a
new translation of the Scriptures, and commissioned University
scholars to undertake the work, accepted their completed labours m
the National Bible, which was authorised, in 161 1, to be read in all National Bible,
churches. In the preface the translator exalted King James as 'the
Sun in his strength,' and praised him for cherishing the teachers of
the Word, and for showing himself to be 'a most tender and loving
nursing father' in ' caring for the Church.'
Neither these laudations nor those radical changes affected the
1 Original Letters of the Reign of James the Sixth (Bann. Club), q.v.
2 Act. Pari. Scot., iv. 469.
190
THE COVENANTERS
Masses
indifferent.
Ogilvie the
Jesuit, 1614.
Scottish community much. The bishops were not assiduously
meddlesome with the masses, who attended at will the routine
services of the Church, even to the singing of the old psalter and the
recitation of Knox's liturgy; and, pursuant to Act 1609, the people
reported themselves to their ordinaries as neither Papists nor excom-
municates. They did not vex themselves about the distinction be-
tween a Pauline and a Jacobite bishop, and continued sinning after the
manner of their fathers. Knox's statesmanlike scheme for national
education was still a dead letter, so that the pulpit was the only
civilising and educational agency and propaganda of ideas of uni-
versal importance. The King's capture of its fearless spokesmen
deprived the pulpit of its power and fascination for the populace.
Even in 1614, when the King, in his process for sifting the Papists,
commanded all to go to worship on Easter, few, even of the aggrieved,
disobeyed the order. He was soon to illustrate the fate of contemners
of his authority in a memorable way.
John Ogilvie, a Jesuit missionary from Gratz in Austria, was
apprehended in Glasgow near the end of 1614.^ His satchel carried
the most harmless contents — a catechism for confessors, a form
of dispensation, and a tuft of Loyola's hair. The treatment he
received from Spottiswood and other citizens was brutal. He
confessed coming to save souls. Under torment, weak for lack
of sleep, he uttered words which, after he was permitted to sleep,
he denied speaking. The King sent a special Commission to try
him before a jury for papistry or rebellion, and Spottiswood was
active in the prosecution. Ogilvie was even more boldly impolite
and indiscreet than Black had been, and, refusing the jurisdiction
of the Court, since he was not a subject of their King, and declaring
that he valued the Acts of Parliament at 'not a rotten fig,' frankly
confessed that he cared no more for the Scots Pope 'than for his
old hat.' What more was needed? The Jesuit's own acknow-
* 'A Scottish Martyr— Father Ogilvie' : SL Aridretc's Cross, ii. No. 3, p. 82 ; Calderwood,
vii. 193, 196 ; Spottiswood, //is/., 521 ; Forbes-Le\th, Narr. 0/ ScoL QM., 311, 312 ; Original
Letters, ii. 424.
THE ERASTIAN KING 191
ledgment that his Pope in Rome was judge of their Pope in Scotland,
and the hint that the former might excommunicate and extinguish
the latter, was sufficient treason for a jury to make short work of
him. The eager Spottiswood came from Edinburgh to see the
victim dangling from the gallows over the white snow of that
severe winter day, 28th F'ebruary 161 5, in Glasgow, and to be
satisfied that the traitor was duly quartered/ Disclaiming the
religious character of Ogilvie's offence, James preferred posterity
to know that the Jesuit was merely a martyr for an opinion on civil
government, extorted from him by torture, and that the King's subjects
must acknowledge that the Sovereign had no superior save God. The
doom of Ogilvie, it was to be henceforth understood, was the fiat of God.
While James was congratulating himself upon his blasphemous Pope blesses
success and the irresistibility of his will, poor Ogilvie's Pope was ^-"^^"•
writing his most cordial benediction on the British Queen for her
constancy to the Catholic faith and her kindness to his — the Pope's
afflicted subjects." The elevation of the Scottish bishops made
them jealous of their prerogative, and they remonstrated with the
Chancellor for bringing the papist Huntly from ward, and also with
the English bishops for loosing Huntly's excommunication. That
jealousy gave pride to their Sovereign, who championed their cause
and denied that ' the Church of Scotland was inferior in any sort to
that of England.'^
This jealous zeal soon had disastrous results. The slumbering Aberdeen
sense of independence among the patient, intelligent laity began j^Jg"" ^'
to awaken when, after the Assembly of Aberdeen, 16 16, churchmen
realised that innovations were stealthily introduced to oust the time-
honoured practices of the Church without any consultation with the
worshippers, and that the northern Church was being slowly con-
formed to the model of the southern. Popery again was the bugbear
rendering imperative an Assembly at Aberdeen, on 13th August
^ The dismemberment was not carried out, according to Grub, Eccl. Hist., ii. 302.
2 Bliss Transcripts (Record Office), 89-92, 4th May 1616 ; De Statu Catholicorum i?i
Attglia^ 4th September 1612.
^ Spottiswood, Hist., 527 fol.
192 THE COVENANTERS
i6i6.^ Spottiswood, fresh from his enthronisation as Primate
in St. Andrews, advanced to and occupied the Moderator's chair,
without being even nominated, while the Earl of Montrose, the
Commissioner, stepped into the King's throne ; the former having
been ordained by the King's warrant 'to rule the Clergie,' and the
latter ' to order the Laitie ' — a superfine distinction of functions. The
Convention was of the usual Jacobite type. It was not represen-
tative according to the law and custom of the Church. No com-
missions were demanded. Only moderators of presbyteries, who
had been invited along with some aristocracy, were expected to
be present. Three days were frittered away thrashing at Popery
and wearying any irreconcilables into the belief that the business
was stale, until, on the i6th August, Montrose pulled from his pocket
his instructions, fourteen in number.
Edicts of The Assembly was asked to arrange for the improvement of
Aberdeen benefices, plantinor peaceable pastors in burghs and houses of the
Assembly. ^ i i • r^ r •
nobility, examining children, makmg a test Confession and a
Catechism, seeing that children learned the Catechism entitled
' God and the King,' compiling and enjoining a liturgy and a
book of canons, holding communions in towns quarterly, once at
Easter, and in rural parishes half-yearly, encouraging students of
theology, ordaining all preachers, giving baptism to all if asked
for— with a godfather provided — and the keeping of parish registers.
The Convention agreed to do as requested, and went a step further
by recommending confirmation of children by bishops, an innovation
which the King, according to Spottiswood, flouted as a mere ' hotch-
potch.'- Patrick Galloway and John Hall, ministers at Edinburgh,
and John Adamson, minister at Liberton, were appointed to write
a catechism ; Galloway, Adamson, Peter Ewart, and William Erskine
were deputed to revise the prayer-book in use ; and James Law,
Archbishop of Glasgow, and William Struthers were selected to be
a committee to compile the canons. A Confession, in fifty-three
J Booke of the U. Kirk, iii. Iil6; Spottiswood, Hist., 528 ; Calderwood, vii. 222-42.
^ Spottiswood, Hist., 528.
THE ERASTIAN KING 193
paragraphs, the production of Hall and Adamson, which had been Aberdeen
under consideration for four years, was accepted after revision, jg^g^^^'""'
This Confession had one new proviso, which was a test approving
of the intrusion of Episcopacy, in these words : ' The Kirk of
Scotland ... is one of the most pure kirks under heaven this day,
both in respect of trueth in doctrine and puritie in worshipe.'^
The legalised Confession and King's Confession were not abro-
gated. The King probably intended to annul them after the new
Confession had become better known. The slippery Earl of Huntly
had the honour of first signing this Confession, to obtain release from
excommunication, and to give relief to the jealous feelings of the
ultra-patriotic prelates. Curious sidelights are also thrown upon the
business at Aberdeen by an Act preventing physicians practising with-
out a bishop's permit, and by another establishing grammar schools.
The autocratic Kinof now had his team well in hand and antici-
pated no refractory member. He transmitted to the Committee
on the Canons, for insertion in their book of canons, five small items
of his own devising. These Articles provided for —
(i) kneeling at the reception of the Sacrament, instead of sitting The Five
which was customary since the Reformation ;
(2) private communion to be given to the sick in presence of three
or four pious neighbours ;
(3) baptism to be not longer deferred than one Sunday, and to be
given privately in cases of necessity, the fact being published on the
Sunday following ;
{4) commemoration of holy days and seasons, with exhortations
pertinent to these days, by the pastors ;
(5) reform of confirmation — the parish ministers to catechise the
young and teach them the Paternoster, Creed, Decalogue, and the
bishops to bless with prayer young children brought to them.
The timorous Primate, with an accommodating recollection that
these innovations had never been seen by clergy in court or con-
venticle, persuaded the King to withhold the Articles till, on his pro-
^ Calderwood, vii. 241 ; Booke of the U. Kirk, iii. 1 125-9.
2 B
194 THE COVENANTERS
jected return to Scotland, his royal influence would ensure their
acceptance by the scrupulous.^ Never was diplomacy so bitter an
acknowledgment of a servile position and of the nascent danger.
Priestcraft staved off the peril for a time.
King James Soon the King announced his visit to Scotland, in order to satisfy
returns, 1617. ^ , ,.,..,,, i > i ^ 1 1
a salmon-like mstmct, to do some oood, and ' to nave abuses
reformed.' He begged a welcome for himself and his English
retinue. The people responded loyally, and burghal poetasters vied
in excitement with busy upholsterers, hostelry-keepers, and victuallers,
when it was stated that the royal progress was to be through many
towns and with much entertainment. Carpenters came from London
to set up an organ, renovate the carvings, beautify the interior, and
fix up portraits, or gilded wooden statues, of the apostles and evangelists
in the Chapel-Royal at Holyrood." The cry of popery soon brought the
bishops to their senses, and they united to send a remonstrance to the
King, who returned a testy rejoinder, marvelling at their ignorance.
Royal entry Qn Friday, 1 6th May, James, with his brilliant cavalcade, entered
into Edin-
burgh. Edmburgh, through a flood of bombastic orations in Latin rhyme and
prose. Not the least notable in the gay throng, beside bishops and
deans, was the King's chaplain in ordinary, William Laud, then Dean
of Gloucester, a little, plump, restless, rosy-cheeked priest in his
prime, whose peering, somewhat tender, eyes, were soon to be
ranging around in search of true religion and of real churches, and
who, having discovered ' no religion ' in these Presbyterian * dove-
cotes,' became a source of torment in Scotland for generations
through his unwelcome endeavour to provide what he deemed to be
lacking. During the Sovereign's stay, religious services were con-
ducted by the English divines, so that the Scottish dignitaries might
perceive the influence of sacerdotal culture, the grace of liturgical
offices, and the beauty of episcopal millinery in public worship. And
who might match Doctor Laud, a tailor's son, for obtaining the
correctest mode, and for the most effective show in wearing it ?
' Spottiswood, Hist.^ 529.
'^ Ibid.^ 530 ; Original Letters^ ii. 496-500 ; Calderwood, vii. 245.
THE ERASTIAN KING 195
On 17th June the King- and the Estates, with all the honours, Parliament of
rode from Holyrood to the Tolbooth to meet in Parliament. The ' ^^"
sederunt was large and influential, but the majority consisted of the
more independent classes — the small landholders and burgesses.
The Sovereign concluded his address in these words : ' He had long
striven to have the barbarities of the country, which they knew to be
many, removed and extinct, and in place thereof civility and justice
established, and that he would still endeavour to doe his best that
way till he might say of Scotland, as one of the Emperours said
of Rome, Inveni lateritiam, relinqiio inar'morea7n (I found it brick,
I leave it marble).' ^ It was evident that James did not really under-
stand his conservative countrymen. There was fire in the air and
thunder soon growled out. A refractory spirit evinced itself before
the King could get the Lords of Articles — the committee for prepar-
ing Acts to be passed, whom he expected to accept his concealed
statutes of restoration, which were to be promulgated on the morrow
—satisfactorily appointed.
Meantime another disturbance was in progress among the clergy Presbyterian
who had assembled in St. Giles once more to discuss the lack Qf f""" ^^ ^'■^•
stipends, the bishops protesting, although the tenor of the King's
restoration bills had leaked out, that there was no other object in
the meetings. Robert Bruce, at this crisis, quietly stole into the
Capital to counsel and guide the Presbyterian brethren, who rightly
suspected trickery. David Calderwood, minister of Crailing, after-
wards historian of the Church, a man of forty-two years, together
with fifty-four staunch Presbyterians, refusing to be hoodwinked,
sent to the King a strong protestation against the interference of the
Crown with their free Church." In particular, they protested against
the King's proposal, that himself and a committee of bishops and
pastors should have power to make Church laws. This proposal the
Lords of Articles, to the King's wrath, prevented coming before the
* Spottiswood, Hist., 531 fol.
- Calderwood, vii. 253-6; cf. Life prefaced to vol. viii. of History, Wodrow Soc. edit.
1842-9.
196 THE COVENANTERS
legislature. The irate head of the Church considered the protesters
to be mutineers, and blamed the bishops for their rising and for
balking him in his plans.
Statutes passed The Parliament of 1617 passed several enactments regarding
in 1617. ^1^^ Church. A statute, ' Anent the Electioun of Archbishopes and
Bischopes,' provided that the Dean of the Chapter, when commanded,
shall proceed and choose for a see the person whom his Majesty was
pleased to nominate and recommend for their election.^ A licence
for his consecration would then be granted. The ecclesiastic'al and
clerical interest in appointments secured by the Leith Settlement,
1572, was thus abolished. The second Act restored to beneficiaries
those manses, glebes, and other possessions of the Church over which
the Crown retained control, and made arrangements regarding the
chapters of St. Andrews, Glasgow, and the Isles.
A statute entitled ' Anent the plantation of Kirks ' would have
benefited the ministers had it become really operative. It depicted
the spiritual barrenness of many districts, where many churches were
vacant, pastors were insufficiently paid from teinds, people were
ignorant and atheistic, and provided a Commission to rectify matters.
These thirty-two Commissioners were a Court of Teinds, and fixed the
parochial teinds, and out of them a permanent stipend of not less than
five hundred merks (^27, 15s. 6d. sterling, or five chalders of victual
for each minister), and of one thousand merks where teind abounded."
Caiderwood's The angry King was not done with the mutineers, of whom
tria.i 17. Calderwood, Simson, and Ewart were summoned by Spottiswood
to appear, on 8th July, before the High Commission at St. Andrews.
All three were deprived of their offices and committed to prison.
The King was present and seemed to enjoy the miserable baiting of
David Calderwood, in a scene of vulgar confusion ; and at the time
probably thought, what he afterwards said with his wonted wisdom,
that David was ' a refractorie foole ' who could not bear the name
of a bishop nor that of the devil. Calderwood was ultimately
banished, and finding a refuge in Holland, continued writing his
' AcL Pari. Scot., iv. 528. 2 /^/^.^ ,v. 530.
THE ERASTIAN KING 197
powerful defences of Presbyterianism till the death of King James,
when he returned to his native land/
Before returning south, James met and rated the hierarchy and Assembly ai
their party for obstructing his plans by not receiving the Five zahN^veT r
Articles. The clergy went on their knees before him and agreed to ^^^7-
meet in an assembly which would obey his behests. This assembly
met and delayed coming to a resolution — a safe procedure — which
made the King boil with rage.^ Rewrote to the archbishops as if Anger of the
they were lackeys, in these terms : ' We will have you know, that we '"^"
are come to that age, as we will not be content to be fed with broath,
as one of your coat was wont to speak, and think this your doing a
disgrace no lesse then the Protestation itself.' His secretary's letter
commanding the bishops to preach Christmas sermons was viseed by
the surly autocrat with this addition : ' Since your Scottish Church
hath so far contemned my clemency, they shall now find what it is
to draw the anger of the King upon them.''^ Another vulgar com-
munication declaring ' that the minister's ease and commodious
sitting on his taile hath been more lookt to then than kneeling,' was
followed by an order depriving of stipend all ministers unfavourable
to the five canons. Spottiswood's sympathies were with James in
his headstrong policy.
The ministers, alarmed at the trend of affairs, petitioned for liberty I'erth Assem-
to hold another assembly, and the King proclaimed the meeting of '^'
a 'new convocation' at Perth, on the 25th August 1618.' Three
Commissioners, Lords Binning, Scone, and Carnegie, watched the
interests of the Crown. When the Primate, after preaching on the
acceptability of ceremonies and the Five Articles, entered the
Moderator's chair, the * defenders of the established order ' challenged
this step, as well as the presence of members only invited by the
Crown, but were overruled. Of the sederunt of 132 — bishops, pres-
byters, nobles, barons, and commissioners of burghs — the Royalists
numbered two-thirds. The Dean of Winchester, Dr. Young, himself
1 Calderwood, vii. 257-79. ^ Booke of the U. Ktrk, iii. 1140.
^ Spottiswood, Hist., 535. ^ Booke of the U. Kirk, iii. 1 143-67-
198 THE COVENANTERS
a Scot, presented the King's letter, whose dictation was unequivocal
in calling his bishops to resort to no more shifts, but, with the
Assembly, to do his bidding. Dr. Young was asked to address the
convocation, and assured his hearers that they had a ' Prince, like
Moses, the meekest man upon the earth.' After that, although
Spottiswood disclaimed having any hand in bringing the innovations
in, one would as soon have expected that Aaron would have refused
to take the decalogue from Moses, as that Spottiswood would have
rejected the Five Articles. Jupiter ruled Neptune. The meeting
agreed to vote upon the articles as a whole. The question was,
' Receive the articles ' or * Disobey the King.' As the Primate
himself called the voters' roll, he frequently ejaculated ' Remember
the King,' and the result was, as might have been expected, that
forty-two (or forty-five) 'rebellious knaves,' as the Anti-Episcopal and
old Church party was called, voted against the Articles, and eighty-
six 'novelists,' many of them laymen, accepted the demands of their
ruler. The tenor of the Articles is : —
Penh Articles. i_ 'Seeing we are commanded by God Himself, that, when we come to worship
Him, we fall down and kneel before the Lord our Maker, and considering
withal that there is no part of divine worship more heavenly and spiritual
than is the holy receiving of the blessed Body and Blood of our Lord and
Saviour, Jesus Christ, like as the most humble and reverent gesture of our
body in our meditation and the lifting up of our hearts best becometh so
divine and sacred an action ; therefore, notwithstanding that our Church hath
used since the Reformation of religion to celebrate the Holy Communion to
the people sitting, by reason of the great abuse of kneeling used in idolatrous
worship of the sacraments of the Papists, yet seeing all memory of by-past
superstitions is past, in reverence of God, and in due regard of so divine a
mystery, and in remembrance of so mystical an union as we are made
partakers of, the Assembly thinketh good that the blessed sacrament be cele-
brated hereafter meekly and reverently upon their knees.
2. ' If any good Christian visited with long sickness, and known to the pastor by
reason of his present infirmity to be unable to resort to the Church for
receiving the Holy Communion, or, being sick, shall declare to his pastor
upon his conscience that he thinks his sickness to be deadly, and shall earnest
desire to receive the same in his house, the minister shall not deny him so
great a comfort, lawful warning being given to him the night before, and that
there be three or four of good religion and conversation, free of all lawful
impediments, present with the sick person to communicate with him, who must
THE ERASTIAN KING 199
also provide a convenient place in his house, and all things necessary for the
reverent administration thereof, according to the order prescribed in the Church.
3. 'The minister shall often admonish the people that they defer not the baptizing
of infants any longer than the next Lord's day, after the child be born, unless,
upon a great and reasonable cause declared to the minister and by him
approved, the same be continued. As also they shall warn them that, without
o-reat cause, they procure not their children to be baptized at home in their
houses ; but where great need shall compel them to baptize in private houses
(in which case the minister shall not refuse to do it upon the knowledge of
the great need, and being timely required thereto), then baptism shall be
administered after the same form as it should have been in the congregation :
and the minister shall, the next Lord's day after any such private baptism,
declare in the Church that the infant was so baptized, and therefore ought
to be received as one of the true flock of Christ's fold.
4. 'Forasmuch as one of the special means for staying the increase of Popery and
settling of true religion in the hearts of people is, that a special care be
taken of young children, their education, and how they are catechised, which
in time of the primitive Church most carefully was attended, as being most
profitable to cause young children in their tender years drink in the knowledge
of God and his religion, but is now altogether neglected in respect of the great
abuse and errors which crept into the Popish Church by making thereof a
sacrament of Confirmation; Therefore, that all superstition built thereupon
may be rescinded, and that the matter itself, being most necessary for the
education of youth, may be reduced to the primitive integrity, it is thought
good that the minister in every parish shall catechise all young children of eight
years of age, and see that they have the knowledge, and be able to make the
rehearsal of the Lord's Prayer, Behef, and Ten Commandments, with answers
to the questions in the small Catechism used in our Church, and that every
bishop in his visitation, shall censure the minister who shall be found remiss
therein ; and the said bishops shall cause the said children to be presented
before them, and bless them with prayer for the increase of their knowledge,
and the continuance of God's heavenly graces with every one of them.
5. ' As we abhor the superstitious observation of festival days by the Papists, and
detest all licentious and profane abuses thereof by the common sort of pro-
fessors, so we think that the inestimable benefits received from God by our
Lord Jesus Christ, his Birth, Passion, Resurrection, Ascension, and sending
down of the Holy Ghost, were commendably and godly remembered at certain
particular days and times by the whole Church of the world, and may also be
now ; therefore, the assembly ordaineth that every minister shall upon these
days have the commemoration of the foresaid inestimable benefits, and make
choice of several and pertinent texts of Scripture, and frame their doctrine
and exhortations thereto ; and rebuke all superstitious observation and licen-
tious profanation thereof.' ^ «
1 Spelling modified: Booke of the U. Kirk, iii. 1165; Spottiswood, Hist., 538; David
Lindsay, A True Narration of all the Passages, 19-72 (Lend., 16:1) ; Row, Hist., 311-17.
200 THE COVENANTERS
Attitude of The voting indicates that there was a moderate or lukewarm party,
minority. ^^^ stood between the irreconcilables of the old reform party and the
Prelatists, and were anxious to obey the King in order to obtain
peace and plenty. A justifiable sentiment underlay the antipathy to
innovations by the protesters, who from childhood had been accus-
tomed to venerate the only forms of worship they knew ; and self-
respect constrained them to discountenance those changes in their
Church, if they were to continue to honour the same King, who, before
he became a Prelatist, adjured Scotland to maintain its own, the
purest of Churches ; while their nervous hatred of Popery made them
suspect and detest all symbols and ceremonies which brought back recol-
lections of the wicked tyranny from which they had escaped. Besides,
they had constitutional grounds for opposition, based upon the 1592
Mao-na Charta of the Church, as well as the sanction of the spirit of
freedom, which revolted from the implication that the truth was the
monopoly of the King.
Effect of I'erth James, about this time, suggestively illustrated his imperious
determination by sending to Edinburgh to be tried and executed for
teaching undesirable political economy and misapplied knowledge of
the Bible, an argumentative student of theology in Oxford named
Thomas Ross, who had compared the Sovereign and his courtiers
to seven lean kine devouring the riches of England. The people
did not approve of the Perth Articles now sanctioned by the Privy
Council. Ministers preached for and against them.^ In Edinburgh
the pews were half empty on festival days, and the magistrates
blamed the pastors for this defection. For ignoring the Canons,
the High Commission deprived of office Richard Dickson, of the
West Kirk, and other pastors. To make the innovations acceptable,
four ' novelists ' were appointed to be colleagues of the city pastors.
Then Kirk Session meetings became scenes of wrangling, recrimina-
tion, and fury, one of the most voluble ringleaders of the elders
• Calderwood wrote A Solution of Dr. Resolutus (Lindsay), 1619. John Erskine of
Dun is said to have been the only minister be-north Tay who opposed the Perth Articles :
Scott, FasiL vi. 822.
Articles.
THE ERASTIAN KING 201
against the ritualists being Joiin Mein, a merchant, whose wife, or
kinswoman, obtained universal notoriety in 1637 as 'Jenny Geddes'
of the Liturgy riots. The King ordered Mein into banishment.^
The effective David Calderwood was still lurking about, and the
stately Bruce was not far off, to inspire the opposition. At the
spring Communion in the Capital only Crown officials and paupers
could be induced to take the sacrament in a kneeling posture. Some
churches were empty ; in others the simple people followed the new
customs, but with tears and prayers laid their confessed sin upon the
souls of the celebrants and adjured God to judge their cause. Many
left the city to seek comfort in rural churches where the time-hallowed
customs were still observed.^ In Burntisland the spring sacraments
of 1 6 1 7 and 1 6 1 8 were attended by 900 communicants, that of 1 6 1 9
by 450, and that of 1620 by 425, of whom only some took the
elements in a kneeling posture.
The aversion of the educated to the canons spread to the laity, Uprising of
who held the old rites very dear, and, as John Mein said, ' they had p^°p^-
never been taught anything different, nor yet consulted in this change.'
Their opposition became a defence of democratic independence and
a claim for the right of individual judgment in spiritual concerns.
What strengthened this popular opposition, even more than the
incisive pamphlets of David Calderwood ^ and other polemics, was the
growing feeling that a monarch who licensed the desecration of the
Sabbath by those who, after coming from church, had recourse to Book of
games and sports, as his proclamation in England, of date 24th May ^°'^^'
1 61 8, did, had sinister designs against the national religion. This pro-
clamation declared his detestation of all Puritans and Precisians, and
strictly commanded * that everie person sail resort to his own paroche
' 30th March 1620 : Wodroiu MSS., xliii. 93.
2 Children were admitted to Communion at twelve years of age and communicants partook
fasting in 161 3 : I.ife 0/ Blair, 6.
^ Calderwood, The Altar of Damascus, or the Patern of the Ejiglish Hierarchie, ajnl
Church Policie obtruded upott the Church of Scotland. Anno 162 1. Sm. 8vo, pp. 222;
original oi A It are Damascenum, by Edwardus Didoclavius, 1623. 4to.
There were now three classes of Communicants — sitters, kneelers, and runners-
away.
2 C
202 THE COVENANTERS
church to heare divine service, and eache paroche by itself to use the
said recreation \ji.e. dancing, archery, leaping, and sports] efter divine
service.'^ Might not his permission to women to decorate the church
with rushes lead to the introduction of gilded Apostles, and of even the
Scarlet Lady — was the Scottish question. Persons justly interested in
their own government grew embittered with the thought that there was
neither mandate, nor voiced desire of the lieges, for these impositions.
Black Satur- To bring his lifelong scheme to a happy consummation James
day, 1 02 1. convened a Parliament in Edinburgh, ist June 1621, to ratify the
Perth Articles. The Estates rode to it with all the Honours. The
superstitious anticipated a dreadful catastrophe. A comet was seen ; an
old house in the Cowgate took fire ; a singing swan soared through
the sky ; and, at length, on 4th August, long remembered as ' Black
Saturday,' a dismal cloud enshrouded the Capital. That was the day
the fatal Articles were, by a substantial majority — seventy-seven to fifty,
eleven bishops swelling the number — approved of and passed on for
ratification by the King.^ When the Royal Commissioner, James,
Marquis of Hamilton, rose from the throne to touch the statute with the
sceptre, as custom was, the sepulchral darkness was made more fear-
ful by three successive flashes of lightning each followed by a clap of
thunder, while the clouds broke in blasts of hail and deludes of rain
which held the legislators as in the blackest dungeon long after their
servile work was done. Some bold scoffers declared it resembled
that day of fire-storm when on Sinai the Ten Commandments were
given. Calderwood in his account of the event re-echoed the popular
opinion that ' God appeared angrie at the concluding of the Articles,'
a conclusion which was strengthened, in credulous expectants of
particular judgments, when the Lammas floods swept away the bridge
' Govett, 77ie King^s Book of Sports, etc., 35-40.
^ Act. Pari. Scot., 1621, c. i, iv. 596 : repealed 1640, v. 277 a. b. Among the dissentients
were Rothes, Eglinton, Linlithgow, Kintail, Gray, Ross, Yester, Cathcart, Cowpar, Burleigh,
Balmerino, Elphinston, Torphichen, Forbes, — nobles, representatives of Inverness, Fife,
Kincardine, Stirling, Haddington, Renfrew, Dumbarton, Ayr,— counties, and Dysert,
Haddington, Kirkcaldy, Montrose, Cupar, Anstruther, Inverness, Irvine, Jedburgh, Kirk-
cudbright, Pittenweem, Dunfermline, Lanark, Crail, Burntisland, Anstruther W., Dunbar,
Kilrenny, North Berwick, Stirling.
THE ERASTIAN KING 203
at Perth itself.^ The statute was deficient in fixing no penalties for
disobedience to these canons.
The triumphant King next authorised the bishops to exterminate Policy of
his opponents on the ground that ' Papistry was a disease of the ^^ """"^ '°"-
minde and puritanisme of the braine,' and commanded all public
officials to conform to the canons. At the very time these futile ful-
minations were directed against Papists at home, Prince Charles was on
his secret mission to Spain to ask the Catholic Infanta in marriage, and
the English Catholics were by arrangement actually enjoying * a good
quyett time.'^ Repugnance to the Perth Articles was spreading.
The Madrid negotiations and the promise of King James to relax the
penal laws against Catholics, and to procure a statute securing tolera-
tion for them are now a matter of history. This vow and the confession
of Prince Charles to Gregory xv. that he too was favourably disposed
to Rome, seem to indicate that the re-establishment of Popery was a
matter of the near future.^ The disaffected, calling themselves ' The
Congregation,' sought spiritual comfort at conventicles, which through
their frequency became obnoxious to the Government, and were pro-
claimed as seditious. Some staunch elders refused to serve at the
Communion, and fractious communicants bandied unseemly words
over the elements formerly approached with silent, tremulous awe.
Persecutor and persecuted were in deadly earnest. Robert Bruce, Sufferings of
who still lingered in Edinburgh, was immured in Edinburgh Castle. ^^''^^'
Murray of Dunfermline, a nonconformist, was transferred to another
pastorate. George Dunbar of Ayr, and David Dickson of Irvine,
having discarded the new ceremonies and ignored the authority of the
High Commission, were deprived of their ministerial functions and
sent to Dumfries and Turriff respectively. Spies were employed to
' Calderwood, Ht'si'., vii. 488-505.
' Bh'ss Tf-anscripts (Record Office), vol. xc. Letter of Wm. Law, 4th January 1624.
(MSS. from S. Pietro, Perugia.) In a letter of loth February 1623 Law writes that the
articles regarding the Infanta's marriage were signed, and she and her household were to
be allowed liberty of religion, and all Catholics were to be freed from the penal laws.
" For the leanings of James and Charles at this time, cf. Hardwicke, State Papers, i. 402,
411, 417 (452, Letter of Charles) ; Clarendon, State Papers, ii. 337 ; Hallam, Cotist. Hist., i.
370, 410, citing authorities.
204 THE COVENANTERS
entrap the preachers. A regent in Glasgow College was reported to
the Crown for having maintained that the people acted rightly in
rescuing Jonathan from Saul. The Primate was also pitiless. When
Duncan's that Veteran scholar, Andrew Duncan, minister of Crail, after enduring
*^*^^* much hardship for his irreconcilable Presbyterianism, wrote, in his
old age, to Spottiswood craving some consideration and sympathy —
doubtless it was a crabbed letter — the Archbishop returned his crave
with this snarl, that Duncan might 'feid upon' his own scrappy petition.
One would now like to know what the senile Primate himself after-
wards thought on his own deposition in 1638, of the philosophy of
the scholar of Crail, who had written : ' Kings' minions are sett up on
high skelfes [shelves], but slipperie and dangerous, I have seen one
right highe-mounted in your roume and course, and gatt a foule and
shamefull fall.' The sight of murdered Beaton hanging in 'whites,'
of Hamilton dangling by his neck, and of hapless Adamson begging
for bread at Melville's door, one or all, had given conscientious
Duncan a nausea at primates.
The stewarton Duriug the incumbency in Stewarton of William Castlelaw (1618-
reviva.i 22. ^2) a wave of strange religious fervour spread over that parish into
Cunningham and Clydesdale, so that numbers were seized by great
terrors and awakening of conscience, and found no peace till they
gave themselves up to prayer and religious exercises. Their peculiar
ecstasy won for them the opprobrious title of ' The daft people of
Stewarton,' and for their godly demeanour 'The Stewarton Sickness.'
Whether this revival in 1622 was a spontaneous outburst of spiritual
power or the effect of the contagious enthusiasm of the gifted David
Dickson in the adjoining parish of Irvine is not known, but it had a
marvellous effect and served as an antidote to the prelatising influences
of the time, which tended to exalt the authority of the Church to the
ignoring of personal piety. Their simple faith encouraged and con-
firmed preachers, such as Robert Blair, and attracted many visitors to
Stewarton and Irvine, where Dickson was instrumental in converting
many.' John Livingstone, when itinerating as a preacher, caught from
' Kirkton, 19 ; Row, Blair, 19 ; Wodrow, Select Biog.^ i. 316.
THE ERASTIAN KING 205
Dickson and Blair the inspiration which had a marvellous expression
on the occasion of the Communion at Shotts, 20th June 1630, where The Shotts
he got ' such liberty and melting of heart ' that crowds in the church- ^'^'"''^ ' ^ "
yard, confessing their conversion, could not tear themselves away
from the musical voice of the fascinating young preacher. He was
then chaplain to the Countess of Wigton. He was prevailed upon
to preach on Monday — a custom not yet observed. He was carried
away in his theme, Ezekiel xxxvi. 25, 26 — the cleansing of the
sinner ; the new heart, and the new spirit — and for two hours and a
half held the people spellbound. It was said that no fewer than five
hundred converts received the power of God in renewed lives that
day.^ In remembrance of it the Church instituted the practice of
having a thanksgiving service on the Monday after Communion."
A personal effect of this excitable form of religious exercise was
the development in individuals of hysterical ' motions ' and of ex-
hausting outbursts of prayer and praise. Livingstone himself left
on record an instance in the case of Lady Culross, who, on
the evening of the Shotts Communion, when in bed was heard
to 'have great motion upon her, although she spake not out,' but
on being adjured to speak, the crooning ceased and 'she continued
in prayer, with wonderfull assistance, for large three hours time.' ^
Nonconformity increased so much that the King, in 1624,
threatened to remove the courts of justice, unless his law-officers Repressive
were more diligent in stamping out the rebellion, and personally
showed a good example at Christmas when the sacrament was to
be given to all kneeling. A curious instance of the form which this
recalcitrancy took arose out of the practice, dating from the Refor-
mation, of pastors and members mutually objecting to or approving
of each other's conduct before proceeding to receive the Sacrament."
1 'Life of Livingstone,' Se/ecf Biog., i. 139 ; V\^odrow, Analecia, i. 271. Robert Bruce of
Kinnaird was also one of the spiritual wrestlers that memorable day : Life, prefaced to
Sermo7is, 140, Wodrow Soc. Bruce died in August 1631.
2 Gillies, Hist. Coll., i. 308-11.
3 Selecf B/og., i. 347.
* Calderwood, vii. 596-600.
measures.
2o6 THE COVENANTERS '
An Edinburgh town-bailie and other elders had ventured to criticise
the opinions of their learned pastor, Dr., afterwards Bishop Forbes,
and to absent themselves from the Communion. Dr. Forbes, losing
his temper, poured contempt on his ignorant colleagues. The case
reached the royal ears, with the result that the heated anxiety of
the Biblical critics was punished by two of them being sent to the
Tolbooth, two banished out of the city, and the ringleader. Bailie
Rig, confined to his own house at the King's pleasure. The head
of the Church considered himself to be the only layman competent
to discuss and settle points of theology, and, like Dr. Forbes, he
resented the attempt of catechumens to question catechisers.
King James Scotland got happy relief from these persecutions when, on 27th
March 1625, James vi. was called to another kingdom, and left
Episcopacy to mourn its staunchest champion. Burnet recorded :
' It is certain no king could die less lamented or less esteemed than
he was. '^ At the conclusion of Spottiswood's History of the Church
of Scotland appears a doggerel epitaph by Dr. Morley, an Oxford
divine, upon 'James, the Peaceful! and the Just,' praising
'That head whose working brain alone
Wrought all mens quiet but its own.'
Dr. Morley promulgated that new Gospel of the English Church
which was to make Charles i. a willing martyr : —
' Princes are Gods ; O doe not then
Rake in their graves to prove them men.'
In the sepulchre of James this labour would be profitless. It is a
relief to quit the contemplation of this ostensibly Protestant phenome-
non, without one attempt to explain a life of cold-blooded deceit and
shameless inconsistency, or to justify the policy of a constitutional
ruler who could send to a foreisfn orrave one of the most brilliant
ornaments of his country, and a true upholder of his Protestant
throne as well — Andrew Melville, while at the same time he was
persecuting to the death conscientious Papists. The quality of the
' Hist., i. 23.
THE ERASTIAN KING 207
Protestantism maintained by James is not easily appraised in view
of his apparent indifference to the perversion of his own queen, his
acquiescence in the demand of Spain that he should barter the
Reformed religion of Britain for the Infanta, and his welcome of a
French Roman Catholic Princess as the bride of his son Charles.
The adaptability of James to environment was a mean result of his
notion of kingcraft ' The Scottish Solomon ' achieved one thing
great — he made his countrymen feel their fetters, and Scotsmen
never long retain their chains.
208
THE COVENANTERS
CHAPTER VIII
THE LITURGY IMBROGLIO
Charles i.,
1625.
England in
1625.
In 1625, when Charles i. became king, Scotland received little
attention from English courtiers and citizens, its public affairs being
too uninteresting to merit mention in the news-letters of the day.
The stirring enterprises of Continental powers were of more moment.
The Scots were considered to be rude hyperboreans, and designated
half-clad ' Scythians' and ' beggarlie Scots.' A satirist declared :
' A Scotchman enters Hell at 's birth,
And 'scapes it when he gets to earth,
Assured no worse a hell can come
Than that which he enjoyed at home.'
Charles permitted eight years to elapse before he visited his
native land. At hand he had enough to do with domestic broils and
foreign wars, with angry Parliament-men presenting undesirable
petitions of right and defying the Crown, with fanatical prelates
goading him to exterminate dissenters, with the horrible plague, with
poor rustics refusing to pay illegal taxes, and with the hubbub of
confused affairs of State. The Sovereign was stately of person,
courteous in manner, and pure in morals.^ Yet under this fair
exterior was a crooked nature, guided by a perverse will. Obse-
quious flatterers ministered to his vanity and encouraged his obstinacy.
His mental power was insufficient to give him strategic control of the
currents of political and social life requiring to be kept within the
channels of right government, yet he was able, while exercising his
father's kingcraft, to conceal the defects of his character under a dig-
nified demeanour. Fate was not kind to Charles in not endowing
1 Otherwise, Kirkton, Hist.^ 46 ; 'not the perfect saint,' Hallam, Const. Hist., i. 374 note.
lohn, tirst Baron .Maitland of Thirlestanc James, fourth P^arl of Morton Jatiies, first Uuke of liair.illon
William, third Duke of Hamilton John, tirst Duke of Lauderdale
Edward Hyde, first Earl of Clarendon
Principal Carstares
FAMOUS POLITICIANS
Archibald, ninth l-larl of Argyll
THE LITURGY IMBROGLIO 209
him with the sense to learn that he was only a constitutional ruler
over a free people.
Political affairs beyond Tweed were of little account at first. Charles an
Charles, having entered himself heir to his father's policy, was crazed
on the subject of royal absolutism and the project for annihilating
Puritan and Presbyterian dissent. He had mastered the Basilikon
Doron, and accepted the maxim, 'No bishop, no king.'^ The
English clergy, approving of the Jacobite Gospel, taught that it was a
sin to resist their ruler, who had at his own disposal the person of
every subject. This was heresy to Parliament-men who maintained
that King and citizens were subject to Parliament. Such antagonism
could not last long without creating a rupture between the governor
and governed. Charles, being a dutiful son, imagined that it would
be an easy matter to fulfil his father's wish regarding the uniformity
of worship in his three kingdoms, and to furnish the Church of
Scotland with a decent government, discipline, liturgy, and psalter,
together with comely vestments and good livings for the 'kirkmen.'
A genuine * kirkman ' was a preacher who taught that the King was
God's deputy and the uncontrolled head of Church and State. The
dead potentate had arranged the preliminaries, and left a pious
executor to see his will carried out — a lesser god fitted by sartorial
education to shape old things into new and to drape offensive ideas
with visible adornments, so that worshipful minds might be spellbound
with unending transfigurations. This was no other than the restless-
eyed, irascible enthusiast for sacred things. Dr. Laud, to whom true Wiiiiam Laud.
religion, as yet unknown in Scotland according to this visionary, was a
sublime reality possessed by few. Prolonged researches in the depths
had made Laud a dreamer of dreams and observer of visions, a
medium of delightful second-sight, through which flitted glorified
mitres, cardinals' hats, rods of office, family ghosts, and other personal
properties in the grand ecclesiastical spectacle to be opened in comedy
and to end in tragedy. He resembled a pagan soothsayer or Druidic
high priest, who could, at the pillory, have the ears and noses of the
^ Cf, The Large Declaration^ by the King.
2D
2IO THE COVENANTERS
enemies of his God sacrificed as if they were an acceptable oblation.
King James had discovered William Laud, Dean of Gloucester,
President of St. John's College, Oxford, to be the man he was in
search of : one of Jacobite whims, a natty artist in apparel, as was his
worthy father, the clothier in Reading, providentially sent to fashion
neat clothes and new destinies for the Church — by himself, too,
unaided by Assembly or Parliament. Laud had absolute faith in
himself, and another stiff assurance — he imagined it was grace —
which, it surprised him, did not come to others after he had caused
their ears to be sheared off, and their limbs to be shattered in iron
boots for his own conscience sake. Highly educated, he possessed
the dominating idea that the Church of England might become a
Laud's views, holy Community, after some imagined type in apostolical days, in which
bishops, ritual, as well as sartorial adornments had a sanctified place
— in a word, Rome revived without Rome's errors. He contem-
plated a British Patriarchate. The pious schemer never compre-
hended, nor took into consideration, the possible spiritual independ-
ence of individuals. His aim was, first, the aggrandisement of
the Church, and then the establishment of the royal prerogative.^
For him, nominal conformity to established truth was virtue ;
personal conviction was less worthy of praise than obedience to law ;
observance of authorised rites was as sure to confer salvation as the
exercise of faith in love and toleration. When relentless Prynne, of
the sheared-off ears, hinted that Laud was a disguised priest who
lived mourning some misguided passion, this celibate, cold as an ice-
berg, shuddered at the slander. Religion was his love and spring of
ecstasy — a religion better suited to primitive Jewry than to en-
lightened Christendom. The reproof of the University of Oxford for
his maintaining in his exercise for Bachelor of Divinity that there
could be no true Church without bishops, was lost on Laud.^
With such views, Laud had no difficulty in concluding that
' Hallam, Const. Hist.., ii. 39.
2 Heylin, Life., 54. Many maintained that he was a Papist in disguise. Cf. postea,^. 238 n.;
P. Orleans, Revolution d'Atigleterre, iii. 35, quoting Vittorio Siri.
THE LITURGY IMBROGLIO 211
Scotland, in 161 7, had no religion so long as the decorative aspects
of the faith were lacking, and that Puritanism and Presbyterianism,
being ' dangerous positions,' as Primate Bancroft had taught, should
be obliterated altogether. According to Hallam,^ the system pursued
by Bancroft, Neile, and Laud was 'just such as low-born and little-
minded men, raised to power by fortune's caprice, are ever found to
pursue. '
The Scottish parishioners soon grew accustomed to the episcopal Parishioners
forms of worship ; and the younger members, only knowing those
pastors who had sought ordination from the bishops, many of whom
shrunk from coercion, were less averse to the intruded innovations.
The * headiest ' of the covenanted Presbyterian preachers sought
peace abroad. Many moderate-minded men conformed, but others,
like Alexander Henderson, minister of Leuchars, frequented 'very
precious and refreshing ' conventicles, in order to pray for happier
days, or as George Gillespie phrased it, ' some blessed opportunity to
be rid of all such rotten relicks, riven ragges, and rotten remainders
of Popery.' The superstitious prophesied an evil time from stars,
storms, and stranded whales, which appeared at this time.
The legislature for years occupied itself with very commonplace
business relative to needy prelates, churchless parishes, criminals,
indecent apparel of dandies, and the comely black coats of kirkmen.
No General Assembly had met since 161 8. A valid episcopate
governed the Church after the model of the Church of England since
1610, when the phantom episcopate vanished ; but, at the same time,
the inferior Church Courts met as formerly to spiritually supervise
parishes and districts. The only distinct innovation was the use of
the Ordinal, printed by royal command in 1620, entitled 'The Forme
and Maner of ordaining ministers, and of consecrating of archbishops
and bishops, used in the Church of Scotland.' ' The Ordinal required Ordinal and
r^ ' -church
no subscription to a Confession, making Scripture the sole rule ot services.
faith, but exacted the oath of the King's sovereignty in all causes,
1 Const. Hist., i. 394.
■i 4to. 'Edin. : Printed by Thomas Finlason,' 1620 ; reprinted in Wodrow Misc., 1. 591.
212 THE COVENANTERS
of canonical obedience, of perpetual residence, of preservation of the
patrimony, and against simony. The Book of Common Order was
read in the churches, and the English Book of Common Prayer in
cathedrals, universities, and Holyrood, but, as far as is known, not
in parish churches. The Scots metrical psalter, but no prose psalms,
was used in the musical part of the service. The Confession ( 1 560)
still commanded allegiance — the Aberdeen Confession (161 6) having
died a natural death. The severe measures taken by the bishops for
depriving ministers who refused to accept the Perth Articles had to
be relaxed, and failure to observe the Ordinances came to be
winked at, the bishops themselves often neglecting confirmation and
catechising;.
In 1630, Struthers, an Edinburgh pastor of royalist tendencies,
wrote to King Charles a remonstrance in friendly terms indicating the
Hatred of the pent-up feeliugs of hatred of the people for the recent policy of the
system. Crown, and averring that 'the bishops are ^Xr^^Ay publici odii victimcBy
and borne down with contempt, and that vexation is intolerable.
When they depose any brother for nonconformity, they scarcely can
find an expectant to fill the place that is empty, and that because they
become so odious to the flock, that they can do no good in their
ministry, . . . the former schisms have shaken the hearts of the
people . . . Popery is increased in the land. . . . Our fire is so great
already, that it hath more need of water to quench it than oil to
augment it.' Yet in 1634, according to Brereton, the English
traveller, ' the discipline is much pressed (by the bishops), and much
opposed by many pastors and many of the people. I observed few
given to drink or swearing.""
The inducements to an edifying worship were woefully deficient,
churches being sparse, ruinous, unseated, uncomfortable. Schools
were few. The universities were poorly equipped. The life of the
majority, rendered irritable by the selfish conduct of the ruling
classes and soured by the intolerant aims of unpopular clerical
' Balfour, Annals^ ii. 183.
^ Brereton, Travels^ no (Chetham Society).
THE LITURGY IMBROGLIO 213
dignitaries, entirely lacked the sweet undercurrents of Christian love
and charitableness.
The learned Aberdeen Doctor of Divinity, and stiff opponent of Misery of
the Covenant (1638), John Forbes of Corse, left an account of the j^^^^"
misery of Scotland at this time.^ Ministers were poor. The order
of deacons had lapsed. Many parishes were without readers and
teachers, so that the ilHterate became * a ready prey to Sathan. I
am ashamed to say,' he proceeds, 'but thousands of these wretched
creatures seem to have actually dedicated themselves to his service.'
In some parts of the Highlands, Christ was scarcely heard of, and
some of the ministers were * the most incapable or degraded of
men.' The universities and public schools languished in squalor, and
were almost deserted. Scotland was fast becoming a heathen field
ripe for foreign missionaries, being absolutely bereft of those institu-
tions of charity and culture which characterise a land once won for
Christ. Forbes, being of episcopalian predilections, was not likely
to overdraw this picture indicating the insignificant influence of the
prelatic party. Was regeneration to come from within or without
the deo^raded commonviJ^ealth ?
After the coronation Charles lost no time in informing Spottis- Charles
. , .-. . T^, • 1 • 1 • marries, 8th
wood that he auned at uniformity. This was laying the axe again to May 1625.
the root of the tree. Yet, but one day after the burial of James,
Charles by proxy had married Henrietta Maria of France, a devoted
Catholic. The Scots anticipated evil days. Soon the Crown officials
were instructed to proclaim in Scotland that the revocation of royal
grants, a mere form on the demise of the Crown, was on this occasion
really meant. Officers of State were to resign and be reappointed.
A new Commission to investigate grievances was instituted, and was
reckoned a ruthless inquisition by the restive populace. By proclama-
tion, a General Revocation of all gifts and privileges from the Crown General
. • o \ 1 Revocation.
was announced, to enable the King to annex (as in 1587) the estates
of the Catholic Church, nearly one-third of Scotland, out of which he
might rehabilitate the First Estate — the Church — then shorn of power
1 Theologica: Moralis (1632) : Eighth Commandment ; subsection, Sacrilege.
214 THE COVENANTERS
and glory. By redistributing the lands in feu-farm he might raise
money for himself. This scheme struck at many interests. The
aristocracy possessed the best lands of the Crown and of the Church,
with palaces, castles, parks, and coal-pits ; many held pensions ; others
possessed the soil and paid the teinds ; pastors might draw their teind-
sheaves off the field. Altogether a complicated system prevailed by
which Crown, superiors, vassals, sub-vassals, ladies of terce, conjunct
feears, life-renters, feuars, tacksmen, pensioners, pastors, and squatters,
all nibbled a provision from the Patrimony. The heirs of those indivi-
Aiarm of laity, duals who had assisted the deformers of the ancient Church for the
sake of spoil did not relish a dislocation of their connection with this
source of profit and pleasure, which meant humiliation and poverty.
In anger they contemplated resistance. They held conferences
with dudgeon-daggers in their belts.. The King spurned their first
petition for redress, presented by Rothes, Loudoun, and Linlithgow,
considering it too imperious for men whose bodies belonged to him-
self This rebuff did not compose the heated blood of the Leslies,
Campbells, Livingstones, and their allies. After negotiations for
years, the Crown found itself helpless to do anything but com-
Revocation promise. To end the matter, referees fixed the rate of teind at ' the
compromised, ^^^-j^ ^^^^ ^f ^^^ coustant rent which each land payeth in stock and
teinds where the same are valued jointly.' A register was instituted
and influential landowners secured small valuations. Parliament in
1630 and 1633 (Act 17) made this arrangement statutory, and also
made provision for the ministry, out of the teinds fixed. ^ The Act of
Annexation (Act 10) was also passed. One result of this legislation
was, that the humbling sight of a parish minister stalking over the
stubble in search of the bulkiest sheaves, or scudding through a barn-
yard to secure the plumpest roosters, or entering the sheep-fank to
peel the thickest fleeces, or scaling the sea-lashed crags to snare the
fattest solan geese to ensure his midnight oil, was made an obsolete
custom. Deceitful Charles afterwards took credit, in his Large
Declaration, for having magnanimously abolished a national griev-
^ Act. Pari. Scot., v. 218, et seq.
THE LITURGY IMBROGLIO 215
ance, while, in reality, he knew he had failed in his first enterprise.
He continued to exalt the spiritual order. He conferred upon Spottis-
wood the Chancellorship and the highest precedency. In July 1626
he permitted ordinaries to restore exiled pastors who were willing to
observe the Perth Articles, With a curious perversity he ordered
the ministers to sign a ' common band of conformity,' and commanded
that no Papists should be molested. To his credit alone, not Clergy exalted.
to that of the Church, he commanded the clergy to plant schools
in every parish, to catechise the people weekly, and to make
provision for the poor.^ His policy, at least, benefited the small
landowners, and aided the ministers who were secured in their
stipends.
In 1629 Charles took up his father's ' pious and princely design '
to give a liturgy to Scotland. Since 162 1, when James, alarmed at
the opposition occasioned by the Perth Articles, promised that there
should be no more innovations, the idea of introducing a liturgy was
never mooted until Laud was appointed Bishop of London in 1628. Liturgy
At this time England was in an inflammable state, on account of the '^°° ^ > ^ 2 .
teaching of lay and clerical courtiers, who asserted that the King was
the sole foundation of power and justice. Charles was flattered by
Laud's conception of government, that the Sovereign was the only
refuge from the tyranny of the people, and that Parliament was
merely a convocation to promulgate the royal wishes. Charles
desired peace and unity. How were these attainable when preachers,
like Sibthorpe, maintained that the King was the fountain of law,
and no one might refuse the King's demand for money on penalty of
damnation; when Mainwaring declared that disobedience to him English teach-
was damnation ; and when Montague pleaded for an unholy alliance, '"^'
' Do thou defend me with the sword, and I will defend thee with the
pen ' ? For refusing to license Sibthorpe's sermon, Abbot, the
Primate of England, was, in July 1627, sent a prisoner into the
country, and deprived of his jurisdiction, which was exercised by
Laud and a Commission.- This offensive illegality illustrated the
^ Balfour, Annals, ii. 144. 2 Hallam, Const. Hist., i. 418 note.
2i6 THE COVENANTERS
new autocracy. Popish services for the Queen and her increasing
co-reHorionists were sanctioned.
Coronation of When, in 1633, Charles came to Scotland ostensibly to be
ar es, i 3^. (^j-q^j^^^j^ }-jg ]-jg^j ^\^q [^ view the recovery of Crown lands and taxa-
tions, the territorial establishment of Episcopacy at the expense of
the land-grabbers, and the unification of the three kingdoms by
means of canon law. He began his progress from Whitehall on nth
May, being accompanied by a small army of lay and clerical courtiers
and personal attendants, of the latter 908 being servants requiring
1 179 horses. Provision at the public expense for such a host made
the King's visit to his impoverished fatherland dear, inconvenient,
and unwelcome. Roads had to be relaid, streets cleansed, mansions
fitted up, lodgings emptied of their residents, offensive sights such as
filthy beggars and bleaching gallows-birds removed, transports and
victuals commandeered along the route, as if Charles were a Sultan.
On Saturday, 15th June, the final stage from Dalkeith to Edinburgh
was undertaken. The magistrates placed the capital en fHe at a cost
of over forty thousand pounds Scots. Never was such a pageant
seen. The King, in the van of a gaily caparisoned suite of nobility
and prelates, road on a Barbary charger through streets bedizened
with Jameson's pictorial devices, and spanned with triumphal arches.
The summer sun added a glory to his plumed headpiece, a sparkle to
the jewels on his harness, and a distinction to the crimson footcloth
which adorned his war-horse.
Laud's second He rode between two evil geniuses. Bishop Laud and James,
Marquis of Hamilton. Seven times along the route did the poet,
Drummond of Hawthornden, make canvas gods — Bacchus, Apollo,
the Muses, with vocal planets and other wonders, welcome in music
and euphuistic phrase ' The Flower of Princes, honour of his time ' ;
and as fountains poured out libations of wine, the cannon on the
Castle roared out welcomes from sulphurous throats. The joy was
artificial. The real god of that show, the ' deus ex machina,' not
made of canvas, probably passed unnoticed in the brilliant retinue.
This was Doctor Laud, that very day made a Privy Councillor of
visit
THE LITURGY IMBROGLIO 217
Scotland.^ It was verbose adulation in the preambles of the statutes
to boast of Charles ' extirping of all roots of discord, relieving the
oppressed, and with so even and fatherly a hand curing the wounds
of this commonwealth as the wisest eye can find no blemish in the
temper of all his royal actions.' He had already prepared the apple
of discord and Laud had it in his satchel.
On Sabbath Charles worshipped in the Chapel- Royal of Holy-
rood all fresh bedight. On Mon.day night he fortified himself in the
Castle with dinner and prayer for next day's coronation.
Laud, who was master of the ceremonies, had at length got the Laud, Master
artist's opportunity of furnishing one Scots church with decorous oma- ° ^'^*^'"°"^ ^•
menta — organ, tapestries, altar, kneeling-desks, two clasped books,
two unlit candles, alms-dish (all horrors of Melville), and the indispen-
sable altar cross — all the harmless vesture clothing divine ideas and
often hiding the pearl of great price from searchers for it.^ He had
also compiled the ritual, after the Episcopal form, for the coronation,
a poor, blundering affair, whose clumsy innovations and parts tending
to irreverence so much irritated that master of liturgies, the late
Marquess of Bute, that he condemned it as the work of a ' careless
ignoramus.' ^
Early on Tuesday morning the King, in the great hall of the
Castle, was received by the Estates of Parliament. He wore a
slashed red-silk coat, the collar of the Thistle and the Garter, and
his crimson velvet train was supported by five heirs of noble houses.
The significant custom of inviting the Sovereign to take the Crown
was observed.
A strange innovation was introduced. King and Parliament
mounted their steeds to ride down Castlehill, High Street, and
Canongate — the King's horse adorned with a foot-cloth embroidered
with silver and pearls, the seven clerical peers robed in black Genevan
gowns, the lay peers carrying their coronets, gay in crimson robes,
^ Cal. State Pap., 1633, p. 100,
* A. Stevenson, History of Church (citing Crawford), 132.
•"• John, third Marquess of Bute, Scottish Coronations, 122 (Paisley, 1902).
2 E
2i8 THE COVENANTERS
the hereditary bearers of ' The Honours of Scotland,' and other
Parliament-men and functionaries.^
At the Chapel door the six prelates selected to officiate — the
Primate, Spottiswood of St. Andrews, Dunblane, Dunkeld, Brechin,
Ross, and Moray — gorgeous in their violet-silk cassocks, white
rochets, and copes of gold, together with the choir of men robed in
black and of boys clad in * sad-coloured coats,' awaited the monarch.
The Dean of the Chapel, Bishop Bellenden of Aberdeen, conducted
the King within, to a chair near to the western entrance, where he
heard Hannay, afterwards the Dean made famous at St. Giles, give
an address. The choir then sang an anthem before the King moved
The up to the throne. The elaborate ceremonial, with singing inter-
Ceremon^ri. spersed, proceeded. The dlite of Scotland filled the staged tiers and
galleries. Lindsay, Bishop of Brechin, preached on the anointing of
Solomon (i Kings i. 39). The Primate and other officials presented
Charles as the lawful King as he sat on the throne. The King gave
an oblation of gold ; took the legal oath on the Bible lying on the
communion table ; was anointed ; and was prepared for investiture
with the royal robe, sword (on which he swore the persecuting oath),
sandals, and spurs. The Primate, old and infirm, placed the crown
on his head and the sceptre within his hand. Thereafter the peers
touched the crown and swore fealty, the people, at the same time,
taking an obligatory oath. Charles next kissed the bishops, who gave
him homage. The baronage also gave homage. The Monarch,
before partaking of the Eucharist, and the scattering of the corona-
tion pieces, then promulgated a pardon. The function, which had
lasted eight hours, ended when Charles, in all his regalia, moved
through the ranks of his acclaiming subjects into the palace of
Holyrood." He had got everything save the trust of his people.
According to Rushworth, when the keen-eyed Laud perceived how
Patrick Lindsay, Archbishop of Glasgow, clad in sober black, made a
' The seven prelates were Glasgow, Orkney, Isles, Caithness, Argyle, Galloway, and
Aberdeen. The Bishop of Moray took his precedence as Lord Almoner.
2 Bute, Scottish Corojiaiions, Charles I., 63-140.
THE LITURGY IMBROGLIO 219
piebald effect and marred the harmony of colour, also thereby detract-
ing from the symbolical significance of the scene, he unceremoniously Laud insults
thrust Lindsay from the King's left hand, as he said with a sneer : ^'"^^^y-
* Are you a Churchman and wants the coat of your order ? ' Into his
place the ever-ready Maxwell, Bishop of Ross, was advanced. No
other lack of harmony troubled the restless soul of Laud. It con-
cerned him little that the brilliant audience, friend and foe, murmured
that the gorgeous ritual and genuflections ' smelt of Popery.'
On Sunday, 23rd June, the Court worshipped in St. Giles. The
old reader, Patrick Henderson, attended, as usual, in his black stuff
gown to read the Common Prayers, as they had been recited for
three generations. The master of the ceremonies had either forgotten
the existence of this quaint ' lover of the truth ' and rebel against the
Perth Articles, or, what is more likely, he intended to repay him
for refusing to read prayers on the festival days ^ by dismissing
him with intentional publicity. As Henderson appeared. Bishop
Maxwell, formerly preacher in St. Giles, and now fugleman to Laud,
descended from the royal gallery, and, ejecting Henderson, filled his
desk with two surpliced chaplains, who read the English liturgy. Liturgy read
John Guthrie, Bishop of Moray, preached in his 'whites.' Worship
ended, and the head of the Church and his giddy train walked round
to the banqueting-house, and, obedient to the gospel of the ' Book of
Sports,' began junketing with a revelry and uproar so easily heard in
St. Giles, that the minister, for decency's sake, had to depart from
the customary afternoon service on that Lord's Day.
This apparent contempt for Sabbatic reverence and the established Scotiaud
r r 1 shocked.
rites of a free people created a shock and exasperated many, whose
grudge was intensified as they realised that neither pastors nor people
were being consulted. The Scots never did scorn a beautiful and
reverent worship. Their intelligence rightly attributed no redeeming
power to any gaudy apparatus of worship invented by pagans to
divert the ignorant ; and they would have no veil over their Shechinah,
as their teachers declared.
' Act 1 62 1, c. 1, i^ 5, Ac/. Pari. ScuL, iv. 597.
220 THE COVENANTERS
What the Covenanters designated baubles and Popish rags, Laud,
and his willing convert, the King, maintained to be of the very-
substance of the faith. The universal fear that innovations were the
precursors of Popery — and everything foreign was associated with
Rome — and the discontent arising out of these insults, were not
St. John's lessened by the events of St. John's Day. John the Baptist was
ay, I jj. Laud's patron saint. The Court observed his day in the Chapel-
Royal with due pomp and piety. One hundred victims of king's-
evil knelt and received from Charles his healing touch, and, what
probably helped them more, a gold piece, which the pretended
miracle-worker presented to each for a charm. This tactless action
did not harmonise with a spirit which had outlived such mockery.
The liberal distribution of patents of nobility and knighthood among
courtiers who afterwards preferred their country's honour to their
King's command, little assuaged the unexpressed bitterness of men
who always reckoned freedom to be a patent received from the King
of Kings, and not to be sold to gratify a regal or clerical autocrat.
The political atmosphere of Britain became much perturbed.
Events of the most momentous character were about to happen. The
rariiamcntof Scottish Parliament again met upon the i8th June.^ The meeting
^^' was large. The King sat on the throne. Missed from the roll were
young Montrose, soon to return and champion first the Covenant and
then the King, and young Lome, waiting to choose the popular
quarrel, his rebel father Argyll being still abroad, in disgrace. The
bishops were there in person ; the leading clergy of the Covenant and
Presbytery were there in spirit. The nobles, finding themselves in
a helpless minority, could not thwart the royal will regarding the
Revocation in the bills prepared by the Lords of Articles, but they
endeavoured to do so in ecclesiastical matters, in conjunction with the
popular representatives of the people.
The Lords of Articles consisted of a committee of thirty-two
members of each Parliament for preparing bills. The nobles first
chose eight bishops, who in turn chose eight nobles. These sixteen
' Aci. Pari. Scot., v. 6-165.
THE LITURGY IMBROGLIO 221
selected eight representatives of counties and eight of burghs. The
King had the privilege of including eight officers of State and of
appointing the Lord Chancellor to be chairman in the King's
absence. It is easily seen how this committee might become a tool
of the King. Their draft-bills admitted of no emendation, being
either accepted or thrown out by Parliament. In seven days they Legislation
produced one hundred and sixty-eight bills. Scottish statutes are '" ^^'
laconic. The bills were all accepted. Four were specially offensive.
The first Act, ' anent the taxation ' for the maintenance of the Crown,
was sure to be felt in that cruel winter fast approaching to kill off
nearly all the bestial in the land.^ The Marquis of Hamilton was
appointed collector at a ruinous salary. The fourth statute quietly
re-established diocesan episcopacy. The ninth statute contained ' The
King's General Revocation' of all infeftments, charters, donations,
lands, lordships, patronages, teinds, and privileges granted by the
Crown.^ Other Acts treated of schools, ministers, colleges, teinds,
and the Clan Gregor. The suspicious activities and ' high carriage '
of Laud, the latest addition to the Privy Council, gave grounds
to the aristocracy, now sufficiently aroused, for their expectation
of sinister designs. As yet neither laymen nor clerics, saturated
with definite Calvinism and averse to the semi-Pelagianism infect-
ing the English Church, had discovered what Laud termed 'the
beauty of holiness,' in correct symbolic posturing, and in the proper
arrangement of sad crucifixes and gaudy green candles on the altar
at the eastern wall. To the Scot of 1633, generally speaking,
every cope adorned an Antichrist, every surplice covered a Jesuit,
and no familiarity with these vestments could banish the imagined
horns of Satan from the view of the haters of Popery. This
Parliament had before it a bill (Act 3) skilfully drafted to include
the Act of 1606, asserting the royal prerogative in all causes, and
the Act of 1609, giving power to the King to regulate the clerical The clerical
fashion. When this dual bill came up for discussion, the dissentients,
on the motion of the young Earl of Rothes, illogically d;emanded the
1 Aa. Pari. Scot., v. 13-16. ^ Ibid., 23.
222 THE COVENANTERS
bisection of the bill. The King rightly replied that, as the greater
included the less, the two proposals must stand or fall together. With
unlimited jurisdiction he himself might ordain any fashion. This
was not the first time on which one of these defiant Leslies, whose
history is written in blood, crossed the purposes of kings and
cardinals at St. Andrews, at Ruthven, and at Perth, where this
same jovial John opposed the Five Articles. Jameson, the artist,
painted him as a large-eyed, intelligent-looking cavalier, resting his
hand significantly upon his sword.
Another opponent of man-millinery was Melville, also a noble
from Fife, who supported the amendment for the sake of con-
sistency, because he had sworn with King James to his Confession,
which abjured these innovations. This outspoken remonstrance
should have given Charles pause. Instead, he waited impatiently
while the votes were taken, with a list in his hand, and meanly and
testily observed, as he marked it : ' Your names are here. I shall
Act on apparel know to-day who will do me service. ' Victory was declared for
passe. ^j^^ 'ayes,' the royalist party being double the number of the dis-
sentients. The minority insinuated fraud, and the bolder Rothes
demanded a scrutiny of the register. Snubbing him, the King
offered him a scrutiny at the cost of his life if he could not prove
his accusation. Rothes prudently shirked the ordeal. History
was repeating itself. When King James tore in pieces the journals
of the House of Commons in 162 1, he announced: 'I will govern
according to the commonweal, not according to the common will.*
His son was also to make the attempt and fail. It need not now
be doubted that obsequiousness, not fraud, gave the King the
vote he desired. Through it the independence of Parliament
would have been obliterated, the freedom of the Church turned
into a tradition, and the nation itself added to the Engrlish Crown
as a rural appanage, had not Rothes, Loudoun, and other masterful
spirits been roused to stand up and balk the evil effects of the
royalist policy, and been guided by the calm reason of Alexander
Henderson and the clear intellect of young Johnston of Wariston
THE LITURGY IMBROGLIO 223
to re-establish the constitution of the State and the Church. Another Leaders of
Leslie, Alexander of Leven, with cold steel was to sever that dual '^'^^^°^'^"'^-
Act on the battlefield, and give courage to a bolder antagonist to
make a final bisection on the block at Whitehall.
The Presbyterian ministers of this period have been frequently
blamed for encouraging a rebellious spirit in their congregations,
whereas the reader must have perceived how deficient in tact the
Government was in negotiating any ecclesiastical changes, and how
little likely the highly educated nobles were to be constrained by
presbyters. Nor must it be overlooked, that if obdurate Presby-
terians preferred uninviting Calvinism and a bare worship to a joy-
ful humanitarianism and dramatic adoration, poor had been prelatic
influence for a generation. We may accept as near the truth the origin of
conclusion of Sir James Balfour, the annalist, who mingled in the ^'^^'^"^•
best society of his day : * Not only were the grievances of the
ministers suppressed, but likewise all former Acts concerning the
complained-of corruptions in the Kirk were ratified. Howbeit it was
notoriously known, that most of these Acts had wrought great dis-
turbance in this Kirk. And now the Acts of this Parliament laid
the foundation of an irreconcilable schism, and proved afterwards the
ruin both of King and bishops.'^
To this Parliament may be traced the rise of a new constitutional New constUu-
party, demanding a reform of the old procedure under the Lords of jgl'J ^^^ ^'
Articles and a full discussion of political affairs. It only needed
fresh insults to give it homogeneity and to force it into revolt against
all unconstitutional procedure. This anti-Romanist, anti-prelatist,
anti-Arminian, anti-beauty-of-holiness party soon cohered over the
insults it met. Rothes, and his defeated minority, wished to present
a petition explanatory of their action, but their attempt was futile,
the King testily dismissing petition and petitioners with a laconic
warning to Rothes: 'No more of this, my Lord, I command you.'
This rebuke did not cool the Leslie temper. The ministers were also
aggrieved, having presented a petition on 14th June, which was
1 Balfour, Annals, ii. 216.
224 THE COVENANTERS
never acknowledged, craving the abolition of bishops' seats in Parlia-
ment, the Perth Articles, and the new tests, also the restoration
of the privileges of the Reformed Church, particularly the right to
convene General Assemblies.
Lord Baimer- Lord Balmerino imagined that, with the aid of a careless lawyer
from Dundee, named Dunmure, he might recast the petition of the
' noes,' and make it acceptable. By treachery his document passed
into the King's hands, through those of wary Spottiswood, and
Balmerino was soon lodged in Edinburgh Castle, charged with libel
and treason. He was tried and condemned to death for not reveal-
ing the existence of the libel, this verdict being secured by the
casting vote of the Earl of Traquair, chancellor of the jury, a crafty
diplomat and untrustworthy politician. On the advice of Traquair,
whom Charles had raised to an earldom, and through fear of public
opinion, Charles, luckily for himself, commuted the sentence passed
on Balmerino. One notable result of the mischievous policy of the
King was the drawing into public affairs of the greatest literary
Drummond of Scot then alive, Drummond of Hawthornden, whose canvas gods
den^sr^mons- ^^^ delighted the Sovereign. In 'An Apologetical Letter' he
trance. Splendidly contended for freedom of speech and writ, boldly declaring
that *no prince, how great so-ever, can abolish pens,' which should
be answered by pens and not by axes.^ Tolerance, he said, became
princes, who, like shepherds, could never turn rich by peeling the
skins of their own flocks. Charles may not have seen this timeous
and noble remonstrance, but he was not long in learning that the
Capital was full of armed bands ready to rescue Balmerino and to
overthrow the authorities, rather than be robbed of their liberties.
Their leaders had precedents for bold courses, to ' take occasion
by the hand.' The sullenness that fell upon the people presaged a
storm at the point of bursting.
King Charles returned to London piqued with memories of
Scottish disloyalty ; Laud, on the other hand, rejoiced to think that
the pagan North would soon have some religion. Both of them
' 2nd March 1635 : Masson, Drummond, 237-41.
THE LITURGY IMBROGLIO 225
informed the bishops, in so many words, that without a Liturgy there
was no salvation.
On 6th August 1633 Laud attained to the summit of his ambition. Laud's
when, on the death of Abbot, the King greeted Laud with these ^'''^''^^' '^33-
words, * My Lord's Grace of Canterbury, you are very welcome.'
His * Grace of Canterbury ' felt that he had the Scottish primate and
bishops, whom menaces and flatteries had made docile, in his cassock
pocket. England rang with accounts of his cruel crusade against the
Puritans. In October the northern ministers were donning their new
vestments, and prelates were faithfully executing the Anglican services,
simple and choral, in their entirety. Edinburgh was erected into a
new bishopric, 1634, under the rule of William Forbes, reputed to
have been a learned, leathern-lunged doctor, able to preach well for
hours at a stretch, and the minister best suited for the Metropolitan
see. But the bitter east winds of ' Auld Reekie ' soon chilled even
his leathern lungs and stopped more than his ' modest and pacific
considerations.'^
Laud's policy was definite and continuous. Believing that the Laud's policy,
masses were a corpus vile to be operated upon, first by the King and ^^'
then by the clergy, he aimed at elevating the latter by making them
conform to a standard in creed and ritual, and by restoring to them
their lost temporal power. To gain the Crown's protection he
supported the Crown against the people. Not knowing the Scots,
he began experimenting in Scotland. With Spottiswood elevated to
the Chancellorship, bishops taking seats in the Privy Council, and the
establishment, in October 1634, of a Court of High Commission, the
domination of the hierarchy was almost restored. Every class in
and beyond Parliament realised the menace likely to come from
the prelatic nominees of the Crown, and it can be argued from the
success of the Covenant of 1638, and the action taken by the Glasgow
Assembly in 1638, that the majority of the parish ministers and office-
bearers were thoroughly opposed to the prelatising and secularising
*
^ Co)isiderationes viodestae et pacificae Controversiat'uvi de justificatione^ etc. (Lond.,
1658) ; Row, Hist,, 370-4.
2 F
226 THE COVENANTERS
policy of the King's English advisers, and were ripening for a revolt.
The discontent of the landed classes affected by the regal Acts of
Revocation stiffened those who were disaffected by the ecclesiastical
policy, so that diverse parties had a common enemy. Had not
Charles, the ultimate Court of Appeal, himself settled the exact
position of the communion table in church, and robbed the Church
of any voice in the matter by ordaining the Dean of the Arches to
dismiss, without even considering, any appeal on the subject ? Such
submergence of will was neither intelligible nor tolerable to the people
of Scotland, whose presbyterial assemblies fostered their innate love
of liberty, fraternity, and equality, in matters secular and sacred, and
warned the simple when crafty deceivers proffered some fascinating-
substitute in order to obliterate a divine instinct. The Covenanters
meant to be free. The landholders, aggrieved over the land question,
determined to be comfortable.
King's instruc- On 13th May 1 634 the King transmitted instructions to the
tions, I 34. Scottish bishops requiring them to condescend upon a Liturgy and a
Book of Canons, for making uniformity of discipline in churches,
colleges, schools, and families.^ At the same time all officials of the
Law Courts were ordained to communicate twice yearly in Holyrood
Chapel, since * we will not suffer you to be leaders of our other
subjects to contemn and disobey the orders of the Church.' This
was no new phase of Erastianism to these calm students of precedents.
Nineteen years had elapsed since King James instructed Spottiswood
to prepare a Liturgy and Canons. The Aberdeen Assembly, in 1616,
deputed Galloway, Ewart, Adamson, and Erskine to improve the
Book of Conunon Order, and Law and Struthers to compile the Canons.
The Scottish A Liturgy, after being corrected by Spottiswood and Cowper, Bishop
i6i'q^' ' ' of Galloway, was sent to James, who returned it scored with his own
* observations, additions, expunctions, mutations, accommodations.'
The second revised draft was ready for the press in 16 19, but was not
printed ; for, as the quaint Dean of Durham wrote : ' Before it could
1 MS. 943, p. 659, The True Narrative concerning the Scottish Service Book, Catal. of
Archiepisc. MSS. in Lambeth Palace Library.
THE LITURGY IMBROGLIO 227
be brought ad umbilicuni, God called that blessed King to
glory.' ^
In 1629 Charles resumed the business of the Liturgy, and after
examining the 161 9 draft, brought by Bishop Maxwell, refused to
sanction it, probably on the advice of Laud, who declared to Maxwell,
' That if his Majesty would have a Liturgy settled there, it were best
to take the English Liturgy, without any variation, that so the same
Service Book might be established in all his Majesty's dominions.'
To this common-sense view the King yielded for four years, till the
question emerged at the Scottish Coronation, when the King asked
the northern bishops to frame their own Liturgy 'with all convenient
diligence.' The two Prayer Books were being used side by side, the
Scottish one in parish churches only. The Bishops of Galloway
(Cowper), Aberdeen (Forbes), Ross (Maxwell), and Dunblane (Bel-
lenden) are said to have compiled the Canons after the model of the
English Canons (1604), without submitting them to any convention of
ministers. These Canons, after final emendation by Laud, and his
successor in the see of London, Juxon, the fox-hunting bishop, were
authorised for printing on 23rd May 1635. Bishop Maxwell presented Canons
to Juxon a finished copy of the work, and the witty recipient in his i6"*e.'°"^ '
reply indicated a correct judgment of the temper of the Scots: 'Your
Book of Canons . . . perchance at first will make more noise than all
the cannons in Edinburgh Castle.' The title of the book is : ' Canons
and Constitutions Ecclesiastical gathered and put in Forme for the
Government of the Church of Scotland. Ratified and approved by His
Majesties Royall Warrand and ordained to be observed by the Clergie
and others whom, they concerne. Published by Auihoidtie. Aberdene.
Im^printed by Edward Raban, dwelling upon the Market Place, at the
Armes of the Citie 1636. With Royall Privilege.' Never was a
little volume of forty-three pages so fateful as this governmental code
of worship. The canons are arranged in nineteen chapters. The
1 Sprott, The Booke of Comino7t Prayer (Edin., 1871). The preface gives a good account of
the origin of this Liturgy ; The Book ofComi7ton Prayer (Laud's Lituigy), edited by Professor
Cooper (Edin., 1904) ; Sprott, ScoUish Liturgies of the Reign of James VI., Pref , 1901.
228
THE COVENANTERS
Contents of
Book of
Canons.
first chapter made practical King James's doctrine of ' innate power
from God,' when, in treating of the Church of Scotland,, it affirmed
that the King as Head of the Church had absolute authority, by
which he had, according to Scripture, sanctioned the Episcopal Church
and its Liturgy. It also ordained that deniers of this supremacy, or
assertors of errors in the Liturgy, should be excommunicated. The
second chapter set forth rules for the ordination and guidance of pres-
byters and deacons, who were to be educated at college and to be over
twenty-five years of age. The ordained preaching deacon was an
innovation provided for in the new Ordinal of 1636. Ordination at
' the two solstices and the two equinoxes ' was considered to be
popish. No mention is made of assemblies of ministers. The third
chapter dealt with 'residence and preaching,' and authorised ordained
and licensed preachers to conduct worship according to the forth-
coming Liturgy before sermon. It forbade allusions in the pulpit to
royalty. Pastors were to read the Liturgy to the sick, toll the
passing bell for the dying, and at home to read good books, and on
all occasions to recite the Paternoster. The next chapter enjoined
seemliness of conversation. The sixth chapter forbade laymen
administering sacraments, enjoined private baptism in cases of
necessity, and ordained the Lord's Supper to be dispensed at Easter
and other three occasions annually, to kneeling communicants. The
remains of the elements were to be eaten in Church by poor com-
municants. This care, the Covenanters declared, indicated belief in
the doctrine of transubstantiation. The seventh chapter regulated
marriage and divorce, no person under twenty-one years of age being
permitted to marry without consent of parents. The eighth chapter
provided for half-yearly and National Synods, but suppressed meet-
ings in presbytery, session, and conventicle. It made the canons
unalterable by presbyters. The ninth chapter prescribed manners in
church : removing of hats, kneeling at prayer, standing at the Creed,
not leaving during worship ; and, under pain of deprivation, ministers
were forbidden to use extempore prayers, or prayers not in the
Liturgy. Succeeding chapters imposed conformity on teachers,
THE LITURGY IMBROGLIO 229
curates, readers, printers, regulated fasts, and appointed the apparel
of Church and University men. The sixteenth chapter authorised The Canons.
the purchase of a Bible, Book of Common Prayer, pulpit, communion
table and vessels, font, and alms-box. The communion table was to
be placed at the upper end of the church, to be decently ' carpetted '
when not used, and spread with fair white linen during celebration ;
the font at the entrance door. The church and churchyard were to
be decently kept at the sight of bishops and archdeacons. The
eighteenth chapter regulated ' censures ecclesiastical,' afforded a right
of appeal to the King as Head of the Church, forbade clergy taking
up civil causes and sanctioned the confessional. The last chapter
treated of ' Commissaries and their Courts,' fixed the age of officials
at not less than thirty, and gave the ordinaries sole power to punish
the breakers of the Canons. With these Canons and the Court of
High Commission the Protestant hierarchy had obtained a position
scarcely less powerful than that of their popish predecessors.
The Presbyterians saw the glory of their Reformed Church
extinguished, and felt insulted by the suppression of names and
institutions hallowed by long usage — 'ministry,' 'presbytery,' 'elder-
ship,' and ' kirk-session.' They laid blame chiefly on the English
Primate, whose name. Will Laud, corresponded with 666 according
to their ingenious interpretation of the number of the Beast of the
Apocalypse, as also with ' William a Devil.' Nor had they mali-
sons enough for this ' Master of Postures ' and ' Archurger of the
Ceremonies' when they heard the reports of his persecution of the
Puritans in England. These were the days in which, as Cromwell Evil times in
said, ' it was a shame to be a Christian ... a reproach to be a man,' °^^" *
and when the most religious man of the age, Milton, declared he
was forced to shun the Church, having been ' church-outed by the
prelates.' One of the first to feel the tyranny of the Scots bishops
was Samuel Rutherford, the saintly minister of Anwoth, whom
Sydserf, Bishop of Galloway, caused to be summoned before the
Commission in Edinburgh, in July 1636, for disregarding the innova-
tions and the laws of the Church. The verdict was that Rutherford
230 THE COVENANTERS
should be transported to the parish of Aberdeen, then noted for its
hard-headed doctors of divinity and staunch favourers of episcopacy,
so that their influence might be brought to bear on this unwavering
presbyter.
Principal John Lee, in his Lectures on the History of the Church of
Scotland^ following other authorities, states that the Scottish Liturgy
' was in a great measure transcribed from the Book of Common
Prayer of the Church of England, and is generally represented to
have been the work of Archbishop Laud.^ But though it was framed
under his direction, its execution was chiefly intrusted to Maxwell,
Bishop of Ross, Wedderburn, Bishop of Dunblane (formerly a
professor of divinity in St. Andrews), Sydserf, Bishop of Galloway,
and Bellenden, Bishop of Aberdeen.' Laud had less to do with the
compilation of the book than he is credited with, and King Charles
several times acknowledged his own connection with and sole
Evolution of responsibility for its contents.^ After several drafts of a Liturgy had
the Scottish . , , 'iti irT-n»'l
Prayer Book, been prepared and set aside. Laud prepared a draft, if Bishop
Racket, in his Life of Archbishop Williams, correctly reports the
following conversation of King James with Williams: 'This man
[Laud] hath pressed me to invite them to a nearer conjunction with
the Liturgy and Canons of this nation, but I sent him back with the
frivolous draught he had drawn. . . . For all this he feared not mine
anger, but assaulted me with another ill-fangled platform to make
that stubborn Kirk stoop more to the English pattern ; but I durst
not play fast and loose with my word [i.e. that there would be no
more innovations]. He knows not the stomach of that people.'^
King James had not then forgotten the counsel given to his son in
Basilikou Doron, that in Psalms and Lord's Prayer — 'the meetest
scholemaster — ye may learne all forme of prayer necessare for your
comfort at all occasions. ... In your prayer bee neither over strange
^ Lee, Lectures, ii. 248 (Edin., i860).
^ Kirkton, 30 : 'I have seen the principal book corrected with Bishop Laud's own
hand, where, in every place which he corrected, he brings the word as near the Missale as
English can be to Latin.'
^ Charles R., Large Declaration, 48 ; Laud, Works, iii. 317, 336. < Scrinia Reserata, 64.
THE LITURGY IMBROGLIO 231
with God like the ignorant common sort that prayeth nothing but out
of books.'
In the autumn of 1629 the second draft, after its revision by the Second and
bishops, was by command of the King carried by Maxwell to Laud, '^^^'"^ ''^^^^^^'
who in vain had attempted to persuade Charles to authorise the
English Prayer Book instead. The events of 1633 made it expedient
that the Liturgy should be of native origin, although Charles had
somewhat compromised himself by instructing the Scots prelates, in
1630, to familiarise themselves with the English book until they had
prepared a 'fit and full Liturgy,' 'as near that of England as might
be.' The bishops were suspected of evading this order, but Maxwell
read the English Liturgy for three years.^ At length the compilers Fomth draft,
completed a book which the King signed at Hampton Court, 28th '^^'
September 1634. An English Prayer Book, of date 1629, formerly
in the possession of the Earl of Stirling, containing notes written by
Sir Edward Nicholas, Secretary of State in England, probably to the
dictation of the King, may have been a model for the compilers.^
Laud selected a new font of Gothic type for the production of the
book, and Young, printer in Edinburgh, prepared an edition which,
however, was discarded at the close of 1635, and as waste-paper
dispersed among the sellers of sweets and snuff in the Luckenbooths.
There, in all likelihood, 'Jenny Geddes,' applewoman, and John
Mein, merchant and watchful critic, first saw the unwelcome intruder.
What with Maxwell running to and fro, printer Young — * the greatest
knave ' the Earl of Stirling said he ever knew — defective type
turned upside down, and discrepancies which no patience could rectify,
Charles and Laud must have been sick of their enterprise. At last, Fifth or fmai
Charles commissioned Laud and Bishop Wren to extend the sugges- ^^ ' '^ '
tions from Scotland ; and, after these had been considered by himself
and, where approved of, entered upon the clean pages of an English
Liturgy, he had arrived at a final Prayer Book for Scotland, which he
signed on April 19, 1636.
^ Hamilton Papers, 2, Camden Soc, 1880.
2 Athenceum, No. 2608, p. 499, Oct. 20, 1877 ; No. 2715, p. 596, Nov. 8, 1879.
redactenr of
the Liturgy.
232 THE COVENANTERS
Charles the Long afterwards, Laud's enemy, Prynne, found in the Primate's
chambers a copy of the King's imprimatur, and wrongly declared it
was a fraud.^ It was in the following terms : ' Charles R. I gave
the Archbp of Canterbury comand to make the alteracons ex-
pressed in this Book and to fit a Liturgy for the Church of Scotland
and wheresoever they shall differ from another Booke signed by us
at Hampt[on] Court, September 28th 1634, our pleasure is to have
these followed rather than the former ; unless the Archbp of St
Andrews and his Brethren who are upon the place shall see apparent
reason to the contrary. At White Hall, April 19, 1636.' The
warrant in the handwriting of Charles himself, as Prynne gave it,
was inscribed in 'The Booke of Common Prayer . . . R. Barker, 1637,'
which belonged to a Duke of Hamilton, probably the Commissioner
of 1638." The warrant, in the same terms, is written in copies of the
English Liturgy, printed in 1634 and 1637, preserved in Lambeth
Palace Library. The warrant is important, proving what Charles
asserted in the Large Declaration and in the Stirling Proclamation,
19th February 1638, that personally he had taken great care and
pains, ' so as nothing passed therein but what was seene and approved
by Us before the same was either divulged or printed.'^ A similar
confession was made to the Commissioners of the Covenanters at
Berwick, in 1641, which Johnston of Wariston heard and recorded:
' He \i.e, the King] declared also that nothing could be said against
the Service Booke of Scotland, bot it behoved to reflect against that
of England, for they were all one ; that he had hand himself in the
difference betwixt them, that he would not suffer any to be punished
albeit they had brought in the Alcoran.' * Another corroboration of the
warrant is in the letter written by Laud to Wedderburn, Bishop of Dun-
blane, in April 1636, informing him that Wren and he had written
into an English Prayer Book the King's own additions (some of them
probably suggested by Wedderburn), ' with his Majesty's hand to it.'
1 Prynne, Hidden Works ^ 156 ; cf. The True Narrative, etc., Lambeth MS. 943, p. 659.
''' On the sale of the Hamilton Library, the volume was sold for ^137 to Lord Rosebery.
^ Charles R., Large Declaraiio7i, 48. * Johnston, Diary, 79, Scot. Hist. Soc. edit., 1896.
THE LITURGY IMBROGLIO 233
After these delays, the handsome folio, with its bold Gothic type Prayer Book
and fine woodcut capitals and tailpieces, issued from the press of "^^""'' '^•^^'
Robert Young in Edinburgh in April 1637, Its title-page, printed in
alternate lines of black and red colour, bears this title : The Booke of
Common Prayer and Administration of the Sacraments and other
parts of divine Service for the use of the Church of Scotland. Edin-
burgh, Printed by Robert Young, Printer to the Kings most excellent
Majestie, MDCXXXVII. Cum Privilegio. In the same binding
appears a Prose Psalter, entitled : The Psalter or Psalmes of David
after the Translation set forth by authority in King Jam,es his time
of blessed memory, as it shall be said or sung throughout all the
Churches of Scotland. Edinburgh. Printed by Robert Yotmg, Printer
to the King's Most Excellent Majesty, Anno MDCXXXVI. Cum
Privilegio. This is accompanied by the Metrical Psalter, entitled :
The Psalmes of King David, Translated by King James, London.
Printed by Thomas Harper, 1636, which was authorised for use on
5th May 1632 and 14th March 1637.
A remarkable woodcut of the capital letter C in ' Charles ' begins a suggestive
the text, and quaintly depicts a pilot steering a full-rigged galley,
under favouring breezes, preceded by Neptune, past a headland into
smoother waters, a happy Ulysses escaping Scylla and Charybdis.
He is alone at the helm ; more suggestive still, he is alone in his
armed craft. The King's name begins his Proclamation, dated 20th
December 1636, ordaining every parish to procure two copies of the
Prayer Book, and authorising the punishment of contraveners of the
order. The Table of Contents, embraced in twenty-one sections in
three hundred unnumbered paoes, indicates the scope of the Liturgy, Scope of the
,1 1^ 1 • • . J Prayer Book.
namely : A preface ; of ceremonies ; order how Psalter is appomted
to be read ; order how Scripture is to be read ; proper psalms and
lessons for Sundays, and table of the order ; almanack ; calendar for
psalms and lessons ; order for morning and evening prayer throughout
year ; litany ; collects, epistles, and gospels for communion service ;
communion ; baptism ; confirmation and catechism ; matrimony ;
visitation of sick; communion of the sick; burial; churching of
2 G
Prayer Book.
234 THE COVENANTERS
women ; a commination against sinners, with certain prayers to be
used divers times in the year.
Substance of The volume is in substance the Prayer Book of Edward vi., as
amended and then (1636) in use in England, there being a few
changes of the EHzabethan text, and of the rubrics concerning the
ceremonies. These emendations were startHng enough to suspicious
formahsts and to conservative Calvinists, but were not Popish in
any other sense than that they were not embraced in any formulae
sanctioned at Geneva.^ To many the form was less acceptable than
the substance, the rite more objectionable than the doctrine, and the
rubrics worse than the text of the book. From the beginning every-
thing tended to cast suspicion on a production whose secret, tedious,
difficult manufacture had made it quite a portent to a people whom
treachery had made wary and evil treatment had rendered inflam-
mable. It was the match to set two king-doms on fire. One
intolerable feature of the Liturgy was its origin beyond the Tweed ;
another, even less forgivable, was its imposition upon a Church which
did not want it, and without the assent of either people or pastors,
very few of whom ever saw it until it was in print. The terms of
the Proclamation that this Prayer Book was the ' only form which
We (having taken the counsell of our clergie) think fit to be used in
God's public worship,' are highly misleading. Dr. Sprott, in his
excellent account of the work, declares : ' Only a portion of the
Scottish Bishops concurred in it, and that not without much pres-
sure.'" For these reasons it was viewed by intelligent Scotsmen as
the emblem of Erastus, the mean idol of a craven Episcopate, and
the memorial of a tyranny which the freeborn determined was never
to be brooked again.
Yet, after all, the Prayer Book had its use in authorising novel
attitudinisings, which, though deemed to be ' ill-fangled ' movements,
were reverential decencies sadly needed in ' a stubborn Kirk,' wherein
' The poperie of the Sennce Book discovered by Dtdoclavius, Laing MSS., Edin. Univ.,
No. 69 ; No. 293, Nwefeen points of resemblance between the Mass Book and Service
Book.
2 Sprott, The Bookc of Common Prayer., Ixv. (Edin., 1871).
THE LITURGY IMBROGLIO 235
a dull vitality, the monotonous platitudes of many wretched preachers,
and the woful weather, forced careless worshippers into sleep under
their Stewarton bonnets and woollen shawls.
The innovations were distasteful to many who could not approve innovations in
of the celebrant of the Lord's Supper standing at an altar, and ""^^^
presenting his side or back to the worshippers, from whom the rite
was partly concealed, nor of dipping children in the font, at the front
door, which reminded them of a holy-water vessel. The new terms,
* corporall ' for cloth, ' chalice ' for cup, ' Sunday ' for Sabbath, * paten '
for plate, ' presbyter ' for minister, gave needless offence. The
commemoration on holy days, fortnightly, according to a partial
calendar, of saints, Celtic missionaries, and others, all as dead as
Pharaoh and some as nebulous as Orion, recalled the Roman festivals.
The following instruction created alarm : ' Then the Presbyter (at
Baptism) shall make a crosse upon the childe's forehead, saying we
receive this childe into the Church of Christ and do signe him with
the siofn of the crosse in token that hereafter he shall not be ashamed
to confesse the Faith of Christ crucified.' Row, in his animadversions Popish doc-
on the book, pointed out Romanist significations in the Communion p^^^^^ ^3^^,.^
rite. The ' oblation ' of the elements before consecration, the con-
secrating prayer in these words that ' these Thy gifts and creatures of
bread and wine may be unto us the body and blood of Thy most
dearly beloved Son,' and the phrase 'partakers of the same His most
precious body and bloud,' together with the kneeling posture, in-
dicated the disofuised doctrine of transubstantiation. That Laud, who
regretted the omission of the ' oblation ' from the English Liturgy,
considered the celebration by the priest an offering, as well as a
memorial, of Christ's ' precious death and sacrifice,' is proved by his
own notes in a copy of a Prayer Book.^ The suspicion of Popery
was increased by the permission of ' wafer- bread,' by the instruction
' to take the paten in his hand ' (not handle and break bread), and by
the consumption of the residual elements in church by the communi-
cants. The withholding of the sacrament, unless there was 'a
^ Hutton, William Laud, 183 j Laud, Works, iii. 359.
236 THE COVENANTERS
sufficient number to communicate,' violated the Master's spirit. The
minced selections from Scripture and the Apocrypha, which were
recommended to be sung, highly displeased others.
Horror of The book was generally spoken of with horror. Damaging
les y enans. p^j^pj^]gj-g^ admonitions, supplications, petitions, books, and ballads,
afterwards burned by the hangman, poured from the press at home
and abroad. Even Alexander Thomson, minister of St. Giles, wrote
verses to Sir James Carmichael about it : —
' I need not impairt to you
Hou our Church stait does stand
By this neu Service book, which nou
So troubells all this land.'^
A scurrilous pasquil, entitled The New Litany, prayed for deliverance
from the Laudians and Liturgy men : —
' From pupill, pastor, tutor flocke,
From gutter Jennie, pupit Jocke,
From all such head controlling taylles.
And from small barkes with too big saylles.' ^
The last line may have been a reference to the royal pilot in the
initial letter of the Prayer Book. Calderwood's trenchant polemical
works, Altare Damascemtvt, A Re-examinatio7t of the Five Articles
enacted at Perth, 1618, and Quaeres concerning the Church, were
Gillespie on eagerly read. The writings of a genius, George Gillespie, then
Book!^^^ twenty-five years old, an ' expectant ' for the Church, notably his
A Dispute against the English-Popish Ceremonies intruded upon the
Church of Scotland, created a sensation on their appearance in 1637.
He thus describes the injured Church : ' Her sweet voice is mumming
and muttering some missal and magical Liturgies. Her fair neck
beareth the halter-like tokens of her former captivity, even a burden-
some chain of superfluous and superstitious ceremonies. Her undefiled
^ Balfour MSS., Advocates' Library, Edinburgh.
2 A Bool- of Scottish Pasqtiih, 52. Forty-six petitions relative to the Liturgy arc pre-
served in the Register House.
THE LITURGY IMBROGLIO 237
garments are stained with the meretricious bravery of Babylonish
ornaments, and with the symbolising badges of conformity with
Rome.'^ The very title of Dr. Robert Baillie's book (1641) indicates Baiuie's
the popular horror of Popery : A parallel or brief e comparison of the "i'""^"-
liturgie ivitk the masse-book, the breviarie, the ceremonially and other
Romish ritualls ; wherein is clearly and shortly demonstrated^ not
onely that the liturgie is taken for the most part word by word out
of these anti- christian writs, but also that not one of the most
abominable passages of the masse can in reason be refused by any
who cordially imbrace the liturgie as it now stands, and is commented
by the prime of our clergie. John Row, the sturdy old Presbyterian
minister at Carnock, scornfully declared : ' Any boy of eight years of
age, who is taught to read Inglish, may be a Kirkman good enough,
for he can read a prayer, a chapter, the Service Book, a printed
Homilie or sermon.' " No indictment of it was so bitter as that of
Montrose, who styled it ' a dead service-book, the brood of the bowels
of the whore of Babel.' ^ To Samuel Rutherford it was ' toothless and
spiritless talk.'*
The Nonconformists, in both Scotland and England, at this time Papal alliance
could not divest themselves of the suspicion that King Charles and ^"^'^'''^
Laud had some secret understanding with the Pope regarding the
restoration of the Roman Catholic faith and polity. There is no
exact proof to show that their fears were well grounded. It is true
that Charles was sometimes tolerant to, the Queen always shielded,
and Laud once dreamed of reunion with, the Catholics, but that pro-
bably was all. The Scots, so early as 1632, had been publicly
expressing their distrust of the King, and the Jesuit agents reported
this at headquarters.^ Laud never compromised himself in any
negotiations he had with the Papal agents, and although Panzani
wrote to Barberini, 2nd April 1636, that, according to Bishop
Montague, Laud was ' favourable to Rome,' it is most probable that
1 Gillespie, A Dispute, etc., 6. ^ Rq^v^ Hist., 401, Wod. Soc. edit.
^ Napier, Memoirs, i., app. xlvi. * Triutiiph of Faith, y^, edit. 1845.
^ Bliss Transcripts, No. 91, Status Catholicae Religionis, etc., State Paper Office.
238
THE COVENANTERS
Prayer Book
not approved
by Rome.
a wish was father to the thought.^ And yet the Papal intriguers, in
twice offering to Laud a Cardinal's hat, imagined that they had got
a proselyte not likely to make the refusal a matter of conscience.^
There is a remarkable story, which has escaped the notice of
editors of the liturgies, to the effect that Laud, wishing to ingratiate
himself with the Pope, sent the Scottish Prayer Book to Rome for
approval, and this was refused. The report was current in 1638 that
Thomas Abernethy, the converted Jesuit, knew of this fact, but when
he was questioned by Robert Baillie, he declared he had no infor-
mation on the point.^ However, his insecure position made him
reticent. The narrative appears in a work entitled. The English-
Afnerican his Travail by Sea and Land or a New Survey of the West
Indias. . . . By the true and painfid endeavour of Tho^nas Gage now
preacher of the Word of God at Acres in the County of Kent.
Anno Doni. 1648. London 1648. The author, Gage, avers that,
being in Rome, after he had enjoyed an interview with Cardinal
Barberini, he went to dine in the English College at the invitation of
its well-known rector. Father Thomas Fitzherbert, who had formerly
held the position of agent of the English clergy and became a Jesuit.
Fitzherberi's Gage reports Fitzherbert's conversation thus : ' The Jesuite began to
praise the Arch-prelate [Laud], for his moderate carriage towards
Papists and priests, boasting of the free access, which one Simond,
alias Flood, a Jesuite had unto him at all houres, and on all occasions ;
and to extoll him the more, he brought in the Archbishop, Abbot,
whom he cried down as much for a cruel enemie and persecutor of
the Church of Rome, and of all papists and priests. But the now
Archbishop, said hee, is not only favourable to us there, but here
• Addl. MSS., 15390, xxxi. 359, British Museum; Bliss Transcripts, No. 92 ; Barberini
MSS., Gen. Series, No. 17. On the other hand, P. Orleans in his Hisf. des Rivolutions
d'Angleterre, iii. 36 (Paris, 1694), citing Abbe Vittorio Siri, a contemporary of Laud, declares
Laud was a Papist.
2 Laud, Diary, 4th August 1633; Hutton, Laud, 154, 155. 'Statement in reference to
communications alleged to have been made to Rome by William Laud, Archbishop of
Canterbury, and James Ussher, Primate of Ireland' (1639): Rinuccini MSS., Hist. MSS.
Co?n., ix. (ii.), 351.
^ Baillie, Letters, i. 102.
THE LITURGY IMBROGLIO 239
desireth to make daily demonstrations of his great affection to this
our Court and Church ; which he shewed not long since in sending a
Common Prayer Booke (which hee had composed for the Church of
Scotland) to be first viewed, and approved of by our Pope and
Cardinals, who perusing it liked it very well for Protestants to be
trained in a form of Prayer and service ; yet considering the state
of Scotland and the temper and tenents [sic'] of that people, the
Cardinals (first giving him thanks for his respect and dutifull com-
pliance with them) sent him word, that they thought that form of
prayer was not fitting for Scotland, but would breed some stir and
unquietnesse, for that they understood the Scots were aversed from
all set forms, and would not be tyed and limited to the inventions of
man's spirit having (as they thought) the true and unerring Spirit of
God in them, which could better teach and direct them to pray. All
this (said Father Fitzherbert) I was witnesse of. . . . But the
good Archbishop (quoth he) hearing the censures of the Cardinals
(Cucua(?), Albornus [Alberici ?], Barberini), concerning his intention
and Form of Prayer, to ingratiate himself the more into their favour
corrected some things in it, and made it more harsh and unreasonable
for that nation ; which we already heare they have stomached at, and
will not suffer it in many parts to be read ; and we justly fear that
this his Common Prayer Book and his great compliance with this
Court will at last bring strife and division between the two kingdoms
of Scotland and England.'^
The credibility of this extraordinary story rests upon the Account of
testimony of a notable man, who, in his time, was supposed to be ^^^'
well acquainted with the movements of the Papists in the reign of
Charles i., namely the apostate priest, Thomas Gage. Gage was a
member of an old and staunch Catholic family, which had given three
sons to the Church, and one, Sir Henry, Governor of Oxford, to the
royal cause for which he fell in battle. Thomas had apostatised from
the Dominican or Franciscan Order, and, in his Protestant zeal,
became a chief witness against Peter Wright the Jesuit, who was
^ Gage, T/ie English-American his Travail^ 208.
240
THE COVENANTERS
Laud's desire
of uniformity.
The draft pro-
bably sent to
Rome.
Proclamations,
1636.
executed in May 1651. Gage's alleged informant regarding Laud's
overtures was Father Thomas Fitzherbert, who, in 16 18, became
Rector of the English College in Rome and died in office in 1640.
Gage's narrative indicates that he had interviewed Fitzherbert before
1639. Laud's desire of uniformity was an old affair in 1637. In
1626 he recorded in his Diary: 'Dreamed that I was reconciled to
the Church of Rome.' A prolonged search made by me in the
Record Office, London, in the Stevenson and Bliss Transcripts of
papers in Rome and elsewhere bearing on the period 161 1 to 1643,
threw no light upon this incident. There were references to the
troubles caused by the introduction of the ceremonies and Liturgy.
The Jesuit, Con, who had been living under the protection of the
Queen, had occasion to know the changeable tactics of Laud, and
wrote to Ferrugalli, 13th November 1637, that Laud, the ' Bestiola,'
was ready to sacrifice the Catholics to the fury of the armed Puritans
in Scotland and England, thus indicating his hatred to Rome at
that date.^
It was not to be expected that the ill-advised act of sending a
Liturgy for Papal imprwiatur would be noticed in Laud's own True
Narrative concerning the Scottish Service Booke given in at his trial. ^
But, as before stated, the Scots were convinced that the Prayer
Book was an instrument created for assisting Popery back into
authority in Scotland. If Laud, however, did seek approval of a
Liturgy, one might argue from Fitzherbert's words — ' which hee had
composed ' — and from our knowledge of Laud's temperament, that
the draft sent was none other than the * ill-fangled platform,' and the
'frivolous draught,' both of which King James had discarded some
time about 162 1, as recorded by Bishop Hacket.^
The Privy Council (with a warrant for letters of horning
appended),'' on 20th December 1636, had proclamation made at
burgh market-crosses that all ministers should, before Easter, procure
' Barberini Transcripts, Gen. Series. No. 92.
^ Lambeth MSS., 943, p. 659 ; History 0/ the Archbishop's Troubles, 168.
"' Hacket, Mcviorial of Archbishop Williams, 64.
* I.e. the ordinary form of execution.
THE LITURGY IMBROGLIO 241
for each parish two copies of the Liturgy, at the cost of four pounds
sixteen shillings Scots each copy. The majority obeyed, but on
June 13 the Council were forced to issue a second proclamation
against those who refused to accept it, ordaining them to use the
book within fifteen days. These opponents were not standing idly
looking on. Laud, well informed by spies, asserted that the N on- Attitude of
conformists in England and Scotland had covenanted to resist the
policy which he directed. Spalding, author of a History of the
Troubles, went a step further, and declared that a * clandestine band,
drawn up and subscribed secretly,' provided for the establishment of
one reformed religion and the uprooting of Episcopacy in both
kingdoms.^ King Charles, in his own Large Declaration concerniTig
the Late Twnitlts in Scotland, etc.,^ a large folio compiled by Dr.
Walter Balcanqual, Dean of Durham, for the King, attributed the
seditious spirit of the opponents of the Liturgy to the recent Revoca-
tions and to the paucity of honours distributed at the coronation.
Although there may be no direct proof of the existence of national
and international combinations, yet, when the fury of the time, the
antagonism displayed in many petitions, subscribed even by women
and children, and the self-sacrifice shown by the readers who
resigned, are considered, the relation of effect to cause almost
demands the production of some patriotic league to explain the rapid
spread of the revolutionary spirit which found undying expression in
the National Covenant of 1638. The angry explosions of a crowd
of domestic servants, herb-women, and fishwives, even though they
were fired to a riot by aristocratic ladies at the introduction of the
Prayer Book, are not sufficient to account for the wild enthusiasm,
which spread like an irresistible tide over Scotland and swept all the
impositions away. It was a 'No Popery' revolutionary movement
in reality.
Sabbath, the twenty-third day of July 1637, was fixed for the
inauguration of the new Service Book in the Capital itself, so that all
the country might witness the example of the docility of subjects
1 Spalding, Mcmorialis, 77, Spald. Club. - London, 1639, fol. 430.
2 H
242
THE COVENANTERS
Bishop
Lindsay.
St. Giles
Church, 23rd
July 1637.
respectful to the majesty of the King and law.^ Dr. David Lindsay,
Bishop of Edinburgh, issued printed advertisements, which the
ministers were to read on i6th July, announcing that the pastors
would on the next Sunday read the book to their flocks. In some
churches this order was not read, in others it was heard with
murmurs from the people. This announcement, according to Laud,
was inconsiderate and afforded time to the ill-affected to premeditate
opposition.- Lindsay made elaborate arrangements for introducing
the Liturgy with a stately ceremonial into his Cathedral of St. Giles.^
Choice could not have lit upon a happier instrument of the King's
will than this former minister of Dundee and Bishop of Brechin,
champion of the Divine Right of Kings, and a pamphleteer in favour
of the kneeling posture — ' Doctor Resolutus,' as incisive Calderwood
styled him. A contemporary opponent nicknamed him 'apockeof
avarice,' and thus doubly hit the prelate for his corpulency and his
greed of honours. He had a willing henchman in James Hannay,
M.A., formerly of Kilmaurs, now of the New Kirk, and Dean of
Edinburgh. As usual the old-fashioned morning service, of prayers
read from the Book of Common Order, of metrical psalms sung,
and of Scripture lessons read, was conducted by the worthy reader,
Patrick Henderson, standing in the ' latron ' or desk. Fresh in his
memory was that scene, four years gone, when Bishop Maxwell
hauled him out of that high place in order to install two surpliced
priests. After finishing his duties, in the interval during which the
1 A Large Declaratiori^ 23 (London, 1639). 2 Letter to Traquair, Aug. 6, 1637.
^ This account of the introduction of the Liturgy has been compiled from many con-
temporary manuscripts and printed accounts of the incident, inter alia : Swinton, Kirk MSS.,
Advoc. Lib., 34-5-8 ; A True Relation of the Proceedings, etc. ; ibid., The Second Part of the
Historie of the Church, etc., 29 ; Charles First (or Balcanquhal), Large Declaration ; Phillip
MSS., Baillie to Spang, Oct. 1637; Baillie, Letters, i. 17; Peg. Privy Coiinc, vi. ; A
Collection of Several Manuscripts^ etc. (said to have been written by Kirkton), p. 7 (Advoc.
Lib.) ; Balfour MS S., W. 4, 16, 33-2-32, p. 39 (Advoc. Lib.) ; Rothes, Relation of the Affairs
—1637, with Appendix, A Briefe and True Relaiun of the Broyle, etc. (Lee, p. 109); The
Stonie Field Saboth Day— A breyf discriptioun of the tumult, etc., 48, 52 ; Wodroiv MSS.,
liv. 10 (Advoc. Lib.), A Relation of the Prelates carriage, etc. ; on same subject, pp. 169, 175,
249, 285, Catal. Wod. MSS. ; Wodrow, Analecta, \. 64; Calderwood MS., transcript by
Wodrow, MSS. xiii. (Glasgow University) ; Laud, Works, ii. 373, 401 ; The Cross Removed,
Edin., 1756 ; Gillespie, Dispute, etc., 1637 ; Lee, Cath. Presb. Mag., viii. 102 (1882).
THE LITURGY IMBROGLIO 243
third bell rang its customary call for the preacher, Henderson dole-
fully said : ' Adieu, good people, for I think this is the last time of
my reading prayers in this place. '^ The church was crowded. The
places of worship at this epoch were not furnished with seats.
Consequently many 'rascally serving-maids' were sent before public
worship commenced to secure good places, and there sat on * creepie-
stools' (folding or three-legged stools), until their fashionable mis-
tresses arrived, as custom was, after the common prayers were recited.
The ministers of Edinburgh agreed to enter their pulpits between
eight and nine o'clock forenoon and to carry the prayer-books with
them. Lindsay and Hannay duly appeared.
With great pomp the King's representative, Spottiswood, Primate
and Chancellor, occupied the throne in the royal loft and honoured
the inauguration. Nobles grandly attired, law-lords brilliantly robed,
and City Fathers gaily gowned and attended by their halberdiers
filed in. Provost Aikenhead, whose rosy nose afforded such costly
merriment to the satirical student, Leighton, afterwards the staid
Bishop of Dunblane, looked down on the surging scene with his
rubicund face, which three weeks later was laid pale enough in Grey-
friars Churchyard.^ One may surmise that John Mein, elder, post-
master, and merchant, who would sell goods on Christmas and other
festival days, ripe critic of bishops and innovations, a somewhat
officious man, whose irrepressible Presbyterianism brought him along
with Henderson into conflict with the Privy Council, was also present.
His capable wife, Barbara Hamilton, was at her post, on her
* creepie-stool,' and solemnly waited.^ David Calderwood, historian,
looked on and took notes for his still unpublished account of the
scene.* There was as much latent fire in that old church as might
have turned it into another place. An indication of its presence
' Maitland, Hist, of Edinburgh, 71.
2 His monument is now affixed to the north side of Greyfriars Church.
^ The Cross Removed, 1756; Wodrow, Analecta, i. 64. A godly woman with the same
name was a favoured correspondent of Samuel Rutherford. Rutherford's successor in
Anwoth was John, son of this John Mein.
* Wodrow MSS. (Glasgow), vol. xiii.
244 THE COVENANTERS
was given when (about lo a.m. according to Row) Dean Hannay
mounted the desk, carrying in his hand the brown leather-bound
St. Giles riot, foHo. A murmur was heard. Soon 'a barbarous tumult' began;
^^^^' women wept, men shouted, serving-maids clapped their hands, and
others yelled the reader down. The sight of the fat bishop, glorious
in his episcopal millinery, waddling up to the pulpit in order to
appease the struggling rioters, fairly unleashed the more explosive
sex, who first hurled at bishop and dean ' angry speeches and
bitter, calling them traitors, bellygods, and deceivers,' 'a Pope,
a Pope,' and other ' despightful exclamations.'^ After volleying a
shower of stools and Bibles, Mrs. Mein, or ' Jenny Geddes,' having
the honour to lead off the discharge, the women proceeded to grab
and eject the rotund bishop from the pulpit.- The witches swarming
out of Kirk Alloway to the chase of Tam o' Shanter make faint
comparison with the vigorous actors in this unholy scene.
'The stony The remonstrances of the Primate fell on deaf ears. By his
Sabbath.' command the magistrates and their halberdiers descended and ejected
the malcontents into the High Street, where they found stones and
missiles with which they battered the door and pulverised the ' glassin
windows ' of the Great Kirk. According to the King's Large Declara-
tion, the Liturgy would have been consecrated with a bloody sacri-
fice of the bishop on the very altar, had not a friendly hand
warded off the blow intended for Lindsay. A manuscript narrative
of the episode pointed out that ' No less worthy of observatioune is
that renouned Christian valyance of ane other godly woman at the
same season.' Unable to escape with the ejected, this pious dame
retired to a corner to read her Bible, and to be far from ' the voice
of the popische charmers,' when a young man behind her began
effusively to respond ' Amens ' to the reader. The impatient mother
in Israel made for the young man's face and showered home her
hottest blows, as she shrieked and ' schott against him the thunder-
bolt of her zeal,' exclaiming : ' False theefe, is there no uther part of
' S'itjinton MSS. : Second Par/ of His/, of the Church., 29.
- Hist. MSS. Com.., iv. 293, App. ; Wodrow, Analecta, i. 64.
THE LITURGY IMBROGLIO 245
the Kirk to say masse in but thou must say it at my lugge ? ' The
youth collapsed. Unfortunately the heroine's name was not recorded.
Hannay and Lindsay, however, finished the office. After this
morning service was ended, the bishop tried to thread his way down
street through a flight of stones and curses hurled by the waiting
crowd, and would have become a public sacrifice had not the
servants of the Earl of Wemyss rescued him. In the other city
churches similar tumults followed the introduction of the Liturgy,
the College Church excepted, where Rollock, the preacher, prudently
delayed producing the book that morning.
In the afternoon of the 23rd July the authorities took care to Continuation
have an undisturbed service in St. Giles in the presence of guards- ° "°^^' ' •^^'
men, when the offending Prayer Book was read to an aristocratic
and congenial audience. But after the service, as the coach of the
Earl of Roxburgh, Lord Privy Seal, with affirighted Lindsay within
it, dashed down the Netherbow and Canongate to Holyrood House,
it was assailed by a mad mob, who yelled, cursed, and threw the
stones prepared for building the Tron Church at the flying rumble ;
and, had a rearguard of the Earl's body-servants not repelled the
rioters, there is the King's authority for stating that Lindsay would
then have become Scotland's St, Stephen. He gladly evaded
martyrdom again, and with Thomson, his reader that afternoon, sur-
vived to be deposed by the Covenanters for being 'an obstinate
papist,' according to his dittay.
There are two theories regarding the origin of the disturbance,
the one maintained by the Covenanters that it was only ' a rash
emergent,' when God moved the spirit of these holy women ' to
scourge the buyers and sellers out of God's house, and not to suffer
the same to be polluted with that foul Book of Common Prayer.' ^
The royalist view of the affair, as stated by Spalding, is : ' The
nobells being foirseen of this noveltie never heard befor (since thfe
Reformation) in Edinburgh, devysses a number of rascally serving
' Epistle Congrattilatoric of Lysimachus Nicanor, 72ii 1640 ; Bastwick, The Beast is
Wotmded, 7, 1638.
246
THE COVENANTERS
Bishop
Guthiy's
narrative.
Alleged con-
spiracy of
Henderson
and others.
women to throw stools at the reader and perturb the kirk.' ^ This
was also the opinion of Sir William Alexander, Secretary of Scotland
at this period, who declared that the blame was ' put upon Rascallis
and coal steilers, but how justly let subsequent actions and events
declare.' The King's letters to the Council indicated a similar sus-
picion, which, however, was not made into a charge in the Large
Declaration. Laud, probably informed by Spottiswood, believed
that there had been preconcerted action." The Memoirs of Bishop
Henry Guthry contain this hitherto uncorroborated royalist account
of the affair : ' This tumult was taken to be but a rash emergent,
without any pre-deliberation, whereas the truth is, it was the result of
a consultation in Edinburgh in April, at which time Mr. Alexander
Henderson came thither from his brethren in Fife, and Mr. David
Dickson from those in the west country, and those two having com-
municated to my Lord Balmerino and Sir Thomas Hope the minds
of those they came from, and gotten their approbation thereto, did
afterwards meet at the house of Nicolas Balfour in the Cowgate, with
Nicolas Balfour, Eupham Henderson, Bethia and Elspa Craig, and
several other matrons, and recommended to them that they and their
adherents might give the first affront to the book, assuring them that
men should afterwards take the business out of their hands.' ^ There
can be no doubt that Lord Advocate Hope's sympathies were with
the Covenanters, so much so that the Marquis of Hamilton urged the
King to dismiss him in 1638, 'for he is ill disposed' to the royal
policy, wrote Hamilton. The conspiracy is not in keeping with the
upright and bold conduct of Henderson, the last man to shield himself
and his enterprises behind the matrons of the Cowgate and the
applewomen of the Tron. In the light of previous combinations,
however, it would indeed appear a novel emergent if there had not
existed, or risen, a band of men and women able and courageous
Enough to conspire to save their own spiritual independence, and to
oppose regal and ecclesiastical tyranny. Scotland was being rapidly
* Spalding, History^ 47, Bann. Club ; 79, Spald. Club.
^ Memoirs^ 23, 2nd edit.
Laud, IVor/cs, ii. 373-401.
THE LITURGY IMBROGLIO 247
permeated with the spirit of rebellious presbyterian Hildebrandism,
which was soon to bear fruit in the fallen Episcopate and the Civil
War. Some contemporary narrators of the episodes, already described,
asserted that the rioters in St. Giles were disguised men of title and
position, and this is not unlikely. None of the narratives consulted
by me mentions 'Jenny Geddes ' as the ringleader of the throwers 'Jenny
of the stools; nor could I find her name in the registers of the
municipality. Her name appears in a pamphlet entitled Edinbitrglis
Joy for his Majesties Coi^onatio7i in England, printed in 1661, which
refers to ' the immortal Jenet Geddis, Princesse of the Trone Adven-
turers,' burning all the contents of her booth in honour of the
Restoration. Wodrow, on the other hand, upon the authority of
Robert Stewart, son of Lord Advocate Stewart of the Restoration
period, informs us that * Mrs. Mean, wife to John Mean, merchant,
. . . cast the first stool . . . and that many of the lasses who carryed
on the fray were prentices in disguise.'^ Lord President Inglis,
preferring the tradition to the assertion of Stewart, Wodrow, and the
descendants of Mrs. Mein, wrote the following inscription for a brass
tablet affixed on a pillar in St. Giles : ' Constant oral tradition affirms
that near this spot a brave Scotch woman, Janet Geddes, on the
23rd of July 1637, struck the first blow in the great struggle for
freedom of conscience, which, after a conflict of half a century, ended
in the establishment of civil and religious liberty.' Another tablet
simply commemorates Dean Hannay.
On the morning of 24th July the City magistrates clapped into the
Tolbooth six or seven of the iconoclastic viragoes in order ' to show
their diligence,' but their names are not given in the extant minute-
book of the Bailie Court. The charge against them was departed
from. Their offence was popular. The Privy Council sat daily
through the crisis. They forbade crowds on pain of death, and
ordered the magistrates to prosecute the rioters, and to protect the
1 Wodrow, A7ialecla, i. 64 ; cf. J. K. Hewison, 'The Jenny Geddes Myth,' Glasgozu Herald,
Feb. 5, 12, 1898. A Janet Geddie, wife of William Barclay in St. Andrews, left a legacy
to the church there, and in 1638 it was expended on Communion linen ; Lee, Leciiires,
i. 400, App.
248 THE COVENANTERS
readers of the Liturgy, all of whom, terrified, resigned. The Council
Prayer Books and Episcopal bench, equally afraid, agreed to suspend both the
suspen e . Pj-^yer Books until the King had been informed of, and sent a
pronouncement upon, the rebellion. Their injunction ran that, until
the 30th July, only *a prayer sail be made before and after sermon,
and that neither the old service nor the new established service be
used in the interim.'
Glasgow riot. When the Diocesan Synod met in Glasgow, in August 1637, to
introduce and explain the desirability and scriptural authority of the
Liturgy, the women convened ' with great din ' at the door of
St. Mungo's Cathedral, to express their dissent. For their intolerance
two of them were dragged off to Bridewell. This roused the populace
far more against the unfortunate preacher, William Annan, of Ayr,
who had already preached a polemical discourse in favour of the
Liturgy, which was an inconsiderate step while the service was in
abeyance. The 'devouter sex' waylaid Annan on the street, smote
him with their fists, tore his cloak and battered his ruff-hat, and
wellnigh martyred the liturgist, not far from the place where
Spottiswood was satisfied to see Ogilvie the Jesuit made a sacrifice
to intolerance. Next day, escorted by the magistrates and their
guards, Annan was taken to the boundaries of the city, but on the
route his luckless horse cast the dishevelled preacher into the mire
amid the jeers of the rioters, who then with a show of charity let him
go — in dirt and peace. If the St. Giles riot was not the result of
clerical and aristocratic inspiration, that in Glasgow was claimed by
a partisan annalist to have been indulged in by persons of ' the best
quality.'
Liturgy- used In somc dioccscs, in cathedrals and parish churches, Fortrose,
in some paces, j^^j^j-jj^j^g^ Brechin, St. Andrews, St. Fillans, and Dingwall, the new-
Liturgy was used for some time.^ In March 1638 Mitchell, an
Edinburgh minister, wrote to Leslie, Bishop of Raphoe, in these
terms : ' Ross [Maxwell] keeps at home, and keeps up the service in
his Cathedral, but I fear he shall not be able long.' Whiteford,
• Rothes, A Relation of Proceedings^ etc., 4, Bann. Club. edit.
THE LITURGY IMBROGLIO 249
Bishop of Brechin, entered the pulpit, pistol in one hand and Prayer
Book in the other, with an armed bodyguard for his congregation. On
his retiral from church his froward flock interviewed him, in such an
unmistakable temper that a contemporary humorist recorded, * he durst
never try that play over again.' Thus appeared and disappeared the
long yearned-for, long hatched, mysterious, and ' impudently vented '
service-book. With the tidings of its surcease and of these risings
a Scots courier was speeding to King Charles at his manor at
Oatland.^
1 The Register of the Privy Council of Scotland, embracing the period April r, 1635, to
December 21, 1637, is embodied in vol. vi., Second Series; vol. vii. includes entries from
January 6, 1638, to June 20, 1643. These two volumes may be consulted for the most
important facts regarding the revolt against the ecclesiastical policy of Charles 1.
2 1
250 THE COVENANTERS
CHAPTER IX
THE NATIONAL COVENANT
Anger of King KiNG Charles heard with horror the news of what he styled 'the
barbarous tumult' and 'that fearfull and horrible profanation' of
holy ground. He had forgotten that ever-memorable Sunday in
June 1633, when, in the precincts of St. Giles he kept a Belshazzar's
Feast ; and the wild mirth and breaking glasses of the courtly
revellers there silenced the public worship, and injured the faith,
more than the curses and ' creepie-stools ' which flew on that ' Stony
Sabbath.' The suspension of the Liturgy made him angrier still.
He sent commands for its re-introduction and for the punishment of
the rioters. But the executive was too paralysed to attempt to do
either the one thing or the other. Their slipshod inquiry led them
to attribute the disturbance to ' a nomber of basse and rascally
people,' who were not named, meantime ; and they confessed,
' Nather dare we dive aney further in the trayell [trial] of the causes
of the said feares and remedies, until it shall pleis your Maiestie . . .
to prescryve the way.' They described the commotion as general,
not merely local, and realised their peril. It was easy for Laud,
at the King's command, to write from a distance, where there
was no danger to ruff-hats, and to taunt bishops and councillors
who blamed each other, with delightful badinage spurning them both
for their pusillanimity. Laud wrote : * It was unworthy of the bishops
to disclaim the book as their own. They did not like to admit of
ours, but thought it more reputation for them, as indeed it was, to
compile one of their own, yet as near as might be, and they have
done it well ! Will they now cast down the milk they have given
THE NATIONAL COVENANT 251
because a few milkmaids have scolded at them ? I hope they will be
better advised.'^ It was equally easy for the King to vow that he
would not resile from his policy to please a rascally mob, when he
believed that the national commotions were caused only by handlers
of spirtles and spindles.
The Privy Council ordered the bailies of Edinburgh to see that
the Liturgy was read at the point of the halberd, but no readers
could be got for love or money.^ The Lord Chancellor and
the bishops were assiduous in making use of that old Scots legal
instrument of terror, called * The Horn,' and raised letters of horning 'The Hom.'
(equivalent in English law to writs of execution and attachment)
against Alexander Henderson, minister at Leuchars ; George
Hamilton, minister at Newburn ; and James Bruce, minister at
Kingsbarns, all in the presbytery of St. Andrews, charging them to
buy and use the books within fifteen days, under pain of being
held as rebels.^
The trio petitioned the Privy Council to grant a suspension of Alexander
the charge. The presbytery of Ayr sent in a similar petition, appeal.
Alexander Henderson is credited with framing the Bill of Suspen-
sion, and those reasons stated in it for not granting the warrant
following the charge.* This document was the first, and one of the
most important, of those legal instruments upon which the Covenanters
founded their case for the establishment of civil and religious liberty.
Its concise reasoning and calm phraseology lifted the dispute out of
the heated atmosphere of selfish partisanship up to the level where
great causes are to be judged in the light of principle. Henderson
was no chatterer in clerical conventions for notoriety or place. Long
before this he had considered the Perth Articles and found them
deficient in those elementary principles which conduce to peace and
righteousness. His opposition was not the spasm of an attenuated
intellect capable only of narrow views, and incapable of balancing the
^ Laud to Traquair, 7th August 1637 : IVor/^s, vi. 493.
2 Large Declaration, 28. ^ Row, Hist, of Kirk, 484.
* This was the proper legal procedure in order to suspend ' letters of horning.'
■52
THE COVENANTERS
Henderson's
character,
1583-1646.
Henderson's
pleas.
merits of conflicting opinions. His portrait in Yester, his extant
works, and his achievements, attest that Henderson had a complete
nature, soHd judgment, firm will, kind heart, and was the man of the
hour. In person he was neither large nor handsome, like Robert
Bruce of Kinnaird, whose winning words at Forgan had won
Henderson — 'the best fish caught in the net' — for Christ.^ His
slender form, which crept through the beautiful Norman window of
Leuchars Church, when he was intruded for ordination in the Prelatic
epoch, now boldly essayed to free the Church. He was well pre-
pared. The mantle of Andrew Melville, his spell too as a vivid
expounder of Calvinism and philosophy, had fallen on Henderson, a
Fifeshire man, who, now in his fifty-fourth year, was a quiet, digni-
fied, unobtrusive man with well-reckoned, steadfast beliefs." A
pamphlet against the Perth Assembly and Articles made him a
suspect.^ His evangelical tendencies constrained him to seek con-
stant comfort in the Holy Spirit. A frank contemporary said to
him : ' I love you, sir, because I think you are a man in whom I see
much of the image of Christ.' The saintly Samuel Rutherford
addressed him as ' the talking of the north and south, and looked to
as if ye were all chrystal glass.'
The brilliant pastor of Leuchars was not sure about the new
Canons and Liturgy, and, being eminently sane and cautious, he
abstained from obtruding the novelties upon his rural flock, until he
had studied them and laid them phrase by phrase at the Throne of
Grace, even although the penal sword hung over him. He was
directed to seek defence under the judicial powers of the Privy
Council. His five reasons showed a statesmanlike conception of the
principles at stake. In them he condescended that The Book of
Common Prayer had not been authorised by the General Assembly
and the Scots Parliament, as the national religion and form of
worship had been ; that the Church was inherently free and inde-
' Macnicol, Life of Bruce ^ 262 ; D. Hay Fleming, Guide to St. Andrews, 125.
''' Life, M'Crie's Misccll. Writings, 1841 ; Aiton, Life and Times, 86.
^ Aiton, Life, 103 : the anonymous author of the tract, The Nullitie of Perth Assemblte,
161 8, was David Calderwood ; Row, st., 325 note, 442.
OTOGRAVURE BY T R ANNAN & SONS. GLASGOW
ALEXANDER HENDERSON.
THE NATIONAL COVENANT 253
pendent, having pastors qualified to provide spiritual necessaries —
' what may serve most for the good of the people ' ; that the cere-
monies recently ordered were divisive, unharmonious with Refor-
mation principles, and tending to Romanism ; that the people having
been differently taught, would, if tried, be unwilling, even if the
pastors were willing, to accept the changes. This was the case for
the National Church in a nutshell ; the old plea for democracy, and
the re-assertion of the Protestant dogma that the people are the
custodiers of the Oracles of God, and the wardens of their own faith.
This, although nothing more than an appeal for the previous status of
the Church, was the gauntlet Charles had to lift.
The Privy Council, now anticipating fresh sacrifices upon episco- Council's
pal altars, cleverly shuffled away from the issue, and on a techni-
cality produced a quibble of a judgment.^ On 25th August they
granted suspension on the ground that only the buying of the books
was ordered. This judgment, tantamount to the supercession of the
Liturgy, was viewed by the Royalists as an illustration of cowardice
and disloyalty. It is not to be wondered at. Henderson and his
compatriots were attended to their trial by a crowd of clergy, nobles,
magistrates, and influential laymen, armed with steel, and carrying
constitutional petitions. All classes petitioned against innovations.
The King ignored their supplications as well as sound advice from
Scottish counsellors. That slippery courtier and correspondent of
Laud, Traquair the Treasurer, blamed the ' violent and forward '
clergy for the misgovernment and crisis. The restoration of the
parliamentary power of the Church had more to do with the opposi-
tion of the laity to the Liturgy than anything else. The malcon-
tents, realising that the Council's deliverance was a mere subterfuge
to gain time for procuring instructions from Charles, poured in
petitions to the number of sixty-eight ; and powerful nobles, such as
Sutherland and Wemyss, compeared before the Council to ask that
1 For a collection of miscellaneous historical documents illustrative of this particular
time and these incidents, cf. Peterkin, Records of the Kz?-k of Scotland (Edin., 1843), 47
et seq.
254
THE COVENANTERS
The Liturgy
a panacea.
Edinburgh in
Autumn, 1637
Second riot in
Edinburgh.
Policy of the
Crown.
the petitions should be dispatched to the King. In a petulant reply
in September the head of the Church declared that the only remedy
for Scotland was reading the Liturgy.
Edinburgh, depopulated during harvest, was crowded again as
soon as the crops were gathered in. The excitement of the times
attracted to the Capital many curious irascible bands of aristocrats and
their armed retainers, thriving burgesses, and inhabitants from towns
and villages. Even 'Old John Row' came from rural Carnock to
foment the quarrel.^ Royalism had little popular sympathy. To
buttress the King's cause. Sir John Hay, the Clerk Register, was
commanded to take the chair of Provost Aikenhead, Hay bungled
his part and insulted the citizens by preventing them from petitioning,
so that they retaliated by besieging the town council, and by exacting
from their council a promise to petition against the Liturgy. Robert
Baillie was in the city and saw the ferment, of which he wrote :
' What shall be the event, God knows. There was in our land never
such an appearance of a sturr ; the whole people thinks Poperie at
the doors. ... No man may speak anything in publick for the
King's part, except he would have himself marked for a sacrifice to
be killed one day. I think our people possessed with a bloody
devill, farr above anything that ever I could have imagined, though
the masse in Latine had been presented. The ministers, who have
the command of their mind, do disavow their unchristian humour, but
are no ways so zealous against the devill of their furie as they are
against the seduceing spirit of the Bishops.'"
The King, clearly mistaking the inwardness and magnitude of the
movement, wrote ordering visitors to return to their homes, the
Council to punish the rioters, and the courts of law to adjourn to
Linlithgow and Dundee. This paltry policy merely strengthened the
insurrection at its source. The petitioners dispersed, leaving their
business to the care of a brilliant young advocate, Archibald John-
ston of Wariston (1611-63), who soon recalled them to hear the
' Life prefaced to History^ Wodrow Soc, 1842.
^ R. Baillie to Spang : Works^ i. 23.
THE NATIONAL COVENANT 255
three fatal proclamations at the Cross on the i8th of October. These
commanded the petitioners to be gone within twenty-four hours,
under pain of outlawry for rebellion, authorised the Privy Councillors
and Law Lords to convene in Linlithgow and Dundee, and ordained
that all copies of George Gillespie's treatise, entitled A Dispute
against the English-Popish Ceremonies obtruded upon the Kirk of
Scotland, be burned by the common hangman, because it ' stirred the
hearts and affections of the subjects from their due obedience and
allegiance.' ^
The agitation was growing uncontrollable. All night of the
17th October, Edinburgh, from causeway to garret, from nobility to
servants ^md children, was busy subscribing a monster petition, indeed,
two petitions. At daybreak knots of these excited anti- Liturgy * Sup-
plicants ' stood on the narrow streets and waited for the assembling
of the councils and law-courts. The ' bloody devill ' having entered Third Hot,
into the populace, incited them now to demand the restoration of 15.7.
their silenced ministers, Rollock and Ramsay, and Henderson, the
reader. Consequently, with the alacrity of the devil-possessed herd,
they ran down and blocaded the City Fathers, who, to save their
necks, were glad to promise anything. At this juncture Sydserf,
Bishop of Galloway, was espied near the Cross on his way to the
law-courts, and some mischievous females set on this dignitary to
unclothe him, willy-nilly, to discover some secret crucifix or other
proof of his Popery ; and they would have succeeded in stripping
him, had not his friends come on the scene and pushed him into the
sanctuary of justice, round which the mutineers roared for the bishop's
life. The magistrates were appealed to for aid ; they were in a worse
blockade. Even Treasurer Traquair, white wand in hand, in essaying
to mollify the crowd, was thrown on the street and lost his hat and
cloak. Not until the services of a convention of notable Covenanters
then sitting were called in, could the mob be appeased and the
representatives of law and order rescued.
The Privy Council met in the afternoon and forbade all public
1 Peterkin, Records^ etc., 50 et seq.
256
THE COVENANTERS
Petitions of
' Supplicants.
Appointment
of Commis-
sioners of the
Covenanters,
afterwards
called 'Tables,
meetings, as well as ordered all persons, not on business, within doors.
At their meeting the Council received the two petitions against the
Canons and Liturgy, one from ' the men, women, children, servants,
and indwellers, within the burgh of Edinburgh,' and the other from
'noblemen, barons, ministers, burgesses, and commons.'^ Among
these ' Supplicants,' many of whom were young men and elders of the
Church, were the following nobles : Rothes, Cassillis, Home, Lothian,
Kinnoul, Sutherland, Wemyss, Dalhousie, and Lords Montgomerie,
Fleming, Lindsay, Elcho, Yester, Sinclair, Loudoun, Balmerino,
Burley, Dalyell, Cranstoun, Boyd, and others. In this second
petition these ' Supplicants ' exonerated the King, but definitely
charged the bishops with misgovernment, and, through that, with
wronging * so good a king,' with insnaring his subjects, with causing
dispeace, and with breaking the laws. In accordance with the law
and custom of Scotland, the 'Supplicants,' in this formal and con-
stitutional document, demanded a trial of this cause, which was no
other than a trial of the bishops in a constituted court of law. The
petitions were forwarded to the King. The tables were turned ; and
the 'Supplicants' were now accusers demanding the withdrawal of
the bishops from all government until their cause was legally settled.
This demand opened up a new phase of the case. With much
shrewdness, Sydserf and Hay suggested that, until a settlement was
effected, the petitioners should withdraw from the city, leaving behind
' them a committee, called commissioners, to represent them. With
the sanction of the Privy Council these commissioners were appointed,
and developed into a committee well known as ' The Tables,' in the
following manner. In November the petitioners agreed that their
commissioners should become a permanent official body residing in
Edinburgh, and to that end appointed a committee consisting of six
or more nobles, two gentlemen from each county, a burgess from each
burgh, and a minister from each presbytery. This body was found to
be too large. In February 1638 a central or headquarters committee,
in four sections, was ultimately selected from the commissioners,
' Large Declaration, 41, 42 ; Peterkin, Records, 56.
THE NATIONAL COVENANT 257
namely, one section of as many nobles as cared to attend, one of four
county gentlemen, a third of four ministers, and a fourth of four
representatives of burghs. These four sections met separately at four
tables — ' The Green Tables ' — and together, to report to the Com- The Tables.
missioners (also called The Tables), and to the larger body of
petitioners or ' Supplicants.' Among the first notable members of the
central committee were Rothes, Montrose, Lindsay, and Loudoun, all
of them young nobles of spirit.^
On 7th December a proclamation in Linlithgow announced the
King's answer to the petitioners. It emitted a disclaimer of Popery,
a promise to advance true religion, and a resolution to observe
the 'laudable laws' of Scotland. This shuffling with momentous
issues neither appeased the fiery bloods, who invaded church,
city, chamber, and courts, nor yet the intellectual constitutional party,
who had a spokesman in John Campbell, Earl of Loudoun. ThisEariof
young elder in Irvine Parish Church — with stern face modelled like
a medallion — had been brought up in the Lollard atmosphere of
Ayrshire, full of memories of heroes fighting for freedom and martyrs
dying for the faith, and had been stiffened in principle as well as
sweetened in character by a grand preacher of truth and witness
for Presbytery, the chaste poet of 'True Christian Love,' David
Dickson, minister of Irvine, who was also a Supplicant. In 1636
Robert Blair, John Livingstone, James Hamilton, and John
M'Lellan were deposed from the ministry in Ireland, and excom-
municated for their opposition to Episcopacy, by Bramhall, Bishop
of Londonderry. Some of these exiles, fleeing from the tyranny Exiled
of Strafford and the Irish Protestant bishops, sought refuge in Irvine, ^''''"'''"''
where, no doubt, their piteous narratives influenced Loudoun and his
covenanting Countess. The petition or ' General Supplication ' was
reconstructed by the Commissioners, and, in the old and new forms,
presented to the Privy Council on 21st December. Loudoun, with
the fire of a Celt and the zeal of a prophet, eloquently addressed
^ Gordon, Hist, of Scots Affairs, 28, 38 (Spald. Club) ; Spalding, Memorialls of the Trubles,
i. 78 ; Row, Hist. (Suppl.), 486.
2 K
258
THE COVENANTERS
The Tables
resist
autocracy.
the Council, again libelling the bishops and demanding their removal
from Council, twitted that facile body for authorising a Liturgy
before it had been seen or printed, and demanded a trial of the
national wrongs. A narrative of this rising was Scotland's Christmas
gift to its King ; he reciprocated with an ultimatum.
The bold action of The Tables indicated what little value these
politicians placed upon the right of the Crown to give prelates
legislative and judicial functions, and that they were prepared to
resist unconstitutional procedure and autocracy. At this point in
the struggle the plea for toleration on behalf of the free unit was
less used than the plea for a free nation. These opponents of
Charles well understood the limits of personal freedom and of
personal toleration, which were fixed by existing laws of the State
and decrees of the Church with popular concurrence. The unpatriotic
Council had no choice but the royal will.
Intriguers from Scotland poisoned the King's mind until he fell
into melancholy ; and Laud, it is said, suppressed reliable informa-
tion and shrewd advices sent from Scotland to the Kino-. The
elastic Traquair, whom none but Laud trusted, told the King that
the mutineers were neither rebels nor deformers of the constitution,
A multitude of but Were high-minded patriots who would not take their law nor
counsellors, i^uj-gy from a foreign prelate, unless after coercion. The recall of
the Prayer Book would lead to obedience, he declared. Un-
fortunately, Spottiswood, an ecclesiastic approaching his dotage,
ever too timid and biassed to understand the spirit of the age,
penned a fatal letter advising Charles simply to condemn the action
of the Supplicants, and to declare their meetings to be treasonable,
and then their combinations would disappear. As in his historic
palace at St. Andrews he had often seen an impenetrable mist,
hanging over the North Sea, dissolve before the rising King of Day,
so the credulous Primate imagined that this dark cloud would vanish
at the command of Charles. Never was a greater delusion. It is
remarkable that Scottish feeling should be so deep and difficult to
gauge in every epoch. With similar .short-sightedness Wentworth,
THE NATIONAL COVENANT 259
fresh from crushing Ireland, and Laud, arrogant by reason of the
subserviency of the rural clergy, urged the King to govern England
according to his own will, and to satisfy his own lawful desires
in every way.
King Charles was doing this without suggestion.^ He possessed views of King
intellect enough to consider the issues of every course of action. For
him to succumb to the mob was to extinguish the Prayer Book,
conformity, episcopacy, prerogative, and prestige — indeed, every-
thing worth retaining in his poverty-stricken fatherland. Rather
than suffer the criticism of rebels he vowed he would die.' Plastic
Traquair suited the changeful moods of a master whose kingcraft
evinced itself in superlative deceit. Traquair was easily suborned
to carry to Scotland an ambiguous, conciliatory reply, while he
concealed an enslaving proclamation until an opportunity for publish-
ing it arrived. But behind the scenes was an unsuspected spy —
an eavesdropper in the interests of the Covenanters — and soon the
Supplicants were informed of the King's base ruse. They made ready
a Protest. A Protest was a formidable legal instrument in use in A Protest.
Scotland for protecting the subjects of the Crown from the sudden
operation of unacceptable statutes. It meant entering an appearance
in the highest law-court to ask trial of the legality of any new
ordinance. In vain did Traquair parley with The Tables, and
try to wheedle them out of publishing their Protest. Ever on their
guard, they sent representatives to Stirling, where the Privy Council
now sat, to watch over their interests hour by hour. The two
royal confidants, Traquair and Roxburgh, were kept under close
surveillance by the anxious Supplicants.
The eighteenth day of February 1638 was a Sabbath — after Edinburgh in
sunset, cold, bleak, and chilling to the bone. In the dead quiet ^ '"^'^ ' ^ "
of that night, after the old horologe of Lindores, in the crown
of St. Giles, and the city watch had called another day, three
1 A fine exposition of the main facts of the period— January 1638 to June 1643— is given by
Professor Hume Brown in his Introduction to Reg. Prhiy Counc, vii.
- King to Hamilton, nth June 1638 : Pelerkin, Records, 69.
26o THE COVENANTERS
travellers, perhaps unknown, certainly unattended and inviting
no suspicion, passed through a gate in the city wall. The first was a
Borderer, and, although grey-headed, still fit for perilous enterprises ;
the other two were young gallants. One may picture Robert Ker,
first Earl of Roxburgh, Lord Privy Seal, the same who rescued the
bishop, and the eldest of this trio, guiding the unwilling Traquair and
the timorous Lyon-King, Sir James Balfour, down to Broughton to
get their horses and their spurs. Their servants will follow later, if
they do not stay too long in Johnnie Elliot's ale-house drinking and
babbling. Great and small of the city lie asleep, all of them, unless
Advocate Johnston has not finished the composition of the Protest,
which the deputies, Home, Lindsay, Wedderburn, and Lamington,
must publish on the morrow, or has not ended his inexhaustible
The night ride prayers. The horsemen clattered on their forty-mile ride to Stirling,
^^ ^"^' the two politicians chuckling over the outwitted rebels, but Balfour,
whose sympathies are the other way, feeling ashamed of his errand.
They must ride in hot haste who ride with the devil. The servants
would break that cold morning air with a tankard of spiced
ale or stronger hot brew, before they mount and follow, and must
chuckle too at their masters' ruse — must chuckle too loud, and be
heard by some disturbed sleeper in Elliot's hostelry. Those available
ears of Lindsay, or his servant, belong to the Supplicants, and in
a trice Lindsay and Home, alarmed, are out of bed into the saddle
with the Protest in their pocket, while Johnston himself accompanies
them in person or in the spirit of his prayer. The pursuers have to
ride hard, by short cuts and roundabouts, to ride any way if they are
to pass in the darkness the cunning Royalists, so as to reach Stirling
at timeous hours. When unsuspecting Roxburgh and Traquair drew
bridle at eight that grey morning, the smoking steeds of Lindsay and
Home were cooling in their stalls, and these two Supplicants were
loitering nervously around the old Market Cross in Broad Street,
Stirling, the royal arms on which looked quite gay, having been
redecorated on the visit of the King in 1633.
The Proclamation could not keep. At ten o'clock the Lyon- King,
THE NATIONAL COVENANT 261
a young man of striking appearance, in emblazoned velvet tabard, Scene at the
mounted the steps of the cross and read the Proclamation to the g^iJw loih
effect : That Kine Charles had himself ordained a Book of Common February 1638.
Prayer in order to maintain the true religion and beat down supersti-
tion (he thus exonerated the bishops and answered their accusers) ;
that his subjects had, ' out of preposterous zeale and not out of any
disloyaltie,' convened to form petitions which he would forgive ; that
all similar assemblages should cease ; that the lieges should not repair
to Stirling, and those strangers, already in the burgh, should leave it
within six hours, all under pain of treason/ The herald had done.
Thereupon from the crowd stepped up Lindsay, Home, and a notary
— Advocate Johnston, according to some. The latter read a Pro- The Stirling
r 1 t 1 . • 11 . Protestation.
testation m name 01 noblemen, barons, mmisters, and burgesses, to
this effect : That they were aggrieved on account of the King
ignoring their petitions and complaints ; that they were entitled to
access to their Sovereign to present their petitions ; that bishops should
not sit as judges discussing these causes ; that the Supplicants should
not be criminally charged and fined for disobedience to illegal edicts
regarding worship, but should be permitted to worship, as Scripture,
the standards of the Church, and the laws of the land directed; that
they would not be responsible for consequences if the King persisted
in his policy ; and that, being loyal subjects, they called for redress
of their grievances." The laugh was turned. The officers of State
must have looked baffled when these bold cavaliers descended to the
causeway, by that time covered with many supporters who hurried to
congratulate them on their splendid feat. The Proclamation was in
effect the King's acceptance of his subjects' charge of misgovernment,
and a declaration of war. An even more dramatic defiance of the
royal will was shown in Edinburgh. There the heralds were not Protestation at
, . . Edinburgh on
permitted to descend from the battlements of the ancient city cross, 22nd February,
until they as well had listened to a popular counterblast by the Sup-
plicants and protesters, in proper legal form. Johnston prepared this
• Larg-e Declara/w/i, 48 ; Peterkin, Records^ 59 ; Balfour, Annals, ii. 250.
- Large Declaration., 50 ; Reg. Privy Counc, vii. 3, Introd. vii.
262 THE COVENANTERS
protest ; Cassillis took the instruments, and Rothes, Montgomery,
Home, Montrose, and other nobles, barons, and clergy by their
presence supported this action/
The enraged Sovereign considered these scenes to be public
affronts to himself, and the Protestation to be the cause of a ' horrible
rebellion.' He disdained to look at the Supplication when presented
to him by nobles friendly to his policy. The people saw themselves
on the eve of a deadly conflict. The bishops, everywhere hunted,
sought safety in hiding or at Court. The petitioners, remembering
the precedents of former perilous times when national interests were
menaced, gravitated to the Capital as to a central and impregnable
An stronghold. The anti-royalist party — it was a combination of
anii-royaiist Reformers, Presbyterians, Covenanters, anti-lituro-ists, disaffected
combination. ^ y ' o '
landowners, political and religious protesters soon to be united under
the comprehensive term of Covenanters — having thus practically got
rid of the prelates, sought out the hierarchy of intellect, heart, and
spirit to guide the course of events. In Rothes, now in his thirty-
eighth year, they found a reliable leader, and in his noble associates,
Loudoun, Home, Lindsay, Balmerino, Yester, Montrose, Cranstoun,
and Lothian, men of action. To their council came the incisive
debater, Alexander Henderson, the cultured poet, David Dickson,
the loud-voiced orator, William Livingston ; and among other notable
ministers. Row, Ker, Bonar, and Cant. Baiilie designated Henderson
and Dickson, ' the two archbishops by whose wit and grace, joined
with two or three of the noblemen, all in effect was done.' The
legal aspects of the case were watched, on behalf of the Crown, by
the Lord-Advocate, Thomas Hope, who, being secretly in sympathy
with the Supplicants, prevented any tampering with the course of
justice." In Archibald Johnston, then only twenty-seven years old,
the Supplicants retained an advocate and legal adviser who was
' It was on this occasion that Rothes remarked to Montrose, who was so excited that he
had mounted a puncheon : 'James, you will not be at rest till you be lifted up there above
the rest, in three fathom of a rope' — a sneer rather than a prophecy. The original Protest
is preserved in the National Museum of Antiquities, OA. 34.
- Omond, Lord Advocates ^\. 93-147.
THE NATIONAL COVENANT 263
a phenomenon for acumen, shrewdness, and piety.^ Of the warHke Johnston of
breed of Annandale, he boasted that he was 'a true-hearted Johnston
and a true friend to the house of Johnston.' He was bred among
law-papers and musty parchments, being grandson to Sir Thomas
Craig, of Feudal Law fame, and a relative of other law lords, among
whom was that Lord Durie whom Christy's Will spirited away to
a Border dungeon. His grandmother's house at Sciennes, in the
suburbs of Edinburgh, had been a refuge for persecuted Presby-
terians, and his youthful education had been received in society
which could not brook even an appearance of Erastianism. By
nature Wariston was a serene, unobtrusive, mystical individual,
unlike that character readino- 'murderous doom' with * savage Sflee,'
depicted by Aytoun in his ballad of Montrose. Solitary prayer for
unbroken hours was his supreme luxury ; and then adoration absorbed
him. A genius for incessant work and the superadded gift of lucid
wakefulness were his. Large, lustrous eyes piercing the depths, and
lighting up a noble brow, betokened vast mental energy.^ His grand-
father Craig's house in High Street, which Johnston had inherited
and dwelt in, was a rendezvous, overlooking the historic Cross, where
the Supplicants frequently met. As Clerk to The Tables, Johnston
took a prominent part in all the movements of the Covenanters. He
is credited with the suggestion that the King's Confession of 1581
should be renewed as an antidote to the royal policy and chicanery,
which were subversive of civil and religious liberties ; and this
attempt to set Charles the task of nullifying his father's policy
was a masterly stroke of diplomacy and the move of a dexterous
advocate.
Rothes, convener of the new coalition, summoned to the Capital the Rothes
influential men who were willingr to swear fealty to the ' cause of God ' '^^"y^""^^^
c> J petitioners,
and the Reformation principles embodied in the Protestation. The 22nd February
terms of the invitation indicate the honourable aims of The Tables,
^ Cf. y[.ox\%on^ Johnston of Warrislon, Famous Scots Series; Omond, Lord Advocates,
i. 148-54; Paul, Johnston's Diary, Scot. Hist. Soc, i8g6. For Wariston's letters, cl
Hailes, Memorials.
~ His portrait is in the possession of Sir James H. Gibson-Craig, Baronet, of Riccarton.
264
THE COVENANTERS
The 1638
Covenant in
course of
preparation.
Draft of a
Covenant.
and their desire that any movement, which the crisis necessitated,
should be spontaneous and national. Rothes wrote : ' It is thought
fit that all considerable persons should be at once here to receive true
information of the business that so nearly concerneth all who love the
truth, the welfare of their posterity and estate, how mean soever, and
desire to enjoy the liberty of free subjects that they may give their
opinion herein.'^
At this time, 22nd February 1638, the Supplicants definitely
centralised their authority in the Four Tables already mentioned, and
requested Henderson and Johnston to prepare a Covenant suitable
to the circumstances and agreeable to the masses and 'considerable
persons ' who might subscribe it. The leaders, realising that they
could not cope with the forces of England unless they had popular
support, promulgated the Covenant as a final appeal from a disdainful,
misgoverning King to the people^ — themselves the fountain of power.
It was a happy suggestion, and had an unprecedented result. The
Lord's Day, 25th February, set apart for public fasting and humilia-
tion, was the most solemn of days ever seen in the Scottish Capital,
within whose walls some sixty thousand excited strangers had
gathered. Gloomy preachers traced the national troubles to the
breach of the Covenant of 1581, and adjured their hearers to make
amends to Heaven by renewing the bond on the momentous day
which was fast approaching.
After an all-night sitting, on Tuesday, 27th February, Johnston
and Henderson had the final draft finished and revised by Rothes,
Loudoun, and Balmerino. The Supplicants — barons, ministers, etc. —
met also to revise it, and, as was to be expected, some, true to the
Scots spirit — fond of objecting in case of anything being wrong ;
others, troubled with oaths of conformity and with recollections
of John Cameron's teaching of absolutism in Glasgow, had objec-
tions, emendations, splitting of hairs with battle-axes, before the
document was passed for extension and for signature on the
^ Row, Hist.^ 489 ; Rothes, Relation of the Affairs of the Kirk, 1637-8, p. 60, et seq.
.M
^ •: ■■:>-
■ ■
■\
Mi ^
m^:
"-•^jij jri^^Jl'JtJfti t^;
'^%^
yi'U/.y-J^x/'^.O^^ X^^
THE NATIONAL COVENANT 265
The text of the National Covenant forms Appendix I. at
the end of this volume."
The first part of the Covenant is a repetition of the King's Nature of the
Confession of 15 80-1, and of its execration of 'all kinds of Papistrie.'^°''^"''"*'
The second part, drawn up by Johnston, specified the Acts of
Parliament suppressing Popery and establishing the Protestant
religion in Scotland. The third part, said to have been Henderson's
work, was the new Covenant applicable to the times ; and it
declared, that while its subscribers kept inviolable the former national
oath, they had resolved also ' to defend the foresaid true religion,
and forbearing the practice of all novations already introduced,' until
the legality of the innovations had been tried before the General
Assembly, the proper tribunal ; meanwhile they abhorred these as
' particular heads of Papistrie ' already abjured. The exact words of
the new bond which gave rise to misgivings and debate were : ' We
also declare, that the foresaid Confessions are to be interpreted and
ought to be understood of the foresaid novations and evils, no less
then if every one of them had beene expressed in the foresaid
Confessions ; and that wee are obliged to detest and abhorre them,
amongst other particular heads of Papistrie abjured therein.' In fine,
the Covenant framers anticipated the Act of Glasgow Assembly
* Declaring Episcopacie to have been abjured by the Confession of
Faith 1580, and to be removed out of this Kirk '; also that * declaring
the Five Articles of Perth to have been abjured and to be removed.' ^
This emphatic opinion was admittedly tentative until it was
homologated by the first Assembly. Robert Baillie declared that BaiUie's
, , , , . ... J . opinion.
these clauses would create schism among the mmisters and were not
deducible from the premises, otherwise those who had acquiesced in
the government of bishops and the Five Articles of Perth had broken
the National Oath.* It was this alleged uncertainty as to the true
meaning of the Kings Confession, which King Charles magnified, and
1 Baillie, Letters, i. 31 : Baillie to Spang, 27th February ; Rothes, Relation, 63-79 ; Baillie,
Letters, i. 35, also mentions ' D. D.,' David Dickson, as a compiler of the Covenant.
- Act. Pari. Scot., v» 294-8 ; Large Declaration, 57.
2 Peteikin, Records, 28, 32. ' ^ Baillie, Utters, i. 52.
2L
266 THE COVENANTERS
took advantage of, in order to try and divide the ranks of the
Covenanters themselves.
Aim of the yj^g Covenant proceeds thus: 'And therefore from the knowledge
Covenanters.
and conscience of our dutie to God, to our King, and country,
without any worldly respect or inducement, as farre as human
infirmitie will suffer, wishing a further measure of the Grace of God
for this effect. We promise and sweare by the great name of the
Lord our God to continue in the profession and obedience of the said
religion, and that we shall defend the same and resist all those
contrary errors and corruptions, according to our vocation, and to the
utmost of that power which God hath put in our hands all the days of
our life.' The document disclaims any intention on the part of its
subscribers to minimise the royal supremacy, and parties were bound
by it to defend the King and their co-subscribers even with their
lives. This clause accounts for the blind tenacity with which the
Covenanters afterwards cluno- to the cause of Kin^ Charles i. Their
sole aim was stated to be to ' maintaine the true worship of God, the
majestie of our King, and the peace of the kingdome for the common
happiness of ourselves and posteritie,' which they would do and
'answer to Jesus Christ in the Great Day.' The object of the
confederation was thus to return to the first principles of government
in Church and State, so that, with these put into operation, the
contending parties might find a modus vivendi. Questions were
confused, so that religious concerns had become political. It had then
to be settled whether King or Kingdom was the source of power ;
whether ruler and ruled had not mutual responsibilities ; whether or
not Charles was, as his father taught, ' as God ' over the masses.
The Covenanters demanded that the civil laws should be made to
harmonise with the laws of God set forth in Scripture ; King Charles,
on the other hand, conscientiously acted upon the opinion given by
Judge Berkeley, in the Hampden case, that the King is the law —
' Rex est Lex ' ; and thus the Basilikon Doron had begun to bear
evil fruits already.
On Wednesday, the twenty-eighth day of February, the neatly
THE NATIONAL COVENANT 267
written Covenant was ready for subscription, having been finally
approved of that morning by the barons. The place appointed for
its public acceptance was Greyfriars Church, then a modern edifice, Greyfiiais
standing in the upper yard of the monastery of the Franciscans, or^^^^^j^ '
Grey Friars, and as plain a building as their chapel had been
sumptuous.^ Round the church was a comparatively new cemetery,
yet to be one of the most famous in Christendom, and the Mecca of
patriotic Scotsmen. At the foot of the grassy slope was situated the
historic Grassmarket, frowned upon by lofty tenements, and gruesome
with its hideous gibbet, soon to be a bloody instrument for the
promotion of Protestant freedom. Beyond that Calvary, on the
northern skyline, rose the dark-browed rock of Dunedin, castled and
menacing, a visible reminder of heroes from King Aidan's day to
that of Bruce, suggesting liberty by its very aspect of power. For a
picturesque act of faith, choice could not have fallen on a site so
appropriate ; for the resurrection of the national spirit, no fitter arena
than this resting-place of Buchanan and his compatriots could have
been selected. Early in the morning, to this hallowed spot, from
streets and alleys, from mansions and high-fiying garrets, wended
their way crowds of citizens and strangers, to fast, and pray, and
sign their names.
At two in the afternoon, Rothes, Loudoun, Henderson, Dickson, Subscribing of
and Johnston, who carried a 'fair parchment above an elne in squair,'
arrived at the church. The beauty of the parchment won for this
Covenant the designation, ' The Constellation upon the back of
Aries.' ^ In church, Henderson opened the proceedings with prayer,
urgent and decisive ; Loudoun eloquently stated the righteous cause
of the Covenanters ; Johnston read the document. A hush ensued,
which Rothes broke by asking if there were any objectors. The
doubters were soon soothed into compliance. Among these was
Robert Baillie, who had compunctions in subscribing; but he, after
^ Built, A.D. 1610 : Wilson, Memorials of Edinburgh, 342, 410.
''■ After having examined many copies of the Covenant, I arrived at the conclusion that
the Covenant in the custody of the Town Council of Edinburgh is the original document
signed in Greyfriars. See Appendix for description of this deed.
268 THE COVENANTERS
examination of the reasonable document, wrote that he ' did never
repent of that subscription.'^ The congregation with upHfted hands
swore allegiance to the Covenant, and pressed forward to subscribe
the precious pledge, most probably upon the Communion-table.
It has been often asserted that the first person to append his
signature to the document was the aged Earl of Sutherland ; and
inaccurate historians and pathetic artists have depicted the white-
haired, trembling patriarch leading the van of patriots. But the Earl
was only twenty-nine years of age in 1638, and his name is not
included by Rothes among those of the subscribers, nor does his signa-
ture appear upon any of the early copies of the Covenant examined
by me ; it is also absent from the roll of Parliament in 1639.^ The
First forward Montrose probably signed first. The second signature was
the Covenant, that of Sir Andrew Moray of Balvaird, minister of Abdie in Fife, who
1638. ^3^5 knighted at the Coronation in 1633, and afterwards ennobled by
King Charles. The designation, ' S[ir] A[ndro] Moray of Balvaird,'
is prominent upon the white parchment preserved by the Town
Council of Edinburgh, and comes after the names of those commonly
found together as first subscribers, namely, Montrose, Rothes, Cassillis,
Eglinton, Montgomery, Wemyss, Home, Lindsay, Lothian, Dal-
housie, Yester, Burley, Loudoun, Melville, Johnston, Carnegie,
Forrester, Cranstoun, Boyd, Sinclair, Balmerino, Fleming, Cowpar,
Elcho, Drumlanrig, Rowallan, ' Lyone,' Grierson of Lag, Fergusson of
Craigdarroch — nobles, barons, and commissioners of shires ; Alexander
Henderson, George Gillespie, David Dickson, Andrew Ramsay,
Henry Rollock — ministers ; A. Johnston (Wariston), Henderson, the
outed reader of St. Giles, and sixty representatives of burghs were
among the first who signed the deed.
There is confusion among the various accounts of the proceedings
as to what took place after the Covenant was accepted in the Church.
' Baillie, Letters, i. 36.
- 'J. E. Southerland' is a signature appended to a Supplication of the General Assembly
in 1639 : General Register House. 'John Earle of Sutherland ' was the first to sign the bill
of 24th October 1638 against the bishops, presented to the Presbytery of Edinburgh :
I'eterkin, Kccorils^ 94.
THE NATIONAL COVENANT 269
Rothes states that the nobles first subscribed, and were followed by The Covenant
1 > 1 1 • 'll signed ill
the gentry to the number of * many thousands, and this went on till night.
near eight o'clock at night. It was a dark night too, and the three-
quarter moon had not yet risen over the hills to light homewards the
linoferers amonor the tombs, when the white sheet reached the
expectant crowds in the churchyard. If one account be accurate,
then torches or other lights had to be used, when the earnest men,
women, and children stood lifting up suppliant votive hands to
Heaven while the Covenant was being read, before It was laid
upon a flat table-stone to be signed. Here we have a picture
unique in Scots history — veritably 'The Night Watch' for any
painter — as we see manly cheeks glistering with tears, others
stern yet radiant with joy ; anon a blood-stained hand rises, and
shows ruddier in that umber light, for some signed with their blood,
and one enthusiast also appended to his signature the words, ' till
daith ' ; while the ruder masses were content to permit initials, crosses,
marks, and blots to indicate the unity of their vows.^ The boldest
spirits even dared to break the holy silence with a wild slogan
of defiance. A weirder, ghostlier scene can scarcely be imagined.
It forms a complement to that vision of Dante wherein
' Accents of anger, voices deep and hoarse,
With hands together smote that swell'd the sounds,
Made up a tumult that for ever whirls
Round through that air with soUd darkness stained.'
When, at length, the ' fair parchment ' was, on both sides, largely
occupied with names and initials, and the palpitating figures who
pressed to sign and were disappointed had to pass away from the
grey memorials of the dead, a modern Dante might also have com-
pleted his picture thus :
' Such a long train of spirits I should ne'er
Have thought that death so many had despoiled.'
Could the curtain of the future have been lifted, there would have
appeared, at that grim Grassmarket gibbet, ' a long train of spirits '
' The Edinburgh Corporation copy, already mentioned, bears the names of both men
and women, and some signatures written in what seems to be blood. See Appendix.
270 THE COVENANTERS
moving towards this dismal burial-ground, towards its most gruesome
spot — 'The Thieves Hole' — all holding up bloodier hands for the
same Covenant's sake. Greyfriars Churchyard was the city Gehenna
where the mutilated bodies of many martyred Covenanters found
their resting-place, in the reigns of Charles Second and James
Second.
Clergy sign. An animated meeting was held next day, Thursday, ist March, on
the grassy parterres beneath the Tailors' Hall in Cowgate, when nearly
three hundred ministers and commissioners from burghs met with the
leaders of The Tables and the subscribing nobles, and thereafter
signed the Covenant. The Covenant, in duplicate, was next carried
over the city, and as it itinerated, like the sacred carpet of the
Prophet, the * fair parchment ' was followed by rapturous crowds of
excited attesters and assenters, sometimes shouting, groaning, and
weeping, who solicited adherents, and urged all unwilling parties
to subscribe it. It was at this date, 2nd March, according to Mr.
R. S. Gardiner, that the Covenant was carried back to Greyfriars
Masses Church to be signed by the masses of the people.^ This is not im-
probable, since there is no account of the subscription by the masses
as a body.
The leading Covenanters, Rothes, Montrose, Eglinton, Cassillis,
and other members of The Tables next busied themselves in attesting
duplicate copies, which were taken away by ' the considerable persons
themselves,' or dispatched into every shire, bailiary, stewartry,
presbytery, parish, and judicatory for signature. Many of these,
excellently preserved, remain : one is signed on both sides ; another
is a clean skin having the Covenant without the signatures. The
enthusiasm of the people everywhere was unprecedented. A con-
temporary account states that it was subscribed ' in a very short time
by almost the whole Kingdome.'^ The outed minister John Living-
stone rode in disguise post haste to London with copies of the
Covenant for assenters there. Copies of the Covenant and the Con-
' Gardiner, Hist.^ viii. 333.
- A Short Relation of the State 0/ the Khk of Scotland, etc., B., 1638.
subscribe.
'O ?
- l*,
THE NATIONAL COVENANT 271
fession were issued from the printing press.^ In less than three
weeks the greater part of the kingdom had subscribed, so that
Rothes was anxious to know ' if the whole Canongate have subscribed
with their minister, Mr. Matthew Wemyss,' on the i8th March." The
notable exceptions were the towns of Aberdeen, St. Andrews, Crail,
and Inverness. Commenting upon the marvellous unanimity of the Enthusiasm
Covenanters at this time, Alexander Henderson, replying to the covenanters.
Aberdeen Doctors, declared ' that this was the day of the Lord's
power, wherein we saw His people most willingly offer themselves in
multitude like the dewdrops of the morning — this was indeed the
great day of Israel, wherein the arm of the Lord was revealed — the
day of Jehovah's strength, on which the princes of the people
assembled to swear allegiance to the King of Kings.' Differently
affected was the feeble Primate, Spottiswood, who was in Edinburgh
in the strictest seclusion until he could seek safety across the Borders.
He mournfully exclaimed, 'All which we have been attempting to
build up during the last thirty years is now at once thrown
down.'^
As in all popular insurrections, the result of this agitation was the Result of the
venting of an intolerant and violent spirit in many quarters. The ^sit^^'""-
odium which the favourers of the old regime, clerical and lay, incurred,
may be estimated from a letter of David Mitchell, minister in Edin-
burgh, afterwards Bishop of Aberdeen, to John Leslie, Bishop of
Raphoe, on 19th March :
' The greater part of the kingdom have subscribed, and the rest
are daily subscribing a Covenant. It is the oath of the King's house,
1580, with strange additions, a mutual combination for resistance of
all novations in religion, doctrine, and discipline, and rites of worship
that have been brought in since that time : so as if the least of the
subscribers be touched, and there be some of them not ten years of
* Row, Hist.^ 489 ; Aldis, List, Nos. 904, 905, 906.
2 Dalrymple, Metnorials a7id Letters, 38 note (Glasgow, 1766) : Rothes to Wariston.
Wemyss did subscribe, 'preached for the Covenant on Sunday, and discharged the organ' :
Mitchell to Leslie, ibid., 38.
^ Lee, Lectures, ii. 259.
Edinburgh.
272 THE COVENANTERS
age, and some not worth two pence, that all shall concur for their
defence, and for the expulsion of all Papists and adversaries (that is,
all that will not subscribe) out of the Church and Kingdom, according
Intolerance in to the laws whercof a hundred are cited in the Charta. This goes on
apace. The true pastors are brought into Edinburgh to cry out
against us wolves ; and they, with our brethren here, Mr. Andrew
Ramsay, Mr. Henry Rollock, and your whilome friend, the Principal
(crying out they are neither good Christians nor good subjects
that do not subscribe, nay, nor in covenant with God) have made us
so odious that we dare not go in the streets. I have been dogged by
some gentlemen and followed with many mumbled threatenings
behind my back ; and then, when in stairs, swords drawn, and " if
they had the Papist villain, oh ! " Yet I thank God I am living to
serve God, and the King, and the Church, and your Lordship.
Your Chief [Rothes] is chief in this business. There is nothing
expected here but civil war. There is no meeting of Council ; the
Chancellor may not with safety attend it, nor any bishop ; the very
name is more odious among old and young than the devil's. . . .
' There are still here 500 commissioners of the states ; they
relieve one another by course, as Castor and Pollux went to hell ;
they sit daily and make new laws. ..." No wonder all the professors,
save two regents, in the University of Edinburgh subscribed! These
Covenant two werc deposed.^
Copies of the Covenant were carried into every corner of the land
to be subscribed, and were looked upon as tests of faith in Christ.
In Ayrshire travellers were refused food and lodging until they had
given assurance of being Covenanters. The Presbytery of Kirkcaldy
resolved, ist August 1639, that no 'wilful non-Covenanters should be
admitted to the Sacrament.'^ Non-subscribers were called ' Dis-
covenanters.' The universal adherence to the bond was not alto-
gether the result of piety and patriotism. The disclaiming of
compulsory methods by the promoters of the Covenant is not in
1 Dairy mple, Memorials, 36, 37 ; Crawford, I list, of Edh?. University, 133.
^ Stevenson, PresbyMe Dooke of Kirkcaldy, 151.
subscribed
through fear
THE NATIONAL COVENANT 273
accordance with reliable contemporary accusations and menaces, of
which there is " proof, although many of the more tolerant, with
Rothes, may have ' held it to be irreligious to use wicked means to
advance such a work.'^ In April, I. de Maria — a pseudonym — wrote
to a person unknown: 'You could not-- have chused but laugh to
have seen pipers and candle-makers in our town committed to the
town-jail by our zealous Mr. Mayor ; and herdmen and hiremen laid
in the stocks up and down the country, and all for refusing to put
their hand to the pen, as a thousand have done, who cannot write
indeed. . . .'" A letter of Johnston of Wariston to his kinsman, Lord
Johnston, reveals the manner in which the pressure was put on the
educated classes to produce conformity :
'If you take this oath [of allegiance to Charles], then you Menaces of the
renounce the Covenant with God, you draw down His vengeance
visibly upon you, your house and your name, good fame, yourself, and
your posterity, with that stigmatizing blot and blunder of a traitor to
your religion, the kirk, the liberty and freedom of this kingdom ; you
will be infamous in all stories, and contemned both at home and
abroad, whereof I am very confident you abhorre the very thought
worse than death.' ^ In this letter, Johnston, while asserting that he
was 'the weakest of the thousands of Israel,' and 'no braggadocio,'
appears to have worked himself into a terrible heat wherein he
makes bold to prophesy the fall of curses upon the opponents of the
Covenant :
' . . . I make not question but the great God, the patron of this
work, will trample them down and erect over their bellies the trophies
of His victory. God has said it and He will perform it. Antichrist
shall fall, and Christ rise.'*
Robert Burnet, father of Bishop Burnet, gave to Wariston, his a warning to
brother-in-law, this sane and needful advice regarding the excom-
munication of opponents : * Be not too violent then, and do as you
would be done to, for you know not how the world will turn yet. . . .
1 Hamilton to Cassillis, 3rd Oct. 1638 : FeierVm, /Records, 91. Cf. Arf. Pari. Scot., v. 345.
- Dalrymple, Memorials, 25. ^' Ibid., 51. * Ibid., 55.
2 M
274
THE COVENANTERS
Fervour in
the country.
Opposition in
the North.
Oases of non-
conformity.
And if you should be never so violent to us, yea, if you should bray
us in a mortar, that will not make us, against our conscience, to be of
your mind.'^ The hapless Wariston came bitterly to learn the
strange vagaries of fortune when his enemies turned him over from
'ane gallous of extraordiner heicht,' in Edinburgh, a quarter of a
century afterwards.
A striking illustration of the enthusiasm with which the Covenant
was subscribed is given in John Livingstone's Life : ' I was present
at Lanark, and at several other parishes, when, on a Sabbath, after
the afternoon's sermon, the Covenant was read and sworn, and I may
truly say, that in all my lifetime, except one day at the Kirk of
Shotts, I never saw such motions of the Spirit of God, all the people
generally and most willingly concurring. I have seen more than a
thousand persons all at once lifting up their hands, and the tears
falling down from their eyes ; so that through the whole land, except
the professed Papists, and some few who for base ends adhered to
the prelates, the people universally entered into the Covenant of
God. '2
Guthry, in his Memoirs, noted : ' It was everywhere done with joy
except in the north parts, where many opposed it.'^ Gordon, in his
Scots Affairs^ with mingled merriment and disgust, relates how
women sat in church from Friday till Sunday, or had their seats kept
for them by their servants, rather than forgo the prelections of their
favourite ministers expounding the Covenant and dispensing the
Eucharist. The religious fervour possessing the masses may be
inferred from the fact that when Lord Erskine made his
submission to the General Assembly in 1638, he shed tears as he
alluded to his previous obstinacy in refusing to accept the Covenant.
Here and there throughout Scotland were to be found little islands
of nonconformity, small oases in the great expanse of uniformity,
sparse gatherings of staunch Episcopalians adhering to their un-
covenanted priests and professors. The Roman Catholic opposition
' Dalrymple, Memorials, 74. ^ Wodrow, Select Biog., 'Life of Livingstone,' i. 160.
-' Memoirs, 35, 2nd edition.
THE NATIONAL COVENANT 275
was a negligible quantity. Some ministers, who for a time openly
applauded the Service Book and spurned the Covenant, were deposed
by their presbyteries. A few of the leaders, who at first had scruples
about the new confederation, such as Cassillis and Robert Baillie of
Kilwinning, became promoters of the cause very soon.
The broad and humanising influence of the teaching of Professor Opposition to
John Cameron, formerly of Saumur, whom King James had appointed *^^*^"^"^-
to a chair in the college of Glasgow, in order, according to the Presby-
terians, to support the imposition of the Perth Articles, is said to
have borne fruit in the opposition to the Covenant by some of his
students. That influence, if so potent once, did not affect Wariston,
himself a scholar of Glasgow, whatever effect it had upon the city
ministers John Maxwell, John Bell, Junior, and Zachary Boyd, the
poetic pastor of the Barony Parish, whom a Committee of The Tables,
including Baillie, in vain tried to win over to the popular side at this
time. Some treatises, unfavourable to the new movement, emanated
from St. Andrews University, but this academic hostility soon
disappeared.^
In Aberdeen and the surrounding country, the latest phase of Hostility in
. . . T . , , . - ^ rj^^ , Aberdeen.
Presbyterianism was viewed with a decided repugnance. 1 here the
ancient national faith had deepest roots, and had not been obliterated
as regards its spiritual influence and its visible factors, largely on
account of the paramount power of the Roman Catholic family of
Huntly. Such had been the regard for, or indifference to, the visible
symbols of the faith, that the pre- Reformation crosses, statues,
shrines, and other ornamenta of the Roman Church still remained in
the churches and highways of Aberdeen, unmolested by any northern
iconoclasts. The professors and clergy of Aberdeen preferred the
hierarchy, and deprecated change in the direction of democratic
Presbyterianism. Notably, Dr. John Forbes, proprietor of Corse,
Professor of Divinity, entered the controversy with a written pamphlet
entitled A Peaceable Warning to the Subjects in Scotland, and
1 Wodrow MSS., xxv. 23, 4to ; 'Reasons for not Subscribing,' Maitland Club Miscell ,
iv. 149.
276 THE COVENANTERS
intended to prove that the Negative Confession of King James (the
Covenant of 1 580-1) was obsolete and no longer binding.^ His
work was dedicated to the Marquis of Huntly, who had been edu-
cated as an Episcopalian under the eye of King James at the English
Court, had served as a gentleman-at-arms at the French Court under
Louis XIII., and having remained a devoted supporter of Charles,
considered it now his duty to encourage the Aberdeen nonconfor-
mists in their antagonism to the appointments of the Crown. The
burgh of Aberdeen had neither sent a representative to Greyfriars
Covenanicis nor subscribed the Covenant. Elsewhere opposition had collapsed
thrfieicL before the unprecedented wave of enthusiasm which swept into the
remotest parts of the country, and made the democrats practically
masters of the field. Indeed it may safely be concluded that, if this
Covenant had not been universally felt to be a desideratum of the
time, it would have been impossible to have made it acceptable to a
people peculiarly irate, obstinate, and perverse, as the Scots have
always been at the thought of the loss of their liberties, and of
interference with their interests. The Tables resolved to have the
northern opposition wiped out, and accordingly appointed a Com-
mission consisting of the Earl of Montrose, Baron Cowpar, the
Master of Forbes, Sir Thomas Burnet of Leys, and three ministers,
Henderson, Dickson of Irvine, and Andrew Cant of Pitsligo, to deal
with these belated Royalists. They arrived in Aberdeen on the
20th of July. With singular want of grace, they made a bad be-
ginning of their mission by refusing to accept the refreshing * Cup of
Bon Accord,' which the magistrates, in accordance with ancient
custom, proffered to the visitors, who made the paltry excuse that
they could accept of no hospitality until the Covenant was accepted
by the city. That was a different matter, and not so easily
accomplished.
The Aberdeen That night the Aberdeen Doctors had ready for presentation to
the deputation a series of fourteen debatable questions, which had to
' Aldis, List, 910, 4to, Raban, Aberdeen; 909, Duplyes of the Minista-s ; ibid., 911,
General Demands concerning the Late Covenant, 4to, Raban.
THE NATIONAL COVENANT 277
be answered to their satisfaction before they could subscribe the
Covenant. These questions were signed by seven Doctors of
Divinity, namely, John Forbes, Professor of Divinity, Robert Barrone,
Professor of Divinity, Alexander Ross, James Sibbald, Alexander
Scrogie, William Lesley, and William Guild of St. Nicholas. Guild
resiled afterwards.^ Their queries in effect were : What legal The Fourteen
,.,. , oi^ I-' Questions.
warrant existed for agam subscribmg the 1581 Covenant, and givmg
it a modern interpretation.-^ How could a Covenant forbidden by
the Statute 1585 be lawfully signed, or that act against all 'bands'
be justifiably set aside? Who was to interpret the Covenant? If
the Covenant created a perpetual law, not made by God, could they
conscientiously accept it? Should they accept in faith dogmas
about which ancient divines and Reformers were in doubt ? Should
they abjure ceremonies alleged to be Popish, which they accepted as
scriptural ? Was loyalty to the King limitable ? Could they accept
a Covenant which curtailed the freedom of Assembly and of Parlia-
ment ? Was their subscription of the Scottish Confession (1567)
not sufficient ? Why were certain ministers, who were guilty of
offences, not punished ? Could they, who had accepted the Perth
Articles, and sworn obedience to bishops, subscribe this Covenant
without becoming perjurers? How could they, who were believers
in the lawfulness of Episcopacy and the Perth Articles, permit
ministers to occupy their pulpits with the object of seducing their
flocks from rites approved of by the Doctors ?
The Commissioners, in their replies, pointed out that the alleged
Popery consisted in the foisting upon the Church new doctrines,
ceremonies, and jurisdictions — Episcopacy, the Perth Articles, the
Liturgy, Book of Canons, and Court of High Commission — without
the sanction of the Church duly convened in General Assembly.
The Doctors prepared an erudite rejoinder, which was answered in
turn. The paper war practically ended in a victory for the dis- Result of the
Covenanters. And the ministerial Commissioners, being debarred '^''"^'°''"'^'
from the city pulpits, were forced to advocate their cause by preach-
' Guild wrote An Antidote against Popery, i2mo (Aberdeen, 1639).
278 THE COVENANTERS
ing in the courtyard of the Earl Marischal's town-house, then
occupied by Lady PitsHgo, a Covenanter. Their visit was futile,
however. Few subscribed, and were persecuted by the dis-
Covenanters for their conscientiousness.^
Charles thanks This defiant and loyal attitude of the Doctors, irritating to their
'^^" ^" ^' antagonists, so gratified the King that, to mark his appreciation of
their efforts to discredit the new movement, he specially sent, by the
hand of Huntly's son, a letter of thanks to the Town Council, and
another to the Doctors ; and shortly afterwards his Commissioner,
Hamilton, forwarded to Doctor Barrone one hundred pounds, to
enable the pamphleteers to keep their printing press going in the
royalist interest. A good number of the clergy of the Synod of
Aberdeen fled to England to escape subscription of the Covenant,
but returned in 1639 and swore it with penitence.^
Privy Council Attention must now be turned to the action of the executive
March 16?."^ government. On the ist March, that afternoon on which the rural
pastors were debating the doubtful points in the Covenant on the
parterres of the .Cowgate, the timorous Privy Council had assembled
in Stirling to discuss the 'general combustion.' No bishop attended.
Spottiswood, crafty to the end, apologised for his absence. On
consideration, the Council found the combustion ill to extinguish.
Traquair and Roxburgh wrote private advices to Hamilton in
London, to the effect that they did not know that any force could
extinguish it, if the obnoxious impositions were not withdrawn.
After four days of troubled excogitation, the Council resolved to send
the Lord Justice-Clerk, Sir John Hamilton of Orbiston, to consult
the King, and to express their unanimous opinion that the innova-
tions were the cause of the national discord, and that peace was only
obtainable by the King granting a trial of the grievances of the
people, and by withdrawing the offensive edicts. There was one
ominous omission. Neither the memorandum nor the letters sent to
^ Row, i. 496.
'^ A staunch clis-Covenanler was Andrew Logic, minister of Rayne, a wit, litterateur, and
champion of Episcopacy. He was restored in 1664.
THE NATIONAL COVENANT 279
the Kino- mentioned the Covenant, which was an unmistakable
legal appeal from the Crown to the People. Sir Thomas Hope, Lord
Advocate, knew full well that the Covenant was a skilfully drafted The Covenant
legal instrument, which could not be thrust out of court without the document.
destruction of the free institutions of the land, and the time-hallowed
liberties of the subjects, and that it would give rise to many memor-
anda.^ The Covenant brought the cause of its promoters by advo-
cation to the bars of the constitutional judicatories of Church and
State, namely, the General Assembly and the Parliament, and there
it would be found that the autocratic King had mistaken his status
in Court, and his function outside it. To the extent of maintaining
those views, Hope was one of the strongest supporters the
Covenanters had. At the same time he as consistently maintained
the due prerogatives of the Crown in civil matters.
All too soon for his comfort, Charles received news of the Judgment of
northern rising. What he thought of the crisis and the leaders of
the Presbyterian party is very vulgarly expressed in his own Large
Declaration, wherein he punningly refers to The Tables as ' stables of
unruly horses,' and offensively remarks : ' Now the first dung which
from these stables was throwne upon the face of Authoritie and
Government was that lewd Covenant and seditious Band annexed
unto it.'" After this, it needs little demonstration to prove that
a Sovereign who would authorise such an unkingly insult to be
published, was quite incapable of restoring peace to his distracted
country, or of helping to bring about a desirable uniformity in
matters of religion.
Two most remarkable and significant events happened on nth Two
March 1638. The mischievous boys of Fortrose entered church and
stole two prayer-books, belonging to Bishop Maxwell, which they
^ The opinion of the late Lord President Inglis is a striking corroboration of that of
Hope : — The Covenant of 1638 was no act of rebellion; it was deliberately adopted by the
people. Montrose deliberately accepted it and adhered to it. Montrose repudiated the
Solemn League and Covenant as unconstitutional, was deceived by King Charles, and objected
to Royal Absolutism : Blackwood'' s Magazitte, cxlii. 624 ; Reg. Privy Count., vii. 9, n, 17.
2 The King^s Large Declaration, etc., 54.
significant
events.
28o THE COVENANTERS
tried to burn, and, failing, cast into the sea. The trick of the boys
indicated the exact attitude of the Scottish mind towards the question
of the time — the intruded innovations of the King — which the people
had resolved to annihilate. The other event occurred in England.
The Privy Council was engaged with a complaint from Archbishop
Laud against Archie Armstrong, the King's Scottish jester. Archie
met the Primate going to council and railingly inquired at that
dignitary, ' Whase fule noo [who is fool now]? Doth not your Grace
hear the news from Stirling ? ' Laud reported the gibe, and the
Opinion of the Council Ordered the too wise fool to have his motley uniform dragged
Kino^'s jester.
over his ears, to lose his appointment, and to be expelled from the
Court. Shortly afterwards * The Scots Scout ' met Archie and asked
him why he was clothed in black. *Oh,' quoth he, 'my Lord of
Canterbury hath taken it [the motley] from me, because either he or
some of the Scotch bishops may use it for themselves ; but hath
given me a black coat for it to colour my knavery with it.'^
This paltry affair illustrated the attenuation of that clerical mind,
which imagined it could guide and govern, with the aid of obsolete
symbols and discarded principles, an independent nation influenced
by an open Bible and cultured pastors ; and which clerical mind
encouraged, if it did not directly incite, the misguided Charles to take
the perilous course which ultimately brought him to the block. The
Privy Council's judgment not only illustrated the peevish nature of
Laud, but the political incapacity of the English men of affairs, who
were setting themselves the task of grappling with the able diplo-
matists of the north, at a time when they could not cope with a
jester.
' The Scots Scouts Discovery — The Second Discovery^ i6 (London, 1642).
THE GLASGOW ASSEMBLY 281
CHAPTER X
THE GLASGOW ASSEMBLY AND THE ABOLITION OF EPISCOPACY
Great was the alarm when the King and Court heard the news of Alarm at
the rebellion in the north and of the defiance of the royal will. The ^°^^^'
advisers of the Crown were cognisant of the keen sympathy subsisting
between the persecuted Puritans and the Scottish Presbyterians, and
even suspected the existence of a secret league binding them together
for the purpose of overthrowing Episcopacy. The rigour used against
the Puritans had only created a popular feeling of esteem for them,
and an impatience of temper at the repressive measures used against
them. Englishmen, by nature easy-minded, were not much interested
in these new spiritual experiments of Charles and Laud, so that, with
the exception of some courtiers, few Episcopalians cared whether the
Scots chose priests, presbyters, or witch-doctors to be their clergy.
The King, on the .other hand, took the rising to heart. The flatterers The King's
on the steps of the throne encouraged the King in his autocratic cds^s°" °
frenzy, and assured him that a show of force was sufficient to quell
'the brutish bedlamites.' Laud's lifelong yearning for a sanctified
uniformity had been crushed out as by one blow, which also intensi-
fied his painful feeling, that his impotency in controlling spiritual affairs
was increasing. Charles realised that the issues at stake were his
crown and reputation, and, rather than damage the one or sully the
other, he vowed he would die ; that if the Covenant held the field
he would possess no more sovereignty than the Duke of Venice —
a thought which fired his blood and made his utterances emphatic.^
That fair bond of freedom and brotherly love, which constrained men-
^ Peterkin, Records^ 70 ; Burnet, Memoires, 60.
2 N
enthusiasm.
282 THE COVENANTERS
at-arms to weep and pious women to sit all night in church to hear
its exposition when morning broke, appeared to the Sovereign as ' the
damnable Covenant.'
The almost universal subscription of the Covenant produced one
of the most extraordinary revivals of religion ever known in Scotland.
Reliable contemporaries believed that a special Pentecostal grace had
been given to the members of the Church for their penitence and
desire of a renewal of the Spirit. Within six weeks after the accept-
ance of the Covenant, the nati,on had been canvassed and a census
National of assenters and refusers of the test obtained and tabulated. Enthusi-
asts carried private copies about with them, and urged all and sundry
to take the pledge. The General Assembly, in its letter to the
Helvetic Churches in 1640, testified to the great heart-searchings
which accompanied the subscription, and how, after a public fast had
been observed, ' the people publicly confirmed their subscriptions in
the Churches, by a solemn oath, with their right hand lifted up, and
with many groans and tears.' The Tables sat daily deliberating, and
hundreds of Commissioners, watching their interests, lingered in the
Capital. Conversant with the resolutions of the Privy Council, and
concluding that the lull in politics indicated a gathering storm. The
Tables directed their attention to a policy of preparation. They sent
to Poland for arms. A complete organisation, including clerks,
couriers, and spies, was set up and maintained by the voluntary contri-
butions of earnest, even ecstatic, supporters of the Cause. Govern-
mental movements were ferreted out and reported at headquarters ;
billets were fixed for brethren already armed ; two ships full of arms
were on the way home from the Continent ; everywhere was heard the
preparation for all emergencies.
On 27th March The Tables formulated eight demands, in which
the innovations were again condemned, and the King was asked to
convene an Assembly and a Parliament to settle their disputes. At
the same time they urged the Council to subscribe the Covenant for
very joy's sake ; and, with delightful irony, they compared the new
era of faith and morals which had dawned on their benighted country
THE GLASGOW ASSEMBLY 283
to the shining of the sun. A month afterwards, Rothes, Cassillis, and
Montrose signed eight ' Articles for the present peace of the Kirk and The Eight
Kingdom of Scotland,' which were to be transmitted to the King/ ^"^'j'"~|^''^
These Articles committed the Covenanters to a further step in their
opposition, by announcing that the mere discharge of the innovations
could not be a cure of the existing evils nor a preventive of others.
The Tables discovered worse grievances — notably the old scandal of
spiritual masters interfering in political affairs, which bore evil fruit in
the Court of High Commission. The State needed emancipation as
much as the Church ; and the clergy needed relegation to their own
particular field of labour. As was to be expected, the crafty lay-
leaders of The Tables omitted to suggest that the laity should be
relieved of the Church lands and patrimony which they had seized.
That day on which The Tables drew up the Articles, 27th April,
the remnant of the hierarchy sat in sad conclave — the Bishops of
Edinburgh, Dunblane, and Argyle having for their audience three
loyal ministers, Hannay, Mitchell, and Fletcher. The other prelates
had crossed the Borders, and some had reached the Court. The Doleful report
1 1 t /- 1 T-t • . • 1 • 1 of the bishops.
remnant prepared a lachrymose report tor the rrimates, m which
they dolefully related that the constant Moderators had been set
aside; many pulpits were filled, even with excommunicated Irish
ministers, without consent or ordination of bishops ; Samuel Ruther-
ford was restored to Anwoth ; Alexander Henderson was translated
to Edinburgh ; and that many of their own party had been abused,
deposed, and rendered penniless. They hinted that they too would
soon be thrown into the debtor's prison unless the legal processes
taken against them were countermanded.^ The Presbyterians were
now beating the Prelatists with their own cudgels. Spottiswood,
steeped to the neck in debt, and Maxwell dependent on royal charity,
might now have to do what miserable Duncan of Crail was bidden
try — eat their own petitions for sustenance.
King Charles, in his dilemma, turned to his noble kinsman, the
young Marquis of Hamilton, for counsel and comfort. Hamilton was
1 Peteikin, Records, 63. - Ibid., 64.
284
THE COVENANTERS
The third
Marquis of
Hamilton,
1638.
Hamilton's
hatred of
Scotland.
in the King's presence when Sir John Hamilton arrived from Scotland
to present the Privy Council's Memorandum and Suggestion that the
ecclesiastical policy should be changed. In James, third Marquis of
Hamilton (1606-49), the King had a courtier eager to be his lieutenant
in executing his plans regarding their native land.^ This noble, being of
royal Stewart descent, and a possible heir to the Crown, should the reign-
ing family die out, was to Charles the head of a powerful house that had
often been the mainstay of, and suffered for their loyalty to, the Stewart
kings ; but, to his enemies, Hamilton was a crafty politician, with an eye
to the throne itself. Hamilton, Master of the Horse, was at this time a
handsome cavalier, thirty-two years of age, not long returned from the
Continent, where, as a General, he had commanded British mercenaries
under King Gustavus Adolphus, who gave him a 'letter of credence,'
which amounted to all the honour this bankrupt noble brought back.
The experiences of his house, the influences of Court, and educa-
tion at Oxford did not tend to make this soldier of hasty temper,
imperious will, and ill-balanced judgment love his fatherland the more,
nor despise his little-refined but conscientious countrymen any the less.
Next to hell he hated Scotland, he said, and was ready to expatriate
himself from it : ' I shall not weary till the Government be again set
right; and then I will forswear this country.'^ His sons, he vowed,
would be bred in England, and his daughters he would not permit to
marry perverse Scots. He was a hopeless bankrupt, having run
through his patrimony to maintain his military dignity abroad and his
position at the Courts, and possessed only the royal gift of the imposts
on wine to keep him from poverty. Creditors held his estates and
were forbidden by Charles to sell them.^ Hamilton's hereditary func-
tions at both Courts brought him into closest contact with the King,
^ Hamilton MSS.^ Hist. MSS. Com., xi. App. pt. vi. 94-129 ; Peterkin, Records., 66 et seq. ;
Burnet, Metnoires, Lond., 1677, q.v.
- Hamilton to the King, 27th Nov. 1638 : Peterkin, Records, 113 ; Hamilton MSS., p. 99.
^ Stirling's Letters, vol. ii. 585.
'The mighty Marquess Hamilton,
Quhose land was bought with two off ten,"
i.e. t\\o per cent, granted by King Charles to pay Hamilton's debt in 1633.
Contemporary Pasquil.
THE GLASGOW ASSEMBLY 285
whom he scrupulously served, even to abstention from attending his
own father's funeral. Laud and he had common ground for friendship
in a belief in autocracy and hatred of the democratic instincts of Scottish
freemen. Yet, strange to say, Hamilton, on the eve of his expedition
into England on behalf of King Charles i., in 1648, wrote his own will
at Holyrood, and professed himself to be *a member of the true
reformed religion as it is now established in this kingdome, and a
loyall subject to my gratious master, King Charles.'^ An instrument
more suitable for furthering the King's will than this embarrassed
cavalier, who, like * Bloody Bite-the-Sheep Turner' afterwards, had no
scruples in obeying any orders, could not have been found. But the
choice was disastrous. Cunning had blinded the King to the consti-
tutional defects of his confidant, who, instead of being a statesman
walking warily, became a firebrand among the inflammable Scots.
While the Covenanters always charged Laud with being the first cause
of their troubles, they did not hesitate to declare that ' Hamilton's
head was the shop where those cursed counsells were first forged for
the taking off of his Majestie's.'- In Laud, his friend and corre-
spondent, he had a ' particeps crvninis''^
The Sovereign, now grown anxious, sent to Scotland for his The King and
advisers, and soon Traquair, Roxburgh, Lome, and others of the
nobility most incapable of giving counsel in the crisis, and the Bishops
of St. Andrews, Galloway, Brechin, and Ross arrived. The month
of April was spent in deliberating. Laud giving his counsel. Some
of the bishops, faithful to precedent, and animated with the spirit of
Belial, were for war : * The bischopes blowing the bellowes, and still
crying fyre and sword, especially Mr. Johne Maxwell, Bischope of Ross
(one that did favour Rome too much), suggests it to be a schame for
his Maiestie to receid from quhat he formerly had determined.'^ The
conciliatory spirit of the laymen prevailed, however. The King
announced his intention of sending Hamilton to settle the quarrel.
Hamilton's first request was that the Scots bishops should accompany
' Hamilton MSS., 57 ; Burnet, Mevioires, 52. ^ Digitus Dei, 21.
^ Burnet, Memoires, 60. ^ Balfour, An7iah^ ii. 263.
286 THE COVENANTERS
him ; but these sons of Belial had joined the party for peace, and now
preferred unfrocked repose near Lambeth to any ' fyre and sword '
in the north, where was still a risk that the Church's own anointed
ones might afford a * reek ' of martyrdom, as fragrant to Presbyterians
as that of Wishart had been to Roman Catholics. Sir John Hamilton
returned to Edinburgh with the news that Hamilton, as Lord High
Commissioner, was coming to make ' faire wether and sweet creame.'^
Still unsatisfied, the King consulted the law officers of the Crown, and
received a report from Lord Advocate Hope, and two counsel, Sir
Thomas Nicolson and Sir Lewis Stewart," who stated their opinion,
The Covenant that the action of the Covenanters was not a contravention of statute
ie<^ai. ^^w, and that there were no statutes dealing with any imprudent or
unconstitutional act which they might have performed.^
It was no comfort to Charles to be told that the agitators had kept
within the letter of the law, and he felt compelled to act on his own
The icing's initiative against them. Hamilton received final instructions from the
instructions. ...
King in person, at Windsor, on the i6th May, together with a Pro-
clamation and a Declaration, which were to be published when the
opportunity was favourable. These three expressions of the policy of
the Crown did not harmonise with each other. The Proclamation
contained the stereotyped repudiation of Popery, gave assurances that
innovations would only be introduced ' in a fair and legal way,' and
called for the disowning of the Covenant under threat of force and
penalty for treason. This last demand, however, was suppressed. The
Declaration asserted the King's unwillingness to use force. But the
private instructions revealed the mailed hand beneath the velvet glove :
' You shall declare that if there be not sufficient strength within the
kingdom to force the refractory to obedience, Power shall come from
England, and that Myself will come in person with them, being resolved
to hazard My Life rather than to suffer authority to be contemned.' ^
1 Balfour, Annals, ii. 262.
■^ Omond, The Lord Advocates, i. 121. Nicolson became Lord Advocate in 1649.
' The late Lord Inglis also maintained that the Covenant was a constitutional document
and that its maintainers were conservative : Blackwood's Mag., cxlii. 624.
* Peterkin, Records, 65-8 ; Hist. MSS. Covi. {^Hamilton MSS.), xi., vi. 94, No. 95 (printed
by Burnet) ; Reg. Privy Counc, vii. 32.
THE GLASGOW ASSEMBLY 287
Early in June, Hamilton reached the Borders, and, at Berwick,
wrote to his friends and vassals inviting them to form a befitting
escort to accompany him to the Capital. The Tables forbade all
Covenanters paying him any such honour. Even the Privy Council
dared go no farther than Dalkeith, where they received his commis-
sion on 6th June. There he, concealing his chagrin, waited to see Piamiiton's
what turn affairs would take, and to give interviews to deputies from f "^^^ '"
The Tables. The Tables browbeat the faltering Commissioner, and
warned him that if the King failed to rectify the public grievances,
the nation, in Assembly and Parliament convened without his sanction,
would not fail. Hamilton, piqued and vindictive, advised the King
that coercion was the only cure for Scotland. In reply, Charles in-
structed his Commissioner to parley and to appear conciliatory, while
the English forces were being equipped ; to forbear proclaiming the
Covenanters to be traitors until the English fleet had sailed ; and to
seize the arsenals of Scotland — the castles of Edinburgh and Stirling.
In a deceitful letter, the King wrote: 'And to this end I give you
leave to flatter them with what hopes you please, so you engage not
me against my grounds (and in particular that you consent neither to
the calling of Parliament nor General Assembly, untill the Covenant
be disavowed and given up) ; your chief end being now to win
time, that they may not commit public follies, untill I be ready to
suppress them. ... I will rather die than yield to those impertinent
and damnable Demands (as you rightly call them) for it is all one,
as to yield to be no king in a very short time.'^ Another letter, aTheKingpre-
few days later, informed Hamilton that fourteen thousand foot, two ^^"^^^ ^°'^^^'
thousand cavalry, and forty guns were in course of equipment, and
that, meantime, three ships of war would be sent north, * under
pretence to defend our fishermen,' while six thousand infantry might
be landed near Edinburgh, if Hamilton advised such a movement.^
While these military preparations were proceeding, the Episcopal
party were not idle, having devised a crafty scheme to sow dissension
^ Charles to Hamilton, nth June 1638 : Peterkin, Records, 68 ; Hist. MSS. Com., xi., vi.
95, No. 99 (Printed by Burnet, 55).
^ Hist. MSS. Com., xi., vi. 95, No. 102 (Burnet, 59, 60) ; Reg. Privy Counc, vii. 20.
THE COVENANTERS
among the masses, thereby hoping to win their influential leaders back
to the Court party. A bond was promulgated, whereby the Cove-
The Primate's nanters were to acknowledge that sedition was not their intention, and
^^^' that an Assembly and a Parliament would right their grievances. This
feeble countermine of the runaway Primate only carried mimic war into
the enemy's country, and very few of any party rallied to his summons.^
Through fear or excessive caution, the Commissioner had neither
published the Proclamation nor made his State entry into Edinburgh.
He soon learned the prevailing temper. A ship came into Leith
Roads loaded with Government stores and munitions of war, and,
to prevent the Covenanters seizing this much-needed equipment,
Traquair had the cargo smuggled by night into Dalkeith, so as to
bring it circuitously to the arsenal. But his opponents, wide-awake,
posted guards around and called levies into the city to prevent these
supplies reaching the Castle, and thus outwitted the Royalists. At
length The Tables invited the Commissioner to complete his progress
to Holyrood House. He approached the city by the devious way of
Leith, near which twenty thousand persons of all ranks, out of every
shire, including 'women a world,' eagerly waited to see the potentate
who practically carried the doom of Scotland in his sword-belt. A
soldier himself, he must have noticed the many steel blades from
Liege and Solingen glittering in the sun.
On the sloping green bank of the Calton Hill — at Greenside — like
a dark cloud hanging over the summer scene, stood some five hundred
ministers arrayed in their sombre cloaks, with their most potent
Boanerges, Mr. William Livingston, minister of Lanark, who, being
'the strongest of voice and austerest of countenance,' was appointed
to address the Commissioner, and of course the cavalcade and multi-
tude, at the one time. But the politic Hamilton, forewarned that
this clerical Gorgon was ' one of the most seditious in the whole
packe,' declined the compliment as one only befitting princes, and
invited the son of thunder to fulminate in private next day.^ Through
1 Peterkin, Records, 69.
- BaXfour, A nna/s, ii. 264; Raillie, Letters, i. 83. Hamilton's salute to the clergy, 'Vos
estis sal terrae,' was translated by a wit, ' it is wee who make the kail salt ' ; Gordon, Hist., 68.
Hamilton
enters Edin-
burgh.
Hamilton
declines an
address from
the pastors.
THE GLASGOW ASSEMBLY 289
this show of force Hamilton made his procession, chagrined that no
canvas gods came out to greet him, no merry muses sung his welcome,
and no entertainment was prepared for the vicegerent of Charles in
the Capital, that day as silent as the grave. It ruffled his proud spirit
to perceive that he was under the surveillance of spies by day and
of a patrol by night, and that detectives had even rummaged the
travelling trunk of the Marchioness to see what it contained.
Not only were Hamilton's person and suite watched, but at every The Tables
market cross hovered a faithful Covenanter, prepared to protest if the^^"^^*
King's Proclamation, intended to ' give some stop to their madnesses,'
should be sprung on the country unawares. In Edinburgh, a plat-
form, ready to be knocked together, lay near the Cross, and when the
clerical Gorgon was absent, Johnston of Wariston, or some other
enthusiast, was not far off with a legal protest. The diplomatists on
both sides were weary with whittling at compromises. The time
drew near for action. If Hamilton, 'to win time,' was reticent, merely
urging the withdrawal of the Covenant and the disbanding of its
armed supporters, The Tables, on the other hand, were inflexible in
maintaining their bond, and in demanding the abolition of innovations,
and they declared that they would rather renounce their baptism than
resile from this bond. The Scots were in no mood for middle courses.
Hamilton had brought with him an Episcopal chaplain. Dr. Walter
Balcanqual (son of the exiled Covenanter), afterwards the compiler of
the King's Large Declaration, to conduct the English service in
the Chapel- Royal ; but The Tables prohibited the service, so that*
Hamilton was forced to leave Holyrood House on Saturday in order
to worship out of the city. The Commissioner, thus isolated,
unsupported by the nobility, and in a perilous position, was to be
pitied ; but if Charles pitied him he had no thoughts of surrender.
Charles was not to be moved from his fixed idea, his ineradicable The King's
fixed 1(163^
delusion, that it was only rebels he had to stamp out. He would
rather perish than suffer this rebellion, he often said ; as he also
wrote : ' I intend not to yield to the demands of these traitors, the
Covenanters,' and ' I have not changed my mind in this particular.'
2 o
290 THE COVENANTERS
For this misapprehension, amounting almost to monomania, Charles
had to pay dearly.
Hamilton, before venturing to publish the Proclamation, brought
back the High Courts of Justice, an act to which The Tables replied
by demanding the dismissal of Sir Robert Spottiswood, son of the
Primate, and of Sir John Hay, Clerk Register, both of whom they
accused of malversation. The demand was ignored. Wednesday,
4th July, was a memorable day in Edinburgh.^ Crowds of idlers,
displaying swords and firearms, passed through the narrow streets
to the old Cross, which looked gay with emblazoned draperies. They
had not long to wait before the blare of the trumpets of the picturesque
The Procia- heralds made prelude to the Royal Proclamation with its stale story of
TuT^^ie^s"^^ chicanery — its false vows to encourage no Popery, no novelties, no
unconstitutional edicts, no popular wrongs. The timorous Com-
missioner had excised the only manly part of the Command, that he
himself had power to use ' armed lawful authority for the curbing of
disobedient and stubborn people.' Instantly the disjointed platform
was erected, and to it ascended five defiant men, types of Scottish
mettle — John, Earl of Cassillis, Alexander Gibson, younger of Durie,
advocate, James Fletcher, provost of Dundee, John Ker, minister at
Prestonpans, and Johnston of Wariston, respectively representing and
' environed with great numbers of the foresaid,' the nobility, baronage,
burgesses, ministry, and Covenanters in general.^ Johnston read a
TheProtesta- Protestation in answ^er to the King's unconstitutional Proclamation,
^'°"' which the protesters considered to be a tyrannical infringement of
liberties secured by law and usage. The unassailable act in the
technical procedure of these protesters was, the respectful tendering of
their legal instrument, in due and ancient form, to the King's heralds.
The subsequent history of the Covenant hinges upon this point.
A protest was a legal introduction to self-defence — a demand for
the just trial of any cause before a proper judicatory. Thus it is
defined : * A Protestation is a most ordinary, humble, and legal way
1 Balfour, Annals, ii. 275, gives '8 July' ; Aldis, List, 924, 925 : Protestation oj the Noble-
men 4 ofjulii ; Peterkin, Records, 71. ^ Ibid,, 74.
THE GLASGOW ASSEMBLY 291
of obviating any prejudice that may redound by any other legal act of Definition of
preserving our right, permitted to the meanest of the subjects, in the ^
highest courts, in assemblies, and Parliaments, wheresoever they are
not fully heard, or being heard, are grieved by any iniquity in the
sentence ; which is granted by the law of nature and nations, and is
the perpetual custom of this kingdom, to protest in favour of all parties
having interest, and not heard, by an express act salvo jure cuJ2t,slibet,
even against the Acts of Parliament.' It was also a legal form of
appeal to the King himself to see justice done according to the law.
Every Protestation made by the Covenanters remains the clearest
proof of their law-abiding spirit. But this valuable feature of Scottish
legislation and of untrammelled existence was ignored by the Stuart
kings in England ; and their pernicious government, under the frenzy
of Divine Right, was the more resented because it overruled ' the
perpetual custom of this kingdom,'
To Johnston, for reiterating the ancient fundamental principles
of Scottish government, which secured open meetings and liberty to
protest, this country remains for ever indebted. As a sequel to the
King's promise in the Declaration of 4th July, the Privy Council,
next day, to prevent any misunderstanding, passed an Act abolishing
the Liturgy, Canons, and Court of High Commission.^ Nevertheless
the King, having learned of the bold stand the Aberdeen Doctors
were taking, did not lose hope of being able to carry out his policy,
even though it was by circumvention."^ He would lay the foundation
for a coup d'etat by summoning the General Assembly of his own Apparent
accord, and by therein making proposals, which would become con- pj^y^ °
vincing through the overshadowing presence of military force. The
London spy heard of this and dispatched the following warning :
•Wise men here do think that the King is resolved to hold you in
all fair and promising ways of treaty, until he has sufficiently fitted
himself, by provisions both of arms and men, and then you may look
for no other language but what comes from the mouth of the cannon.''^
^ Peterkin, Records^ 76 ; Reg. Privy Counc, vii. 32-5.
^ On 13th July 1638 Aberdeen was the only Burgh which had not subscribed the Covenant :
Peterkin, Records^ 76. •' Dalrymple, Memorials. 43.
292
THE COVENANTERS
Scheme to
divide the
Covenanters.
The Tables
prepare for
Glasgow
Assembly.
Hamilton was given a freer hand. He was to sound the Privy
Council and discover their willingness to again subscribe the old Scots
Confession of Faith of 1581, with the Band of 1589 added. He was
also to indict a purely Clerical Assembly of the Jacobite type — clergy,
prelates and 'constant-moderators' without lay-commissioners — after
the Covenant had been repudiated.^ These preposterous demands,
subversive of the principle that Presbytery was jure divino, were
spurned by The Tables, who again declared : ' We could not, with-
out sinning against God, and our owne consciences, and without
doing wrong to this Nationall Church and all posteritie, rescind or
alter the same.' Hamilton offered to summon an Assembly of clerics,
on condition that no civil affairs were discussed. The Tables refused
to acquiesce in the extinction of the lay-elders, although they knew
that many ministers and some presbyteries had grave doubts as to the
scriptural warrant for allowing laymen to deliberate with the clergy in
Assembly on spiritual subjects. Alexander Henderson guided The
Tables to their decision, which frustrated the ingenious design of
Charles to disunite the Covenanters, by ranging the opponents of
prelacy against those disapproving of lay-elders.
The Covenanters, afraid of being forestalled, began to make
preparations for a Convocation of the whole Church. From their
headquarters a letter was sent to each Presbytery instructing the
appointment, after election, of three ministers and one elder for each
Presbytery and one for each Burgh, as Commissioners to an Assembly,
and bidding the Presbytery take care that no scandalous person —
no doubt implying Episcopally inclined — should be chosen.^ The
Royalists considered this procedure to be packing the meeting. The
apple of discord now being ripe, the King announced by a Declara-
tion, on 30th July, that, in order to disperse all fears of his enforcing
innovations, he had personally signed the ' Confession of Faith,
established by Act of Parliament, an. 1567, with this bond following
in defence of it ' {i.e. King's Confession, 1 580-1), and that he required
' Additional Instructions^ 27th July : Peterkin, Records^ 76.
^ In accordance with Dundee Act, 7th March 1597 : Peterkin, Records^ 82.
THE GLASGOW ASSEMBLY 293
' all our loving subjects ' to subscribe it, so that posterity might see
how careful he was ' to preserve the integrity of Religion and the
freedom of our laws.' ^
It is to be borne in mind that these imperative and imperious regal Hamilton's
commands had not been sanctioned by Parliament, and in most cases P°^^'^y-
had never been considered by the Privy Council or other executive.
They were autocratic behests only. In this case, however, it is
almost certain that Hamilton himself had advised this new course.
All summer he had been clamouring for war preparations, while the
Covenanters were demanding the calling of a free Assembly and a
free Parliament, and, disheartened by the small success of his efforts
with both parties, he had paid a visit to Court to obtain fresh instruc-
tions. These he got.^ They were crafty enough, as has been pointed
out.^ But when Hamilton returned to Scodand, and advised with
Traquair, Roxburgh, and Southesk, he found that they were all of
one mind in tracing the disorders to the innovations, and the only
way to quell the popular fears was by promulgating a similar Cove-
nant.^ They advised accordingly. Fresh instructions, dated 9th
September, came authorising Hamilton to revoke the Liturgy, Book
of Canons, High Commission, Five Articles of Perth, to limit the
powers of Episcopal Government as instructed, to have the Council
and Lords of Session sign the Confession, to get all to assent to the
Royal Declaration, to call an Assembly and Parliament — all, how-
ever, on condition that ' the most considerable part of the Council '
acquiesced in these proposals, which were formulated on the express
understanding that the King was graciously content with the Episcopal
Government already established. The Privy Council met in Holy-
rood House on 22nd September and docilely subscribed the King's
Confession, and authorised two proclamations, the one summoning all
Archbishops, Bishops, Commissioners of Kirks, and other members
of Assembly, to meet in Glasgow on 21st November, and the other
summoning Parliament to Edinburgh on 1 5th May. The subscribers
1 Peterkin, Records, 82. " Additiotial Imtructwns, 27th July : Peterkin, Records, 76.
3 Ibid., 80. ^ Jbid., 79.
294
THE COVENANTERS
Privy Council Were : Hamilton, Traquair, Roxburgh, Marischall, Mar, Murray,
CovenlnV^ ' Linlithgow, Perth, Wigtown, Kinghorn, TulHbardine, Haddington,
Annandale, Lauderdale, Kinnoul, Dumfries, Southesk, Belhaven,
Angus, Lome, Elphinston, Napier, Dalyell, Amont, J. Hay, S. Thomas
Hope, S. W. Elphinston, Ja. Carmichael, F. Hamilton, Blackhall.^
They declared in the Proclamation of 24th September, that they
did ' sweare and subscribe the Confession of Faith dated the second of
March 1 580-1, according as it was then prof est within this Ki^igciome^
and commanded all others to subscribe the Covenant with the same
meaning, i.e. as if it countenanced Diocesan Episcopacy.^ Montrose,
Cassillis, Rothes, Balmerino, Lothian, Loudoun, Lindsay, Burleigh,
Yester, Cranstoun did not join these acceptors of the Declaration.
On the 22nd September, at the Cross of Edinburgh, the herald
made the Proclamation dated 9th September, discharging the offensive
books, ceremonies, articles, and Court of High Commission, ordering
all ranks to subscribe the King's Confession anew, indicting the
Assembly and Parliament, enjoining a fast, and proclaiming a pardon.^
As soon as the herald had done, Johnston of Wariston produced
and read ' The Protestation of the Noblemen, Barons, Burrowes,
Ministers, and Commons,' and Montrose, in name of the noblemen,
Alexander Gibson, younger of Durie, in name of the barons, George
Porterfield, merchant burgess of Glasgow, in name of the burghs,
Mr. Harie Rollock, minister at Edinburgh, in name of the ministers,
and Johnston himself, in name of subscribers to the 1638 Covenant,
took instruments in the hands of notaries present. This Protestation
is a prolix document, formulating the reasons why the protesters could
not accept the King's explanations of the situation and his intentions ;
could not substitute the old Covenant for the new, which had deter-
mined what the protesters had referred to trial in an Assembly —
namely, the questions of the abjuration of Episcopacy in the 1 580-1
Covenant, and the offensive innovations ; could not countenance what
they had already condemned by their oath, prelacy and innovations ;
The Protesta-
tion, 22nd
September
I638.
' Re^. Privy Counc, vii. 64-74 '• Peterkin, Records., 84
"" Ihid.,^. ' Ibid.,Z\.
THE GLASGOW ASSEMBLY 295
could not agree to a limited Assembly ; and could not tolerate the
prelates in the Assembly.^
Johnston of Wariston was probably carried away with enthusiasm
when he concluded that the King's latest move was simply an invoca-
tion of the Divine wrath. For, even on the showing of the Cove-
nanters themselves, the King's Confession might have been signed as
a work of supererogation by the strictest of them, if it had already
abjured Episcopacy.
In August, Hamilton, Traquair, Roxburgh, and Southesk warned Advice of
the King that there was no hope of composing the Scots until the ^°y^^^^-
innovations were abolished, and 'the illimited power which the Lords
of the Clergy of this kingdom have of late assumed to themselves.'^
Thus the friends of Charles and Episcopacy themselves despised the
prelates for their arrogance, and constrained their Sovereign to plan
the gentlest fall for the tottering hierarchy. Yet if bishops and
' novelties ' had perforce to disappear and their destroyers go un-
punished, the unconquered King would throw among the malcontents
some apples of discord as a foretaste of his vengeance. Hamilton
was instructed to disseminate poison by infusing into the ministers a
sense of the injury they suffered from overbearing elders, and ' into
the lay-lords and gentlemen, with art and industry, how manifestly
they will suffer, if they let the Presbyters get head upon them.'^ This
Mephistophelian scheme indicates that King Charles the Martyr
anticipated the opinion of King Charles the Rake, that Presbyter-
ianism was no religion for a gentleman. What made the deceit
worse was, that the Proclamatibn of 9th September announced that
the King was ' to forgive all bygones to all such as shall acquiesce in
this our gracious pleasure and carry themselves peacefully.'
Opposition sprung up in a quarter where it was little expected.
Adam Bannatyne, Bishop of Aberdeen, and the famous Doctors there,
saw no need for the pledge, and the latter would only sign the
^ Peterkin, Records, 84-90.
2 Ibid., 79 ; The Protestation of the Noblemen, etc. (1638) ; The Protestation of the General
Assembly, i8th Dec. 1638 (1639) : cf. Aldis, List, 923, 925, 952.
'■^ Peterkin, Records, 80.
296 THE COVENANTERS
The Aberdeen Covenant on 5th October, with their explanations, seven in number,
imiir^the indicating how far it bound them. They stated that they abhorred
new bond. all unscHptural errors ; would not condemn apostolical Episcopacy ;
would not condemn the Perth Articles or orderly ceremonies found to
be expedient ; repudiated as perpetually binding all laws which God
Himself had not made; accepted Presbyterial Government, not as
immutable, but as independent of the Pope or of any other foreign
power ; declared that the Church had power to amend the Confession ;
and, lastly, objected to lay any further bond upon posterity except in
so far as posterity found it to be according to the Word of God. The
substance of these explanations was, that the Church, in representative
government assembled, and not any individual, had the right to
promulgate dogmas and rites harmonious with Scriptural injunction.
That was exactly the position of Sir Thomas Hope, the Lord Advo-
cate. These explanations quietly annihilated the Royal assumption of
the Headship of the Church and Dictatorship in Scotland, and they
might have formed a manifesto itself, issued from the moderate side
of The Tables. '^
The next difficulty of the King was, how he might relegate the
useless, senile Archbishop and Chancellor Spottiswood to retirement
without a public affront. Charles gave Spottiswood the alternative of
resigning the Chancellorship, after receiving a solatium of ;^2 500, or
of returning to Scotland to face his inimical countrymen. Spottiswood
Charles deals wisely made the former choice. But Charles, no coward himself,
could not brook, and would no longer fight for, runaway shepherds,
no better than hirelings ; and he brusquely commanded the terrified
bishops to return to their dioceses, to support his Commissioner, and,
if need be, stand their trial in the approaching Assembly.
The Tables The Tables were confronted with a greater difficulty when they
m a difficulty, considered the abolition of the hierarchy. Many of the clergy could
remember how, after the presbyters had disowned the Episcopate,
King James had supported titular prelates and ultimately succeeded
in re-establishing their order. At this time, 1638, the Church of
' Burnet, Memoires^ 86 ; Peterlcin, Records^ 92.
with the
hierarchy.
THE GLASGOW ASSEMBLY 297
Scotland had no constituted judicature existing in prorogued session.
The General Assembly had not met for twenty years and was, to all
intents and purposes, defunct. Officials to receive complaints were
non-existent, the genuine Presbyterians refusing to acknowledge a
constant-moderator appointed by the Crown, and the Royal Com-
missioner and Court of Session being debarred from adjudicating on
spiritual cases. The difficulty was overcome by presenting to the Complaint
Presbytery of Edinburgh a Complaint against all the bishops, who ^^^^'^^'^ ^
were charged with usurping ecclesiastical jurisdiction, and against
Bishop Lindsay, accused of scandalous conduct, as well. This was
subscribed by John, Earl of Sutherland, eleven peers, thirty-three
barons, five ministers, and six burgesses ; and it is noteworthy that
none of them were commissioners elected for the ensuing Assembly.^
This arrangement left the Assembly with perfect freedom as judges
of the cause. The Presbytery referred the Complaint simpliciter to
the Assembly, and meantime passed an edict, on 24th October, which
was authorised to be read in every pulpit, citing the accused to
the bar of the Assembly in Glasgow, on 21st November. Were it
not for the fact that Hamilton the Commissioner, the Privy Council,
and the leaders of the Church, all agreed in the opinion that the
spiritual lords were not what they ought to have been, this indictment
might well be considered the slander of a fanatical sect. The con-
ception of Charles and of the actual compiler of his Large Declaration,
that the Complaint was a mean libel to create the irreconcilable aver-
sion of the masses, does not coincide with the testimony of other
contemporaries more likely to know the truth. The Assembly was
regularly summoned. If the Covenanters captured the seats they did
so through the acquiescence of the clergy.
Hamilton, surprised at the reception and escort he got at Leith,
was more astonished at the preparations made for his appearance in
Glasgow. No doubt Charles expected the same happy issue from
this as from the famous Angelical Assembly there in 16 10. Glasgow
1 Peterkin, Records, 94-9 : Atholl, Dalhousie, Stormonth, Montgomerie, Elcho, Forrester,
Forbes, Boyd, Balcarres, Melville, Master of Berridale.
2 P
298 THE COVENANTERS
Preparations WES at this time a miserable little town, only of note owing to its
^""^nlstTw ^ magnificent Cathedral and reputable College, for as yet there was not
even the remotest prospect of the rich argosies upon its noble river.
The far-seeing Tables took early care to secure the hostelries and
other lodgings for their own assembling hosts. They arranged that
the northern Covenanters should assemble in Edinburgh, and march
in a body to meet their southern compatriots in Glasgow. It was to
be a muster in arms, a regular crusade. Every elected commissioner
was to take four or more attendants with him — ostensibly for advice ;
every burgh was to send two, four, or six good men to support its
commissioner ; and congregations were asked to pay the expenses
of any poor ministers in attendance. In answer to this appeal there
appeared one hundred and forty ministers, two professors, ninety-eight
ruling-elders, of whom seventeen were noblemen, nine were knights,
twenty-five were proprietors of land, and forty-seven were burgesses
of influence, together with their armed bodyguards. The contempt of
King Charles for this representative and highly educated assembly
can be traced to the ill-informed and prejudiced report of Hamilton
himself, which deceived the King into believing that the ' crue
assembled ' was a mob of boors, many unable to read and write, and
'the most part totallie voyd of learning,' yet 'resolved to follow the
opinion of thes feu ministers who pretend to be learned and thoes be
the most rigid and seditious puritanes that liveth. What then can be
expected but a totall disobedience to authoritie if not a present
rebellion ? ' ^ Burnet echoed that opinion in his Memoires, and helped
to perpetuate this false estimate of the Covenanters, which has so long
prejudiced students of this epoch. His mistake was all the more
gross, that he could easily have got evidence to disprove his state-
ment, that 'some commissioners there were who could neither read
nor write, and yet these were to judge of heresie and condemn
Arminius his points.'^ Professor Masson arrived at a juster estimate
when he described these ' first properly historical Covenanters ' as
1 Hamilton to Charles, 22nd Nov. 1638 : Ha7nilton Papers^ 1880, p. 59 ; Hist. MSS. Com.
(^Hamilton MSS.\ xi. vi. 99. ■^ Burnet, Metnaires, 98.
THE GLASGOW ASSEMBLY 299
* simply the whole flower and strength of the Scottish nation from the
highest peerage to the lowest peasantry.'^
The names, ranks, official positions, and signatures of those who Character
had subscribed the Covenant disprove unwarrantable assertions hke ggj^j^^^-^gg"^^'
Hamilton's, which unfortunately misled the King. A scrutiny of the
roll reveals the important fact that a more cultured convention of
aristocracy, clergy, and capable laymen had never met in Scotland
to deliberate upon ecclesiastical affairs.^ There was no uneducated
delegate among the number. The Privy Council by command ap-
peared in full muster. Three bishops — Ross, Brechin, and Glasgow —
secretly watched the gathering from the Bishop's Palace, near the
Cathedral, and waited for their Primus who was never to return.
The streets were thronged with armed men despite the orders of
Government. The Choir (or High Church) in the Cathedral had been
comfortably furnished with tiers of seats by the City magistrates.
That winter morning, Wednesday, 21st November 1638, saw an Assembly in
immense multitude crushed together in that sombre, cold Cathedral of (.^^^^^^^^^^^^1°^
Saint Mungo Kentigern, even then old and hoary. The churchyard, 21st Novem-
nave, chancel, and crypts surged with restless devotees, clamouring
and struggling with each other for seats, stances, and 'coigns of
vantage,' and not to be restrained by the City halberdiers. The
clerestory buzzed with the whispers of excited ladies, while the nave
and crypts resounded with the clangour of men armed with guns and
pistolets, for Hamilton reported that they came all ' boddin in feare of
war.' The gossiping, finical commissioner from Irvine, Mr. Robert
Baillie, 'warm-hearted, canny, blundering, babbling Baillie,' as Carlyle
described him, was there, and lost his temper in elbowing his rightful
way through the enthusiasts, who were displaying their weapons and
* Life of Milton, i. 728.
^ The rank and position of the no elective representative elders whose commissions were
sustained may be seen from the following list of the more influential members : The Earls of
Home, Lothian, Cassillis, Eglintoun, Rothes, Montrose, Wemyss ; the Lords Cranstoun, Hay
of Yester, Balmerino, Johnstoun, Loudoun, Sinclair, Lindsay, Cowpar; Kiiights, Ker of Cavers,
Humeof Wedderburn, Hepburn of Waughton, Murray of Touchadam, William Baillie, Gilbert
Ramsay, John Mackenzie, Stirling of Keir ; Principal John Adamson, etc. ; twelve provosts and
ex-provosts of the principal towns, besides bailies, town-clerks, and lairds. There seems to
have been no person of humble rank in the Convention.
300 THE COVENANTERS
using the short language of troopers. His experiences furnished him
ground for this comment : ' We might learn from Canterbury, yea from
the Pope, from the Turks or Pagans, modesty and manners,' but not
from those rascals, whom he, over-dainty for such a day, would have
flung out of his manse at Kilwinning.^ As anxious murmurs and pious
cries throbbed among the moving shadows cast by pillar and mullion,
the auditory was anticipating the idea of Pennant, the traveller, that
this wonderful monument of religion and art was a place wherein men
should only sing ' De Profundis clamavi.' This feeling must have
been intensified when the smoky candles from their sconces threw out
their tawny rays of light into these consecrated depths of darkness.
The audience. A chair of State was placed for the Lord High Commissioner,
Hamilton, and round it were seated the Privy Council in large
numbers, Traquair, Roxburgh, Argyll, Angus, Glencairn, and others.
Opposite the throne sat the Moderator and Clerk of Assembly at a
table. Between the Commissioner and Moderator sat the represen-
tatives of presbyteries, who were of noble rank — the Earl of Home
Elders among (Elder from Chirnside presbytery), Cranstoun (Earlston), Yester
(Haddington), Lothian (Dalkeith), Balmerino (Edinburgh), Johnston
(Middlebie), Cassillis (Ayr), Loudoun (Irvine), Eglintoun (Glasgow),
Sinclair (St. Andrews), Lindsay (Cupar), Rothes (Kirkcaldy), Burleigh
(Dunfermline), Montrose (Auchterarder), Wemyss (Perth), Cowpar
(Meigle), and others. Many knights, proprietors of lands, provosts,
town-clerks, and burgesses — by no means an illiterate faction — with
the clergy, occupied the tiers of benches. Places were reserved for
the younger sons of the titled members ; and ladies, too, watched the
proceedings. Robes of sacred office were wanting ; fire-arms and
steel blades were in abundance. Never in Scotland had such a
representative gathering met in warlike gear to settle the simple
question — Who is Head of the Scottish Church.'* Three kingdoms
were waiting for the answer.^
^ Baillie, Letters, i. 123. Baillie in a History of Gen. Assembly at Glasgow, etc., gives a
graphic account of meeting : ibid., \. 118-76.
2 The complete record of this Assembly will be found in Peterkin, Records, ()()-\()2,', cf.
HTViWit, Letters, i. 118-76; Reg. Privy Counc, vii. 91-102.
THE GLASGOW ASSEMBLY 301
The forenoon was occupied with worship and a sermon, topical
and up to date, upon the 'Seven Golden Candlesticks,' which the
venerable minister of the Inner High Church, 'old Mr. John Bell'
delivered, without being heard, so that he failed to illuminate the
audience. In the afternoon. Bell, as interhn Moderator, in a fervent
prayer, melting many to tears, acknowledged Christ to be the sole
Head of the Church, and constituted the Assembly. The Commis-
sioner handed his commission to Sandilands, the interim Clerk,
whose father acted as clerk in the Aberdeen Assembly in 16 1 8.
Other commissions were produced. The first skirmish arose in Preliminary
connection with the appointment of the Moderator, which the Com-
missioner did not wish to be made until after the commissions of
the members had been examined and passed. Hamilton's proposal
was rejected, and he entered his protest that the nomination should
not prejudice the spiritual lords in any of their privileges. The Com-
missioner next expressed his desire that a Declinature of the Assembly,
carefully prepared by the bishops in their own interests, and afterwards
revised and approved of by the King himself, should be read
at this stage. This proposal was also unacceptable, and the reading
of the document was postponed. The Commissioner thereupon
claimed votes for his six Assessors — Traquair, Roxburgh, Argyll,
Lauderdale, Carnegie, and Stewart, and the claim was disallowed.
The next business was the appointment of a Moderator, and Alexander
Henderson, minister of Leuchars, was chosen. Thereafter the
Assembly adjourned.
At the meeting next day, similar wranglings arose over the ap- Second day of
pointment of the Clerk. For too obvious reasons, Hamilton wished his
own Royalist nominee, Sandilands, appointed, but the Assembly pre-
ferred Johnston of Wariston, and the latter, to their great delight, laid
on the table the minutes of previous Assemblies, which had been lost.
Another heated discussion, in which Hamilton and Traquair, on the
Crown side, were answered by Rothes and Loudoun, arose out of the
application of the bishops to be heard in support of their Declinature,
before the commissions of members were passed. Argyll — converted,
302 THE COVENANTERS
it is said, by Henderson the very night before the Assembly — young
and hasty, interposed with some irrelevant opinion and was warmly
rebuked by the Moderator for his inopportune interference and ad-
vice. Argyll was not an elected Commissioner. The business of the
Declinature was again held over. The protestations of the Commis-
sioners became chronic, but unavailing.
At length, on 27th November, the Declinature was formally pre-
sented by Dr. Robert Hamilton, minister of Glassford, procurator for
the absent bishops. Strange to say, it was signed by a minority of
the bishops only, namely, the two Archbishops and the Bishops of
Edinburgh, Galloway, Ross, and Brechin. The preamble of the
Terms of the Declinature bore that, while a General Assembly was necessary for
Declinature of , r i /--i i i • /^ • r^^
the bishops, ^^he government or the Church, this Convention at Glasgow was a
seditious gathering" for many reasons. Epitomised these were : the
representatives were elected before the Assembly was legally called ;
the clerical members had not subscribed the Confession and taken the
oath of fidelity before their ordinaries ; they had not subscribed the
Negative Confession (i 581) ; they had opposed the Episcopal office
established by law ; they held commissions from illegally constituted
Presbyteries, which had discharged the 'constant-moderators'; they
were associated with lay ruling-elders, who overruled free elections ;
the representatives elect were partisans, rebels, and schismatics ; they
admitted lay-elders to legislative functions in the Assembly ; they had
already prejudged the business of the Assembly ; they had an animus
against the bishops ; they debarred the bishops, unless they had been
elected by Presbyteries, from the Assembly ; they disowned the right
of the Primus to be moderator of the General Assembly. For these
and other reasons the bishops would not compear for trial in a court
which they thus held to be incompetent.
This Declinature was a libel, as impolitic as it was impolite, and
was essentially a manifesto from the Crown, since its terms had been
revised by the King himself.^ The Assembly ordered answers to be
framed. One set was composed by Wariston, and David Calderwood,
' Burnet, Memoires, 91.
THE GLASGOW ASSEMBLY 303
minister of Pencaitland, whom contemporaries delighted to call * that
learned and laborious servant of Christ,' and another by Andrew
Ramsay, minister in Edinburgh. Over these answers another acri- Answers to the
monious debate took place, in which the Commissioner's English ^'^•'"=^^'^'^^-
chaplain took part. The Moderator ended the discussion by calling
upon the Assembly to declare whether it considered itself competent
to deal with the whole subject of Bishops, the indictment, and their
Declinature before the House. The Commissioner demanded a post-
ponement, or otherwise, he said, he would depart. The Assembly
was in no mood for delay. The Commissioner showed his temper,
drew from his pocket informations giving a discreditable account of
the manner in which The Tables had packed the Assembly, and then
proceeded to announce that he would not preside over an Assembly The Commis-
wherein lay -elders, and these so improperly elected, had spiritual ^^^"^j'^^^ ^j^^
authority. He could do no other than depart. The eloquence of Assembly.
Rothes and Loudoun fell on Hamilton's deaf ears. The Commissioner
now requested the Moderator to close the meeting with prayer, and
was informed that no such instruction was valid. Thereupon, before
leavinof the meeting-, Hamilton said : ' I make a declaration that
nothing done here in this Assembly shall be of any force to bind any
of His Majesty's subjects; and I, in His Majesty's name, discharge
this Court to sit any longer.' Followed by the Privy Council, Argyll
alone remaining, and by some members of the House, Hamilton made
for the door, which was found to be locked, no doubt designedly.^
As aisles and roof resounded with the unholy noise of the Commis-
sioner's retinue, of swords and spurs clanking on the paved floor,
and also of the breaking open of the door, Wariston, by request of
Rothes, was calmly reading a Protestation, in the name of the Lord
Jesus Christ, the only Head and Monarch of His own Church, against
the Commissioner's too hasty retiral.
After words of encouragement had been delivered by the Modera-
tor, David Dickson, Harry Rollock, and Andrew Cant, Lord Erskine,
son of the Earl of Mar, rose from his seat, and with tears in his eyes
^ Burnet, Memoir es^ io6.
304
THE COVENANTERS
besought them to admit him as a Covenanter. The Assembly then
quietly proceeded with its business, and almost unanimously declared
itself to be the Court competent to try the case of the pretended
bishops, their Declinature and Protestation, notwithstanding the step
which the Commissioner had taken. Next day, 29th November, the
Proclamation Commissioncr caused a Proclamation to be made at the Market Cross
Assembly. ^^ Glasgow dissolving the Assembly ; and, this time accompanied by
Lord Erskine, Wariston made the formal Protestation in reply.^
Nevertheless, the Assembly continued sitting, and was assisted in its
deliberations by Argyll, who, in a very ambiguous manner, threw in
his lot with the new party, although shortly before he had signed the
King's Covenant of compromise. The character of this remarkable
nobleman, who maintained the policy of his family by taking the side
of the most powerful, was thoroughly gauged by Hamilton in a report
he sent to the King at this time, in which he wrote: 'Argyll is the
only man now called up as a true patriot, a loyal subject, a faithful
counsellor, and, above all, rightly set for the preservation of religion.
And, truly sir, he takes it upon him. He must be well looked to, for
it fears me, he will prove the dangerousest man in this state. He is
so far from favouring Episcopal government that with all his soul he
wishes it abolished.'^ In the same report, Hamilton sends his ap-
preciation of the bishops and political men of the hour. In his confi-
dent opinion, the bishops had brought about the muddle by their
illegalities, pride, folly, incapacity, and despicable lives. * It will be
found,' he honestly wrote, 'that some of them have not been of the
best lives, as St. Andrews, Brechin, Argyle, Aberdeen ; too many of
them inclined to simony ; yet, for my Lord of Ross [Maxwell], the
most hated of all, and generally by all, there are few faults laid to his
charge more than ambition.'^ In another letter, he regretted the
absence of Bishop Maxwell, * for ther is none of the clergie heere thatt
The Commis
sioner's
report of
proceedings.
^ This was followed by a Royal Proclamation, of date 8th December 1638, prohibiting all
the subjects from acknowledging the unlawful Glasgow Assembly, and from signing any bond
emanating from it : Peterkin, Records, 124 ; Reg. Privy Counc, vii. 95-102.
- Hamilton to King, November 27, 1638 : Peterkin, Records, 113.
3 Ibid,
THE GLASGOW ASSEMBLY 305
can say aine thing in defence of themselfes.'^ Hamilton was satisfied
with the loyalty of Traquair, Huntly, Perth, Tullibardine, Lauderdale,
Southesk, Kinnoul, Findlater, Linlithgow, Dalyell, Sir John Hamil-
ton, and Sir John Hay. He was suspicious of Roxburgh, Wigtown,
Haddington, Kinghorn, and Sir Thomas Nicolson. He referred to
Rothes, Balmerino, Lindsay, Lothian, Loudoun, Yester, and Cranstoun
as the prime movers in the rebellion ; to Lord Advocate Hope as one
' ill-disposed ' ; and to Montrose as ' none more vainly foolish,' Hamil-
ton further concluded that these Covenanters had ulterior evil aims
and that their religion was a cloak to rebellion against monarchy. He
advised the King to suppress the agitation at once by paralysing
Scottish trade by sea, especially in the strong burghs on the coast,
thus rendering the people poor and miserable. He suggested that
the embodiment of the Gordon Highlanders under Huntly, and of the
Lowlanders under Traquair or Roxburgh, might bring the agitators
to their senses. Hamilton's delineations of character were much more
valuable than his counsel.
The same courier who carried the Report brought a letter from
Hamilton to Laud, in which he gave an account of his experiences in
Glasgow, and stated that he feared he was spending his last night on
earth. Laud, who said that if he could but right the wrong he would
gladly sing his Nunc Dimittis, replied in these words : ' I will be bold
to say, never were more gross absurdities, nor half so many in so
short a time, committed in any public meeting ; and for a National
Assembly, never did the Church of Christ see the like.'^ Hamilton
did not particularise the clergy ; his chaplain, Balcanqual, did. Re- Baicanquai's
ferring to Balcanqual, Laud wrote to Hamilton : ' I find in the Dean's ^^°"^ *
letter, that Mr. Alexander Henderson, who went all this while for a
calm, and quiet, and calm-spirited man, hath shewed himself a most
violent and passionate man, and a Moderator without moderation.
Truly, my Lord, never did I see any man in that humour yet, but he
was deep-dyed in some violence or other, and it would have been a
^ Hamilton Papers, 55, November 5, 1638 ; Reg. Privy Cotinc, vii. 91-4.
^ Burnet, Memoir es, 108 : Laud to Hamilton, 3rd December 1638.
2 Q
Assembly
passes
seventy-two
Acts.
Episcopacy
abolished.
306 THE COVENANTERS
wonder to me if Henderson had held free.' It is evident that Dean
Balcanqual had sent to Laud an unfavourable account of the clerical
Covenanters, and on receipt of the news Laud went to the King to
give him advice, so that Hamilton might not be ' kept in the dark
for anything.'
The Assembly, now liberated from the overshadowing influence
of the Lord High Commissioner, and indeed feeling relieved from
the incubus of autocratic authority, with that resilience of spirit native
to the Scottish race, set itself to the practical work of legislation, and,
during its many sederunts, from 29th November till 20th December,
passed no fewer than seventy-two Acts. One Act annulled the six last
Assemblies — Linlithgow 1606, 1608, Glasgow 16 10, Aberdeen 1616,
St. Andrews 161 7, Perth 16 18 — on various grounds invalidating their
authority and the legality of their decrees. The principal reasons
were the presence of members not elected constitutionally by presby-
teries, the absence of lay-elders, and Crown interference. The oaths
exacted by bishops from ministers were annulled. Several ministers
were deposed for ecclesiastical and criminal offences. Acts were passed
condemning the Perth Articles, the Prayer Book, the Book of Canons,
the High Commission, Episcopacy, the profanation of the Sabbath, the
contemners of the Covenant, and other matters out of harmony with
the Covenanting policy. The Act (22) 'declaring Episcopacy to have
been abjured by the Confession of Faith, 1 580-1, and to be removed
out of this Kirk,' was passed on the 8th December, with one dis-
sentient voice. It was that of Robert Baillie of Kilwinning, still
finical, not recovered from his ruffling, and incapable of comprehending
wherein the Negative Confession of 1581 abjured Episcopacy and the
Perth Articles.^
The chief interest of the Assembly centred in the processes
accusing all the bishops of various derelictions of duty, breaches of
law, transgressions, and horrible vices. With great foresight the
Moderator, Henderson, gravely charged the Committee who were
^ Peterkin, Records^ 46, 168, 170, 269. This resolution was affirmed in the Edinburgh
Assembly, 30th August 1639 : ibid.^ 269.
^^^^^a^y^:^^, (n^y/?^o€&/'^^.
THE GLASGOW ASSEMBLY . 307
appointed to frame the indictments to see that they proceeded
' accurately and orderHe, and that it may be upon some sure grounds, Process
for our proceedings will be strichted [tested] to the uttermost.' This^fJJ^^^^'^^
judicial charge itself indicates the care with which the Covenanters
proceeded to their solemn trial of the hierarchy. Members gave
evidence as to their knowledge of the misdemeanours committed by
the accused. No rebutting evidence was forthcoming. The panels
were absent. The verdict went by default. All the bishops were
found guilty of breach of The Cautions — agreements made 'in the
As^mbly holden at Montrose in 1600, for the restricting of the
minister voter from encroaching upon the liberties and jurisdiction of
this Kirk,' under pain of deposition and excommunication. The vices of the
personal misdemeanours libelled, and held to be proved, were : the
Primate was a Sabbath-breaker, a tippler in taverns late at night, a
falsifier of edicts of Assembly, a contemner of Assemblies and of the
Covenant, an adulterer, and a Simoniac ; Sydserf, Bishop of Galloway,
taught Arminianism, used the crucifix, insisted on the kneeling posture
at Communion, was a persecutor of Presbyterians, and a Sabbath-
breaker ; Whitford, Bishop of Brechin, was infamous, an adulterer, a
drunkard, a user of the crucifix, and a preacher of Arminianism and
Popery ; Lindsay, Bishop of Edinburgh, was a promoter of the
innovations, affected Popish rites, domineered over presbyteries, and
winked at heresy ; Bannatyne, Bishop of Aberdeen, was a Simoniac,
liturgist, shielder of Papists, and an apostate ; Maxwell, Bishop of
Ross, bowed to the altar (as did Whitford), wore Episcopal vestments,
used the liturgy, deposed godly ministers, played cards on Sabbath
and on a Communion day, was fraudulent, and fomented the troubles
in the Church. More or less scandalous offences were alleged against
the other bishops : Wedderburn, Bishop of Dunblane, was an Arminian
and innovator ; Graham, Bishop of Orkney, played at curling on
Sabbath; Guthrie, Bishop of Moray, a staunch liturgist, was *so mad
upon dancing that, at his daughter's marriage, he danced in his shirt ' ;
Lindsay, Archbishop of Glasgow, was an oppressor of his clergy and
vassals ; Fairlie, Bishop of Argyle, was of Canterburian tendencies ;
3o8 THE COVENANTERS
all they could allege against Neil Campbell, Bishop of The Isles, was,
that he ignored The Caveats — The Cautions. Loudoun declared that
The Tables would stake ' estates, lyves, and honour ' that their
allegations against the prelates were true/
Montrose's The bitterest invective ever uttered against these prelates was that
opmionof q|- ^YiQ Marquis of Montrose, who declared them to be the cause of
the bishops. -^
the irreparable evils in the nation, since at their instance, ' the very
quintessence of Popery was publicly preached by Arminians, and
the life of the Gospel stolen away by enforcing on the Kirk a dead
Service-book, the brood of the bowels of the Whore of Babel.' '^
On 6th April 1638, James Cleye, schoolmaster of Dundee, wrote
Pasquillus contra Episcopos, 1638, a bitter satire, beginning :
' Atheus Andreas est, stultus Glasgua, Brechin.'
An old translation runs :
' St. Andreus is an Atheist, and Glasgow is ane Gowke :
A vencher Brechin : Edinburgh, of avarice a pocke.
To popery prone is Galloway, Dunkeld is rich in thesaure,
A courtier Rosse, but glutton lyke Argyle eats out of measure,
Dround Aberdein in povertie : vagge Murray's subtile vitt,
Dumblaine the cripple loues the coupe ; Jylles for all subject fitt.
Skilled Orknay is in archerie, as Caithness is in droges.
O quhat a shame Christ's flocke to trust to such vnfaithful doges.' ^
William Drummond of Hawthornden wrote a bitter satire on the
bishops, Lymes on the Bishopes, \\th Apryll, 1638, in which he
declares that if he were king he would make their hides into leather
for coaches and boots.
' Or let me be as King, then of their skine
I 'le causse dresse lether and fyne Marokin.
To cover coatches (quher they wont to ryde),
And valke in bootes and shoes made of their hyde.'
He also designates them ' tobacco- breathed devyns.'* Sydserf he
dubbed ' that Roman snaikie viper.'
^ Gordon, Hist, of Scots Affairs^ 30, Spald. Club. edit.
2 Napier, Metnoirs, App. xlv. ; ibid., i. 215 ; ii. 787.
■' Poems, 404 (Malt. Club) ; Pasquils, 67-9.
■• }A2L\(\m.tw\., Pasquils, 15-24.
THE GLASGOW ASSEMBLY 309
The doom of deposition and excommunication was passed upon the
Bishops of St. Andrews, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Ross, Galloway, Brechin,
Dunblane, and Aberdeen. Excommunication in the case of the rest
was made conditional — if they accepted the verdict and showed
penitence, they were to suffer deposition only. Not a voice was
raised in mitigation of these sentences. If the hierarchy were inno-
cent, was there not an honest man in that assembly to protest against
this ill-treatment ? With commendable charity, in our day, Mr. Grub
endeavours to discredit the scandalous accusations against the bishops
on this ground: 'The circumstance, that the formal sentences of Mr. Grub's
, . . '11 • ^ • r 1 opinion of
deposition against the prelates contain no enumeration 01 personal ^-^^ verdict.
crimes, is a strong presumption in favour of their innocence. Could
such have been proved by reasonable evidence, it is not likely that
the Assembly would have rested the deposition and excommunication
on ecclesiastical offences alone.' ^ But Mr. Grub overlooked the fact,
referred to in the sentence, that they were deposed * for their refusall
to underly the tryal of the reigning slander of sundrie other grosse
transgressions and crymes laid to their charge.' The proof was ready. ^
Nor did Mr. Grub give sufficient weight to the terms of the
Moderator's address when he published the verdict. The Assembly
was convinced of the truth of the allegations. If on the one hand the
libel seems incredible, on the other, it is scarcely fair to the memory
of men who prided themselves in being conscientious, even to being
finical regarding every jot and tittle of the law, to blame them for
fanatical uncharitableness in condemning, for crimes never perpetrated,
the accused, who were not heard in their own defence. The narrative
of the share of the proceedings in which the Moderator took part
proves, at least, that a judge so fair-minded and honourable as
Henderson was morally certain of the existence of the scandals which
he condemned. And the Commissioner acknowledged the existence
of the offences libelled.^
The grim Cathedral, pitilessly cold on that thirteenth day of
^ Grub, Eccles. Hist, of Scotland, iii. 48.
'^ a. postea, pp. 310, 311, Henderson's closing- address. " Cf. antea, p. 304.
3IO THE COVENANTERS
December, was a fitting place wherein to publish ' The Bishops'
Doom,' so unrelentingly final. The church was crowded. The
accused were called to the bar, and did not compear. That morning
the reader in church, thinking to improve the occasion by a suitable
reading, selected a passage in St. John's Gospel, where it reads :
' These things have I spoken unto you, that ye should not be offended.
They shall put you out of the synagogues ; yea, the time cometh, that
whosoever killeth you will think that he doeth God service.' But
to prevent the taunt, or the incitement to intolerance, the minister
made the reader choose another theme. The Moderator took for the
subject of his discourse Psalm ex. : ' The Lord said unto my Lord,
Sit Thou at My right hand, until I make Thine enemies Thy footstool,'
and in a powerful evangelical sermon expounded the true calling of a
Christian and the exact dominion of the Saviour in the soul and in
The Bishops' the world. Then came the solemn peroration beginning : ' Till I
make Thine enemies Thy footstool.' With scathing scorn he referred
to the accused as the friends of Antichrist, the sons of Jerubbaal, who
in the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, and the pride of life, became
' unprofitable and rotten members, whom we are this day to cut off.'
Holding in his hand 'an abstract of the proof against the bishops,'
Henderson solemnly said : ' I will cause read a paper unto you, at the
hearing whereof I think your heart shall quake, your hair shall stand,
and your flesh creep, when ye hear tell that Christians, let be Church-
men, who reckon themselves the chiefest and most eminent men in
the Church, and call themselves the pastor of pastors, should have
fallen out in such foul acts as these are.'^ He next ran over a
Catalogue of Catalogue of their iniquities — treachery to the Church, wasting of
their sins. benefices, tyranny, simony, bringing in innovations, extravagance,
drinking, filthy dancing, swearing, gambling, adultery, and ' many
other gross transgressions and slanders, at length expressed, and
clearlie proven in their process,' and thereupon declared them worthy
of ' this terrible sentence, the like whereof has not been heard in a
land, because we never heard of such matters in our kirk.' Although
' Peterkin, Records^ 178.
THE GLASGOW ASSEMBLY 311
Henderson had only one night wherein to compose this wonderful
sermon, he clearly indicates that his words were not the hasty utter-
ances of an incompetent man treading on uncertain ground, but of
a logical, cultured, conscientious judge, impressed with the responsi-
bility of his holy office. His awful solemnity, in calling down the
Divine approbation on his address and on the sentence, struck terror
into the audience. He uttered the dread words, ' We, the people of The sentence.
God, and I, as their mouth in the name of the Eternal God and of
His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, ... do excommunicate the said
eight persons from the participation of the Sacraments, from the
Communion of the visible Church, and from the prayers of the
Church ; and so long as they continue obdurate, discharges you all,
as ye would not be partakers of their vengeance, from keeping any
religious fellowship with them, and thus give them over into the
hands of the devil, assuring you, in the name of the Lord Jesus, that
except their repentence be evident, the fearful wrath and vengeance
of the God of Heaven shall overtake them even in this life, and after
this world, everlasting vengeance.' ^ To modify this terrible doom,
Henderson said, that the visible Church only demanded the destruc-
tion of the flesh for the saving of the soul. The other bishops were
simply deposed. However, that succeeding generations might under-
stand that this fearful judgment was not the result of passion or
prejudice, the Moderator concluded, 'You may perceive how circum- justification
spectly this Assembly have gone in giving judgment against these sentence
men. Neither have they judged according to rumours or reports,
nor yet by their own private knowledge, but have proceeded accord-
ing to things that have been clearly proved, which makes us rather
be persuaded of God's approbation of our sentence.' Whatever we
may now think of this remarkable trial and its result, those acting
as judges in it asserted that their action was controlled by the con-
scientious desire to please their God, and their verdict was according
to incriminating evidence.
After disposing of the prelates and several prelatical sympathisers
^ Peterkin, Recoi-ds, i8o.
312 THE COVENANTERS
in the ministry, the Assembly proceeded to purge the Church of
scandalous and immoral ministers.' It was further occupied passing
Sundry Acts. Constructive Acts re-establishing the Presbyterian system, and abolish-
ing all traces of Episcopacy, ordaining the 1 580-1 Covenant to be
discharged and that of 1638 to be subscribed by all, limiting the
liberty of the press, translating ministers, and appointing a public
Thanksgiving for the success of the Assembly.^
Act 8 annulled, with reasons given, the last six Assemblies, 1606,
1608, 1610, 1616, 1617, 1618;
Act 9 annulled the oath exacted from ministers by bishops ;
Act 17 declared the abjuring and removing of the Perth Articles ;
Acts 18, 19, 20, 21 respectively condemned the Service Book,
Book of Canons, Book of Ordination and High Commission ;
Act 22 cleared the meaning of the King's Confession, and abjured
and removed Episcopacy ;
Acts 23 and 24 deposed the bishops ;
Act 25 restored the Church Courts to their powers, etc. ;
Act 29 directed the erection of parochial schools ;
Act 41 was directed against opponents of the Covenant ;
Act 69 enjoined all ruling elders to accept the Covenant and Kirk
Constitutions ;
Act 45 condemned chapters, archdeacons, deacons, and suchlike
Popish trash ;
Act 53 condemned ministers holding civil offices.
The Assembly, after interesting debates upon the legality of
Diocesan Episcopacy and the obnoxious innovations, agreed to a
deliverance, that Episcopacy, the Five Articles, and the other books,
rites, and ceremonies complained of were all incompatible with the
terms of The Confession of Faith, and therefore already abjured. An
* Referring to Archdean Gledstanes — 'a monster of drunkenness and atheistic profanity' —
Baillie declares that 'Rome Pagan could not have suffered such a beastlie man to have re-
mained a priest, even to I^acchus ' : Letters, i. 149. Fully persuaded of the guilt of 'all our
monstrous fellows,' Baillie refers thus to Forrester, minister at Melrose, 'this monster was
justlie deposed' : ibid., 166. Indeed no defence of these Carolan Church dignitaries and ex-
communicates is possible.
-' Acts of Assembly, Pelerkin, Records, 46, 47.
THE GLASGOW ASSEMBLY 313
Act was passed (No. 62) ordaining Presbyteries to publish this ex-
planation. Another Act (64) ordained ' the Covenant subscribed in
February last to be now again subscribed, with the Assembly's de-
claration thereof, and this to be intimated by all ministers in their
pulpits.' In consequence of these Acts the later Covenants contain
an addendum, explaining that subscribers swear the Covenant, on the
understanding that the Confession of Faith abjured Episcopacy and
the ' nocent ceremonies.' That there might be no further dubiety as
to the meaning of the disputed bond of 1 580-1, an Act (No. 65) was
passed ' discharging all subscripcon to the Covenant subscribed by
His Majesties Commissioner and the Lords of Councell, which is
likewise to be intimated.'^ An important Act (No. 68) reasserted
the claim of the Church to be self-governing, and having the power to
convene its own Assemblies, and it indicted the Assembly to meet
in Edinburgh on Wednesday, 3rd July 1639.^ This was a bold
challenge to the King, who repudiated that right as inherent in
the Church.
Thursday, 20th December 1638, was the last day on which this The Modera-
Assembly met. Henderson, with a modest reference to his share in counsd'^''"^
the glorious work then consummated, called upon his brethren to bless
God for ' these worthie noblemen who have been cheefe instruments
in this work,' and to thank the King, to whom they were loyal and
from whom they expected approval of their Acts, for their peaceable
Convention. He adjured the clergy to cultivate ' greater pietie,
more religious exercises, greater sobrietie, chastitie, and care to keep
the body from uncleanness, greater care to perform the duties of
righteousness, not so much craft, crueltie, oppression, falsehood in the
land, as was before this work began.' In a similar strain, David
Dickson, Andrew Ramsay, and Argyll, who had been admitted to the
counsels of the Assembly, addressed the House and counselled its
members to maintain the Reformation in the bonds of unity, peace,
and love. After prayer was made by the Moderator, the Assembly
sang Psalm cxxxiii. : —
^ Peterkin, Records, 46, 47, 167, 168. - Act 68, ibid., 47.
2 R
314 THE COVENANTERS
Behold how good a thing it is,
and how becoming well,
Together such as brethren are
in unity to dwell.'
The benediction was pronounced and the Assembly dissolved. As
the brethren departed, Henderson is reported to have said : ' We have
now cast down the walls of Jericho ; let him that rebuildeth them
beware of the curse of Hiel the Beth-elite.'^
In this manner, and by these agents, was the emancipation of the
Church of Scotland from the domination of the Crown and bishops
accomplished, to the inconvenience of a very limited number of indivi-
duals. The rapidity with which the revolutionary movement spread,
the ease with which the Covenant took root throughout the land, and
the total absence of bloodshed at the supreme crisis of change, all
indicate that the agitation was justifiable, and that the aim of the
framers of the Covenant harmonised with the desires of the people
generally, with few exceptions. The rising may not have been a
purely religious crusade — for questions of politics, land, parliamentary
power, and socialism were entangled at this time — but there was a
unity of aim in clergy and laity in focussing their efforts to obtain one
indispensable result, namely, the maintenance of the Church within its
own spiritual sphere, wherein official Churchmen were to be compelled
to use their energies only in propagating religion, pure and undefiled.
Results of The result of the Covenant, and of the Assembly of Glasgow
consequent upon it, was to make practicable again the safe and prudent
scheme of Church government promoted by Knox and the founders
of Scottish Presbyterianism, through which the Church was to be left
unmolested in making and executing its own laws based upon the
Word of God, to remain in full enjoyment of its patrimony, and to
obtain the co-operation and protection of the civil ruler. The Glasgow
Assembly merely reasserted fundamental rights, which the Crown had
too often overridden, to the hurt of the Church and the misery of the
^ Stevenson, History of Church and State of Scotland, 352 (Edin., 1840). Stevenson gives
no authority for Henderson's closing remarks. Almost the same words, however, are found in
James Guthrie 5 last speech, ist June 1661 : Wodrow, Hist., i. 192 note.
Covenant.
THE GLASGOW ASSEMBLY 315 .
country. The Covenant was in reality a legal appeal to the people —
the ultimate fountain of governmental power — demanding a plebiscite
on the main questions in dispute ; and, according to the advisers of
the Crown, the Covenant was a constitutional document properly
drawn and promulgated. The members of the General Assembly,
conscious of their own position and power, asserted themselves to be
the People, in representative government assembled in the spiritual
sphere to promote the cause of religion. Their standpoint was
diametrically opposite to that of the King.
It has often been contended that the Glasgow Assembly exceeded The Assembly
its own admitted powers, and overstepped its boundaries, when it set fnl-o^^'^etent^
aside those Acts of Parliament estal^lishing Episcopacy and its apparatus
of religion. But it must not be left out of consideration — and the
point in its relation to Scots law and custom is an important one — that
the Reformers, and their ecclesiastical heirs, the Covenanters, at every
step, used the legal procedure at their disposal to maintain the consti-
tutional rights that were being filched away ; and they cannot be justly
accused of leaving their own proper sphere of action to usurp jurisdiction
in another, because they declared that statutes for ratifying edicts of the
Church, themselves obtained in an unconstitutional manner, could not
be legally and morally binding, being neither national nor popular Acts.
The learned and accurate Clerk of the Assembly, Johnston, rightly
asserted that he knew * certainlie that this office of the bishops was never
established by any Act of Parliament in Scotland.'^ It is a question
for jurists how far conscientious men, who accept guidance alone from
Scripture, must tolerate the encroachments of the civil power upon the
privileges of the Church, claiming to be a free power. Christian or
not, the Covenanters had enough of Scots manliness to resist, first by
legal instruments, every attempt on the part of Caesar to roll Christ's
crown in the dust, and then to repel any other affront at the point of
the sword, interposing the body as a shield for the soul. Still the Aim of the
influence of faith resulted in limiting the practical efforts of the genuine ^°''^"^"^^'^'-
Covenanter, for the maintenance of his religious cause, to a defensive
^ T eterkin, JiecordSf 167.
Results of
316 THE COVENANTERS
rather than an offensive method. He thus endeavoured to obey-
both the commands of Christ and the promptings of nature, arguing
that Scripture does not forbid individuals nor the nation to defend
their rights. One fauh may be reasonably alleged against this General
Assembly — it was not comprehensive enough. It might have been a
national convocation, a Folk-mote, first assembled in every parish to
select representative members to a National Assembly. As it was,
it nearly approached to that standard, if we reckon that the members
sent must have largely represented the vast multitudes who willingly
signed the Covenant, and afterwards ratified the action of the Church
by arms. It became the actual General Assembly when the army of
Leslie mustered a little later. The change of the ecclesiastical regime
was brought about by no fraud, chicanery, or deception of the masses
most interested, as far as the leaders of the Covenanters were con-
cerned. The Covenant was the will of the people.
The main results of this bloodless revolution were : The Word of
the Covenant. Qod, as the sole rule of faith and morals, was restored to its authori-
tative position ; the Lord Jesus Christ was again enthroned as the
Head of the Church ; the principle of autocracy was condemned ; the
seat of power was asserted to be in the People, as taught by Buchanan,
Goodman, and other Reformers ; the national will regarding religion
expressed in the Covenant was unmistakably announced ; Episco-
pacy, as a barren and unwelcome imposition, was extinguished ;
Scottish Presbytery, as a polity warranted by Scripture, was revived ;
the right of the laity to representation in Church Courts was ratified ;
and the personal interests of individuals in their own spiritual welfare was
so quickened, that, for long after 1638, the printing-presses of Scotland
poured out a flood of books and pamphlets, indicating the joy and
satisfaction which the emancipation of the Church had conferred.
Such were the most important results of the National Covenant
and of the Glasgow Assembly. To undo these, King Charles had two
choices — to convene the Scottish Folk-mote himself and obtain a repudia-
tion of this work, or to draw his Flnglish sword. Unhappily for himself
and for distressed Scotland, the misguided King chose the latter course.
THE FIRST BISHOPS' WAR 317
CHAPTER XI
THE FIRST bishops' WAR
The occasion for a miracle had now arrived. At least, Laud, per- Poiicy ofthe
ceiving the desperate straits into which Wentworth, Lord Deputy of
Ireland, Hamilton, and himself had brought the King, so expressed
his view of the crisis, immediately after the decision against John
Hampden, in 1638. ' It is not the Scottish business alone that I look
upon,' wrote Laud, * but the whole frame of things at home and
abroad, with vast expenses out of little treasure, and my misgiving
soul is deeply apprehensive of no small evils coming on. ... I can
see no cure without a miracle.' At one time, Laud imagined that split
noses, lopped off ears, and other atrocities would be a certain cure for
undesirable enthusiasm ; but had this visionary dreamed another
dream, he would have perceived the heads of King, Primate, and
Viceroy rolling off the bloody stage and failing to make even a tem-
porary remedy. None of these men comprehended the situation.
The statecraft of Charles was elementary and ineffective compared
with that of his father. Hamilton was probably more treacherous
than obtuse when he encouraged the King in his unsound policy of
making war the cure, and consequently of ordering Hamilton to ' win
time,' to flatter the rebels with what inducements he pleased, and to
leave them to themselves until they cut each other's throats.^
The Scots were now rapidly arming, mustering, and drilling in Preparations
every parish. A representative Committee of Estates, appointed with
full legislative and executive functions, soon established a complete
military organisation whereby every fourth man in the land was con-
^ Peterkin, Records^ 68, 70, 80.
3i8 THE COVENANTERS
scribed for active service, every male between the ages of sixteen and
sixty stood to arms, and local supplies and subsidies were exacted/
Eager officers returned from the Continent in hope of employment.
Bishop Burnet's account of the universal enthusiasm and self-sacrifice
rendering any compulsion unnecessary, and Baillie's overdrawn pic-
tures of the popular ardour, are largely discounted by the frantic
appeals found in the documents quoted by Wariston in his Diary,
wherein the despair of the Covenanting leaders at their ' wants of
money, munition, victual, order, and discipline, the natural impossi-
bilities either to retire, remain, or goe on,' is described at the time the
Scots stood face to face with the King's army on the Border.^ Not-
withstanding this weakness, all the Covenanters needed was a sound
statesman to concentrate their energies and turn their enthusiasm to
practical account, in order that they might present an unbroken front
to the power of England. This required no small amount of assur-
ance on the part of a leader, as well as a determined hardihood on the
part of his colleagues and subalterns. There were many prominent
politicians, not lacking in talent, Rothes, Lothian, Lindsay, Loudoun,
Cassillis, Balmerino, and others, but two nobles seemed to fill the
public eye more than others at this time — Montrose and Argyll ; and,
while differing from each other in nearly every respect, they had
one quality in common, in their ambition to lead their disaffected
countrymen.
Earl of James Graham, fifth Earl of Montrose, was born in 1612, and was
1612-1650. ^" ^^^ ^^^^ °^ ^^^ effervescing, romantic nature, when the national
outburst of religious enthusiasm caught him, a high-spirited young man,
not loner after his return from travellino- on the Continent. A grood
face and striking appearance, a cultured mind, a poetic disposition, a
hot rather than a tender heart, all realised by Montrose himself, went
to form an individuality whose impulsive acts have been commonly
reckoned as instances of chivalry, and proofs of the possession of a
noble nature uncommon in a rude land. It may have been true that
Hamilton, with feelings of jealousy, had poisoned the King against
^ Rothes, Relation, 80 ; Baillie, i. 191. ^ Wariston, Diary, 36, 44, 50, 56, 58.
THE FIRST BISHOPS' WAR 319
this gallant subject, and made him slight the youthful courtier so much
that he took revenge by joining the distasteful cause of the Cove-
nanters ;^ still there was not a little discernment in the crafty Hamilton
when he further informed the King that among the rebels there was
'none more vainly foolish than Montrose.'^ That dash and gallantry
on many a battlefield, which made him almost invincible, were less
the tokens of military genius — for Montrose was merely a sporting
archer at St. Andrews — than the proofs of the successful knight-
errantry of a dreamer, who imagined he might become a rival to
Caesar and Alexander.^ His lack of power to see things in their
proper perspective, to discern the seemliness and propriety of a line of
conduct in keeping with his principles and pretensions, and to illus-
trate the supposed grandeur of his soul in the actions of a wise states-
man, made Montrose unreliable as a leader of the malcontents. His
final theatrical appearance on the scaffold, dressed as a superb dandy,
evidenced the peculiar contexture of a frivolous mind.
On the other hand, Archibald Campbell, eighth Earl of Argyll, Eari of Argyll,
had no personal charms to be vain about, and would have been of '^^ '
no moment to his compatriots had he not had the power of five thou-
sand claymores behind him. Compared with Argyll, Montrose was
* Hyperion to a Satyr.' In person small, in appearance unprepossessing,
in visage coarse and sinister, in vision oblique, in action dubious, in
council often suspected, in ignominious defeats a craven fugitive,
Argyll appeared to have few qualities to make himself felt at this
juncture. Indeed, the house of Argyll never had a pretty reputation
among the patriots, and the last Earl was reputed to have destroyed
his son's reputation at Court by bidding the King beware of his
treachery. Nevertheless, this eighth Earl understood the problem of
the hour.
Laud noted a symbol in the squint of Gillespie Gruamach ^ when
' Nalson, An Impartial Collection^ Introd. Ixxiii., citing ' H. L.' Observations upon the
Hist, of Charles /., 205.
'- Peterkin, Records, 114.
* Napier, Memoirs of Montrose, i. 43, 60 (Edin., 1856).
* ' Gillespie, the gloomy or surly,' a sobriquet of Argyll.
320 THE COVENANTERS
he jestingly wrote thus to Hamilton : ' If he [£^. Argyll] do now
publicly adhere to the Covenant and the Assembly (nay be the pro-
fessed Head of the Covenant, as the Dean calls him), yet he will have
much ado to look right upon that, who ever looked asquint upon the
King's business.'^ Argyll as correctly gauged the smallness of the
Primate, while he interpreted the sentiment of Scotland to him in a
letter, thus : ' So with your lordship's good leave, I must say still,
your lordship is mistaken if you think the book \i.e. the liturgy] that
was offered and pressed here was only the English service, for in
reading any man may see the contrary. Yet, truly, I think all His
Majesty's subjects ought to thank God for His Majesty's paternal
care of his own children, and as all (I hope) do acknowledge it to pro-
ceed from His Majesty's own goodness, so I believe they are the
loather to come under the hands of indiscreet pedants or rude task-
masters, that want the affection and moderation of a father.'^ This
was a deft thrust from a pen in a hand that trembled to wield a clay-
more in the nation's defence. In like manner, Argyll's speech to the
Parliament of England, in 1646, when he maintained that England
and Scotland were substantially one kingdom, although they differed
in name — a distinction he was willing to abolish — indicates that
Argyll was a politician of breadth and foresight, who understood the
position of Britain as we to-day realise it. He had a wider horizon
than his rival, and with a modern instinct adjured the English govern-
ment as much to restrain licence in religion as to withhold persecution
from law-abiding citizens, who, in religious matters, differed on points
which are immaterial. Until the Glasgow Assembly, Argyll, as a
member of the Privy Council, had evinced loyalty to the Crown, but
after Hamilton's dissolution of that Convention, Argyll threw in his
lot with the Covenanters and upheld their cause with unwavering
fidelity. His accession was no less a gain from a military than from
an ecclesiastical point of view, since Argyll was a maintainer of the
stern theology of Calvin, and the consequent polity of Knox and of
1 Peterkin, Records, 123.
'^ Argyll to Laud, February 28, 1639 : Hist. MSS. Com., xii. App., pt. ii. 213.
THE FIRST BISHOPS' WAR 321
Melville. He was also the personal friend and supporter of Samuel
Rutherford in the days of his enforced exile. His presence contri-
buted to the cohesion of the Presbyterian and anti- Royalist parties,
and his wise counsels gave directness to their aims and resolutions.
Biit neither Montrose nor Argyll had those supereminent qualities of
a great statesman, who could both command in the field and devise
the more lasting victories of the council chamber.
' I will either be a glorious king or a patient martyr ' ^ was the
fixed idea in Charles which his flatterers fostered. ' No bishop no
king,' he also announced. Wentworth alone advised him to proceed
slowly, and to secure impregnable strongholds on the Borders before
he struck a final blow. Less wise counsels prevailed. Hamilton
arrived in London early in 1639. Scots resident in London were
ordered to abjure the Covenant, repudiate the last Assembly, and to
promise to support the King's policy.'^ Even George Con, the privi-
leged Jesuit hanging about Court, subscribed the abjuration.^ Charles
next informed the shires that the Scots had risen in arms in order to
invade England, and caused a proclamation, 27th February 1639, to
be read in every parish church in England, summoning the northern
barons and their vassals to meet him in York and to afford him
supplies. The day chosen for this muster was All Fools Day. In Charles
former days the threat of a Scottish raid would have terrified the ^rmy, ist
northern shires from Chester to York, but this bogle of the King ^p"^ '^39-
created no scare. The people knew that their Parliament neither
approved nor subsidised the enterprise. The vassals reluctantly
responded to the Royalist barons, and the voluntary subsidies were
miserably small.* The bishops and their party, with some Catholics,
were, however, enthusiastic with supplies. "^
The Scots hastened, 4th February, to promulgate * An Information
1 Burnet, Memoires, i. 203.
- The Remonstratice of the Nobility, etc., 1639, p. 29.
^ Bliss Transcripts (Record Office), 8th December 1638 ; Peterkin, Records, 212.
* Nalson, Imp. Coll., i. 231.
'" Hist. MSS. Com. {Montague House MSS.), Manchester to Mountague, 7th March 1639,
281.
2 S
322 THE COVENANTERS
to all good Christians within the Kingdome of England from the
Noblemen . . . and Cotnmons of , . . Scotland for vindicating their
intentions and actions from the unjust calumnies of their enemies!^
It was signed by ' A. Jhonstoun.' Its explanation bore that the Scots
only wished to be left unmolested in their own concerns and in domestic
peace, and to purge out the corruptions from their national Zion,
undeterred by Papists and vicious prelates. They repudiated any
intention of invading England. The King answered in a proclamation
warning his subjects against these seditious plotters, and they in turn
replied in a printed manifesto : ' The Remonstrance of the Nobility,
Barrones, Burgesses, Ministers and Commons, etc.,' denying the
slanderous charges.^ Their sole weapons, they asseverated, were
tears and prayers. These ill-advised and unconstitutional royal pro-
clamations, together with the inopportune publication of Balcanqual's
Large Declaration by the King,^ in which an ex parte and unreliable
account of recent events was given, aggravated the quarrel. The
Covenanters issued tracts, said to have been written by Alexander
Henderson, Lord Balmerino, and even Lord Advocate Hope, defend-
ing their cause and the lawfulness of an arbitrament by arms.*
Pedlars brought these manifestoes within the reach of those interested,
so that the whole country was on the alert.
King's plan The King's plan was to raise an army of thirty thousand
of campaign. ^^^^ which was to be reinforced by the northern Royalists, and
to march into Scotland at its head. Hamilton was to sail with
five thousand men to the Forth, and to co-operate with Huntly
against Edinburgh. Wentworth's Irish fleet was to enter the
Clyde, while ten thousand Irishmen under the Earl of Antrim
^ Edinburgh, Bryson, 1639 ; Row, Hist., 508-10.
2 Edinburgh, Bryson, 1639, 7>~ PP-) 'Revised by A. Jhonstoun,' 22nd March 1639.
' A Large Declaration concerning The Late Tujuults in Scotland from their first originalls :
Together with a particular deduction of the seditious practices of the prime Leaders of the
Covenanters : Collected out of their owne foule acts and writings : By which it dothplainly
appeare, that Religion was onely pretended by those Leaders, btct nothing lesse intended by them.
By the King. London, Printed by Robert Young, His Majesties Printer for Scotland, Anno
Dom. MDCXXXIX. Fol., 430 PP-
■* Omond, Lord Advocates of Scotland, i. 126: Row, 510. Henderson's 'Instructions for
defensive arms' was printed by Stevenson, History of Church, etc., 356 (Edin., 1840).
THE FIRST BISHOPS' WAR 323
were to overrun Argyleshire and the West. Hamilton's own Arran
men, 'such naked rogues as they were,' accompanied by their
cows, were to invade the mainland. Hamilton, it was reported
at the time, gave the King ^1000 to be relieved from going to
the front personally.^ Other nobles similarly compounded with the
needy King. On 27th March 1639, Laud wrote in his Diary : ' Charles
took his journey northward against the Scottish Covenanting rebels.
God of His infinite mercy bless him with health and success . . . Grant,
blessed Lord, that victory may attend his designs, and that his liege
people may rejoice in Thee, but that shame may cover the face of
Thine and his treacherous enemies.' Wentworth on the other hand
wrote : ' I trust God is not so angry with us as to suffer your Majesty
to be led into such apparent danger, or, by any persuasion, to consent
the trusting of so precious a jewel in the custody of such as, to my
understanding, are so great strangers to honour or morality.'^ Only
22,874 men, of whom 3260 were cavalry, mustered to guard this
jewel, and of the 5000 who sailed from Yarmouth with Hamilton,
scarce 200 could handle a musket.^
The Covenanters hurried on defensive preparations, and the scent
of batde attracted home soldiers of fortune distinguished in the Thirty
Years' War. It was the luck of the patriotic party that in their peril
Field-Marshal Alexander Leslie, one of the most experienced generals Fieid-Marshai
Leslie I ^Sz-
of his age, should have visited his native land and espoused the cause ,661 '
of the Covenant before he returned to Sweden.* This veteran, who
had served under King Charles ix. and Gustavus Adolphus of
Sweden, was the hero of Stralsund and of many other victories.
With the irascible temper of the Leslies and the quick impulses of
the Stewarts, this 'old little crooked soldier,' weather-beaten by sixty
years, bore a face whose keen eyes and riveted lips betokened the
possession of intellectual power befitting him as a leader of men.
The Tables invited him to return in the early autumn of 1638, to
^ Mountague to Mountague : Montague House MSS., i. 284.
2 Nalson, I?np. Coll. i. 208. ^ Jbid., 207.
* Terry, Life a?id Ciunpaigns of Alexander Leslie., 1899, q.v.
tures the
arsenals,
324 THE COVENANTERS
become the Commander of their forces. It is to Leslie's credit, that
although he was an honoured friend of the King, he threw in his
sword with the weaker party when he saw the liberties of his country
at stake. He set the foundries in the Potterrow of Edinburgh ringing
with the casting of artillery for Sandy Hamilton, the master-gunner,
and the city squares resounding with the tread of volunteers, armed
with those two thousand muskets which Queen Christina of Sweden
gave to him. The nobles and gentry eagerly sought commissions
under him. The advocates of Edinburgh formed his bodyguard, under
the leadership of a son of Lord Advocate Hope, and a son of Durie,
a lord of Session. The King, on the other hand, set a price of ^500
upon his head, and ordered his forces to disband under penalty of
being proclaimed traitors.^
Leslie cap- On the 2 1 St March the practical work of the campaign was begun
by Leslie, who, through a neat stratagem, captured the Castle of
Edinburgh. Other arsenals, with their guns and stores, Caerlaverock
Castle excepted, were taken, and garrisons were established in Dum-
barton, Dalkeith, Strathaven, Douglas, Tantallon, Dumfries, Dairsie,
and Brodick. That serviceable soldiers held back or sent unworthy
substitutes with * bachling naigs ' (foundered horses) is Evident from
the remonstrances sent out from the Scots camp at Dunbar in June.
Some rued the rising and others were overtaken by ' some spirit
of slumber . . . which maketh them to think that the fyre is not
kindled when the flame may be seene and all is in a burning.' The
War Committee blessed those who melted their plate and trinkets
to fill the war-chest, and enacted that if they refused they * be reputed
as men careless of religion and the liberties of the country and their
moneys to be confiscate.'
A considerable muster, about ten thousand men, with banners bla-
zoned with the motto, ' For Religioun, the Covenant, and the Countrie,'
met in Edinburgh. Six days a week the towns on the seaboard
of Forth rang with the noise of citizens scooping trenches, building
sconces, and planting batteries, the nobles and peasants working side
' Cal. state Pap. (1639), 77, 81. ^ Wariston, Diary, 56.
THE FIRST BISHOPS' WAR 325
by side, 'none busier in bearing the rubbish than ladies of honour.'^ Activity of the
From Eyemouth to Arthur's Seat watchmen trimmed the beacons.
On Sabbaths noisy pulpiteers lit the fires of patriotism in crowded
churches, and marched away as chaplains to the forces. The Countess
of Hamilton was credited with curvetting on the sands of Leith,
carrying pistols in her holsters, and threatening to blow out the
brains of her son, the Marquis, should that new Admiral of the Forth
cross her path to molest the Covenanters.^
Montrose, in the meantime, was dispatched northwards with six Montrose and
thousand men in order to suppress George, Marquis of Huntly, whom ™ ^''
the King had commissioned as his lieutenant in the north, and his ' dis-
covenanting ' following. Montrose entered Aberdeen on the 30th of
March without striking a blow, and without finding Huntly and the
Aberdeen Doctors, who had fled. After a few days Huntly and
Montrose subscribed a Concordat, which created a modus vivendi for
Huntly and his popish co-religionists, both parties to it having agreed
to leave out of consideration the Covenant, as not being a statutory
ordinance. Displeased, the extremists on the side of Montrose
demanded the submission and surrender of Huntly. This ingenuous
noble returned into the Covenanters' camp on the good faith that he
was not to be made a prisoner. Montrose broke that pledge.
Montrose's naturally generous impulses were not supported by a will
firm and righteous, which would scorn the treacherous resolution of
his military council to detain Huntly. The entrapping of Huntly and
his son, Lord Gordon, and the sending them as hostages to a prison
in Edinburgh, are stains on the character of Montrose. Terms, ihmtiy
reckoned dishonourable by the prisoner, were offered to him at the sfgnCove°nant,
prison gate, to which Huntly boldly replied : 'Yow may take my heid 20th April
from my schulderis, but not my hairt from my Soveraigne.'^ Thus
the King's first fountain of hope had been dissipated, and Montrose
was free to rejoin the muster in the Capital.
At length the beacons flashed, and on May-day 1639 Hamilton's
' Guthry, Memoirs, 54. 2 she was a Cunningham of Glencairn.
3 Spalding, Memorialls, i. 179 (Spald. Club) ; Hist, i. 126, 127, 142 (Bann. Club).
326 THE COVENANTERS
Hamilton's flotilla dropped anchor in Leith Roads. The admiral's flagship,
isf Mar^e^Q ^^^^ Rainbow, painted red, was no signal of hope, according to the
poetic pastor of Cambuslang, who wrote of it thus : —
' The Rainbow was to man a sign of peace,
This doth portend much blood — no sign of grace.
God's rainbow stayed the floods — O greatest wonder !
This threats to burn us all with fyrie thunder.'
The twenty gunboats soon became hospitals for the soldiers stricken
with disease, and afforded another ineffective detail in the royal
campaign, like Wentworth's abortive military diversion in the west.
Every act of Hamilton was impolitic. He directed an insulting letter
to the magistrates of Edinburgh, in which he requested them to
publish the latest proclamation, and at the same time rated them for
fomenting the rebellion. Resenting the calumny, they handed on
the demand to the Committee of Estates. This body, spurning the
King's demand for obedience and offer of clemency in exchange for
their renouncement of the Covenant, declared the proclamation to be
illegal, and the fruit of the ' devilish malice of the known enemies of
this Church and State.' To punish this insolence the truculent
Commissioner asked liberty to burn the towns on the seaboard, but
the King was not so bereft of wisdom as to sanction it.
Charles, and a brilliant staff, joined what English chivalry had
mustered under the Earl of Arundel at York, and spent the month of
April in camp there. Theirs was an irregular crowd rather than a
martial host, the troops being raw, badly equipped, and without heart
in the enterprise. The Scottish prelates did not even march to the
frontier with them. Defoe declared ' It would make too much sport
with English courage and bravery, which is so well confirmed in the
world, to give an account how like scoundrels this army behaved.'^
English army On the 30th of May they encamped at Birks, on the south side of the
30th May. Tweed, three miles above Berwick, and twelve miles from Duns Law,
a commanding height which Leslie occupied on the 5th of June. The
Scottish force numbered twelve thousand men of all arms, with forty-
^ Defoe, Memoirs of Chtcrch, 158, edit. 1844.
THE FIRST BISHOPS' WAR 327
five pieces of artillery. On the 9th of May Leslie had been formally
appointed Commander-in-Chief, and chose for his staff Lieutenant-
General Baillie and Lords Rothes, Lindsay, Loudoun, Yester, Mont-
gomerie, and Dalhousie. The clansmen of Argyll were posted at
Stirling, the gate of the Highlands, and other forces were stationed
on the coastline to guard Leslie's rear.
Robert Baillie has left a graphic picture of the Covenanters' Baiiiie's de-
leaguer at Duns, with its many * canvas lodges ' filled with pious canf^ at" °
campaigners and lusty ploughboys, easily distinguished by their blue ^""s-
bonnets (few had iron-sculls), some crooning psalms or saying prayers,
or anon dancing at midnight alarms of battle, others cursing, all well
fed on wheat, well paid at sixpence daily, all longing for the fray
under blue banners blazoned with red lions-rampant breathing the
pious motto, * For Christ's Crown and Covenant.' ' He leaves a
picture of himself: at home the man of peace; here, facing 'the auld
enemy,' a patriot, resolved to die on that service without return,
withal a perfect Bombastes Furioso, leading out his six Ayrshire
pikemen and his little son girt with a broadsword, himself carrying
two pistols in his holsters, a whinger at his belt, and no doubt in his
satchel that wing of goose-quills to which we are so much indebted.
He depicts the foe waiting in mortal terror of seeing the swinging
tartans of the men of Argyle, and the very King shaking in his shoes
as his prospect-glasses revealed the Lord's ' army terrible with banners '
on the green crest of Duns. It is plain that this sanguine shepherd
had not seen Wariston's nervous appeals to his indifferent countrymen,
while Leslie lay at Dunglass Castle, to this effect : ' Will ye be perjured
against God . . . and by your defection or wavering now losse your
country, religion, liberties, and lyves. . . . And now we tell you and
give you the third summons that as ye love your country, your
conscience, your lyves, and liberties, and would be delivered from the
destruction threatened against us ye would haste, haste hither and
be not deceaved . . . neither be ye detained.'^
It is necessary again to follow the fortunes of Montrose. As soon
* Baillie, Letters, i. 211 et seq. " Wariston, Diary, 47.
;28
THE COVENANTERS
Second cam-
paign of
Montrose.
Aboyne's
force.
Pacification
of Berwick,
i8th June
1639.
as Montrose returned south the RoyaHsts in Aberdeen made it perilous
for Covenanters to show their sympathies in that city. Emboldened
by the news that their Sovereign was marching to right the wrong,
some northern barons, Banff, Abergeldie, Haddo, Cromartie, and other
Royalists, with some eight hundred horse and foot, drew the first blood
in the Civil War at Towie House, where they killed David Prott.
At daybreak on the 14th of May this force surprised a body of
Covenanters under the Earl of Errol and Lord Eraser, killing a
few soldiers, capturing some prisoners, and putting Errol and his
men to ignominious flight. This engagement is known as the Trot
of Turriff.^ The victorious party separated after having a fillip of
plunder. Montrose, at their heels, re-entered Aberdeen on the 25th
of May, having 4300 men under his command. While Montrose and
his staff attended worship on Sabbath, his rascally soldiers spent the
day looting the houses and stealing victual. So unrestrained were
they that, in the vicinity of Aberdeen, in their impartial devastation
among friends and foes, they left neither a cock to crow nor a whelp
to bark.- After Montrose had temporarily quitted Aberdeen, Lord
Aboyne, whom the King had appointed as lieutenant in place of
Huntly, his father, landed in Aberdeen in June, to make the proclama-
tion demanding the abjuration of the Covenant. Two thousand raiders
flocked to his banner and into the lands of Covenanters to ravage
them. They made bold to meet their opponents under the Earl
Marischal at Stonehaven ; but, as soon as the big guns roared, the
unseasoned 'redshanks' fled from the noise of ' the musket's father,'
as they termed artillery. Undismayed, Aboyne again gathered his
followers, and sat tight behind the bridge of Dee in Aberdeen, which
Lieutenant-Colonel Johnstone gallantly held against the 20-pounders of
Montrose. The wounding of Johnstone settled the conflict. I'he Royal-
ists fled, and Montrose, master of an almost bloodless field, re-entered
Aberdeen just one day after the Pacification of Berwick had been signed.^
At the frontier, the bold demeanour of the Scots, in reality a bluff,
Spalding, Hist, of Troubles {Memorials'), \. 134 (Bann. Club). '^ Ibid.. 141.
Napier, Memoirs of Montrose, i. 212 ; Spalding, Hist., \. 154-158.
THE FIRST BISHOPS' WAR 329
made the timorous host of Charles chary of attacking. Had the
King's blameworthy intelligence-officers only been able to inform him
that before him lay a sorry crowd on foot, half-armed with obsolete
weapons, unprovided with trenching tools, badly victualled, and a
poorly horsed battalion, much afraid of himself, he would never have
sat inactive till the Scots unexpectedly appeared as petitioners in his
camp. While the King's lukewarm council of war retarded the ad-
vance, the Scots had framed a supplication for peace, which Lord
Dunfermline delivered to Charles on the 6th of June. The reply of
the Sovereign and his Privy Council referred the petitioners to pub-
lished proclamations, wherein an amnesty was offered to the rebels
who submitted to the Crown. Their counter-reply declared the royal
procedure to be illegal. Many communications, stating demands and
counter-demands, passed from camp to camp, till six commissioners
on each side were appointed to confer on the subject. The King
hotly joined in their discussions.' At length, on the 12th of June, a Councils at
debate took place in the Scots camp, wherein Argyll, Lord Durie, r^^g^jg
Sir Thomas Nicolson, and Wariston discussed the legal position, and
the outcome was the dispatch of Alexander Henderson and Wariston,
along with Rothes, Loudoun, Dunfermline, and the Sheriff of Teviot-
dale. Sir William Douglas, to Birks, with an ultimatum to the King.
The intervention of Henderson, with his incisive reasoning, and the
references of Wariston, with his unanswerable precedents, together
with the cool attitude of Loudoun, and the reckless speeches of Rothes,
were too much for the Sovereign's temper. He twice called Rothes
a liar and a prevaricator.- Wariston he commanded to silence as one
possessed of the uncharitableness and bitterness of the devil, not of
the reasonableness of men.^ No concordat which the Crown offered
to the Covenanters could be accepted, since every amended form of it
contained a loophole for the crafty King to evade engagements he
never intended to keep. The Scottish ultimatum demanded the total
abolition of Episcopacy in Scotland, the unrestrained meeting of
1 Cal. State Pap. (1639), 299, 300, 304, 310-12.
^ Hamilton Papers^ 98. * Wariston, Diary, 85.
2 T
330 THE COVENANTERS
Church courts, and the summoning of biennial or triennial Parliaments.
Wariston luckily overheard Hamilton declaring in a joint Privy-
Council meeting that if the King ' consented to yearly Assemblies, he
might quyte his three crowns, for they [the Covenanters] would
trample over them all, and, if he would follow his way, he should free
the Assemblie of ruling elders, and if the Assemblie were constitute
onlie of ministers, he would paune his lyfe, honor, and estate to gett
his Bishops therein established, and any other thing he would desyre.'^
Thus, according to Hamilton, Scotland is indebted to her laymen for
Terms of the the saving of Presbyterianism. The King, on the i8th of June,
practically conceded all his opponents asked, by consenting to the
Pacification of Berwick. Therein, reserving approval of the Glasgow
Assembly, he ratified the acts of his Commissioner, Hamilton, agreed
to an annual Assembly, indicted an Assembly to meet on the 12th of
August, and a Parliament later, to ratify the Assembly's Acts, agreed
to disband the army, and repudiated any sinister intentions against
the religion and laws of Scotland. Both parties arranged to disband
their forces without delay, and not to muster again without the sanc-
tion of Parliament; while the Scots promised to 'deliver His
Majestie's castles, and shall ever in all thinges carry ourselves like
humble, loyal and obedient subjects.' Thus Charles discovered that
neither he nor his diplomats could outmanoeuvre the sharp intellects
of the North, who had so easily turned the First Bishops' War into a
fiasco. When the proclamation of peace was read in the Scottish
camp, ' all the people applauded that they did adhere to the Assemblie
and bade hang the Bishops.' ^
1 Wariston, Diary ^ 88.
2 Ibid., 90-3. For a detailed account of these negotiations compare Terry, Life of Leslie
(1899), 41-87 ; cf. Peterkin, AV^(7r^i-, 226-9. ^'^'^S- Pfi'vy Counc, Vu. 12t„ gxv&s 12th August;
the King's Declaration gives 6th August : Peterkin, Records, 229.
THE SECOND BISHOPS' WAR 331
CHAPTER XII
THE SECOND BISHOPS WAR
By the King the Treaty of Berwick was viewed as a mere suspension
of arms, which an evil fate necessitated. He read good luck into it,
inasmuch as it afforded him more time to devise another campaign
better calculated to completely suppress the Covenanters. Charles
never had the remotest intention of convening free Assemblies and
free Parliaments, in terms of the Pacification. The object to be
served by these conventions was too apparent, and he would nullify
it by juggling or by force. His design was spontaneous. There is Tortuous
no evidence by which to trace to the counsels of foolish courtiers p°^^'^^°^^^^
the tortuous and despicable course afterwards pursued. Charles had
publicly consented to the abandonment of his most cherished aims,
but privately he informed his abettors of his unalterable resolve to
re-establish what he seemed willing to abolish. Laud fully realised
the peril to Episcopacy that loomed ahead after the recent victory
for Presbyterianism. He wrote to Roe : ' Faction and ignorance will
govern the Assembly, and faction, and somewhat else that I list not
to name, the Parliament ; for they will utterly cast off all episcopal
government, and introduce a worse regulated party than is anywhere
else that I know. ... I am clear of opinion, the King can have
neither honour nor safety by it.'^ The King soon plainly indicated his
intentions to the Scottish prelates, when, through their Primate,
Spottiswood, he discharged them from attending the Assembly.
' Though perhaps we may give way for the present to that which will
be prejudicial both to the Church and our own government, yet we shall
^ Gardiner, Hist, of England^ ix. 48 ; Laud, Works, vii. 583.
332 THE COVENANTERS
not leave thinking, in time, how to remedy both,' he wrote, also giving
the assurance, ' that it shall be still one of our chiefest studies how to
rectifie and establish the government of that Church and to repair
your losses, which we desire you to be most confident of.'^
This design had probably leaked out. When the proclamation of
the indiction of the Assembly was published at the Cross of Edinburgh,
and the hierarchy was duly summoned, the Covenanters replied with
their customary protestation, which declared their adherence to the
Glasgow Assembly and to their belligerent position." Although both
armies were disbanded, the fleet removed, and the fortresses handed
back to garrisons of the Crown, Charles lingered long at Berwick
maturing his plans and playing at nine-pins. While there he invited
fourteen of the leaders of the late rising to a conference with himself,
on the 1 6th of July, in order either to arrange his visit to the Assembly
and Parliament, to offer more attractive terms to the Scots, or to trap
them as hostages for the fourteen bishops, as his father had lured
Andrew Melville into the Tower.^ Rothes, Montrose, Lothian,
Douglas of Cavers, Wariston, and Bailie Edgar of Edinburgh,
Conference without suspicion, obeyed the summons. In a stormy interview
Kin-^ ^ fiery Rothes and the King fell foul of each other. Rothes informed
Murray in August that the King wronged him in declaring that
Rothes was bent on overthrowing Episcopacy in England and
Ireland.^ The King did not make the deputation wiser as to his
aims. He dismissed them on the understanding that they were to
return on the 25th of July, bringing with them the recalcitrants,
namely, Argyll, Cassillis, Loudoun, Dunfermline, Lord Lindsay, and
the provosts of Edinburgh and Stirling. These, however, according
to Sir James Balfour, ' smelling the ratt afar offe, wer secretly
adwertissed by ther frindes ... to eschew ane wnfallable and most
certaine destructione.' Three of them, Loudoun, Lindsay, and Dun-
fermline, ventured to go, but as the others were on the way, they
were debarred at the Watergate of Edinburgh by the rascal multitude
^ Peterkin, Records^ 234. 2 Jbid.^ 231.
' Guthry, Memoirs^ 61 ; Burnet, Memoires, 148 : Balfour, Aniials, ii. 334 ; Lilly, Observa-
tionSf 38. ^ Hist. MSS. Com. (^Hamilton A/SS.), xi., vi. 108.
THE SECOND BISHOPS' WAR 333
which had been stirred up with fears that their leaders were to be
treacherously dealt with.^ After this disrespectful episode, mutual
recriminations, which had sprung out of the terms of the Pacification,
developed into eighteen grievances formally dispatched by the King,
and as emphatically answered by the Covenanters. Among other
things, he complained that Munro's foot-regiment had not been dis-
banded, Leslie's commission had not been recalled, unlawful assemblies
and seditious protestations and sermons were permitted, and that
the Crown officers and non-Covenanters were persecuted.
The Covenanters, in reply, naively invited the King to displenish Negotiations
his own arsenals on the Borders, declared that Leslie's commission ^' ^ '"^'
was recalled, promised the fulfilment of other desires, and observed
that the supposed sedition was according to law, and that the Cove-
nant was to be maintained." The respondents even insinuated some
banter into the statement that there was no proof that ' the wyffe at
the Netherbow and one Litle the barber ' had badly handled his
faithful Traquair in a street riot in July. This last episode, however,
afforded the King a pretext for refusing to trust himself to Netherbow
wives and riotous barbers at the approaching Assembly, and he left
Berwick for London on the 29th of July. The fascinating personality
of the Monarch had left an indelible impression upon the romantic
nature of Montrose, creating in him a personal interest, which, six
weeks afterwards, was seen to be developed into an attachment fatal
to his fidelity to his earlier love — the Covenant.^ In October, Baillie
prophetically observed that Montrose was ' not unlike to be ensnared
with the fair promises of advancement.' And Baillie turned out to be
a true prophet. Montrose, on 26th December, while still associating
with the Covenanters, offered his services to the King.*
The General Assembly met in Edinburgh on the 12th of August,
six days later than the date originally appointed. Hamilton, who had
refused the King's request to face the ordeal of the Commissionership,
' Baillie, Letters, i. 216, Baillie to Spang, 28th Sept. 1639 5 Balfour, Annals, ii. 334.
- Balfour, Annals, ii. 334-9 ; Hist. MSS. Com., xi., vi. 109. ^ Napier, Memoirs, i. 220-7.
■* Hamilton Papers, 102; Hist. MSS. Com., xi., vi. no. Nalson declares that Montrose
betrayed the secrets of his friends to the King : Imp. Coll., i. 244.
334
THE COVENANTERS
Edinburgh
Assembly,
1639.
Henderson's
Sermon.
was succeeded by Traquair. The instructions given to Traquair were
as carefully expressed as they were Jesuitically conceived. He was
to protest against lay-elders having a voice in settling questions of
doctrine and policy ; to prevent any reference to the Glasgow Assem-
bly, and to the King's sole power to convene Assemblies ; to submit
the vexed question of Episcopacy for settlement to the Edinburgh
Assembly ; to consent to the abolition of Episcopacy — not as a point
of Popery, contrary to the law of God or to Protestant doctrine — this
' without the appearance of any warrant from the bishops ' ; to have it
agreed that the King might send fourteen ministers in place of the
bishops to Parliament, or, at least, to the election of the Lords of
Articles.^ The secret quirk in the King's procedure was this, that
as he had ordained the prelates to decline this Assembly (which they
did in a formal Declinature '), he imagined that he might afterwards
declare the proceedings of the Assembly to be null and void, by a
reference to Chose unrepealed statutes of the realm by which Episco-
pacy had been established.^
Alexander Henderson, the retiring Moderator, occupied the chair,
and, in an appropriate sermon upon the subject of Gamaliel, declared
that humanist of Judea to have been devoid of Christ and of the love
of gospel truth. His references to inept Episcopal readers of ser-
mons and profane ministers were very pointed. To him, Christ only
was the Head of the Church, He ended with this happy rejoinder:
' Let it be scene to His Majestie that this government can very weill
stand with a monarchical government.' This was a gibe at the sapi-
ence of the Scottish Solomon, and a sneer at the reiterated accusation
of Hamilton, and of the King himself, that the aim of the Covenanters
1 Peterkin, Records, lyi ; Reg. Privy Cotmc, vii. 128.
^ Vti&rVxn, Records, 234. The terms of the Declinature were calculated to irritate the members
of Assembly, and to widen the breach between the angry parties. The bishops demanded ' That
the present pretended Assembly be holden and reputed null in Law, as consisting and made
up partly of Laical persons that have no office in the Church of God, partly of refractory,
schismatikal, and perjured ministers, that, contrary to their Oaths and Subscriptions, from
which no Humane power could absolve them, have filthily resiled, and so made themselves to
the present and future ages infamous ; and that no Churchman be bound to appear before
them,' etc. There is a trace of the vulgar style of Balcanqual in this protest.
3 Act. Pari. Scot., iv. 430, Act 1609, c. 8.
THE SECOND BISHOPS' WAR 335
was the disestablishment of monarchy. The Commissioner strove to
retain the services of Henderson in the chair, but the latter, perceiving
the drift of this move, resolutely refused, asserting : ' It savours of a
constant-moderator — the first step of episcopacie ; and in trueth I
have no mynd to be a bishop.' After discussion, and a vote, David
Dickson, minister of Irvine, was elected Moderator. Then in his fifty- Dickson
sixth vear. a man of strong will, yet of a warm, dadsome, poetic nature, ^ppo'"^^^
' o J o i. ^ ^ Moderator.
bubbling up with humour, Dickson had suffered for his faith, having
been cantoned out of Irvine in the time of King James for having
denounced the Five Articles and the Liturgy. At the critical moment
of Hamilton's dissolution of the Glasgow Assembly, Dickson's heroic
speech sounded the keynote of that destructive Convention and of
its subsequent judgments, which were intended to be a vindication of
the purity of the motives of the Covenanters. He was appointed Pro-
fessor of Divinity in Glasgow in 1641, and in Edinburgh in 1650.^
As became a pastor of such evangelical fervour, Dickson began his
duties in a broad-minded address, which Traquair echoed with the
hope that ' we may all sing ane sang before this assembly end.' A
discussion arose regarding the grievances which had necessitated the
Assembly, and as a result of it all the statutes constituting the Church
were read and interpreted to Traquair. With consummate duplicity
the Commissioner confessed that he was satisfied that the Episcopal
innovations were unconstitutional, and this adroit, dramatic move was
accepted for its ingenuousness. A*committee was selected to frame an
Act declaring that the innovations (Books of Prayer, Canons, and Act of Assem-
Ordination, High Commission, Episcopal office, prelates in Parliament, Epioplcy,"^
and the Acts of the Assemblies, 1606, 1608, 1610, 16 16, 161 7, 16 18) 13th August
1639.
were the causes of the national disturbances, and contrary to the con-
stitution of the Church of Scotland, and were unlawful.- This Act the
Commissioner subscribed, on the 30th August, with the explanation that
it was * for settleing the present distractions and giving full satisfaction
^ For Life of Dickson, cf. Wodrow, Seleci Biog., ii. 5-28 ; Pref., Select Writings of Dickson^
edit. 1845 ■> Johnston, Treasury Scot. Cov., 314.
2 Peterkin, Records, 204: Act Containing the Causes and Reinedie of the bygone Evils of this
Kirk.
336 THE COVENANTERS
to the subjects' — 'such is his Majesty's incomparable goodness.' He
also promised that, as Commissioner, he would in Parliament subscribe
the Covenant, with the Assembly's Determination appended to the effect
that the 1581 and 1638 Covenants were *ane in substance,' and that 'the
Five Articles of Perth, government of the Church and Bishops, the
Civill places and power of Churchmen, were declared to be unlawful ' ;
and he further consented that the Privy Council should ordain all sub-
jects to sign the Covenant with the explanation added, as it appears on
the later examples of that bond. This injunction was duly published.
The often-balked defenders of the faith and pioneers of liberty
seemed at last to have entered the Promised Land, with
* Sorrow vanquished, labour ended,
Jordan passed.'
Joy of the The Subscription of their purgative Act melted into the tears of joy and
Covcri3.ntcrs
gratitude these stern heroes, who had long mourned the defections of
their Church and country. Never was heard such jubilations, clapping
of hands, and shouting 'God save the King.' 'Old Mr. John Row'
from Carnock, a former sufferer, through his tears magnified the God
of Heaven for His pity. Another member, John Weymes, with tears
dropping off his venerable beard, declared, with the ecstasy of a Simeon,
that his aged eyes had seen 'a wonderful work,' and 'no more did I
wish, before mine eyes were closed, but to have seen such a beautiful
day as this is, as to my great comfort I now see this day.' He ended
by loyally praying : 'and the blessing of God, be upon his Majesty.'"
As the Moderator rapturously cried, ' Would God the King's Majesty
had a part of our joy that we have this day,' the cunning Traquair
must have been gloating over the success of his deception. Traquair
himself had yet to discover that he had gone a step too far for his
earthly master.
The Assembly was next engaged with a terrible list of indictments
of ministers charged with, and deposed for, every conceivable scandal
— carnality, drunkenness, manslaughter, robbing the poor, selling sacra-
^ Reg. Privy Counc. ,vii., xix. 131-2 ; Peterkin, Records, 207, 269, 270.
■■* Peterkin, Records, 251,
WTHE CONFESSION OF FAITH,
SUBSCBIBED AT FIRST BY THL BiJfJCSS MA|ES1 It AND HB HOUS
IIOf.D, IX TIU: ? tAKF. Of GOD Ij
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,,,; i, jli pi.. ./ /'.YJ-'V/I in Ih K." lyoo /);
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- i\ g.-nKtii-ljftlib!!,- WllliaBCtti-iJl
-r?SiU-i
/4~.»BJ
1 '^^^ ^1
'"^n
'"•"'" 1
'V'jf 1
...
'''f-'iii'hr
nTtlu i-nr
DitUiilfil,
^^"^~17\
''J''"'*!"*'"'
THE SECOND BISHOPS' WAR 337
ments, sacrilege, fighting, disobedience, incompetence, reading the
Liturgy, and other faults — all indicating the looseness of discipline in
the Episcopal period. Without a reference to the judgment of the
Glasgow Assembly against the bishops, their indictment was recon-
sidered and the same verdict pronounced. But it was agreed that all
ministers not guilty of immorality would be reponed in office, on indi-
cating their penitence and submission to the Constitutions of the
Church. The Assembly also passed the first Barrier Act.^ The The first
brethren had still grave business in reserve. The King himself had ^"^^^ ^^'
announced his personal share in the religious broil, having issued the
Large Declaration, a bitter controversial work, bearing on the title-page
his name as the author.^ It was meant to engender the worst enmities
of the High Church party and of the purely Royalist party, both in
England and Scotland, against the Scottish Presbyterians and conserva-
tive politicians, who denied xh^ Jus Carolinum, i.e. the divine right of the
Monarch to act as pleased him. It accused the Covenanters of treachery,
treason, alliance with the devil, robbery, of foul acts and false words. It
was known to be the work of Dr. Walter Balcanqual, son of a faithful
Covenanter, who had been minister both in St. Giles, and Trinity
College Church, Edinburgh. His perversion from his father's faith
resulted in intolerant fanaticism — as is not infrequently the case with
perverts — directed against the very Church which sheltered his youthful
head. His position in the English Church — soon to be the Deanery
of Durham — was, he imagined, a safe enough hold out of which to
sling abuse at his father's friends and Church. While doing this,
Balcanqual depicted his beloved Sovereign, with unparalleled magna-
nimity, bearing with his unnatural children so long, that he was forced
out of very love, yet in pity, to chastise them. Acuter critics soon Large
shattered the"* fabrication ; and the Assembly, with a polite deference condemned.
avoiding the association of the book with the King's name, judged it to
be 'dishonourable to God, to the King's Majestie, and to the National
Church, and stuffed full of lies and calumnies.'^ They supplicated the
1 30th Aug., Act atient advising with Synods and Presbyteries, etc. : Peterkin, Records, 208.
■' A Large Declaration, etc. By the King (Lond., 1639). ^ Peterkin, Records, 265.
2 U
138
THE COVENANTERS
Assembly
dissolved,
30th August.
Meeting of
Scots Parlia-
ment of
August 1639.
Commissioner to request the King to suppress the book, and to punish
Balcanqual and the other seditious authors of it. The tables were
being turned. There was not a little covert humour in the remarks
of the debaters. Andrew Cant, the strenuous presbyter of Aberdeen,
declared it was ' so full of gross absurdities that I think hanging of
the author should prevent all other censures.' Sir William Douglas,
Sheriff of Teviotdale, with that decisiveness, which never failed the
Douglases, if a gallows-knob was in view, broke in : * Truly I could
execute that sentence with all my heart, because it is more proper to me,
and I am better acquainted with hanging.' The tears of the saints
were brushed away by the sallies of those witty statesmen who thought,
with Lord Kirkcudbright: ' It is a great pity that many honest men in
Christendom for writing books called pamphlets should want ears, and
false knaves for writing such volumes should brook heads.' This was
a severe criticism of the Crown policy towards the persecuted Puritans.
The King had again received a scarcely concealed castigation.
At length the Moderator dissolved the Assembly after a tolerant
oration, free of the spirit of a zealot, in which he adjured his brethren
to love one another, to strive not with one another, ' neither insult over
those that have beine of a discrepant judgment from us anent the
matter of ceremonies and the governement of the Church : but let us
make a perpetuall act of oblivion in all our memories of such things.'
If poetic Dickson thus worthily displayed the gentleness of the dove,
and a tolerance not credited to his party by partial writers, next day
the cunning Traquair was to strike with the fang of the serpent.
The day after the Assembly dispersed, the Scots Parliament sat
down, and remained in session from the 31st of August till the
14th of November. The Estates assembled under the grand oak
roof of the Upper Chamber of the New Parliamenr House, still
an object of admiration. They rode with all the Honours, Argyll
bearing the crown. It was almost a full convention. They had
come to the funeral of the bishops, as Howell wittily expressed his
opinion of what he saw that day : ' The bishops are all gone to
rack, and they have had but a sorry funeral. The very name is
THE SECOND BISHOPS' WAR 339
grown so contemptible that a black dog, if he hath any white marks
about him, is called Bishop. Our Lord of Canterbury is grown here
so odious that they call him commonly in the pulpit the priest of
Baal, and the son of Belial.'^ The prelates were absent, and the
burgesses and barons numbered ninety-eight, while the nobles num-
bered sixty, so that the meeting could scarcely have been more
representative of all sections of the community.
Traquair first tried to introduce fourteen ministers, in place of the
bishops, to initiate the business of electing the first eight Lords of
Articles, and when this failed, proceeded, under protest from Argyll,
to name them himself. With practical unanimity the Lords of
Articles, among whom were Argyll, Montrose, and Lauderdale,
introduced their Church Acts, which were duly passed as under : — ^^^^ p^.^.
6th September : Act ratifying Acts of Assembly of 1 7th August, moted by the
•11 • 1 1 A Church,
intituled, ' Anent the sex caussis of our bygane eviUis and the Act
prefixed to the Covenant.'
' Act rescinding all former actis of parliament introduced in favour
of Bishops and Episcopacie.'
I ith September : 'Act condemning Balcanqual's Large Declaration!
1 8th September : 'Act discharging civil powers of churchmen.'
24th September : 'Act rescissory of Acts giving civil powers to
churchmen.'^
On the 6th September the Commissioner, in his capacity of
Treasurer, subscribed the Covenant. But when, on the 24th
September, the ' Act Rescissory ' was produced, he demurred to
it as violating the King's prerogative; and on the 14th November,
without asking the consent of the Estates, he, after nine prorogations,
finally prorogued the Parliament till the 2nd day of June 1640, under
a special Commission, which declared that the Estates were trenching,
by their acts, upon the King's prerogative and government.^ This
was another ill-advised accusation of law-breaking, which was answered
in due form in a Remonstrance.
1 Howell, Ho-Elianae — Familiar Letters, domestic and forren, 276 (Lond., 1678).
^ Act. Pari. Scot., v. 253-61. ^ Ibid., 285 ; Balfour, Annals, ii. 362.
340
THE COVENANTERS
Private meet-
ings for
worship
regulated.
Fate of the
prelates.
The Church, while thus menaced by outward trouble, was endan-
gered within by the rise of disputes concerning the holding of private
religious meetings. As has been recorded, these, in an age of
persecution, had afforded solace to retiring Christians like Henderson,
and to other Presbyterians, who in Ireland and elsewhere suffered at
the hands of prelates for their tenets, especially for refusing to hear the
Liturgy read. Their accusers stated that these meetings for private
worship now tended to engender the errors of the Brownists, and
that some of their number spoke lightly of the regular ministry.
Henry Guthry, minister of Stirling, denounced these innovations in
the Aberdeen Assembly of 1640, and was passionately answered by
David Dickson, Samuel Rutherford, and others. The dispute was
ultimately settled by the passing of a regulative Act, entitled, * Act
against impiety and schism,' drawn up by Henderson for the Assembly
of 1641,^ which forbade mocking religion and all meetings breeding
error — such as ' the neglect of duties in particular callings ' — while
encouraging the practice of family worship.
The Presbyterian Churchwasnowat the acme of her glory. Her judi-
catories were all re-established. The persecuting prelates had fled. The
Covenant had been renewed. The King, if not subdued, was powerless
to suppress the Covenanters and their cause, which in reality required no
regal approval, so long as it was defended by the majority of the people.
As the star of the Covenant rose that of Prelacy waned. The
bishops had crossed the Borders. Sickness, as well as misfortune,
overtook many of the most notable of the Episcopal bishops and
clergy in the year 1639. The famous Dr. Baron, bishop-designate
of Orkney, died in August, leaving behind him the memory of an
excellent scholar and a meek divine. He was followed in September
by Bishop Wedderburn of Dunblane, a man of scholarly propensities,
timid spirit, and generous heart. The Primate, Spottiswood, himself
was now feeling the weight of seventy-four years, and, being in infirm
health, made his will disposing of his library and making arrangements
for the publication of his excellent History, which he had undertaken
^ Peterkin, Records^ 294 ; Guthry, Memoirs, 78 ; M'Crie, Miscell. Writings^ 38, App. ii.
THE SECOND BISHOPS' WAR 341
at the request of, ' King James the vi. of ever blessed memory,' as the Spottiswood's
title-page bears.^ His will reasserted his faith, for which be was then '^^°'^'
an exile, that ' Government episcopal is the only right and apostolick
form ; Parity among ministers being the breeder of all confusion as
experience might have taught us, and ruling elders ... a mere human
device; so they will prove . . . the ruine of both Church and State.'^
His biographer declared that he was a pious, peaceable, learned,
charitable man, more anxious to win ' souls for God than praise from
men.'^ Hamilton and the General Assembly credited him with more
carnality than adorns an apostle. 'Almost a martyr,' says his epitaph
in Westminster, where he rests near his patron. King James.
Traquair communicated these negotiations to the King, who was
exasperated, and replied imperiously that he had overtopped his
instructions : ' Though you have power for giving way to the
abolition of Episcopacy as contrary to the Constitutions of the
Church of Scotland, yet you will not find either in your instructions,
or in any other directions since sent you, that We have consented
to declare the same unlawful ... so We absolutely command you
not to ratifie the same in these terms in the Parliament, but only
as contrary to the Constitutions of that Kirk.' The Sovereign com-
pleted the new directions — with the following remarkable illustration
of his perfidy: ' If you find, that what We have commanded you to Perfidy of
do is likely to cause a Rupture, their impertinent Motions give you ^ ^"^'
a fair occasion to make it appear to the World, that We have con-
descended to all matters which can be pretended to concern Conscience
and Religion, and that now they aim at nothing but the overthrow
of Royal Authority, contrary to all their professions, which We can
neither with Honour nor Safety suffer. And therefore We hope and
expect, that if a Rupture happen, you will make this appear to be the
cause thereof, and not Religion, which you know not only to be true,
but must see it will be of great advantage to Us, and therefore must
be seriously intended by you.''*
' Spottiswood, The History of the Church of Scotland, fol., 1655.
- Ibid., Biography, by Bishop Maxwell. ■' Ibid., Pref. ■* Peterkin, Records, 236-7.
342 THE COVENANTERS
As soon as the Parliamentary farce was over, the King com-
manded Tj-aquair to come to Court, where he was coldly received.
Traquair Traquair's ingenious imagination soon rectified this slight, as he
theKin^c^ narrated to the King and Council the terrifying procedure of the
rebels, and substantiated his account by producing a copy of a letter
which, he said, had passed to the King of France, whose aid the
insurgents had implored. Charles was mollified. Traquair was
making good his threat to Henderson, that before he perished ' he
would mix heaven and earth and hell together.' ^ The story of the
treasonable letter is as follows : The Covenanters, after making clear
their intentions to the English, resolved to send William Colvill,
a gentleman of Fife, to the States of Holland and to France, to
explain their position, and to ask their intervention with Charles on
behalf of the Scots. A similar agent, Meldrum, was to proceed to
Letter of Denmark and Sweden.^ A draft letter to the French king was
French^Kintr pJ^^P^^ed and signed by 'A. Leslie and Rothes ' ; but, according
19th February to the agent, Colvill, this letter was not relevant, while that to the
States of Holland was * not so sweet ' as he could have wished ;
and, after submitting them and a letter of credence to Lothian, and
Leighton, afterwards bishop, he recommended Balmerino to have
the papers rewritten and signed.^ This story is corroborated some-
what by Burnet, who, on the authority of Lauderdale, recorded that
Montrose ' both advised and drew the letter to the King of France
for which the Lord Loudoun, who signed it, was imprisoned in
the Tower of London.' Lauderdale, finding fault with the absurd
French expressions, refused to subscribe it. These drafts were
not sent.^ A copy, however, subscribed by Rothes, Montrose, Mar,
Loudoun, fell into the hands of Traquair, who gave it to the King.
When Charles referred it to the King of France, the latter had
no knowledge of it. Colvill got the instructions he desired, and
a second letter, signed by Argyll, Montrose, Lothian, and others
— not by Loudoun — of date 19M February 1639, which he carried
^ Dalrymple, Memorials, 121. " Baillie, Letters, i. 190-1.
^ Dalrymple, Meviorials, 57-65. ■* Burnet, Hist., i. 48, 49.
THE SECOND BISHOPS' WAR 343
to King Louis xiii.^ The letter contained a supplication for pro-
tection through the continuance of the ancient league with France.
It required little incitement to move King Charles to design an-
other war of extermination. But where might supplies be found ?
Laud advised Charles to seize what he needed, by the exercise
of his prerogative, in the same way that past subsidies had been
raised. Wentworth, with more sagacity, advised the summoning of
Parliament.
The Scots, faithful to their declaration at Birks, signed by Loudoun,
' That our desires are only the enjoying of our Religion and Liberties,
according to the ecclesiastical and civil laws of his Majesty's king-
dom,'^ sent Commissioners to London to assert their loyalty to the
Crown, to conciliate the King and his abettors, and to state their
grievances. They were refused an audience on their first visit.
Again they appeared, but their appeals were in vain. Loudoun, Dun-
fermline, Douglas of Cavers, and Provost Barclay of Irvine were Scots Com-
arrested on a fabricated charge of laesa Majestas. Loudoun was com- a^/esteT'^'^
mitted to the Tower on the i ith of April.'' The ground of the charge April 1640.
of treason was that Loudoun, along with Rothes, Montrose, Leslie,
Mar, Montgomery, and Forrester, had subscribed an appeal to King
Louis of France to assist them against their liege lord. Before the
Privy Council, Loudoun declared that a missive supplicating for
mediation had been prepared, before the Pacification of Berwick,
but was never sent to the French king. If he had erred he demanded
a trial in his native land. Charles, so far from being satisfied, is said Loudoun
to have ordered Loudoun's immediate execution, without trial or ^jXeTecu-
benefit of clergy. The keeper of the Tower hastened to inform "on-
Hamilton, who appealed to his autocratic master not to imperil his
own cause by so infamous an act as the violation of Loudoun's safe-
conduct, and the execution of a peer without the semblance of a trial.
The enraged King tore up the warrant. At the end of June, Loudoun
1 Biblio. Nat. Fr., 15,915, fol. 410 ; cited by Gardiner, Hisi., ix. 92, 93 note.
^ Nalson, Imp. Coll., i. 235.
2 Peterkin, j'?^f^;v/^, 282, 283 ; Dalrymple, Memorials, 57-65; BximQt, Memozres., 160, 161,
170; HisL, i. 47.
344 THE COVENANTERS
was liberated on conditions creditable neither to himself nor to his
would-be destroyer, namely, that he concealed this abominable treat-
ment, and became a secret plenipotentiary of his Sovereign, in order
to bring about peace, the dissolution of the Covenanting army, and
the re-establishmeiit of religion and liberty. Of course Loudoun was
to be recompensed, if all went well.
So early as January 1640, King Charles had resolved on war,
having yielded to the solicitations of the Canterburian incendiaries
and the warlike Wentworth, now advanced to be Earl of Strafford,
who was eager for the fray.^ Charles wrote to Nithisdale in March
informing him that he would have a quarrel next month with ' my
Covenanting Rebelles.' Strafford handsomely contributed, and the
Irish Parliament voted a large subsidy for the armament — the Irish,
contrary to orders sent from Rome, acting on the belief that the out-
The Short come might be freedom for the Irish Catholics. The English Parlia-
En'-Iiand ""^ '" ment met on 13th April. John Pym, the bold and clever member
1640. for Tavistock, laid before the Commons a statement of those griev-
ances then maddening the nation and requiring speedy abolition,
he said, before Parliament could ever condescend to the consideration
of the supply the King asked. The majority naturally took the same
view as Pym. Every Parliament-man recognised how Scotland was
fighting for English, as well as for Scottish, liberty. In the Scots
army lay a safeguard for their rights of Parliament, freedom, and
religion. The King appeared willing to concede the abolition of
some of his exactions — ship money, for example — and to avoid a rupture
with the Commons ; but they, not feeling satisfied, and not to be
seduced from their resolve by fair promises, indicated to him that the
Scots War must be abandoned. BafHed and perverse, Charles, on
5th May, dissolved the Parliament, thereafter known as The Short
Parliament. He next set about filling the war-chest by means of
illegal devices. Convocation alone approved of the new move, and
as a protest against the action of Parliament, offered a substantial
subsidy to equip the royal forces.
1 Terry, Life of Leslie, 89.
THE SECOND BISHOPS' WAR 345
The vigilant Covenanters were not sitting idle. It is generally Scottish pre-
supposed that they only watched and prayed till their Parliament ^^"^^1)^°"^^°''
assembled. It was otherwise. The Tables all along kept in touch
with their officers — nominally disbanded. A war fund daily increased.
A scheme of defence was settled. In March, military districts were
assigned to certain commanders. A chain of outposts was placed on
the Borders. On 17th April Leslie's commission was renewed. In
May the mobilisation of the troops was being put into operation, and
trenches, forts, and other preparations were being executed. The
Scots Parliament, which assembled in the first week of June, was
emphatically sanguine. Traquair and the prelates made no com-
pearance. As a substitute for the Commissioner, Traquair sent through
the Crown officials a mandate for proroguing the meeting, which the
members justly held to be irregular and unconstitutional. They
constituted the meeting, appointed Robert, Lord Burleigh, to be presi-
dent, and proceeded to business. They knew that war was unpopular
in England, and that the prorogation was a mean device in order to
gain time. The most important business concluded was the formal
nomination of a large Sub-Committee of Estates, among whom were
Montrose and Rothes, to make, in concert with Leslie, military pre-
parations ' for a just and lawful defence of their religion, laws, lives,
liberty, and country.' The Parliament next proceeded to place on the Acts of
Statute-book, on nth June 1640, those Acts which abolished everything leloTestoring
pertaining to Episcopacy and which rehabilitated Presbyterianism.^ Presbytery.
Parliament formally intimated these proceedings to the Crown, and
^ Act. Pari. Scot., v. 291-302 : —
Act 5. Ratification of Acts of previous Assembly.
Act 6. Anent the ratification of the Confession of Faith and Covenant, of the Supplication
of General Assembly of August 12, 1639, of Act of the Privy Council at Edinburgh,
August 30, 1639, and of Act of General Assembly, August 12, 1639, ordaining the
subscription of the Confession and Covenant.
.A.ct 7. Act Rescissorie, abolishing Episcopacy and renewing Act of June 1592, cap. 114;
annulling Act, 1597, cap. 231 (Bishops in Parliament); Act, 1606, cap. 2 (restoring
Bishops to Third Estate) ; Act, 1607, cap. 8 (restoring the Chapter of St. Andrews) ;
Act, 1609, cap. 6 (restoring Commissariots) ; Act, 1612, cap. i (ratifying Acts ot
Assembly of 1610) ; Act, 1617, caps, i and 2 (on Election of Bishops); Act, 1621,
cap. I (Act ratifying Perth Assembly).
Act 17. Act anent Large Declaration., declaring it 'scandalous and dishonourable.'
2 X
Monro's
campaigns
346 THE COVENANTERS
respectfully justified its action in what was called a free Assembly
and a free Parliament. These stringent enactments were soon put
into force. The arsenals held by the Crown were surrounded, and
some of them pounded into submission by big guns imported from
Argyll and Holland. Argyll was empowered to march his five thousand clansmen
across Central Scotland, from the wilds of Lochaber to the flat lands
of Angus, and to subdue the disaffected Drummonds, Ogilvies, and
Stewarts. 'The bonnie House of Airlie' and its fine garden he
totally ruined. Balfour, a friendly historian, declares that Argyll
' took nothing but quhat he payed for, except from suche as stoode out
against the Covenant,' and even hanged some pilferers. In this
differentiation lies the excuse for Argyll's severity, which Balfour
refers to in a succeeding passage. There he states that when ' Argyle
wes scurging the heighlanders,' Major-General Robert Monro and
some fifteen hundred foot and horse were dancing over the country
of the Gordons and the Ogilvies in the north, at the very time
their Covenanting masters were saying prayers in Aberdeen itself.
Monro, another Turner or Claverhouse, shielding himself behind the
orders of his superiors, was there meaning business. In Aberdeen
he arrested notable citizens and landed proprietors, who still refused
to accept the Covenant, and sent them prisoners to Edinburgh, ' to be
taught by the Committee of Estates to speak their auen country
language.' He billeted his men on their properties. He captured
John Guthrie, Bishop of Moray, in Spynie Castle. At Strathbogie
he held great markets, and sold back the bestial cheap to Huntly's
own tenants. His troops, like locusts, cleaned out the country. He
entered Banff, ' quher he playes the devill and demolishes the Lord
Bamffe's House wich wes both fair and stately . . . reducing all these
that formerlie danced after Huntlie and Bamffe's fidling, to the
obedience of the Covenant.'^ This was the first practical result of a
free Assembly and a free Parliament. It was a remunerative
beginning.
Another Assembly, according to appointment, met in Aberdeen
^ Balfour, Aiwals, ii. 38 1-2.
THE SECOND BISHOPS' WAR 347
on the 28th of July. Undeterred by the absence of a royal Commis- Aberdeen
sioner, they proceeded to business and produced eighteen x^cts, the Assembly,
most important of which dealt with idolatrous monuments (still
unmolested in the north), witchcraft, and Independency. All this
time the ' drum ecclesiastic ' was beat in every pulpit. A national
Fast was observed for deprecating the divine wrath, then owned to
be deserved, and for imploring a blessing on the drawn sword. Daily
the excited populace was convened in churches, harangued, and urged
to muster every fourth man in arms ; and the non-combatants were
adjured to obey the edicts of the War Committee, to pay the
assessment, to lend money, to provide clothing, and to throw their
plate and jewellery into the melting-pot for the cause of Christ and
freedom. John Livingstone, minister of Stranraer, narrates how a
poor woman, a refugee from Ireland, handed to him eight pounds five
shillings in gold and silver pieces. She explained the handsomeness of
her offering thus : ' I was gathering and had laid up this to be one part
of a portion [dowry] to ane young daughter I had : and, whereas the
Lord lately hath pleased by death to take to Himself the daughter I had,
I thought I would give Him her portion also.'^ Such was the fervid Popular
enthusiasm, that thrifty wives emptied their cloth and linen chests so ^"* "smsm.
as to provide clothes and tents for the soldiery. Pamphlets for
enlightening the English people were circulated. The most effective
of these was one issued as the Scots troops crossed the Borders. It
is entitled. Six Considerations of the Lawfulness of our Expedition
into England manifested? A more extraordinary document never
emanated from responsible authorities. It details the grievances of
the Scots, and declares that the expedition was neither directed
against the King nor England, but against the ' Canterburian Defensive
faction of Papists, Atheists, Arminians, Prelates, the misleaders of^^°^^
the King's Majesty and the common enemies of both kingdoms,'
whom it stigmatises as 'the troublers of Israel, the firebrands of
hell, the Korahs, the Balaams, the Doegs, the Rabshakehs, the
' Wodrow, Select Biog., i. 164, ' Life of Livingstone.'
" Pelerkin, Records, 297 ; Aldis, List, No. 972.
348
THE COVENANTERS
The Scottish
muster at
Duns, July
1640.
Hamans, the Tobiahs, and the Sanballats of our time ; which done,
we are satisfied. ... It is not to enrich ourselves with the wealth
of England nor to do any harm thereto.' The Scots would rather
keep their neighbours who had freed them from the French. The
appellants were not raiders, ravishers, and regicides. They sought
' to link the two nations together in straiter and stronger bonds, both
of civil and Christian love, than ever before.' ^ They wished access
to their King. England was their highway to the foot of the throne.
The English were probably not aware that it was an immemorial
custom of the Scots to be fully armed when visiting their kings.
Another paper entitled The intentions of the army of the Kingdom
of Scotland declared to their brethren in Engla^id, intimated that
the Covenanters would not ' take from their brethren from a
thread even to a shoe latchet, they coming amongst them as their
friends.' " In their anxiety to conciliate the English and to enlist
sympathy, the leaders appealed to the Scots women to send some
tents to the army, so that spoliation of the English woods might be
prevented.
The Scottish muster was first at Edinburgh, and the final rendez-
vous was on Campmoor, Choicelee, near the old camp at Duns.
There, on the 31st of July, a force variously reckoned, but probably
consisting of twenty thousand foot, four thousand horse, and a large
train of well-horsed wagons and covered tumbrels, in which artillery
was concealed, together with a mob of bestial, was ready to march.
Leslie was at their head once more. On his staff were Lieut. -
General Lord Almond, Major-General John Baillie, Sir Alexander
Hamilton, in command of the artillery, and Quartermaster- General
David Leslie. The following nobles officered the regiments :
Rothes, Montrose, Dunfermline, Cassillis, Atholl, Home, Kinghorn,
Lothian, Dalhousie, Lindsay, Loudoun, Erskine, Montgomery, Drum-
mond, Carnegie, Elcho, and others. These irregulars in hodden-grey
1 Peterkin, Records, 298.
2 Stevenson, Hist., 445 ; Aldis, List, 970. The same idea is repeated in Henderson's
treatise, The Goveruinent and Order of the Church of Scotland, 68 pp., published in London
in 1641.
THE SECOND BISHOPS' WAR 349
and tartan formed a motley crowd. Few had corselets and iron ' sculls.'
Firearms, swords, and iron-shod quarter-staves were borne by the
infantry ; the horsemen carried swords, pistols, and pikes. The long
cumbrous Scots spear is not mentioned. The fierce Highlanders
carried bows and arrows, as well as their irresistible broadswords,
being ' the nakedest fellows I ever saw,' wrote Sir John Clavering.^
All wore blue bonnets, as Sir Walter Scott's version of a contemporary
song records : —
' March, march, Eskdale and Liddisdale,
All the blue bonnets are over the Border.'
Along with the colours displaying the motto, ' Covenant For Relligion
Crowne and Country,' marched resolute military chaplains, namely,
Alexander Henderson, Robert Blair, John Livingstone, Robert Baillie,
Andrew Cant, George Gillespie, and other country pastors.
Some weeks were spent in drill. On the r 7th of August the Scots enter
advance-guard entered England. Three days later, the very day ^"^Jj^g"^' ^'^*
Charles left London to join his host in York, Leslie's force crossed
the Tweed, without waiting for the advance of the King. The van
was led by Montrose, as impetuous as ever. Alone, he first sprang
into the river, and returned to lead his sixteen hundred foot soldiers
from Perth and Forfar across the Tweed at Cornhill, near Coldstream,
losing one man in the passage.^ Under the Lord Advocate's son.
Sir Thomas Hope, the horsemen of the College of Justice troop,
standing in parallel columns, through which the foot soldiery
passed, stemmed the dangerous river. For a safe transit the army
halted to bless God in prayer. The route lay by ' Flodden's fatal
field,' Wooler, Morpeth, Hexham, Newburn, to Newcastle. Argyll
was left to cope with the menacing Irish on the west, and Eglinton
was stationed at Ayr to oppose any descent upon Ayrshire.
The King, disappointed in obtaining supply, was forced to seek
men and money where he could. He gathered a raw force, which he
managed to pay for a time by selling, under cost price, a large
1 Terry, Leslie, no. 2 Baillie, Letters, i. 256.
350 THE COVENANTERS
quantity of pepper which he had secured on credit. Melancholy
was the pass when the English army had to be maintained on
The Royalists condiments. His Council of War had arranged^ to raise twenty
York. thousand foot and two thousand five hundred horse, with the Earl
of Northumberland as commander-in-chief, and Lord Conway and Sir
John Conyers as his lieutenants. But Northumberland fell sick, and
Strafford eagerly assumed his command. Conway was at once sent
north with a few thousand men to bar Leslie's march, until the
muster had taken place at York. On their way north the English
soldiers, says Gardiner, ' broke into the churches, burnt the com-
munion rails, and removed the communion tables to the middle of
the building. There was no wish among Englishmen to see the
Scots beaten.'" Worse still, Charles left a mutinous people behind
him on his way to the rendezvous. Before he could reach the
Tees, Conway's little force of four thousand foot and horse had
been outmanoeuvred, beaten, and threatened with annihilation at
Battle of New- Newbum Ford, on the Tyne, west from Newcastle. There Conway
28th August ^^^d thrown up earthworks, defended by a few light guns. Leslie
1640. artfully concealed his heavier batteries (eleven cannon, fifty-four field-
pieces, little drakes, and eighty ' frams'), and when these thundered in
support of the Scots cavalry across the river, Conway's gunners fled
panic-stricken.^ A few gallant charges of the English horse could not
rouse the nervous horde, which Conway tried, but failed, to lead.
When the main advance of the Scots took place at four in the
afternoon, their opponents stampeded off the field in disgraceful
flight. The fugitives, according to Conway himself, were ' the
meanest sort of men about London,' 'all the arch-knaves in this
kingdom,' and of a mutinous spirit. Outnumbered, three to one,
and by resolute men, the Royalists were destined to defeat. Leslie
mercifully restrained the pursuit, and saved them from annihilation.
The casualties were few, and the Scots honourably buried their fallen
foemen. Leslie followed up his victory by entering, and sitting down
* Dalrymple, Memorials, 81 : 'Conway's Narrative.'
■^ Gardiner, Stndeiifs Hist, of E tig., 529. •• Terry, Leslie, 121 note.
THE SECOND BISHOPS' WAR 351
tightly in, Newcastle, which he found full of stores and munitions of Scots in New-
war. He appointed Lothian to be its military governor. Leslie's Xucn!st^i64o.
position in the heart of an enemy's country was perilous, in his own
estimation. He was forced to decimate his cowardly deserters. The
prices for his provisions were trebled. He feared an Irish diversion
in his rear. Consequently he requested the War Committee to send
him reinforcements, and for his security to post Monro upon the
Borders. Meantime, the chief events in Scotland had been the
capitulation of Dumbarton Castle, the accidental but disastrous blowing
up of Dunglass Castle, and the reduction of Edinburgh Castle, whose
garrison, under Lord Ruthven, had been a source of trouble and
bloodshed to the inhabitants of the city beneath its guns.
The executive of the Covenanting party now found themselves in English and
an advantao-eous position for respectfully addressing the King anew, ^.°"'^
or tr J o o ' grievances.
with a view to obtaining redress of their grievances. Fortunately, at
the same time twelve English peers presented to their Sovereign
a similar petition relative to English grievances. Charles, with a
defeated army, menaced by mutineers, and having an empty war
chest, was glad to reply that he would submit the Scots supplication
to a Council of Peers, to be convened in York on the 24th of
September. He kept his word. After deliberation, he agreed to
the appointment of a Committee of English noblemen, to meet at
Ripon on the 2nd of October with the Scots Commissioners, and to
settle a treaty of peace. To this conference came, from the Scots
camp, Rothes, Dunfermline, Loudoun, Hepburn of Waughton, Douglas
of Cavers, Drummond of Riccarton, Bailie John Smith of Edinburgh,
Hugh Kennedy, burgess of Ayr, Wariston, and Alexander Henderson.
These bold men would not tolerate at their meetings Traquair,
Morton, Lanark, Sir Lewis Stewart, and others, whom the King had
sent as assistant negotiators. The English Commissioners were
Hertford, Bedford, Bristol, Holland, Salisbury, Berkshire, Warwick,
Paget, Saville, Dunsmore, Howard, Brooke, Paulet, and Wharton.
The King's diplomatists schemed for delaying a settlement, but the
Scots pressed their demand for the payment of their troops on that
352 THE COVENANTERS
Treaty of scrvice, until a final treaty was agreed upon. By this arrangement the
October^fe^o Covenanters secured ^850 a day, payable from the three northern
counties, Northumberland, Cumberland, and Westmorland, and from
the bishopric of Durham. It was further agreed that all acts of
hostility should cease, and that the armies should remain where they
were mustered.^ The Commissioners adjourned to meet in London.
The King was left with no other alternative than the summoning
of Parliament. It assembled on the 3rd of November to begin its
The Long long Struggle with the Crown, hence its name — The Long Parliament.
Parliament, j^ becamc a seHcs of surprises to the autocratic Monarch. Lords and
3rd November ^
1640. Commons granted a commission to the peace plenipotentiaries to
complete their work. Charles was in no haste to have a settlement.
The English Parliament was in less haste, as soon as it recognised
that the Scottish army was the best guardian of English liberties and
the strongest lever for removing their national grievances. In that
alien force they had the means of intimidating the King.
The undaunted Pym again voiced the public dissatisfaction, and
demanded the impeachment of Strafford, Laud, and other incendiaries,
as well as the abolition of the Star Chamber, the Court of High
Commission, and the Council of the North, which were the cruel
engines of tyranny utilised by the King. Charles became more and
more powerless to interfere. This impotence, however, was no justifi-
cation for his mean treatment of his trustiest supporter — the misguided
Fate of Strafford, to whose execution he ultimately consented. ' Put not
your trust in princes,' said that noble defender of a fickle master, as he
prepared for the block. A similar fate was in store for Laud and
Hamilton. The sight of Strafford's blood gave the Puritans and
Presbyterians a tiger's thirst for more. The Israelites would be drunk
with the blood of the Gibeathites before they would feel satiated.
While the Scottish Commissioners tarried in London, they insti-
gated the leaders of the movement against Episcopacy to prepare a
petition, which was subscribed by fifteen thousand persons and pre-
sented to Parliament on iith December 1640, and they witnessed all
' Petei'kin, Records, 302.
Strafford.
THE SECOND BISHOPS' WAR 35
ojo
those stirring events which humbled the King, and made Parliament
paramount in England.^ The city throbbed with excitement over the
monster petition by the people, and the * Petition and Remonstrance
from seven hundred ministers of the Church of England,' to have the
bishops and the ceremonies radically reformed."^ The Scots preachers,
Henderson, Baillie, Gillespie, and others, drew great crowds to hear
them state and defend the popular cause. In The Government and
Order of the Church of Scotland, a manual published by Henderson
when resident in London in 1641, he put the case for Presbytery
in a nutshell thus : ' Here there is superiority without tyranny, parity
without confusion and disorder, and subjection without slavery.'^ A
more concise statement could hardly have been framed.
At length, on the loth of August 1641, a Treaty was adjusted and Treaty of
made a statute, by which the Covenanting insurgents obtained all ^^^^ ^"j^^^^^
their demands, with the exception of Uniformity. As a consideration 1641.
for their losses, the Scots were awarded the sum of ;^2 20,ooo — a not
too handsome war indemnity, or, as it was more euphemistically called,
' brotherly assistance.' In the Act of Oblivion included in the Treaty,
the Scottish bishops and the incendiaries — Traquair, Sir Robert
Spottisw6od, Sir John Hay, and Dr. Walter Balcanqual — were specially
exempted, so that they might receive their deserts should they ever
fall into the hands of their countrymen. Besides this award, over one
million pounds of expenses were incurred by the English through this
invasion. It was a dear price that Laud and other meddlers made
their country pay for 'The Second Bishops' War.'^
1 Hallam, Const. Hist., ii. ii6. - Carlyle, Cromwell, i. 85, Letter iii.
^ Aldis, List, 1005. * Nalson, Imp. Coll., 421-30.
2 Y
354 THE COVENANTERS
CHAPTER XIII
• LEX REX ' — THE RISE OF PARLIAMENTARY POWER
THE KING IN SCOTLAND
The tragic end of Strafford, the ablest of the King's advisers,
1 2th May 1641, and the passing of several bills, notably one pre-
venting the King dissolving Parliament suddenly without its own
consent, denuded the Crown of its offensive powers. This statute
plainly indicated the growing popularity of the Scottish contention —
that the King was servant as well as head of the State, and that his
counsellors also should be representatives of the people. The
'people, fountain of the King, must rather be fountain of the laws,'
was the maxim which Samuel Rutherford was soon (1644) to pro-
mulgate in his famous work. Lex Rex, or the Laiv and the Prince.
Loyalty of Still the Scots professed great veneration for the royal person and
throne. If Charles guaranteed to them their liberties, they would be
prepared to send ten thousand soldiers to Germany in defence of the
blood-royal in the person of the Prince Elector Palatine.^ Charles
placed a stronger trust in that reverence than in the fidelity of his
Puritan critics. With his curious aptitude for acting inopportunely,
Charles resolved to visit Scotland and turn its fealty to account. With
his father's gift, he ' sweires terriblie ' against, and vowed vengeance
on, those who tried to dissuade him.- The political atmosphere of
London had grown unbearable to him ; and this was not to be
wondered at. Baillie, at this very time, was recording, 'all here
are weary of bishops.'^
Laud, impeached by Pym, and charged by Baillie as a traitor,
^ Act. Pari. Scot., v. 386, 460. 2 M'Crie, Misc. Works, 41 note.
'^ Letters, i. 274. •
THE RISE OF PARLIAMENTARY POWER 355
by authority of the Scots Commissioners, lay in the Tower awaiting
his trial and bloody doom. The Scots now esteemed Laud to be too
contemptible for further concern or notice among more engrossing
affairs. Laud was executed on loth January 1645.^ Hallam was Execution of
of opinion that 'Laud had amply merited punishment for his jq^^J, J^j^^^^
tyrannical abuse of power.'' Laud's former victims, Prynne, Bastwick, 1645-
and others, now liberated, used their freedom to create discontent.
The populace, fired with their tale of wrong, looked on these victims
of the slit-nose and cropped-ear policy as demigods. Now John
Milton himself was noting arguments for his able pamphlet (1642)
entitled The Reason of Church Government against Prelaty. The
streets rang with scurrilous ballads such as this : Vox Populi, in plain
English : —
' Then let all good people take courage indeed,
So that they from Antichrist's yoak may be freed :
And seeing that libertie 's gained by the Scots,
Let Englishmen seek for 't, it may be their lotts ;
Then join hands together, and fear not their wrath.
But cry down the Prelats, and spew out their Broth.'"
The sanguine Sovereign hied away to Scotland. On his journey
he visited the Scottish camp at Newcastle, where his kingly bearing
made a great impression upon the warlike ' Bluebonnets.' They
were in high spirits, packing up to march home with their gold and
honours of war. He also won the heart of Leslie ; and that tough
old veteran conditionally offered to Charles his sword — a courtesy
which was afterwards rewarded with an earldom. This enthusiastic
welcome was accentuated because of their delusion that Charles was
the victim of unscrupulous counsellors.
Charles entered Edinburgh on the 14th August. There he Charles visits
found Montrose and other Royalists incarcerated in the Castle, jg'J^/'"'^^ '
charged with plotting against the Constitution and the Covenant.
If confusion reigned in southern politics, the King found confusion
worse confounded in his northern kingdom. Several parties opposed
' Hutton, William Land, 226, note i. ^ Const. Hist., ii. 167.
' The ' Broth' was the Liturgy : Nalson, Imp. Coll., ii. 808.
356 THE COVENANTERS
Parties in the dominant Covenantino- Government. The Covenanters were
divided among themselves as to what their own distinctive principles
were. The staunch Carolan party, whose five leaders were called
the 'Incendiaries,' because they were charged with being 'the
authors of this combustion ' were : John, Earl of Traquair, Sir Robert
Spottiswood of Dunipace, President of the Court of Session, Sir
John Hay, Lord Clerk Register, Dr. Walter Balcanqual, and
ex-Bishop Maxwell. These five were exempted from the indemnity
clause in the Treaty of Ripon. The * Banders ' or ' Plotters ' were a
new party of patriots, who had formed a cave of their own within the
main body of the Covenanters, as a protest against the too radical
policy of The Tables and the schemes of Argyll. The most
satisfactory explanation of the cleavage of the Covenanters into two
followings, that of Montrose and that of Argyll, is afforded by
Montrose himself, and recorded by his relative, Lord Archibald
Napier.^ The Montrose faction maintained that their former
associates had left their original constitutional standpoint, and become
usurpers of authority. This reason is more credible than the other —
that Montrose's championship originated in the vainglory of a peevish
and vindictive cavalier, who resented his countrymen's preference for
Argyll to guide in council, and for Leslie to lead in war.^ Truly
the Presbyterian leaders had gone a long way since they discarded
Episcopacy, and at Duns had asked the King to abolish the office of
bishops in Church and State. Gillespie's trenchant work, A Dispute
against the English- Popish Ceremonies obtruded upon the Church of
Scotland, published in 1637, made it plain that Presbyterians had a
divine mission to carry their polity over the Borders. The success
of Leslie's arms gave this School of Gillespie its righteous oppor-
tunity. A statement of their case for unity asserted that England
was out of harmony with all the Reformed Churches regarding
Church government.
' Napier, Memoirs, i. App. xliv.
2 Cf. Baillie's strictures on Montrose for his pride, vanity, and suspected treachery :
Letters y ii. 26r.
THE RISE OF PARLIAMENTARY POWER 357
In August 1640, Montrose with nineteen nobles and barons,
realising that there were dangerous forces at work, and imagining
that these were to be unscrupulously used by Argyll, Hamilton, and
others for the overthrow of the monarchy, entered into what Baillie
styled ' Montrose's damnable band.' This bond, subscribed at
Cumbernauld House, the seat of the Earl of Wigton, a relative of
Montrose, did not transpire till November. Its tenor is as follows : —
' Whereas WE Under-Subscribers, out of our duty to Religion, King, and Montrose's
Country, were forced to join ourselves in a Covenant for the maintenance and Damnable
defence of either, and every one of other in that behalf: Now finding how that,
by the particular and indirect practicking of a few, the Country and Cause now
depending, does so much suffer, do heartily hereby Bind and oblige ourselves, out
of our duty to all these respects above mentionat, but chiefly and mainely that
Covenant, which we have soe solemnlie sworne and already signed, to wed and
study all public ends which tend to the safety both of Religion, Laws, and
Liberties of this poor Kingdom ; And as we are to make account before that
Great Judge at the last day, that we shall contribute one with another, in a
unanimous and joint way, in whatsomever may concern the public or this cause,
to the hazard of our lives, fortunes, and estates, neither of us doing, consulting, nor
condescending in any point, without the consent and approbation of the whole, in
so far as they can be conveniently had, and time may allow. And likewise we
swear and protest, by the same Oath, that, in so far as may consist with the good
and weal of the public, that every one of us shall join and adhere to others, and
their interests, against all persons and causes whatsoever, so what shall be done to
one, (with reservation foresaid), shall be equally resented and taken as done to
the whole number. In witness whereof, etc.
' Marschell. Stormonth.
Montrose. Seaforth.
Wigton. Erskine.
Kinghorne. Kilcubright.
Home. Amont.
Atholl. Drummond.
Mar. Johnston.
Perth. Lour.
Boyd. D. Carnegy.
Galloway. Master of Lour.'
In the following January, twelve of these 'Banders' signed an
explanatory declaration, asserting their intention to do nothing
' prejudicial to the Covenant.' ^
^ BaWWe, Lexers, ii. 468 ; i. 374,375 ; ii. 262 ; Masson, Drinmnond, 345 ; Napier, Memoi7-s,
i. 269, 270.
158
THE COVENANTERS
Montrose's
hatred of
bishops.
Treachery of
Montrose.
In a Remonstrance drawn up by Montrose at the height of
his victorious career, before Philiphaugh, he justified his action in
breaking from this dangerous party, declaring, ' We could not go
further with a safe conscience, when we perceived their unlawfull
designs.'^ He hinted at some sinister plot of Argyll to seize the
throne. Montrose repudiated any predilection for the bishops, and
rightly blamed the bishops and Hamilton for the misery in Scotland.
No fanatical Mitchellite, Cargillite, or Cameronian could have more
bitterly banned the intruding prelates than did this Royalist, after
deserting the extremists, having declared ' that trampling upon the
necks of all whose conscience could not condescend to be of their
coin, none were sure of life or estate, till it pleased God to stir up
his own instruments . . . for . . , opposing such impiety.' This
severe criticism coincides with what Montrose said on the day before
his death : ' Bishops, I care not for them. I never intended to advance
their interest.'^ Thus his quarrel was purely political. He was of
that minority in Parliament who maintained that the majority had
violated both the letter and the spirit of the Covenant, by trespass-
ing upon the prerogatives of the Crown, thereby causing the ' out-
casting of the locust to be the inbringing of the caterpillar.' Montrose
was but partly right. There was another prerogative — that of the
people — and righteousness also demanded its exercise. Montrose
had forgotten, or had never realised, the perfidy of his Sovereign, and
his treacherous designs against that Covenant, concerning which he
himself wrote : 'We take arms for the defence thereof.' That is the
point in the quarrel which admirers of Montrose, and apologists for
Charles, entirely overlook, that only the lack of power prevented the
King from modelling the institutions of Scotland, and handling its
populace, any way he pleased.
In October 1640 Montrose, while in Newcastle, was discovered
corresponding with the King. Leslie accused him to the Committee,
and threatened him with the short shrift of a court-martial.^ Before
^ Napier, Memoirs, i. App. iii. xlv. - Ibid., ii. 787 ; i. 215, App. xlv.
3 Ibid., i. 272 ; Burnet, Mcnioires, 179 ; Hist., i. 48; Wodrow MSS. (Advoc. Lib.), fol. 65.
THE RISE OF PARLIAMENTARY POWER 359
the death of Lord Boyd, Argyll wormed out the secret of the
Cumbernauld bond, and divulged it in November. Montrose was
cited before the Committee of the Estates and again warned to g^ive
over divisive courses. They ordered the bond to be burned.
Montrose, now thoroughly exposed, was under surveillance. But he
could not hold his tongue among cl'erical tattlers ; and Argyll again
discovered his rival slandering him as a would-be dictator, and
deposer of the King. Montrose acknowledged the gossip before the
Committee, and gave as his informants Lord Lindsay and John
Stewart, younger of Ladywell. Lindsay gave the lie to Montrose in
examination, but Stewart owned to malice and went to the scaffold
for his offence. Although Montrose confessed that he had been
tempted to sign a bond at Duns in 1640, pledging him to the
deposition of the King and the establishment of an oligarchy, he does
not designate the conspirators in his Remonstrance, although he
mentions Hamilton — ' the prime fomenter of these misunderstandings
betwixt the King and his subjects.' Even when he was examined on
the subject, he w^as not ingenuous in his replies.^
The views of Montrose became a family concern. His junto a Montrose
contrived to inform the King that they were sympathetic. Early in ^"
1 64 1 Montrose, Lord Napier, his brother-in-law, Sir George Stirling
of Keir, his niece's husband, and Sir Archibald Stewart of Blackball,
his brother-in-law, made bold to invite his Majesty 'to come in
person to Scotland, and give his people satisfaction and just liberties,'
and settle his own authority. Their advice was still more suggestive
— 'suffer them not to meddle or dispute of your power.' '^ Charles
graciously replied on 22nd May, and promised to come. The courier
was intercepted, and the royal letter was found concealed in his
saddle. The courier, Lieut.-Col. Walter Stewart, another scandal-
monger, confessed that he had carried letters and instructions from
Montrose, which Traquair had furbished up into dispatches for the
King. Drafts of some papers in cipher were found in his possession,
' Napier, Memoirs^ i. 264, 306 ; IVIasson, Drummond^ 345 ; Act. Pari. ScoL, v. 666 ;
VVJllcock, Tke Great Marquess^ 113. - Napier, Memoirs, i. 312.
.^6o
THE COVENANTERS
Inception of
Solemn
League, 1641.
Meeting of
Scots Parlia-
ment, I7lh
August 1 64 1.
and therein, in a curious jargon, Argyll was referred to as the
'dromedary,' Hamilton as the 'elephant,' and Laud as the 'serpent.'
Nothing to incriminate the ' Banders ' was discovered. Both the
King and Traquair disowned complicity with Stewart. Nevertheless,
Argyll and the Committee deemed it safer to throw this junto into
Edinburgh Castle, just four days after Lindsay gave the lie to
the inventive Montrose.
The Estates, the General Assembly, and the Pe^ice Commission
were all sitting in July 1641. The Estates, under Lord Burleigh,
had been thrice adjourned. The Assembly first sat in St. Andrews,
and, on the invitation of Parliament, adjourned to Edinburgh, 27th
July. John, Earl of Wemyss, was Commissioner, and Henderson
was Moderator. The Assembly was occupied with routine business,
— the maintenance of churches, pastors, universities, schools, and
hospitals, and with repressive measures against gypsies and necro-
mancers. On 1 2th August, an answer was framed to an important
letter which was sent by some English clergy who desired a closer
alliance with the Presbyterians, and it announced that the Scots were
praying to secure ' in both Kirks one Confession, one Directory for
public worship, one Catechism, and one forme of Kirk Government.'
Henderson was thereafter empowered to frame a unifying Polity, as
he himself first proposed/ This step towards a National League
was taken on the day before the English Parliament dropped the
Root and Branch Bill.
The King arrived in Holyrood House on Saturday evening, 14th
August. Next morning he heard Henderson, his chaplain, preach in
the Chapel- Royal ; in the afternoon he played golf. Taken to task
by Henderson for Sabbath-breaking, he soon forgot the Book of
Sports ; and, intruder of Prelacy though he was, he bent his neck to
the Presbyterian yoke, and kept the diets of worship without com-
plaint, so long as he remained in Scotland. John Hampden, 'a
subtle fox' according to D'Ewes, was one of four Parliamentary spies
who arrived in Edinburgh at this time to note the movements of the
' Peterkin, Records, 296.
ts^:
V ? . 1^-i C*iJb^' IV^r-
:... '!5.
THE <; u Bs c R r n I R s of the
LEAGUE AND COVENANT.
/.„»,Ck, .,...Y■/•,r,,,.V//,,,•
~mt At-'-i'frjin-t tf iHluM
III hi'-i-jleriifi'6tlc,r>ie
'4'
^7./
/ ; 1 '' v/" ^'
'T." 4■''>-'.</
(^•(,•„/■«/../'
iin League and Covenant, sulj^cribed in Uie
University of Glasgow in 1643
^*9
lit fuhfcrikr; of the Lc.igue tihi
COVENANT-
^^^J^;->i ^^difiX^^ rfti.'*, J^p
^.S'
ryfliv
-^-.
■^^^
Solemn League and Covenant subscribed in Glasgow in 1648
V[^^-i'd■ ^g.
••■-fr' /v 'It-trfKiUU. /-~^ ^
. • /aU. f)Ct ^.it i>:^uJm
<t/!^' A. - "// '- -
-Kr.'r fh-^
BSCRTBr»S*^OF THE
lUgf AND COVENANT,
' *?»3
iV.- .-. ^- ;/•' Lf- .X. r.-tJlfr
y
' * \-i^. A""'-i''V''^ ^ v'- i I it inc. ^ iun^-nfAc'
Letter of King Charles 11. to Rev. Robert Douglas
in 1649
Solemn League and Covenant subscribed by Samuel Rutherford
and other Professors and Students in St. Andrews
FACSIMILE OF SIGNATURES ON COVENANT OF 1643
THE RISE OF PARLIAMENTARY POWER -,6i
King. On Tuesday, Charles opened Parliament most courteously,
asseverating that he had come to settle the religion and liberties of
his fatherland and to make his people content.^ One may imagine
the scene, when Argyll rose to thank his Sovereign, bowed his red
head, tried to look amiably impressive with his conflicting eyes,
referred to the skilful pilot of the storm-tossed Ship of State, and
with a sneer congratulated the King on having thrown overboard
' the naughtiest baggage to lighten ' her, namely, Strafford and Laud.
Without a cavil the King called for the obnoxious Acts of the preced- Charles in
ing Parliament, for which war had been waged, that he might touch
them into operative being with the sceptre.^ What were a few pawns
to the player now, compared with the many rooks and knights he
planned to capture soon ? Meantime, Charles would homologate any
Root-and-Branch statute passed since the Reformation. The Scots
were not deceived, knowing too well that Charles was there to court
allies against his southern opponents and then against themselves.^
In as polite a way as the emergency permitted, these canny legislators
said, ' Hands off! We must needs study these acts again ; we will ask
our King when we are quite ready.' This was the first rebuff. He
also felt snubbed when an act was passed compelling him to appoint
the Officers of State, subject to the approbation of Parliament. An
undignified scramble for some vacant offices then took place. Charles
had given the Treasurership to Morton, who was practically bankrupt.
A vulgar colloquy arose in the King's hearing, when Argyll declared
his father-in-law to be unfit for the office, and upset the appointment.
Charles was baffled, and found his schemes impracticable amid the
feuds of the nobles. The streets swarmed with factions armed to the
teeth, eager to support any dispute of their chiefs, and regardless of
manslaughter.
While these momentous issues were being determined, Montrose
* Only Covenanters who had taken the oath were admitted to this Parliament : Ac/. Pari.
Scot., V. 361, 363.
^ It was afterwards argued that Charles was not a free agent when he acted so
complacently.
- Gardiner,^^/j-/., x. 27.
2 Z
362 THE COVENANTERS
Montrose in lay in the serenity of the state prison on Edinburgh Rock, faintly
hearing the ebb and flow of the dangerous tide of life surging
beneath the battlements. On the same spot Argyll would hear the
funeral drums of Montrose. From this durance he wrote to the
King promising to reveal political secrets regarding the safety of
his person and throne. His avowal came inopportunely. The King
had other entanglements enough. His present policy demanded the
conservation of the goodwill of Parliament, which he preferred to
vague hints and insinuations.^ It looked as if Montrose meantime
were left to languish there. Chary of martyrdom, Montrose, on nth
October, sent another urgent letter to the King offering to prove his
statements. He had now conjured up Hamilton in association with
Argyll, with whom a new and inexplicable friendship had sprung up.
The eleventh was a fateful day. On it Colonel Hurry divulged to
Leslie a plot to remove these very traitors whom Montrose was hint-
ing at, namely, Hamilton, Argyll, and Lanark — Hamilton's brother.
These three were to be invited that night to Holyrood in order to
be trapped, then stabbed, or carried off prisoners to a frigate lying in
Leith Roads. Leslie sent for these three to hear the plot unfolded.^
Just when Charles was about to consult with Argyll and Loudoun as
to the strange request of Montrose, the threatened lords informed the
King that their honour and safety necessitated their temporary retiral
into the country. The trio fled to Hamilton's house at Kinneil in
Linlithgowshire, and awaited events. Truly in misfortune men have
strange associates. Here was Hamilton hand-and-glove with the
very noble whom three years before he designated the ' dangerousest
'The Incident.' man in this state.' This coup d't^tat, or 'The Incident,' as it was
called, although it missed fire, had remarkable consequences. Parlia-
ment, as soon as it heard of the affair, ordered an investigation, ' to
see quher the fox layes,' as the needy Morton quaintly demanded.
That morning Charles was escorted to Parliament House by a
suspicious-looking bodyguard, largely composed of the sworn enemies
of the fugitive trio. He averred that he came to court an investiga-
' Hist. MSS. Com. Rep., iv. 164-8. -' Balfour, Annals, iii. 121,
THE RISE OF PARLIAMENTARY POWER ;6
o^^
tion in public, and, with tears in his eyes, said pretty things to shield
his former favourite, Hamilton.' The Parliament, however, remitted
the inquiry to a committee. Again feeling insulted, the King
ruefully exclaimed, 'he knew not what they would grant him.' When
Montrose was interrogated about his letter and the whole affair, he
declared that he had not ' aney particular person ' to mention or
impeach." He was only libelling at large. It is very difficult to Montrose
infer what private knowledge Charles had of these miserable intrigues, ^ ' ^ ^"^^
but it is certain that having no well-conceived plans of his own he
kept floundering on from scheme to scheme, now trusting to one
party, anon to another, and all the time expecting the interposition of
happy fate to execute his unrealisable designs. His constant instruc-
tions to his Commissioners had been to sow dissension amono- his
opponents, some of whom he knew to be inimical to the Church,
which they had robbed. His own statutes of 1633, however, had
made the holders of church-lands more afraid of himself than of the
crippled Church. Now he discovered the impossibility of carrying
out his own behests.
The inquiry brought to light nothing more definite than
incoherent surmises of some gossiping troopers and the fancies of
excited Montrose. A report of the Sovereign's complacency to his
Presbyterian subjects had disaffected the Royalists over the Border,
who were made believe that he was returning to alter the government
of the Church of England. Charles wrote, 12th October, to his
secretary, Nicholas, ' I resolve, by the grace of God, to die in the
maintenance of it.' ^
Public attention was soon diverted from 'The Incident' by the The Irish
blood-curdling news of the rising and massacres of the Protestants in j/
Ireland, which the King himself first communicated to the Estates
on 28th October. The country shuddered at the accounts of the
atrocities perpetrated upon thousands — the number has not been com-
puted with certainty. Reliable accounts read like descriptions of the
^ Balfour, Annals, iii. 95-108 ; Burnet, Menioires, 186. " Balfour, Amials, iii. 134.
' Gardiner, Hist., x. 39.
Massacres in
I.
364 THE COVENANTERS
Ju-ju rites of African cannibals ; for, after partaking of the sacrifice of
the mass, the savage Papists left the altars to imbrue their hands in
the blood of the innocent. The country was soon flooded with
survivors, who made the Covenanters shudder with horror at their
tales of woe, how even ministers had been crucified, executed,
'martyred and quartered.' Largo kirk-session gave £4. to 'the wife
of one Mr. Thomas Murray, a minister in Ireland, who, she said, was
crucified for the religion.' Lasswade voted sums to 'a minister's wife
from Ireland, who had her husband cruelly execute by the rebels,'
and for the relict and children ' of umquhile John Trewman, who
was martyred and quartered by the deputie in Ireland ... for our
Scottis cause.' ^ The Queen, known to be ever intriguing, and the
King also were suspected of complicity with Sir Phelim O'Neill, the
chief actor in these butcheries, who displayed a forged commission
under the Great Seal of Scotland." Parliament made the crisis the
pretext for inviting Argyll and his companions back in order to get
their counsel and help.
Parliament in xjijg Parliament passed 309 enactments, the first of which
1641 authoribes ...
the National cnjoined its own members to subscribe the National Covenant.
Another act was the peace treaty, by which the King was pledged
to the thorough reformation of the Church in both realms, and the
Scots were declared to be loyal subjects. The 'Incendiaries' and
' Banders ' were ordered to be tried ; to this act the King had to
make an addendum — that he would neither employ nor encourage
these suspects near his person, without the consent of Parliament.
Statutes abolishing idolatrous monuments, establishing a theological
faculty in Glasgow, ratifying former acts of James vi. against non-
communicants, and others exonerating the chief actors in the late
opposition to the Crown, were passed.
Largesse from Charles now showed anxiety to return to London. Before
the King. Parliament rose, 17th November, Charles, in order to obliterate any
trace of ill-feeling engendered during his visit, lavishly bestowed
' Cf. Extracts from Records in Lee, Leti. Hist. Scot., ii. 401, 403. Cf. Appendix vi.
'■* Turner, Memoirs, 21 ; Gardiner, Hist., x. 92 ; Hill Burton, Hist., vi. 344 (edit. 1897).
THE RISE OF PARLIAMENTARY POWER 365
honours on the leading Covenanters. Argyll became a Marquis ;
Loudoun, who all but left his head in London, was made an Earl ;
the victorious Leslie became Earl of Leven, as well as received
100,000 merks out of the 'brotherly assistance' from England; John-
ston, the Procurator of the Church, was knighted and advanced to be
a Lord of Session, taking the title of Lord Wariston ; and there was
a general change of the Officers of State, true-blue Covenanters
being preferred for the vacant offices. Hamilton had not long to
wait for his title of Duke. The ' Banders ' were liberated on bail ;
the trial of the 'Incendiaries' was ordered; Henderson, the royal
chaplain, was settled with the revenues of the deanery of Holyrood ;
on the four Universities were bestowed the Crown rents from
bishoprics, priories, and deaneries in their vicinity. Even the needy
minister of Canongate was not forgotten with a stipend out of the
* wine imposts ' ; and many landlords were bribed with fresh grants
of teinds.
The King soon afterwards was boasting of his liberality. Argyll
and the other leaders of the Covenant received exonerations for their
conduct — that of Henderson stating that he was ' ane loyal subject to
the King, and trewe patriot to his country.' Under the title of ' The Cummisoion
/--> . . r . r 1 T-> 1 T7- • J ' f'"'^ conserving
Commissioun for conservmg of the Peace between the two Kmgdoms, pg^ce.
Parliament set up a new Council, which was virtually a Defence
Committee, as Baillie wrote, 'to keep correspondence in so needful
a time.'^ Parliament adjourned, to meet on the first Tuesday of
June 1644.
That night also the King tried still more to mollify these fractious
legislators by a grand feast in the Great Hall of Holyrood. Next
morning he rode off, never to see the home of the Stewarts again.
In the King's absence in Scotland, Pym's party in the Commons, Revolutionary
which had long threatened to abolish the bishops, ' root and branch,' ^^ghnd.
although they failed to carry a bill under that title, did pass a bill
depriving the bishops of temporal power and their seats in the House
1 Ac^. Pari. Scot.., v. 480, 519 ; Peterkin, 317 ; Masson. Druinvwnd., 355 ; Baillie, Letters.
i. 397 ; M'Crie, Misc. Writ.., 82 ; Balfour, iii. 165.
366 THE COVENANTERS
of Lords — a statute which Charles ultimately (1642) ratified. This
bill was followed by Pym's 'Grand Remonstrance,' which was a fierce
indictment of the King, enumerating all his illegal doings, and denoun-
cing the bishops, the advisers of the Crown, and the Liturgy. This
bill, embodying the principle laid down by the Scots Estates — that
Parliament should be consulted in the King-'s choice of the Officers of
State — became law three days before Charles returned to London, on
25th November.
He found the capital on the verge of civil war. News from
Ireland, growing more heartrending every day, horror for Papists,
and distaste for the prelates and the Prayer- Book, were maddening
'KingPym' the populacc. 'King Pym ' was more supreme in England than
following. Argyll was in Scotland. The real monarch, vainly endeavouring to
outmanoeuvre the Covenanters and the Remonstrants, was no match
for his popular rivals. Pym followed the procedure observed in
inaugurating the National Covenant, and appealed to the people
directly by means of the printed Remonstrance. Differences of
opinion had arisen regarding the unseating of the prelates and popish
peers, which cleft and imperilled Pym's party — already threatened
with reprisals. The Royalists imagined that with Pym, Hampden,
and a few others secured in the Tower, the Church would have peace
again. Twelve bishops, in a petition to the King, protested against
the late doings of Parliament and desired their protest to be recorded.
They asserted that street mobs fettered their action and made Parlia-
ment no longer free. A correspondent at this date wrote : ' The
citizens grow very tumultuous, and flock by troops daily to the Parlia-
ment . . . and there they never cease yawling and crying, "no
bishops, no bishops." ' In a subsequent letter he wrote : ' The bloods
of men severally affected are up, you may see by their catching.'^
Pym retaliated by arresting the twelve bishops for treason, and
clapping them into the Tower, where Laud was engaged writing his
History of the Troubles. The propriety of impeaching the Queen as
' W. Montague to Lord Montague, December 2 and i6, 1C41 : Hist. MSS. Com. Rep.
{Montague House MSS.), i. 287, 289.
THE RISE OF PARLIAMENTARY POWER 367
a fomenter of trouble and a conspirator against the liberties of the
nation was discussed, the leaders of the Commons feeling some
justification for plainly calling the rising in Ireland 'the Queen's
Rebellion.' Charles, now too late, was ready to take Strafford's
advice and seize the impudent impeachers, whom he accused of
subverting the Crown and law, of having invited rebel Scots to
invade England in 1640, and of other illegalities.
On 4th January 1642 Charles, accompanied by a fierce retinue, The Five
marched to the House of Commons personally to arrest five members
— Pym, Hampden, Holies, Hazelrig, and Strode. Forewarned, they
made their escape. 'The birds are flown,' Charles exclaimed with
chagrin when he scanned their empty seats in the House, then turned
and madly strode away. Next day, as the King passed through the
city, the jeering men in the street, now called Roundheads, because
of their cropped pates, howled in his ears, ' Privileges of Parliament.'
More afraid of the Royal autocrat than ever, the panic-stricken
Londoners rose in arms to defend their homes from expected
assassins, and to guard the Commons from an intimidating despot.
Blood was up. Charles and his Court were glad to seek safety at
Hampton Court and Windsor. When he came back to Whitehall,
seven years afterwards, it was to die. Meantime Pym and the
Parliament-men, who during this crisis found refuge in the city,
returned to Westminster in triumph, accompanied by the jubilant
masses.
Civil war was now inevitable. The Court removed to York, Civil War
On 22nd August Charles unfurled the national standard at ^^""'
Nottingham, as his excited followers shouted, ' God save King
Charles, and hang up the Roundheads.' A storm blew the emblem
down, and some read a true omen from the fallen flag. The Queen
was sent abroad to negotiate warlike alliances and to purchase
munitions of war. The King solicited the purses and the swords of
the Catholics. The early honours of the war fell to Charles and his
cavaliers against the Earl of Essex and the Parliamentary forces.
Since December 1641 a small force of English soldiery had in
368 THE COVENANTERS
vain tried to quell the Irish rebels. Early in 1642 the Scottish
force of 10,000 men, which had been intended for Germany, was
dispatched to the north of Ireland under General Robert Munro,
on English pay. English and Scots seemed to vie with each other
in their revengeful butchery of men, women, and babes in Ireland.
Sir James Turner, then a major in the Sinclair Levies, — a mer-
cenary the least squeamish in affairs of blood — with shame afterwards
described the barbarities he in vain tried to prevent.^
During summer Leven superseded Munro in command of the
troops in Ireland, but his success there was not brilliant, and he
returned to lead the Scottish arms into England, on the invitation
of the English Parliament, which declared that his acceptance would
be * taken as an Act of great love and advantage to this State.' Here
it is only necessary to state the main events which rendered this
military alliance with Scotland imperative. Charles had entered into
a truce, called * the Cessation,' with the fanatical Romanists, who had
perpetrated the Ulster Massacres ; had handed over certain districts
to the rule of ' Catholic Confederates ' ; and had promised these allies
toleration. He as readily promised to Parliament to carry out the
laws against recusants. There was no trusting him. His intrigues
forced on the war. This 'Cessation' (15th September 1643) was
the last intolerable manoeuvre among many. It was the King's
ill-conceived antidote to the popular movement which gave birth
Immediate to the Solemn League and Covenant. The prolonged and bitter
cause of the experiences of Scotland ofroanino- under despotic and priestly oppres-
Solemn League ^ t>C3 ir tr J cr
and Covenant, sions had prepared her for a stand on the side of the masses. The
national instinct was democratic, and had grown more and more
impatient of the attempts of authority to curb it. They found in
Charles an enemy to representative government, as their clear
intellects, accustomed to wrestle with subtle problems of theology
and politics constantly projected from Scottish pulpits, led them to
understand it. Both belligerents appealed to the Scots, who never
deceived the King in assuring him that his own interests demanded
' Turner, Memoirs, 18-24 ; Gardiner, Hist., x. 175.
THE RISE OF PARLIAMENTARY POWER 369
peace with his Parliaments, with which they were in accord. A few
Scots nobles still encouraged Charles in his headstrong adventure,
as remains to be seen.
Charles was an incorrigible liar, and to his mendacity may be King Charles
traced all his own personal afflictions as well as the woes which his u^j. .
perfidy brought on his unhappy kingdom. This glaring weakness
in his character impressed Mr. Gladstone, who declared, ' Charles
was no doubt a dreadful liar ; Cromwell, perhaps, did not always tell
the truth ; Elizabeth was a tremendous liar.' ^ Had this vice perished
also at Whitehall, Britain might have had a different destiny. But the
King's two profligate sons and successors had the natural entailment
of it, and were active in exercising it.
' Morley, The Life of William Eivart Glad!:tonc, iii. 480 (Lond., 1903).
3A
170 THE COVENANTERS
CHAPTER XIV
THE SOLEMN LEAGUE AND COVENANT
Origin of idea It IS HOW as difficult to mark on the plane of practical politics the
urn ormi y. jj^^^j^gj^^^g ^f ^^le. idea of uniformity of religion as it is to prove from
which side of the Borders the idea was reflected upon the other. It
is most probable that polemical Covenanters first suggested union
to the English Root and Branch reformers. Since Wariston had
made the National Covenant a corollary from the King's Confession,
he, with as great foresight, may have planned the development of
the Solemn League and Covenant out of that 1638 bond. On the
other hand, it certainly was Henderson who voiced the resolution
of the Church, as to the expediency of the Union movement, at the
time of the visit of Hampden and the Root and Branch spies in
1641. However, as early as 21st August 1640, in the Six Considera-
tions of the Lawfulness of their Expedition into England manifested^
the idea of uniformity is veiled in these terms : ' Scotland shall be
reformed as at the beginning, the reformation of England long prayed
and pleaded for the Godly thereby shall be, according to their wishes
and desires, perfected in Doctrine, Worship, and Discipline. Papists,
Prelates, and all the members of the Anti-Christian Hierarchy, with
their Idolatry, Superstition, and humane inventions, shall pack from
hence, the names of Sects and Separatists shall no more be men-
tioned, and the Lord shall be one, and his name one throughout the
whole island.' After the negotiations were opened at Ripon, ist
October 1640, Henderson formulated the views of his compatriots
under the title : ' Our Desires concerning Unity in Religion, and
' Peterkin, Records, 297.
THE SOLEMN LEAGUE AND COVENANT 371
Uniformity of Church Government, as a special means to conserve
Peace in his Majesty's Dominions.'^ This pamphlet so much
interested Oliver Cromwell, who was also a Root and Branch man,
that he again borrowed the print in February 1642, declaring: 'L
would peruse it against we fall upon that Debate, which will be
speedily,'" In this remarkable document Henderson strongly First Covenan-
repudiated the charge so often repeated, by the Carolan faction, *^f mcimed to
^ ^ 1 ' ,/ toleiatiun.
then and since, that the Covenanters had ' a presumptuous intention
to reform England' and 'to touch another free and independent
Church and Kingdom ... we do not presume to propound the
form of government of the Church of Scotland as a pattern for the
Church of England, but do only represent, in all modesty, these few
considerations, according to the trust committed unto us.' He
proudly asserted, ' so have we not been so forgetful of ourselves ' ;
and further, ' our ways also are witnesses of the contrary against
the malicious.' This is a complete answer to the latest editors of
the Memoirs of Montrose, who inform us that ' the Solemn League
and Covenant was an unprovoked invasion of England on the ,
part of Presbyterian propagandists, seeking by help of a faction in
England to impose on that country' an alien form of Church
discipline.'^ Henderson, who guided the movement, while always
prepared to defend Presbytery, was willing to submit all disput-
able subjects for settlement by a convention of competent inter- *
preters of the word of God. Nye, on the other hand, is
credited with being the earliest champion of toleration with the
soundest views of the question of the hour. In our opinion
Dr. S. R. Gardiner went too far in his generalisation when he
asserted : ' Of liberty of thought these Scottish Preachers neither
knew anything nor cared to know anything. . . . Spiritual and
mental freedom would have one day to be learned from England.'*
It is easy to meet that assertion with quotations from contemporary
^ 'Arguments given in,' etc., 1641 ; Hetherington, Hist. Weshnznsfcr Assembly, 381.
^ Carlyle, Cromwell, Letter iii.
3 Murdoch and Simpson, Preface, xxxix. * Hist., viii. 374.
372
THE COVENANTERS
Remodelling
of the
standards.
works. For example, in the correspondence on the subject of uni-
formity, the spirit of toleration was thus expressed : * We [the Scots]
conceive so pious and profitable a work to be worthy of the best con-
sideration, so we are earnest in recommending it to your lordships,
that it may be brought before his Majesty anfi the Parliament, as that
which . . . without forcing of conscience, seemeth not only to be a
possible but an easy work.'^ Men who had lived in foreign lands
must have experienced the sweets of toleration, although they were
not prepared to sanction an indefensible toleration of wicked men
who professed to take their rule of conduct solely from the word
of God, and yet pressed burdens on other consciences for which
there was neither reason nor authority.^
The General Assembly of 1641 had before it a letter from certain
English pastors, asking for a definitive opinion upon the relative
merits of Presbytery and Independency ; and in their pronouncement
in reply the Scots divines declared uniformity to be their aim. On
28th August, Henderson 'did fall on a notable motion of drawing up
a Confession of Faith, a Cathechism, a Directorie for all the parts
of the publick worship, and a Platforme of Government, wherein
possiblie England and we might agree.' ^ This motion was accepted,
and Henderson was appointed to draw up the standards, thus showing
the implicit trust his associates placed in that divine's judgment. In
spring, Henderson informed Baillie that he had found himself unequal
to the task, for several reasons, among others he could not settle
some disputed points of doctrine, nor venture to amend the Prayer
Book of Knox, 'penned by our great and divine Reformers.' 'The
publication would not be timely,' he thought, ' till we see what the
Lord will doe in England and Ireland, where I still wait for a
reformation and uniformitie with us ; but this must be brought
to passe with common consent, and we are not to conceave that
' M'Crie, Sketches, 275 ; Hetherington, Hist., 385.
'^ Henderson, when addressing the people in St. Andrews before taking the Covenant, in
1638, expressly referred to the lawful means of persuasion — 'preaching the gospel and the
demonstration of the Spirit of God' : Sermons, edit. Martin, 42 (Edin., 1867).
^ Baillie, Letters, i. 365.
THE SOLEMN LEAGUE AND COVENANT 373
they will embrace our Forme ; but a new Forme must be sett downe
for us all . . . my desire is to see what Forme England will pitch
upon before we publish ours.'
These clear statements indicate the tolerant spirit of the trusted
leader of the Church— <;';i; uno disce omnes—\^ho was prepared to compro-
mise on non-essentials, and was averse from tampering with the Psalm
Book of Knox, which had become so popular and useful by long usage.
While the four Scots pastors, Henderson, Baillie, Blair, and Spread ..f idea
1 1 • 1 r I, of uniformity.
Gillespie, all men of incisive intellect and polemical fervour, who
fostered the dream of universal uniformity, remained with the Peace
Commissioners in London, they kept in line with the English ex-
positors of the same views. But they disclaimed all desire to
interfere in southern politics, while openly demonstrating that
Presbyterianism alone would accomplish the statesmanlike design of
King James for unifying his kingdom. There was simplicity more
than craft in enthusiasts having such millennial views. What they
enunciated in London was re-echoed by Professor Samuel Rutherford
in St. Andrews, who taught that the Church of Scotland did ever
repute the prelate to be ' the fifth element and the sixt finger in the
hand, and therefore unlawful.'" That was the Covenanters' id^e
fix^e. The reply of the Assembly to the English ministers, already
referred to, resembles the preface of an able work, which George
Gillespie was engaged on at this very time. He begins An Assertion
of the Government of the Church of Scotland, etc., 1641, thus : ' It is
high time for those who have been long praying for the Peace of
Jerusalem, and, with bleeding hearts, have beheld the sorrows of
Zion, now to bestir themselves . . . that this great and good work of
reformation may not be blasted in the bud, nor fade in the flourish,
but may be brought forward to that full maturity which shall afford a
harvest of joy to us, and to all the churches of God.' Robert Baillie's
prolific pen, which made more excitement for an already nervous
generation, in works such as Autokatacrisis, The Canterburians
' Baillie, Letters, ii. 2.
' A Peaceable and Temperate Plea for Paul's Presbytery, 311, edit. 1642.
374 THE COVENANTERS
Self-Cofiviction (1640), Parallel of the Liturgy with the Mass- Book,
Antidote to Arminianism, The Unlawfulness of Limited Episcopacy,
and other works, helped on the movement. In a printed ballad of
the time Baillie is thus referred to : —
' Baillie is bold now with his subtile pen,
At London Laud to encounter, and defend
His scrolls 'gainst England's Bishops and their minions.
And in High Justice Court plead his opinions.'
To the chagrin of the Scots, their offers to be mediators between
the King and Parliament, 1642, were rejected by Charles. The
Rubicon was crossed. The Earl of Dunfermline was appointed
Royal Commissioner in Scotland.
General The General Assembly met in St. Andrews in July 1642. The
Assembly in -rr . . J J
1642. King sent the usual greetings, and protestations that he was in
favour of reformation, and would prove himself 'to be a nursing
Father in that Kirk wherein we were born and baptized.' In reply
the Assembly, 3rd August, petitioned the King to bring about unity
in religion, and conformity. The English Parliament, in guarded
terms, assured the Assembly that they too desired ' a most firm and
stable union between the two kingdoms,' and 'such a reform of the
Church as shall be most agreeable to God's Word.' The Assembly,
in a reply to the Commons, pressed home the uniformity scheme :
' For what hope can there be of Unity in religion, of one Confession
of faith, one Form of worship, and one Catechisme, till there be first
one Form of ecclesiastical Government.'^ A similar answer was
sent to those English ministers who then favoured Presbyterianism.
The Assembly next appointed a large committee of their number to
prosecute those aims and to prepare drafts of the proposed standards,
namely, Henderson, Robert Douglas, Rutherford, and Robert Baillie,
ministers; the Earl of Cassillis, Lord Maitland (afterwards that
scourge, the Duke of Lauderdale), and Wariston, elders.^
On 2nd June, the Scots Privy Council, by an ambiguous letter,
' Peterkin, Records, 323, 325, 329.
^ Ibid., 339 ; Baillie, Letters, ii. 44-54 ; Grub, Hist.^ iii. 94-8.
THE SOLEMN LEAGUE AND COVENANT 375
gave Charles to understand that he was not to expect help from the Proposed
Scots against the English Parliament/ In September, the Scottish Ass^g^biy.
movement was reported in London, and resulted in a letter being
sent from both Houses pledging them to the abolition of Episcopacy.
In October, a bill passed both Houses for convening an Assembly of
English divines and learned laymen, with power to frame a new
model of the Church. The refusal of the King to receive a petition
from his Parliament at this juncture forced Pym to move for a bond
similar to the Covenant ; and shortly afterwards, in November, the
Scots were invited to enter England.^
The war proceeded. The Queen advised the King to play off intrigues at
the Irish against the Scots, and to buy help from Denmark by the
cession of the Orkneys. The Government retaliated by having the
most influential Catholics arrested and their estates sequestrated.
There was still a strong peace party, whose efforts were practically
fruitless. The same may be said of the attempts of Henderson,
Loudoun, and other Conservators of Peace, who waited upon the
King at Oxford as mediators. According to Bishop Burnet, these
amicable Scots had gone the length of inviting the Queen to act as an
angel of peace, and to come to Scotland in that interest.^ Charles
slighted that request, as much as he did their presence at Court in
Oxford, from which they were glad to escape in safety, having
accomplished nothing.^ The Crown had other advisers, Hamilton
being at the King's ear, Montrose at the Queen's at York. Both
had captivating schemes, of course diametrically opposite. Hamilton,
that brass-faced Munchhausen, who boasted of having a genius for
political malingering, had invented fresh stumbling-blocks to the
Scottish advance. His countrymen might be bribed. He told
Lauderdale that he succeeded in keeping the voracious Scots ' neuter '
at this time, by the King's offer of a slice of England, of a Court at
Newcastle under the Duke of Rothesay, and of good billets in the
royal household.^ He could pull strings, he imagined, so that nobles
' Reg. Privy Cottttc, vii. 264. '- Gardiner, Hist. 0/ the Great Civil War, i. 39, 54.
^ Mevioiresy2o\. * BaWlie, Letters, i'l. 66 ; Clarendon, vi. 337-66. ^ Burnet, iTzV/,, i. 59.
Z1^
THE COVENANTERS
Montrose's
plan.
Petition and
Cross-petition.
inimical to Argyll would soon destroy his faction of clergy. Hamilton
was thus probably corroborating what Baillie wrote, that 'public
commotions ' were the * private subsistance ' of needy nobles like
himself/ With statecraft, intrigues, bribes, lies, and Hamilton —
with Traquair included — the rising could be ended. Charles cherished
this silly delusion hatched in Hamilton's brain. Not so the bold and
energetic Queen, now attracted by the agreeable machinations of the
brilliant Montrose, who proposed to send the fiery cross through the
Gordon Highlands, muster the Nithsdale Papists on the Borders,
unleash the cut-throat Macdonells of North Ireland upon their
barbarous kinsmen of Argyll, and thus by a triple blow crush the
Scots. This scheme was the only one which had the elements of
success in it. As might be expected, the King preferred the
Machiavellism of Hamilton to this bold call to arms ; and Montrose
had to bide his time. When Henderson returned from Oxford, the
' verie double ' Montrose — as Baillie designated that intriguer —
arranged an interview with Henderson at Stirling, ostensibly to get
enlightenment on the national crisis, but in reality to hoodwink the
Covenanting party, and gain time to further his own plans. Hender-
son was too acute and too well informed of the ruse not to see
through the foolish subterfuge of the cavalier, of whose untrust-
worthiness he warned his compatriots.^
In the meantime the Defence Committees of Church and State
had not been asleep. They were in communication with the opposing
parties, who, before the end of 1642, respectively solicited help from
the Scottish executive. The Scots Privy Council arranged to put
the King's appeal alone before the people. To this prejudiced action
both the Commission of Assembly and the Conservators of Peace
demurred, on the ground that such a step was not harmonious with
the popular feeling. They set about proving this in a petition,
demanding the publication of the communication from the English
Parliament. The Royalists, Malignants, or Banders, as they were
1 Letters^ ii. 75.
'^ M'Crie, Life of Hetjderson, 45 ; Baillie, Letters^ ii. 74 ; Napier, Memoirs^ ii. 381.
THE SOLEMN LEAGUE AND COVENANT 377
called, tried to nullify this by their cross petition upholding the
Council's action. On reconsideration, the Council gave way to the
complainants. The issue was placed before the people now.
The informal Scots government, under Argyll and the Church Counterplots
. /^ • r T^ ^ .t °f Covenanters
leaders, in May, determmed to convene a Convention ot Estates, ^^^ Puritans.
on 22nd June, if necessary, without the royal warrant. Hamilton,
acting representative of the King, and his following, who schemed
for delay, were again outmanoeuvred.^ The disclosure of the new
Irish plot, and the proposed rising under Montrose, fired Scotland.
News was sent to England. The English Parliament had no hesita-
tion in appointing a deputation of clergy and laity to wait upon the
Convention, ostensibly to ask counsel and to invite also the attendance
of some Scots ministers at their Assembly in Westminster. Arms
were not condescended upon. The deputies dilly-dallied. According
to Baillie, ' their slowness in all their affairs is marvellous.'
At length, on 2nd August 1643, the epoch-making Assembly met
in the east division of St. Giles' Church, Edinburgh, when Sir Thomas
Hope had the unique distinction of sitting as Commissioner, and
Henderson, for the third time, filled the Moderator's chair. They
began business by enacting that the National Covenant of 1638
should be issued in a little quarto volume, with blank leaves, to be
subscribed in every synod, presbytery, and parish, and that non-
subscribers of it should be censured.^
The dignified Moderator communicated his own feeling of awe General
and gravity to the anxious House, so as to prevent the Commissioners ^^^ ^^g^;^
from England conceiving the common Anglican idea that the Scots '643-
were rude, hyperborean boors. The deputation who attended were
Sir William Armyn, Mr. Hatcher, Mr. Darley, Sir Harry Vane,
Stephen Marshall, a Presbyterian minister, and Philip Nye, a Con-
gregationalist minister.^ They were not admitted as members of
Assembly, but sat apart and communicated their views through the
* Baillie, Letters, ii. 68, 74 ; Act. Pari. Scot., vi. pi. i. 14.
^ Aldis, List, Nos. 107, 108, 109, 1343 ; Peterkin, Records, 346 : 8th August 1643.
2 Baillie, Letters, ii. 89.
3B
Z7^ THE COVENANTERS
medium of a committee which passed to and fro. Their message was
that the Lords and Commons of England had removed theTiigh
Commission, ejected the bishops from the Upper House, aboHshed
Episcopacy, ordered other reforms, and had called an assembly of
divines to advise with Parliament concerning religion. To this
assembly the Parliament now invited a quota of Scots divines,
while they pleaded with the Assembly to pray to God and to stir
up the nation to send an army to suppress Papists and Prelatists.^
Seventy assenting English clergy also sent a fulsome letter craving
the union of Protestants against Antichrist. The Westminster
Assembly of Divines, in session since ist July, in a letter subscribed
by their prolocutor, Dr. Twisse, and others (4th August), formulated
their views in a more statesmanlike manner, referring to a ' nearer
agreement with the Church of Scotland ' as desirable ; and they
cordially invited * their godly brethren of the north to help to set
their afflicted ark upon the mountains of Ararat.'
A mutual bond The English propositions were fully discussed in the three separate
agreed upon — . _ _,
The Solemn committecs of Estatcs, Assembly, and Commissioners from England.
CovSanT'^ The deputies were careful not to commit their principals to anything
1643. pledging them to a fast scheme of Uniformity. They ' were for a
civil league, we for a religious covenant,' wrote Baillie.^ At length
they agreed upon a happy compromise, and termed the bond ' The
Solemn League.' Thereupon Henderson produced the draft of his
famous document. It met the requirements of the case almost
exactly. In it, however, the deputies wished to embody a clause of
toleration giving countenance to Independency, but the Scots were
too obstinate to concede the demand entirely. The consciences of
the proposers, however, were relieved by the insertion of two expres-
sions explaining the intended reformation to be 'according to the
» Row, Pref., xxiii., extract of K. S. Record of Carnock : 'The 24 of .September
1643, I advertised our people that every minister in Scotland wes desyrit to send out a
fencible man to go in to England to withstand the violence of the Papistes Armeis that were
myndit to invad us, and take away the libertie of the Gospel from us.' This levy was for the
General's guard.
^ Letters, ii. 90.
THE SOLEMN LEAGUE AND COVENANT 379
Word of God, and the example of the best reformed Churches.'
Vane is sometimes credited with having outwitted the unbending
Presbyterians by the suggestion of this equivocal addendum safe-
guarding Independency. But the phrase embodied a favourite idea
of the Scots Reformers, and was expressed in the Book of Discipline,
and even in their Argument for Uniformity. Vane succeeded,
however, in beating those wary polemics with their own cudgels.
On 17th August, the Assembly accepted the amended Covenant Covenant
with an unparalleled enthusiasm. Robert Blair, minister of St. contention. ^
Andrews, that famous sufferer for his faith, was present, and thus
describes the electrifying effect of it when read for the first time :
' When the draught thereof, at last agreed unto, was read in open
audience of the whole Assembly, our smoking desires for a more
strict union and uniformity in religion betwixt both the nations did
break forth into a vehement flame ; for it was so unanimously and
heartily embraced (so sincere was the Kirk of Scotland in this grand
affair), and with such a torrent of most affectionate expressions, as
none but eye and ear witnesses (whereof the writer was one) can
conceive.' When the vote of some old ministers was asked 'their
joy was so great that tears did interrupt their expressions.'^ The
Assembly passed the bond on to the Convention and to the Parlia-
ment for ratification. The Convention as heartily accepted it before
adjourning on 19th August. To the three sets of correspondents
the Assembly sent masterly replies, each distinctly exhibiting the
characteristic styles of Wariston, Henderson, and Rutherford. Five
ministers and three elders were authorised to carry these answers,
and to treat regarding the union of the National Churches.^
Before dissolving, the Assembly, following * the commendable
practice of the late Assembly at Saint Andrews/ appointed a large,
influential Commission of Laity and Clergy to * advance, accomplish,
and perfect the great Work of Unity of Religion, and uniformity of
Kirk-government in all his Majesties Dominions.' Among the
1 Row, Life of Blair ^ 171.
• Peterkin, Records^ 355 ; Grub, flisL, iii. g6 : AcL Pari. Scot., vi. 41-3.
38o THE COVENANTERS
ministers were Henderson, the two Gillespies, Blair, Rutherford,
Henry Guthry, James Sharp ; the leading laymen were Argyll,
Sutherland, Cassillis, Eglinton, Lauderdale, Oueensberry, Lord
Maitland (Lauderdale), Dun, Wariston, etc. The next Assembly
was fixed for the last Wednesday of May 1644.
Purport of the The Solemu League and Covenant purported to aim at the
and Covenant, advancement of Christ's Kingdom, the protection of the King's
honour, and of the liberty and peace of the realm, the overthrow of
God's enemies, the preservation of Scottish Presbyterianism, the
reform of the Church of England (Ireland was a subsequent English
addition), the extirpation of Popery and Prelacy with their retinue of
officials, the rooting out of superstition, heresy, and schism, the prosecu-
tion of the wicked fomenters of the national troubles, the settlement of
an abiding peace and union, the mutual defence of all Solemn Leaguers
and Covenanters, and finally, the earnest amendment of individual
lives. Such are the definite resolutions of this wonderful protocol.
Its amended and final form as accepted is given in Appendix 11.
Eight Eight Covenanters — Henderson, Robert Douglas, Samuel
deTates'"^ Ruthcrford, George Gillespie, Robert BailHe, ministers; and the
Earl of Cassillis, Lord Maitland, and Wariston, elders — were dele-
gated to prosecute the Covenant in London.^ We have many
references in the literature and documents of this epoch to
Henderson, whose acute and powerful intellect grasped the whole
movement, kept in check the extremists whose fanaticism imperilled
the cause, and foiled those intriguers who had only sordid ends in
view. Unfortunately the moderation and toleration of this cultured
divine engendered suspicion in narrower minds, against whom he
complained bitterly, so that his coadjutors tried to soothe his sensitive
soul by securing for him the approbation of Parliament and a vote of
confidence from the Assembly. These delegates were notable men.
Robert Douglas, minister at Kirkcaldy, and at this date settled
1 Henderson, writinj^ to Douglas from London in 1643, declared ' If the Scottish army
were heere the Covenant would go through the more easily.' Wodrow MSS., fol. 25, No. 13,
Gen. Assem. Library.
THE SOLEMN LEAGUE AND COVENANT 381
at Edinburcrh, formerly a campaigner with Gustavus Adolphus, Robert
• /- r 1 1 • ( T^L Douglas,
received this handsome certificate from that king : 1 here goes a 1594., 674.
man, who for wisdom and prudence, might be councillor to any
prince in Europe ; he might be a moderator to any general council,
and even for military skill, I would very freely entrust my whole
army to his conduct.' He was an unbending Presbyterian, and hater
of Prelacy, of which he declared : ' The Lord will pluck up that
stinking weed.' He preached at the coronation of Charles 11., was
five times Moderator, and lived to be ejected at the Restoration.
Samuel Rutherford is better known, through his letters, as an Samuci
o r C 1 ' Rutherford,
aphrodisian lyrist in prose modelled after the ' Song 01 Solomon, 1600-1661.
than as one of the acutest controversial writers on theology and
constitutional law which Scotland has produced.^ Many only think
of him, in leafy Anwoth, pouring out his Balm of Gilead in spiritual
letters to ecstatic women and case-hardened worldlings, whom he
quickened with quaint questions, such as this : ' My Lord [Kenmure],
where lay Christ all night? Did not your well beloved lie as
a bundle of myrrh betwixt your breasts?' Yet this emotional
Covenanter, little of stature like Henderson, but fair as the other
was dark, with starlike eyes always peering into heaven, with shrilly
voice assisting his restless hands in the air in mauling malignants
with his impetuous oratory, possessed one of the keenest and best-
informed intellects of his age. A Tweedside borderer (1600-61), belli-
gerent of instinct, but chastened with Christian culture, he graduated
in the University of Edinburgh, and, in 1623, was appointed Regent
of Humanity there. Early in 1626 he married Euphame Hamilton,
which so displeased Adamson, the Principal of the University, that
he charged him with immorality, so that he was forced to resign his
appointment. His offence probably was marrying without academic
or Episcopal authority. Archbishop Spottiswood was a martinet
regarding the proclamation of banns. Rutherford's mistake, whatever
it was, was no barrier afterwards to the ministry, at any rate, and may
1 Gilmour, Samuel Rutherford (Edin., 1904) ; Taylor Innes, Studies in Scottish History^
3-60 (Lond., 1902).
38:
THE COVENANTERS
Rutherford's
views and
volumes.
have been an early instance of his distaste for Episcopacy/ He
soon got a licence to preach. Probably through the influence of
young Lochinvar, he was appointed minister of Anwoth parish,
Kirkcudbrightshire, and entered the charge without Episcopal ordina-
tion.- In Anwoth he wrote his first work, entitled Exercitationes
Apologeticae p7'o Divina Gratia, adversus Jacobum Arminium, etc.,
which was published in Amsterdam in 1636. For his pronounced
views and anti-episcopal practices, Sydserf, Bishop of Galloway, had
him deposed and cited to answer to the Court of High Commission,
which, despite the efforts of Lord Lome and other favourers of Presby-
tery, removed him from his pastorate and cantoned him in Aberdeen in
August 1636. For two years he poured out in full flood his spiritual
love-letters, disputations, and orations against the ' Doctors ' and
sectaries, and prepared for the impending conflict. The Glasgow
Assembly which swept out Episcopacy ordered his restoration, and
its successor, 1639, placed him in the Divinity Chair of St. Andrews.
Ten years later, 1649, the Town Council of Edinburgh, who had
ejected him, appointed him to the Chair of Divinity in Edinburgh
University, thus indicating their confidence in one they had apparently
wronged. His Peaceable and Temperate Plea for Pauls Presbyterie
in Scotland, 1642, was followed by a manifesto on the constitutional
crisis. Lex Rex, which created a furore, and, according to Bishop
Guthry, was so idolised that it threw Buchanan's De Jure Regni
apud Scotos entirely into the shade. A very double of Melville,
Rutherford in the Westminster Assembly frequently, incisively, and
eruditely reiterated the Melvinian principles, which Presbytery rested
on — ' That where Christ hath not bound us, a Directorie ought not
to bind us,' since worship requires the warrant of the Word. The
incessant labours of the Westminster Assembly wore out the northern
delegates. Rutherford became principal of the New College, and
afterwards Rector of the University of St. Andrews. An irreconcil-
able Protester, he survived the Restoration, and had the honour of
* Edinburgh Town Council Records, xiii. 323. Cf. Appendix ix.
^ His brother was Reader in Kirkcudbright.
THE SOLEMN LEAGUE AND COVENANT 383
being deprived, of being summoned as a traitor, and of being informed Death of
that his Lex Rex was to be burned by the common hangman. To his
citation he repHed from his deathbed : ' I behove to obey my first
summons ' ; and there in the grey old city of St. Regulus soon
afterwards, on 29th March 1661, he breathed among his last words
these: 'Glory shines in Emmanuel's Land.'^
One of the most remarkable geniuses Scotland has produced was George
George, son of John Gillespie, the 'thundering preacher' of Kirk- ^^J^fg^g
caldy. in which town he was born in 161 3. From St. Andrews
University he entered the houses of Kenmure and Cassillis as domestic
chaplain. Kenmure, brother-in-law of Lome, a repentant renegade
from the * true- blues,' was to die a Lollard under the spell of Ruther-
ford; and Cassillis became doughtiest of the Reform party. His
early youth was thus spent in the hotbed of constitutional dissent.
Most likely he heard bold Lochinvar tell Lome, 'the Great Marquis,'
that his soul was * builded on a sandy foundation,' as well as Confess to
Rutherford, that the 'ceremonies now entered in the Kirk of God . . .
are anti-Christian and come from Hell.' " In this atmosphere Gillespie
composed his epoch-making book, A Dispute against the English-
Popish Ceremonies obtrnded upon the Chtirch of Scotland, which, in
1637, first nerved the fevered masses to cast out the Laud Liturgy.
During the same year in which he entered the ministry, 1638, the
youth preached to the Glasgow Assembly. He went with Leslie and
his ' blue bonnets ' to the front, and, such was his influence, he was
sent to negotiate the Peace, Covenant, and Westminster Standards.
He shone at Westminster. The 'babbling Baillie,' once disdainful
of this phenomenon, when undeceived, wrote : ' None in all the
companie did reason more, and more pertinently . . . my heart
blesses God on his behalf ... a singular ornament of our Church
. . . however there be in the Assemblie diverse very excellent men,
yet, in my poor judgement, there is not one who speaks more
' Rutherford is buried in the Cathedral Graveyard, St. Andrews. A plain stone, with a
doggerel epitaph on it, indicates his grave. For epitaph, cf. Martyr Graves of Scotland, 208.
- Wodrow, Select Biog., i. 396.
384 THE COVENANTERS
rationallie, and to the point, than that brave youth hes done
ever.'^
While in London in 1641, Gillespie found time to write An
Assertion of the Government of the Church of Scotland, which remark-
ably learned reply to Bishop Hall's Assej'tion of Episcopacy by Divine
Right is quite as telling as that by * Smectymnuus,' a combination of
English divines. Other works followed : A Brotherly Examination
of Coleman's Opinioits ; Nihil Respondes ; Male Audis ; One Hundred
and Eleven Propositions concerni7ig the Ministry and Government of the
Church; Aaron's Rod blossoming ; A Treatise of Miscellany Questions
(posthumously) ; Wholesome Severity reconciled with Christian Liberty;
sermons, and other treatises.
Gillespie ministered in the New Church, Edinburgh, till his
health broke down, when he returned to Kirkcaldy to die. He was
Moderator of the Assembly of 1648, and expired that very day on
which the Solemn League and Covenant was renewed, 17th December
1648, in his thirty-fifth year. His latest composition was A Testimony
against Malignants.
Duke of John, Lord Maitland, afterwards Duke of Lauderdale (1616-82),
Lauderdale, cttj-i • iit •• • ri • r
1616-1682. ^^^ "^^^ Hudibras m real lite, givmg no promise ot becommg, alter
the Restoration, the scourge of his former fellows —
' With red hot irons to be tortured,
Reviled, and spit upon, and martyred,'
He was now a young noble of twenty-seven, well known for his classical
attainments and interest in Church affairs. He dabbled in theology.
' For his Religion, it was fit
To match his learning and his wit :
'Twas Presbyterian true blue.
For he was of that stubborn crew,
• Such as do build their faith upon
The holy text of pike and gun.'
' You deservedly pass for a master in all learning,' said Bishop
Burnet (in the dedication of the Vindication of the Church) to this
' Letters, ii. 117, 129, 160.
George Gillespie
{From a Portrait in the New College Hall, Edinburgh.
Photograph by Mr. E. Drummond Young)
THE SOLEMN LEAGUE AND COVENANT 385
' Great Prince, greater in your mind than by your fortune.' His
coarse, negritic face, betokening the brutish forces that lurked beneath,
gave far less hint of his becoming, what Fountainhall styled him,
'the learnedest and powerfullest minister of state of his age,' than
that truculent inquisitor, who, before his victims, bared his arms up
to the elbows, 'and swore by Jehovah that he would make them enter
into these bonds ' of security for their allegiance. For two centuries
the unsavoury name of this sensualist and persecutor has been
greeted by Scots in general with the same odium as those of Bloody
Mackenzie, Claverhouse, and Lag. These names are written in the
public memory as in blood, never to be blotted out.
John, sixth Earl of Cassillis, was a courtly Kennedy, who, like his Eari of
ancestor the third earl, favoured Lollardy, and was probably the most i595?.i668.
steadfast of the Covenanters in high places. His manly protest
against the intrusion of the Liturgy is still extant, and his firm
signature is on the first line of many copies of the Covenant of 1638.
He was constantly in evidence as a protester against every illegal
move of the King and Council. He opposed the ' Engagement,'
negotiated the return of Charles 11., resisted Cromwell, and lived on
after the Restoration a staunch Presbyterian. He never took his
seat at Westminster.
John, first Earl of Loudoun, Lord Chancellor of Scotland, Ead of
attended the meetings, but did not contribute any suggestions of j^^jj.^gg'^
moment. Similarly, Sir Charles Erskine is just mentioned in the
minutes, while Robert Blair of St. Andrews, appointed in 1648,
does not seem to have sat.
Maitland, Henderson, and Gillespie took their seats in West-
minster on 1 6th September, and Maitland sat till 1647. Cassillis and
Douglas never attended, and Balmerino came in place of Cassillis
for a time; then Argyll succeeded Balmerino, sitting from July 1646
till the next January. He was succeeded by Winram of Liberton.
Wariston, admitted ist February 1644, attended few meetings.
Robert Meldrum, a political agent, was a member from the beginning.
The Covenant in draft arrived in London before the deputies.
l86
THE COVENANTERS
The draft of
the Solemn
League.
Covenant
subscribed in
London.
The Commons sent it to the Assembly, then sitting in the Chapel of
Henry vn. The famous Assembly numbered thirty lay assessors
and one hundred and twenty-one divines. The former included
several distinguished nobles ; the latter, the most notable Puritan
pastors and some Episcopal clergy. As was to be expected, the
new Covenant afforded that splendid opportunity, which frequenters
of such assemblies delight in, for showing a genius for hair-splitting,
and discovering grounds for amendments. The Westminster divines
would agree to maintain the Church of Scotland only in so far as it
was 'according to the Word of God.' The Episcopacy which they
were prepared to abolish was the personnel of the hierarchy, with the
lower officials and underlings thereof. The Commons accepted these
amendments, threw out the reference to the Treaty of Ripon- London,
included Ireland in the scope of the League, and passed it on to the
Lords. The Lords excised the offensive reference to the Scottish
Church, and inserted an enumeration of the offices to be abolished.^
September 25th was the day ordained for its public subscription.
St. Margaret's Church, Westminster, was the scene of that unique
gathering of Parliament-men, Lords, Commons, Puritan Divines,
and Scottish Commissioners. Philip Nye was selected to give an
exhortation, and in a tedious discourse, this clever champion of
independency and toleration gave the positive Scottish proposers of
Presbytery a Roland for their Oliver. In Edinburgh they had
thought him a wearisome, prosy ' paper reader ' of sermons. He
now deftly discarded the y?^^ divinum of Presbytery in these terms:
' If in the churches of Scotland any more light and beauty in
matters of order and discipline, by which their assemblies are more
orderly [are obtained] ; or, if to any other Church or person it hath
been given better to have learned Christ in any of his ways, than any
of us, we shall humbly bow, etc.'- Henderson also delivered a
stirring address, in which he declared that so intolerable had become
the insolence of the prelates in Scotland, that his countrymen ' choose '
rather to die than to live in such slavery.' After commending the
' Gardiner, Hist. Great Civ. War, i. 232-5. ^ Kerr, The Coverzajzts, 141.
THE SOLEMN LEAGUE AND COVENANT ^^7
League and prophesying its success, Henderson concluded with the
following remarkable peroration : ' Had the Pope at Rome the
knowledge of what is doing this day in England, and were this
Covenant written on the plaster of the wall over against him where
he sitteth, Belshazzar-like in his sacrilegious pomp, it would make
his heart to tremble, his countenance to change, his head and mitre Henderson's
to shake, his joints to loose, and all his cardinals and prelates to be ^ "^"^^
astonished. . . . The Word of God is for it, as you have been now
resolved, by the testimony of a reverend assembly of so many godly,
learned, and great divines. In your own presence and experience
you will find, that although, while you are assaulted with worldly
cares and fears, your thoughts may somewhat trouble you ; yet at
other times, when, upon seeking God in private or public, as in the
evening of a well-spent Sabbath, your disposition is more spiritual,
and, leaving the world behind you, you have found access unto God,
through Jesus Christ, the bent of your hearts will be strongest to go
through with this work. . . . As the Word of God, so the prayers
of the people of God in all the Reformed Churches are for us, and
on our side. It were more terrible than an army, to hear that there
were any fervent supplications to God against us. Blasphemies,
curses, and horrid imprecations there be, proceeding from another
spirit, and that is all.' ^
The contracting parties were all satisfied that they were entering subscription
on an agreement which, though deficient in explicit details of the J ^^ lament-
contemplated reformation, afforded a true touchstone to distinguish
Puritans from Papists, and the defenders of popular freedom from
the abettors of Carolan autocracy. The document, engrossed on
parchment, was read in the pulpit, article by article. With uplifted
hands the audience, standing uncovered, swore the Covenant and
then subscribed it.^
1 M'Crie, Sketches^ i. 281 ; Ebenezer Erskine, Collection of Sermons on Covenant, 105
(Glasgow, 1 741); Kerr, The Covenants, 156.
2 Of the Commons two hundred and thirty-six, and of the Peers twenty or thirty subscribed
the deed, according to some authorities ; one hundred and twelve, according to others :
Hallam, Const. Hist., ii. 163 et seq. ; Somers, Tracts, iv. 533 ; Rushworth, Hist. Coll., v.
475-82. Cf. postea, 392 note.
388
THE COVENANTERS
Covenant
accepted in
Scotland.
After this auspicious event, Henderson lost no time in sending
the deed home to the Moderator, Robert Douglas, then minister in
Edinburgh, who, next to Henderson, was the most prominent pastor
there. Douglas at once convened the Commissioners of Church
and State to ratify the document. They appointed Friday, 13th
October, for the public acceptance of it in the Choir of St. Giles.
Anew, with English Commissioners present, the Scots solemnly swore
and signed the Covenant, with 'great joy and manie tears.' ^
Copies were sent broadcast throughout the land, and every person
was commanded to sign it on penalty of confiscation of goods. To
facilitate its progress and to ensure its success, it was printed in the
form of a quarto book, and prefaced with the edict of the Committee
of Estates, which ordered (22nd October) all the lieges to subscribe,
and threatened nonconformists with punishment for being enemies
of God, King, and country.'^ To all appearances this international
Covenant was hailed and signed with honest joy everywhere. A few
obdurate nobles and persons of influence refused to recognise it, and
held aloof from the democratic party till they found opportunity to
throw themselves into the Royalist ranks.
' Baillie, Letters^ ii. 102. Cf. Appendices ii., iv. in this volume.
2 Act. Pari. Scot. (1643), vi. i. i kj, Articles to be framed applying the National Covenant ;
ibid. (1643), 41-2, terms of Solemn League and Covenant agreed to ; ibid., 43^, Convention
of Estates approve of Covenant ; ibid., 48, to be sworn by both kingdoms ; ibid., 61, estates
of non-subscribers to be forfeited ; ibid. (1644), 128, 129, Irish and King to sign ; ibid. (1644),
150-2, Solemn League and Covenant recited and approved.
THE WESTMINSTER STANDARDS 389
CHAPTER XV
THE WESTMINSTER STANDARDS
The history of the Westminster Assembly forms a literature in itself.^
Here only the fringe of the subject can be touched. In origin the
convention was thoroughly Erastian ; in result partly so.
The Lords and Commons of England, in an ordinance dated Westminster
1 2th June 1643, convened *an Assembly of learned and godly divines p,^^[:'^j^|g^*
and others, to be consulted with the Parliament, for the settling ofCommiitee.
the Government and Liturgy of the Church of England, and for
vindicating and clearing of the Doctrine of the said Church from
false aspersions and interpretations.' The Assembly was practically
a Parliamentary committee. Parliament nominated the members, fixed
the place and date of meeting, appointed a chairman — Dr. William
Twisse — defined its functions, even to demanding that, ' what every
man undertakes to prove as necessary,' he shall 'make good out of
Scripture,' sanctioned clergy leaving their cures, filled up vacancies,
arranged for its dissolution, and stipulated that the Assembly should
be a secret conclave. Every member took the following oath :
' I, A. B., do seriously and solemnly protest, in the presence of
* The best authorities on the Westminster Assembly and Standards are : Adoniram
Byfield's Notes embodied in Minutes of the Sessions of the Westminster Assembly^ Mitchell
and Struthers edit., Edin., 1874; Lightfoot's Notes, Works, vol. xiii. ; Gillespie's Notes,
Works, vol. ii., Edin., 1844 ; Hetherington, Hist, of the West. Assew., Williamson edit.,
Edin., 1890; A. F. Mitchell, Catechisms of the Second Reformation, Lond., 1886; Mitchell,
The West. Assem. (Baird Lecture), Edin., 1890 ; W. A. Shaw, Hist, of English Church during
the Civil Wars, 2 vols., Lond., 1900; Ben. B. Warfield, The Making of the Westminster
Confession, Philadelphia, 1901, reprint ; Leishman, The Westminster Directory, Edin., 1901 ;
Baillie, Letters andfournals, Laing edit., 3 vols., Edin., 1841 ; Prof. Thomas MackUn, A Brief
Historical Sketch of the West. Assem., Glasgow, 1889. For all the Standards combined,
cf. The Confession of Faith, Edin., Johnstone, Hunter and Co., printed by authority, 1869 ;
W. Beveridge, A Short Hist, o'' the West. Assem., Edin., 1904.
390
THE COVENANTERS
Assembly
proscribed.
The divines
sit in West-
minster.
Almighty God, that in this Assembly, whereof I am a Member, I will
not maintain anything, in matters of Doctrine, but what I think, in
my conscience, to be truth ; or in point of Discipline, but what I shall
conceive to conduce most to the glory of God, and the good and peace
of His Church;^
King Charles, in May 1642, had entertained the idea of convening
'a number of grave, wise, and religious divines,' two from each
county, to settle uniformity of government and worship in the
Church.^ Notwithstanding, on the 22nd June 1643, he proclaimed
this Assembly to be illegal and threatened to prosecute those who
attended it.^ This impolitic order deterred many Episcopal scholars
from attending, and deprived the assenters to a modified Episcopacy
of the aid of defenders of that platform. The ordinance enumerated
151 members — 121 divines, with 10 nobles, and 20 members of the
House of Commons, who acted as lay assessors. Subsequently other
30 were added along with the Scots Commissioners, who, however,
had deliberative function only, and no liberty to vote.
Of that company 2,7 were Masters of Arts, 32 Bachelors of
Divinity, 21 Doctors of Divinity, i Doctor of Laws, many Fellows
of Oxford and Cambridge, and many in Episcopal orders. After-
wards 13 became masters of colleges and halls, 3 professors of
divinity in Oxford and Cambridge, and 5 bishops. A more
competent and representative conclave could scarcely have been
selected. Of three bishops appointed only one sat for a time, and
Ussher, the Primate of Ireland, did not attend.
On the day appointed, sixty-nine clerical members entered the
hoary Abbey Church of Westminster, and to them Dr. Twisse
preached from the text : ' I will not leave you comfortless, I will come
to you.' They adjourned to meet on 6th July, and began their business
then by dividing the membership into three working sections, or
grand committees. The indispensable Baillie has left the following
' Journals of Commons, 6th July 1643.
2 His Majesty's Resolution, i6th May 1642.
^ In 1648 he was willing to concede its legality : Works of Kin^ Charles /., 260 (Aberdeen,
1766}.
THE WESTMINSTER STANDARDS 391
description of the scene : ' Here no mortal man may enter to see or
hear, let be to sitt, without ane order in wryte from both Houses of
Parliament . . . we satt doun in these places which since we have
keeped. The like of that Assembly I did never see, and, as we hear
say, the like was never in England, nor any where is shortlie lyke
to be. They did sit in Henry the 7th's Chappell, in the place of the
Convocation ; but since the weather grew cold, they did go to
Jerusalem chamber, a fair roome in the Abbey of Westminster, about
the bounds of the Colledge fore-hall, but wyder.'^ The interior was
furnished with stages of seats, an elevated chair for the Prolocutor,
and a table for the scribes. The Scots Commissioners sat close to
the Prolocutor, to whom all speaking had to be addressed. They sat
from nine till about two o'clock each day, Saturdays and Sabbaths
excepted.
The purposes for which the Assembly was convened were — to Purpose of
prove the catholicity of the doctrine of the Church of England, to ^^sse^br^^'^
illustrate the identity of its teaching with that of other Reformed
Churches, and to reconstruct the system of worship and the form of
government of the Church of England, so that it might come more
into line with the Church of Scotland, and with the Reformed
Churches abroad. In pursuance of these aims, the Assembly im-
mediately directed its attention to the Thirty-nine Articles, and spent
from 8th July till 12th October discussing the first fifteen articles.
Among the divines who took part in the debate were Dr. Twisse,
the President, a learned graduate of Oxford, Pastor of St. Andrews,
Holborn, a supralapsarian, and a hammer of Arminians and Jesuits ;
Dr. John Arrowsmith, afterwards Regius Professor of Divinity and
Master of Trinity, Cambridge ; Dr. Antony Tuckney, Master of St.
John's College, who had a share in compiling the Larger Catechism ;
Dr. William Gouge, Fellow of King's, an erudite preacher and
commentator ; Thomas Gataker, a classical scholar, who refused the
Mastership of Trinity ; Dr. Lightfoot, the orientalist ; Dr. Calamy,
Dr. Coleman, Dr. Reynolds, Dr. Hoyle, Dr. Wallis, Charles Herle,
1 Baillie to Spang, 7th December 1643 '• Letters^ ii. 107.
cuss the
Covenant
392 THE COVENANTERS
who succeeded Dr. Twisse on his death in 1646, and many other fine
scholars. Nor were the Scots silent.
Assembly dis- On 15th September 1643, the Assembly departed from these
purely theological studies to the consideration of the Solemn League
and Covenant, which the Scots Commissioners were there to explain.
The strangers received a hearty welcome. The potent and por-
tentous bond was submitted to searching analysis, and, after emenda-
tion, was passed for extension and subscription.^
Parliament- men and divines congregated in St. Margaret's
Church, Westminster, on Monday, 25th September, to publicly sign
the Covenant. Two copies of the instrument engrossed on parchment
were produced. John White, the patriarch of Dorchester, a grave
divine, opened the momentous proceedings with prayer. The two
eloquent apologists, Nye and Henderson, next adjured the nation to
take the vow. Only one hundred and twelve members of the House
of Commons then did so ; but among these enthusiasts Cromwell
did not sign, as is so often stated, he being near Hull that day.'^
Covenant On 9th October, King Charles, then in Oxford, issued a procla-
Enjiand,'l644. Hiation, angrily denouncing the Covenant and enjoining that the
people 'presume not to take the said seditious and traitorous
Covenant.' Unmoved by these threats, those nobles who upheld the
Cause of Parliament, and the populace generally, gathered to hear
stirring sermons by Coleman, Caryll, and others, and to subscribe.
Before winter set in, the Scots Estates made subscription imperative,
and menaced recusants with penalties. In February the English
Parliament ordained the ministers to tender the Covenant to all
persons of eighteen years of age, who were to appear in church, with
bare head, to hear it read, as well as an explanatory and vindi-
catory Declaration issued by the united nations in 1644, before they
subscribed the bond. This intolerant procedure emanated from the
civil rulers, solicitous of the success of their political policy. Soon,
however, the shrewd conservators of Scotland's peace realised that
' See siip7'd, p. 386-7.
- Rushworth, Hisf. Coll., v. 475-82 ; Commons /otirnal, iii. 252-4, 389 : Carlyle, C^-om'weir s
Letteis, xviii. ; Gardiner, Hist. Great Cii'. War., i. 235 and note, 310.
THE WESTMINSTER STANDARDS 393
the southern diplomatists were making the Scots a catspaw to drag
English affairs out of the general combustion, and they perceived
their perilous course between Scylla and Charybdis — the policy of a
shifty autocrat and that of equally unreliable democrats, who had no
finality in their ecclesiastical views. To divest their council of
individualism and prejudice, the Assembly took for a basis of
neeotiation, or rather as a model of concise and tolerant views of
truth, the Articles authorised by the Irish Church, and in use since
1615/ This treasury of pure Calvinistic dogmas has been enriched
by the incisive intellect of the learned Ussher, afterwards Primate of
Ireland.
On 1 2th October Parliament intervened to instruct the Assembly Directory for
to frame a new Polity and a new system of worship ' most agreeable .vorship.
to God's^most holy Word,' to take the place of the discarded hierarchy
and its apparatus of worship, so as to pacify and unify the Church.
The Assembly committed the framing of a Directory for worship
to a grand committee and subsequently to a sub-committee of five,
(Marshall (chairman), Palmer, Goodwin, Young, and Herle), con-
joined with the Scots members. They had a draft ready in March
1644. From 24th May onwards, at seventy diets, the Assembly
debated over its contents. At length completed it reached Parliament,
which authorised it, on 3rd January 1645. A month later it received
the sanction of the Supreme Courts of Scotland.^ Besides the
Parliamentary Ordinance and the Preface, the contents of the book
are in fifteen sections: Of the Assembling of the Congregation;
Public Reading of Holy Scriptures; Public Prayer before the
Sermon ; Preaching of the Word ; Prayer after the Sermon ; Sacra-
1 The Irish Articles (1615) show the influence of The Lambeth Articles (1595), which were
supplementary to the Thirty-nine Articles.
2 Act. Gen. Assem. Scot., 3rd February 1645, Sess. 10; Act. Pari. Scot., vi. i. 309, 446,
Charles i., Pari. 3, Sess. 5, cap. 60, 6th February 1645, cap. 14, 2nd August 1645. The title
of the book is significant : ' A Directory for the Publique Worship of God throughout the
Three Kingdofns of England, Scotland, and Ireland. Together with an Ordinance of Parlia-
ment for the taking away of the Book of Co7nmon-Prayer and for establishing and observing of
this present Directory throughout the kirigdom of England, and Dominion of Wales, etc.
London, 1644.'
394
THE COVENANTERS
ment of Baptism ; the Lord's Supper ; Sanctification of the Lord's
Day ; Marriage ; Visitation of the Sick ; Burial of the Dead ; PubUc
Solemn Fasting; Observation of Days of Public Thanksgiving;
Singing of Psalms ; Appendix touching days and places for Public
Worship.
The Ordinance completely banned the Liturgy — ' the great Idol
of England,' as Baillie called it,^ as if it were a Mass-book. The
Preface emphatically declared that the prayers in the book were
merely suggestions of the ' general heads, — the sense and scope of the
prayers,' and not liturgical forms. The Directory gave no instruction
as to posture at public prayer. Lively discussions arose regarding
the reader of Scripture, the use of a text, non-parental sponsorship,
the disuse of the creed at baptism, sprinkling, the communion and its
place, with the word 'sit about it or at it,' marriage in church, excom-
munication, funeral services, and reading the psalm line by line.
While resembling the Book of Common Order which it ousted, the
Directory led to the obliteration for a time of some hallowed practices
in the northern Church, such as the use of the Creed, Paternoster,
Doxology, and Scripture Lessons.^ It also authorised some innova-
tions quite repugnant to the well-educated Scots, such as reading the
line before singing the metrical Psalter — a custom still retained in
some Gaelic churches in Scotland.
Opposition The English Parliament, pushed on by the populace, dissatisfied
from the u-ur ^rr'
Independents. ^^ the Sight ot SO many vacant parochial charges, clamoured for the
new Polity and Ordinal. The preparation of this Directory for Church
Government and Ordination early brought the Presbyterians into
conflict with the Independents. The Independents did not approve
of graduated church-courts, nor yet believed in the scripturalness of a
National Church formed out of co-ordinated congregations. They
saw no advantage in a parochial system. They were simply Bible-
Conventiclers, Close- Brethren, gathering in societies of avowed
regenerates only. Toleration from their standpoint was tantamount
^ Letters, ii, 117.
^ The Westminster Directory, edit. Thomas Lcishman, D.D. (Edin., 1901).
THE WESTMINSTER STANDARDS 395
to pure Antinomianism. According to Baillie,^ 'The Independents,
being most able men and of great credit, feared no less than banish-
ment from their native country if Presbyteries were erected,' because
'as yet a Presbytrie to this people is conceaved to be a strange
monster.' Consequently they determined to be obstructionists.
They conducted their case with great strategy. In every conceivable
^ way, creditable and discreditable, they tried to shun or scotch the
'monster.' The Scots Commissioners, foreseeing the conflict over
Presbytery, prepared and presented to their associates a treatise
outlining a system of Presbyterial government, and justified it by
scriptural warrants. An incomparable treatise on the same subject
had come from the pen of Alexander Henderson three years before.^
In the keen debates on the subject George Gillespie displayed his
acute and well-stored mind, and showed that the power of Presbytery
lay in jurisdiction only. During the debate on church censures and
excommunication Selden enunciated an almost unanswerable exposi-
tion of Matthew xviii. 15-17, and Gillespie followed in an unexpectedly
brilliant reply which demolished his learned antagonist's conclusions.
' That young man,' said Selden sadly, ' has swept away the learning
and labour of my life.' ^
The finished draft of the Ordinal reached Parliament in April, but Cromweii and
in February the five Independents had also submitted 'AnApolo-
getical Narration,' wherein they appraised themselves highly, and
magnified Independency as an acceptable, tolerant, and scriptural
system. Feeling ran high. A pamphlet war began to rage. Parlia-
ment haggled over the document. The Independents feigned to have
accepted Presbytery in substance, till after the battle of Marston
Moor, 1644, when they quite outmanoeuvred their opponents. In
the tents of the Parliamentary army similar discussions ended in
practical results. The * Ironside,' Lieutenant-General Cromwell, was
the type of Independents. Liking Presbytery as little as Prelacy, he
1 Letters, ii. 117.
2 The Government and Order of the Chicrch of Scotland, Anon. (Edin., 1641) : Wodrow,
Hist., i, 29.
^ M'Crie, Sketches, 291.
the Accommo-
dation.
396 THE COVENANTERS
became the champion of toleration. His plain speaking on swearing,
profanity, and the disorderliness of officers rent Manchester's army.^
He belittled denominationalism, and considered himself to be an
unsatisfied seeker after truth, unfettered conscience to be a sufficient
instructor of religious method, and the State to have no interest in
the private concerns of the soul. 'Sir,' said Cromwell to Major-
General Crawford, a Scot, ' the State in choosing men to serve it
takes no notice of their opinions, if they be willing to serve it faith-
fully ; that suffices.' Cromwell had the questions at issue discussed
in Parliament and obtained the famous 'Accommodation Order,' 13th
September 1644, whereby a committee was appointed to adjust the
differences of the divines, and to devise an Accommodation for tender
consciences.^ The Ordinal was ratified, on 2nd October. The
Accommodation Committee acted in no haste. The majority of the
divines had no patience with their sophistical opponents, whom they
Debates on had persistently to answer. Parliament at length received the
Pres ytery. substauce of the tedious controversy, which afterwards went under
the title of 'The Grand Debate concerning Presbytery and Inde-
pendency.' The ordinance for Ordination embodied the statement
that ' Ordination is the act of a Presbytery ' ; and acceptance of this
conclusion rather compromised the Independents. On 3rd February
1645, the General Assembly of Scotland ratified the Westminster
Form of Church Government and Ordination, while it was still
unauthorised in the south. On 15th November, the Westminster
article on the subject of Presbytery was laid before the Commons and
was acquiesced in, except the section asserting the divine right, the
consideration of which was postponed. On 24th January 1648, the
House of Lords ordered all the documents in this controversy to be
printed, under the title The Reasons presented by the Dissenting
Brethren against certain Propositions concerning Presbyterial Govern-
ment, etc.
The article on Excommunication roused the opposition of the
• Gillespie to his father, nth September 1644: Baillie, Letters, ii. 501.
* Frith, Cromwell, 151.
THE WESTMINSTER STANDARDS 397
Erastian party, who were led by Selden and Lightfoot, both erudite
scholars. The strength of Selden's argument, that church censures
were innovations borrowed from heathendom, was felt when Parlia-
ment took up the subject. It passed an ordinance (an ordinance was Right of
de facto a statute not ratified by the King), 28th October 1645, which p^^fifj^nt.
enumerated censurable offences and gave the accused the right to
appeal from the ecclesiastical tribunals to Parliament. One com-
mittee was appointed to schedule scandalous offences, another to act
as provincial judges of such causes. By this policy the Jus Divinum
of Presbytery was diplomatically whittled away ; for Parliament,
growing every day more imperious, was not ready to relinquish what
Kings James and Charles had claimed for the Crown, jurisdiction
over all ecclesiastical causes.^ The Presbyters grew more wroth.
Parliament and Assembly soon came to close quarters." The former
demanded scriptural proofs for the claim to Jus Divinum. The
Assembly replied with an article for which scriptural proofs had been
selected, to this effect : 'The Lord Jesus, as King and Head of the
Church, hath therein appointed a Government, in the hand of the
Church officers, distinct from the Civil Magistrate.' At length Parlia-
ment effected a compromise, and, on 5th June 1645, ratified the
ordinance establishing ruling elders and the erection of Presbyteries,
and abolished the office of provincial judges of scandal. Still the way
was not clear. King and Parliament were now negotiating a treaty,
and the questions of Presbytery and Toleration were considerable
factors in the case. The dissatisfied clergy did not hasten the
erection of their new courts. The irritating contest dropped when
Parliament, on 13th October 1647, gave Presbytery a short lease of
power, the use of the tithes, allowed Nonconformists, with the
exception of Romanists, to have freedom of worship, and tabooed the
Liturgy.
The Confession of Faith, emerging after a tedious process of
evolution, was the result of infinitesimal scrutinies of every idea,
word, and letter within it, by scholars capable of appraising the
1 Rushworth, Hist. Coll., vi. 224-8. * Baillie, Letters, ii. ^yZ.
398
THE COVENANTERS
The West-
minster
Confession of
Faith.
Confession
with the
proofs.
history, import, and possible effect of every part of it. The pre-
liminary studies of the Thirty-nine Articles afforded a solid basis for
the constructive work to follow. The collateral debates on Church
Government, terms of Communion, and Jus Divinum provided
useful material for the Creed. The Confession was the corollary of
the Solemn League and Covenant. Wariston, lately arrived from
Scotland, and Henderson, on 20th August 1644, demanded its incep-
tion by the Grand Committee.^ A committee, composed of Dr.
Temple (chairman), Arrowsmith, Burgess, Burroughs, Gataker,
•Goodwin, Herle, Hoyle, Ley, Newcomen, Palmer, Reynolds, Sedg-
wick, Smith, Tuckney, and Young, was appointed to collect material
and prepare a draft. A second committee, assisted by the Scots
Commissioners, grouped and extracted the essence of the doctrinal
facts collected, and submitted the results to the three Grand Com-
mittees. In July 1645, th^ fi^'st sectional report of progress was
tabled. It was not, however, till 26th November 1646, that the
following satisfactory memorandum was made in the minutes : ' The
Confession of Faith was finished this day, and by order of the
Assembly, the Prolocutor gave thanks, in the name of the Assembly,
to the Commissioners who had taken so good pains in the perfecting
of the Confession of Faith.' Before this date the Commons had
ordered scriptural proofs to be added to the text, and when these
were added, the record of 5th April 1647 ran, 'The Confession was
finished,' i.e. as far as the draft was concerned.
On 29th April 1647 a committee of the divines appeared in the
English Parliament with the Confession, with the proofs added to the
text. From 19th May till 17th March 1648, the Commons debated
various sections. On the latter date they resolved to designate the
Confession Articles of Christian religion approved and passed by both
Houses of Parliament, after advice had with the Assembly of Divines ^
by authority of Parliament sitting at Westminster? They sent the
draft with corrections to the Lords, who approved of it with one
exception regarding marriage. The Commons sent the final draft to
1 Baillie, Letters^ ii. 220; Lightfoot, IVorks, xiii. 305. - Com. /our., v. 502.
THE WESTMINSTER STANDARDS 399
the printers on 20th-2ist June 1648. Seven days afterwards it
appeared from the press of Edward Husband.^
On leaving London at the end of 1646 Baillie took with him the Drafts of
complete text of the Confession without proofs appended, that is, of°Fa?th°"
the second issue printed in December 1646, \ki^ first issue having
appeared in October, and introduced this draft to the Commission of
Assembly in January 1647.2 The third draft, that of May 1647,
that is the Confession with Scripture proofs adduced by references
on the margins, was in all likelihood brought away by Gillespie on
1 6th July 1647.^ A copy of this 4to, pp. 56 (one of three hundred
ordered by the General Assembly, 9th August) was issued in Edin-
burgh in August 1647 — 'Printed at London, and Reprinted at
Edinburgh by Evan Tyler, Printer to the King's most Excellent
Majestie, 1647.'^ Other editions followed in 1647 ^"^^ 1648. On
the 27th August 1647, the Assembly passed the Act of 'Approbation
of the Confession of Faith,' thereby constituting the book a standard
of the Church. The first Edinburgh authorised edition was printed
by Evan Tyler in 1647.^ In 1649 Gedeon Lithgow, Printer to the
University of Edinburgh, printed the title-page : ' The Confession of
Faith and the Larger and Shorter Catechisme, etc., 1649.' ^
The Scottish Parliament which met in February 1649 passed a Act of Scots
most important statute (Act 58), 'Act anent Swearing of Religion ^^^^'^^'J'^^^^
and peace of the Kingdome,' in which it was ordained that the King, Covenant.
or any of his successors, before being admitted to regal power should
first subscribe, and promise to make all his subjects in the three
kingdoms subscribe the Solemn League and Covenant, and consent
1 ' Articles of Christicm Religion Approved Mid Passed by both Houses of Parliajnent, After
Advice had with the Assembly of Divines. By Authority of Parliament sitting at Westminster.
London : Printed for Edward Husband, Printer to the Honourable House of Commons, and
are to be sold at his shop at the Sign of the Golden Dragon, in Fleetstreet, near the Inner
Temple. June 27. 1648.' 4to, pp. 50. ^ Letters, ii. 259.
- ' The Humble Advice of the Assembly of Divi?ies now by Authority of Parliament sitting
at Westminster Concerning a Confession of Faith with the Qtiotatiotis and Texts of Scripture .
annexed, etc. London, Printed for the Company of Stationers.' Sm. 4to, pp. 56.
* Peterkin, Records, 480.
^ Cf. facsimile title-page in Williamson's edition of Hetherington's Hist, of the West.
Assem., 1878. " Aldis, List, 1403.
400
THE COVENANTERS
Directory
for Family
Worship.
Westminster
Catechisms.
to the statutes enjoining its acceptance and the establishment of
Presbyterial Government, the Directory of Worship, the Confession
of Faith and the Catechisms, promising also to observe them in
personal practice and in his family.^ The Estates having considered
the Longer and Shorter Catechisms and the Confession with their
accompanying Acts of Approbation passed another statute (Act 59), on
7th September, entitled, 'Act ratifying the Catechismes and Confession
of Faith.' ^ It enjoined that they should be published and printed
— the Statute Book adding in brackets [' and practised '] — essential
words apparently omitted. On 5th March 1660, the Rump Parlia-
ment, when reassembled, had the satisfaction of declaring the
Westminster Confession, chapters thirty and thirty-one excepted, to
be ' the public Confession of the Faith of the Church of England.' ^
To complete their work the Scottish Assembly, on 24th August
1647, also authorised The Directory for Family Worship to make
uniformity as well in private worship. Parliament did not ratify it.
The Catechisms of the Westminster Assembly — The Long, or
Larger, and The Shorter — are the fruit of the labours of the divines
— the concentrated essence of all the material they amassed. Many
of the divines were expert makers of catechisms. One of these in
particular, Herbert Palmer, a London minister, whom Baillie described
as 'learned, and gracious little Palmer,' was from the first on the
committees preparing both works. On 2nd December 1644, a new
committee consisting of Marshall, Tuckney, and Newcomen joined
Palmer in his work of preparing a Directory for Catechising. The
catechisms do not touch on debatable questions of government and
worship, and thus have done more even than the Confession to mould
the religious life of Scotland. The Larger Catechism contains one
hundred and ninety-six, the Shorter, one hundred and seven questions
and answers. The Larger Catechism was authorised in Scotland by
' Act. Pari. Scot., 1649, 5^. vi. ii. 161. 2 jbid., 161.
^ Com. Jour., vii. 862 ; Whitelocke, iv. 401. This Act fell into desuetude. After the
Revolution the Scots Parliament again ratified it in these Acts: 1690, ix. iijb-i'^ib ; 1690,
c. 7, ix. 133, App. 1476 ; 1693, c. 38, ix. 303 ; 1702, c. 3, xi. 16 ; 1703, c. 2, xi. 104 ; 1707, c. 6,
xi. 402, 413^^.
THE WESTMINSTER STANDARDS 401
the Assembly on 20th July 1648,^ and by the Parliament on 7th
February 1649.^
The Shorter Catechism, with proofs added, was accepted by the The shorter
Scottish Assembly on 28th July 1648, and was ratified by the Scottish ^''*^''^'""-
Parliament on 7th February 1649. In the Act of 1690 neither
Catechism was mentioned." The Larger Catechism is very little
consulted now, but the Shorter is deservedly held in much esteem
in Scotland and in the Colonies, still forming a manual of doctrinal
education for children in day- and Sabbath-schools. For a concise,
intelligible, and informative catechetical treatise it still holds the
foremost place.
In the autumn of 1646, the Assembly considered their work, andxheCate-
ordered, in January 1647, the preparation of a larger and a smaller'^ '^'"^'
treatise. The Larger appeared before the Houses of Parliament in
October, the Shorter a month later. Scriptural proofs were next
demanded, and on 12th April both books reached Parliament. The
Shorter Catechism soon passed the Lords, and was finally approved
of by the Commons on 22nd September 1648, under the title :
The grounds and principles of religion contained in a Shorter
Catechism accordi?ig to the advice of the Assembly of Divines sitting
at Westminster to be tcsed throughout the kingdom of England and
dominion of Wales!^ The Larger Catechism was not authorised by
the Lords. The Commons asked the Lords for authority for the
Commissioners to the King in the Isle of Wight to ask the royal
warrant for the (Shorter ?) Catechism.^ Ministers apparently were
never enjoined to use the Catechism in England.
The Commons also took advice upon the subject of Francis The Metrical
Rouse's Metrical Psalter.^ A committee of revision was appointed. ^''''^'^'■•
The Westminster Assembly, 14th November 1645, passed the
following resolution: 'Ordered that whereas the Honble. House of
Commons hath by an order, bearing date the 20th of November
' Peterkin, Records^ 496. 2 ^^t. Pari. Scot., 1649, 59. vi. ii. i6r.
^ A. F. Mitchell, Catechisms of the Second Reformation., Preface, xxxvi. (Lond., 1886).
** Com.Jo2(r., vi, 27 ; Lords Jour.., x. 511. '' Lords J our.., x. 572.
^ Baillie, Letters, iii. 532, App.
3E
402
THE COVENANTERS
Barton's
version.
Revision of
the ' only
ParaphraKC.'
1643, recommended the Psalms set out by Mr. Rous, to the con-
sideration of the Assembly of Divines ; the Assembly hath caused
them to be carefully perused, and as they are now altered and
amended, do approve of them and humbly conceive that it may be
useful and profitable to the Church that they be permitted to be
publicly sung.'^ The version was severely plain and without the
* Conclusion ' so much doted on by ' the Popish and Prelaticall
partie.' ^
The Lords had favoured a version by William Barton, M.A.
The Commons withheld their approving injunction regarding Rouse
until the Church of Scotland had considered the text.^ The Scottish
Assembly received it through Lauderdale, remitted it to a committee
who, after corrections were suggested, returned it to London.* The
Commons, 15th April 1646, authorised it to be used from Land's End
to Berwick-on-Tweed. The Independents, the Lords, and Barton
were far from being satisfied. The Independents wanted liberty to sing
what they fancied, and Barton preferred only his own jingles. Zachary
Boyd, too, imagined his rhymes to be worth promulgation.^ The
Lords allowed a compromise — the issuing of the Psalms begun by
Francis Rouse, Esq., and perfected imtk sundry hymnes thereunto
annexed by William Barton, M.Af' Barton petitioned the Commons
for a licence for his version, which, in the end, he got from the
Protector and his Council, 1653-4. Otherwise no version was fully
authorised by Lords and Commons in England.
The Scots Assembly went about the revision of the proposed
psalter leisurely. Committees were appointed to consider the versions
of Rouse and the scriptural songs of Robert Lowrie, David Leitch, and
Zachary Boyd, among the revisers being John Adamson, John Nevay,
Patrick and George Gillespie, and James Guthrie. A printed ' revise '
was sent down to Presbyteries early in 1649. On the 23rd November
1^ Mitchell, Mitwfes, 163. 2 Baillie, Letters, ii. 359.
•"' Ibid., ii. 279, 280, 2C)i, passim. 1 Ibid., ii. 329.
' Aldis, List., 1 2 16; Boyd (Z.), The Psalmes of David in Meeter (Glasgow: Anderson,
i64<'^). " Shaw, Hist. English Chirch, \. 377-84.
THE WESTMINSTER STANDARDS 403
1649, the Commission authorised this oft-revised version to be the
•only Paraphrase' in use after ist May 1650, all others being
discharged. The Committee of Estates also passed it on 8th
January 1650.^
' Laing's Notices in Baillie, iii. 525-56; Feterkin, Records, 475, 513, 553. This is the
version still in use in Scotland. ' The Psalmes of David in Meeter, etc. Edinburgh, Printed
by Evan Tyler,' etc. Sm. 8vo, pp. 1 5 and 308.
404 THE COVENANTERS
CHAPTER XVI
1644 — THE GREAT CIVIL WAR: THE STRUGGLE FOR LIBERTY OF
PARLIAMENT AND FREEDOM OF CONSCIENCE
Stale of the At the beginning of the year 1644, several armies were in the field
1644*^^'" in England — King Charles and the Royalists contending for the
prerogatives of the Crown, and Parliamentarians and Puritans resist-
ing the King so long as rebel Papists were being shielded by him and
political liberty was imperilled. Neither side could boast of continuous
successes. The Solemn League and Covenant had been accepted by
the House of Lords and was soon to become obligatory on all citizens.
Great Pym was dead ; helpless Laud was nearing his doom ; Hamilton,
now suspected to be infected with Presbytery, lay in ward in Pen-
dennis, as Lothian did in Bristol ; and Argyll was the uncrowned
King of Scots. ^ The hot debates in the Westminster Assembly over
Presbytery, Independency, and Liberty of Conscience inflamed the
laity. The King astutely tried to increase the divergencies of
discordant parties, making a show of interest in the prominent
question of toleration into a cloak to conceal his real design, namely,
the throwing of loyal troops, especially Papists, from Ireland upon
the west coast of England. Montrose, Nithisdale, and young Aboyne
hung about the Court in Oxford — Montrose still importuning the
King for permission to carry out his flouted scheme — to lead a body
of English cavaliers across the Borders, to raise the Gordons, and to
wait upon the landing of German mercenaries and Irishmen. Antrim
was sent to raise the latter force and, if possible, to corrupt Monro,
' J. C. Fotheringham, The Correspondence of De Montereul, etc., i. 556 (Scot. Hist. Soc),
cited as Montereul.
THE GREAT CIVIL WAR 405
who was reported to be impatient at the retention in Ireland of the
clamorous, half-starved Scottish army.
The Earl of Leven crossed the Tweed on 19th January 1644,
with the van of the Covenanting army, which numbered 18,000 foot,
3000 horse, and 500 dragoons, with 150 guns. John Baillie was in
command of the foot, David Leslie of the cavalry, and Sir Alexander
Hamilton of the artillery.
The forces were in high spirits. The English Parliament had Scots under
agreed to pay them ^30,000 a month. Their unconquered leader had Kngiand,
boasted before he left Edinburgh that he would never stop marching
till he had planted the banner of the Covenant above the throne of
the Pope.^ The words of * Leslie's March ' probably record their
esprit de corps : —
' Stand till 't and fight like men,
True Gospel to maintain.
The Parliament 's blythe to see us coming.'
But the Parliament was blither to see them returning, as we
shall find.
The King's Parliament sitting at Oxford — a body composed of Montrose and
nearly all the English Peers and one-third of the Commons — pro- ^rm". ^ '"
claimed this inroad of the Scots Estates to be an unjustifiable invasion
and a breach of the Pacification of 1642.- The King had no mis-
givings now in unleashing Montrose. To remove possible jealousies
among the touchy northern chiefs and nobility, Charles appointed
Prince Maurice to be commander-in-chief, with Montrose as his
lieutenant-general ; but twelve days afterwards, 1 3th February, he
directly commissioned Montrose to be lieutenant-general in Scotland.
Montrose, accompanied by Crawford, Nithisdale, Traquair, Kinnoul,
Carnwath, Aboyne, Ogilvy, Reay, and about a thousand men whom
they had gathered through the northern shires, made for the Lowlands,
and on 14th April, finding their way barred at Dumfries by a resolute
body of Covenanters, retreated to Carlisle.^ The gallantry of Mon-
trose was rewarded by a Marquisate in May. Meantime the ever-
' Montereul, i. 556. - Rushworth, v. 560. ^ Napier, Memoirs, ii. 397.
4o6 THE COVENANTERS
loyal Huntly summoned his vassals and other well-affected persons
to his standard, on which was inscribed the motto, * For God, the
King, and against all traitors.' The Estates placed Argyll at the
head of a well-equipped force to suppress the Gordons. The
Covenanters' colours bore the words, ' For the Covenant, Religion,
The Crown, and The Kingdom.' Whenever the southern force
came within striking distance of the Gordons, the latter dwindled
away and finally vanished to their homes, their leader betaking
Huntly in himself for safety to the fastnesses of Caithness. The conquering
hiding in May. , ,
army took its fill of plunder from friend and foe impartially. The
loyal Argyle Highlanders, who went by the name of 'cleansers,'
driving before them what could walk and carrying whatever could
not, left the country clean. It was a bad example to set the wilder
caterans who were shortly to rush through the same distressed
districts under the leadership of Montrose and Colkitto the younger,
and the Royalists did not fail to remember it.
The Oxford Parliament made overtures to their opponents for
peace. The reply from London on 5th February was a demand that
the King should subscribe the Covenant — on that very day, it is to
A new be noted, that Oliver Cromwell signed the famous bond.^ The Parlia-
ment at Westminster in February appointed ten of their number with
four Scots, namely, Loudoun, Maitland, Wariston, and Barclay, a
committee of both kingdoms, with power to control from a head-
centre the military affairs of the realm. The rival governments
banned each other for incendiaries and traitors. The conviction was
steadily growing, especially in the minds of Puritans and Covenanters,
that, so long as Charles reigned, peace was impossible. Everywhere
conversation turned on ' his obstinacy judicial, as if in God's justice
he were destroying himself.' Those, who with Rothes in 1641 'had
hard work with the King,' were certain that he was possessed of a
demon, and they deemed his execution to be necessary. The generals
of the triple army besieging York in the summer of 1644 were sounded
by Vane regarding his deposition, and all three, Leven, Fairfax, and
^ Com. Jour. .^ iii. 389.
Parliamentary
committee.
THE GREAT CIVIL WAR 407
Manchester, rejected the proposal. To the Scots, Monarchy and
Presbytery were divinely appointed forms of government, notwith-
standing the opinion of the Scottish Solomon, that they ill agreed
with each other. The successes of the Parliamentary armies resulted
in the King seeking safety in Oxford, while the dashing Prince
Rupert advanced to the relief of York. The triple army there- Armies maet
upon retreated to Marston Moor, followed close by Rupert and ^Jo^qJ^"^^^""
Newcastle. The Parliamentarians had the advantagfe of choosinof
their stand — a ridge overlooking a magnificent plain divided into
fields of grain and grass between Tockwith and Long Marston.
The 17,500 men under Rupert drew up in regulation form before
the 27,000 men on the ridge, — cavalry on both wings and foot
in the centre. Rupert gallantly selected the Ironsides of Crom-
well for his opponents. With them were associated the Scottish
Horse and some dragoons under David Leslie. The Scots army
under Leven was in the centre between Manchester and Fairfax. A
long hedge and a ditch separated the combatants. On the Royalist
side Eythin led the centre. Goring the left wing, and Rupert the
right.
The evening of the 2nd July wore on, and neither force appeared The fight
anxious to move and strike, until Frisell's Scots dragoons were sent Moorind
to clear the ditch of musketeers. Cromwell next threw his Ironsides J"^y ^^44-
into a dubious conflict with Rupert's invincibles, from which, being
wounded, he was barely extricated by David Leslie and the Scottish
Horse. Leslie drove Rupert to flight. While Manchester's army on
the left, led by Cromwell, Leslie, and Crawford, carried all before them,
Fairfax's on the right was being cut to pieces by Goring's horse, and
the Scottish force in the centre under Leven was thrown into disorder,
being assailed vigorously in the front and rear. Leven, Manchester,
and Fairfax fled, and left what they deemed a stricken field. Their
braver subordinates stayed and turned the tide of battle. Baillie
bravely held the centre, while three regiments of Scots — the men of
Fife, Strathearn, Ayr, and Midlothian — repelled the desperate assaults
on their flank. At length Cromwell, disentangled from the flying
4o8
THE COVENANTERS
Montrose
raises royal
standard at
Blair-Athole.
wing of Rupert, crossed the field, and leaving Crawford and Baillie to
dispose of the hitherto unbroken Royalist foot, dashed into Goring's
cavalry, as they returned from their victory in loose order, and routed
them instantly. The carnage lasted till midnight, and 4000 Royalists
bit the dust. Of the victors about 300 fell. Many prisoners were
taken. With unpardonable mendacity Cromwell accepted all the
credit of the victory accorded to him by the Independent party, and
concealed the splendid feats of the Scots, who undoubtedly rescued
both Cromwell and the English army from destruction.^
Montrose, bent on capturing Scotland for the King, now made for
the camp of Rupert at York, where the two baffled leaders met.
Rupert had no practical encouragement to offer the other enthusiast,
and refused to part with any of his force. Montrose buoyed up his
hopes with the assurance that Antrim had the Irish on the move, and
with the belief that the Highlands would be true to the Stuarts. His
spies soon found no grounds for such calculations. Scotland was
under the heel of the Covenanters. Nevertheless, Montrose deter-
mined to test his own surmises, and set out, disguised as a wood-
merchant, to try the glamour of his own personality upon the excitable
Gaels. On 22nd August he reached the house of Tullibelton in
Perthshire, where dwelt his kinsman, Patrick Graham of Inchbrakie,
near his own ancestral castle of Kincardine. There the information
he received was discouraging. Nevertheless, ' Black Pate,' the
younger of Inchbrakie, who afterwards figured in kirk-session records
for his sins, attached himself to the adventurer and faithfully followed
him through his campaigns. Local Royalism was entirely crushed.
They had to go into hiding in the Wood of Methven.^ While there
he saw the fiery cross pass by to summon the Perthshire militia to
muster and oppose the Irish advancing under Alasdair Macdonald
and Colonel James Macdonald. Fortunately also he then received a
dispatch from Macdonald himself, informing him of this military
1 Gardiner, Hist. Great Ci7>. War., i. 375-82 : Terry, Leslie, 239; Cromwell.^ Letter xxi. ;
Holies, Memoirs., 200, 201.
^ Pat. Gordon, Britane's Distemper., 71.
THE GREAT CIVIL WAR 409
expedition, Antrim had succeeded in equipping and throwing
into the Western Highlands a body of fifteen hundred Irish
infantry under the command of the handsome son of the notorious
Colkitto/ This Alasdair (Alexander) Macdonald Maccoll Ciotach Aiasdair
(ambidexter) MacGillespic was a Catholic, a sworn enemy of Argyll, ^=''^^°"^^^-
and a soldier for Charles in Ireland. He had all the fighting qualities
of the clan Donald, then at feud with the Campbells, who had expatri-
ated Coil's family from their lands in the Isles. This blood-feud
made the crisis less a matter of religion or politics than a family war
to the knife. Macdonald landed his men on ancestral soil in Ardna-
murchan. His summons of the septs of the clan Iain Mhor to the
Royal standard was disregarded from fear of their hereditary enemy.
For a similar reason the Mackenzies and other smaller clans would not
rise. He could not push into the lands of the loyal Gordons, in case
he should be ambushed by the Grants in Badenoch. In his extremity
he happily received the command of the King's lieutenant, Montrose,
to meet him at Blair- Athole. Montrose had arrived there just in time
to prevent the Stewarts and Robertsons mustering and marching
against the Irish marauders. Their chief, knowing how to touch
Gaelic sensibilities, appeared habited in Highland dress, and displayed
his military commission. Montrose appointed Alasdair Macdonald
major-general. Soon the Macdonalds of Keppoch, Knoidart, Glen-
garry, Glencoe, Grahams, some Gordons, Camerons, Drummonds,
Robertsons, Stewarts, Ogilvies, flocked to the Royal standard. As
soon three Covenanting armies were on the march to stop the
career of Montrose. Lord Elcho, with the Fife and Perthshire levies
— 6000 foot, 700 horse, and a park of field-guns — encamped at Perth.
Montrose pluckily determined to lead his 3000 claymores against
the untrained battalions of Elcho, many of the raw recruits of which
had never blown a firelock-match before. Elcho led his host out to
the green plain of Tippermuir, three miles west from the Fair City,
1 He figures in Gaelic literature as (Sir) Alisdair mic Colla Chiotaig mic Giolla Easbuig
mic Colla mic AUasdar mic Eoin Cathanaig : Cameron, Reliqiiia; Celtica: — 'The Book of
Clanranald,' ii. 179.
4IO
THE COVENANTERS
and there Montrose found them in battle array on Sabbath morning,
Batiieof 1st September 1644. At divine service on the field, the Covenanting
i^sTsepTem'bcr prcachers promised the army a glorious victory. Their slogan was
1644.
Stampede
of the
Covenanters.
'Jesus and no Quarter.'^ Montrose drew out his men in a long
line, in three divisions, three deep. Major- General Macdonald, with
the well-drilled Irish brigade, held the centre, the Highlanders
from Athole and Badenoch occupied the right wing on a hill-face,
and on the left wing stood the men from Strathallan under Lord
John Drummond, and 400 archers from Menteith under the
unfortunate Lord Kilpont, who was shortly afterwards murdered.
For lack of muskets and weapons many hillmen armed themselves
with stones. Montrose commanded the musketeers to withhold their
fire until they closed with the foe. After a volley of shot, arrows,
and stones, the claymore, Lochaber axe, and pike were to make
the onset irresistible. Such were the simple tactics and orders of
Montrose.
Elcho's artillery began to play harmlessly. The Gaels steadily
descended, dashed through the smoke of their pistols and firelocks,
and, yelling their fierce slogans, leaped upon the terrified peasantry,
and struck with their gleaming broadswords. The bloody onset lasted
but a few minutes, until the Covenanters were broken and in full flight
from the field. In vain the Covenanting cavalry rallied to the fight.
The Irish brigade butchered the fugitives, too terrified to offer resist-
ance. Two thousand of Elcho's army were slain, one thousand laid
down their arms, and all the guns and munitions of war fell into the
hands of Montrose. The affair was a stampede rather than a fight,
in which very few clansmen fell. The rapacious Celts were loaded
with plunder, and stripped the dead in order to cover their own
nakedness. During the course of the conflict the conqueror drank
a glass of water at the manse, for which the parish minister was put
on discipline by the presbytery. His defence was that other ministers
would have done a more servile act in similar circumstances when
asked by such a victor. On Sabbath night Perth was given up to
' Napier, Memoirs, ii. 582.
THE GREAT CIVIL WAR 411
Montrose. His prestige was now assured. His battalions had
arms, rations, and the sinews of war. This was the first instance of
the 'general phlebotomie ' which that 'noble phisitian practised for
a distempered religion ' ; so Patrick Gordon facetiously phrased it.
Parliament on 12th February passed an Act of forfeiture against Montrose
Montrose, Macdonald, Airlie, and other invaders of the north.^ tStoT.™^
Later the Government declared Montrose a traitor, an associate of
mass-priests, a murderer of the lieges, and offered for him alive, or
for his head, ^20,000 Scots, i.e. £1666, 13s. 4d. stg. On the march
north to Aberdeen, the clansmen furtively straggled homeward, true
to the habits of their marauding ancestry of carrying back to sheiling
and clachan their rich booty before undertaking another inroad. The
Irish could not retreat. The Earl of Airlie and some landowners
from Angus and Mearns — Lord Spynie, Lord Dupplin, Sir John
Drummond, Sir Thomas Ogilvy, Sir Thomas Tyrie, and other lairds —
with their vassals and forty-four horsemen, joined the Royalists. A
few Gordons who had been out with Huntly came in, under the
leadership of the gallant Colonel Nathaniel Gordon," as notable a
votary of Venus as he was of Mars.^
When Montrose halted at the 'Twa Mile Cross,' Aberdeen, he
found a Covenanting army consisting of 2000 foot and 500 horse,
with 3 guns, under Lord Burleigh, posted outside the city.^
Montrose sent an officer along with a drummer to demand the
surrender of the city, with the alternative of * No Quarter.' The
citizens for reply slew the drummer, which unpardonable act made
Montrose 'mad, and furious, and impatient.' In his ire he vowed
he would give the city up for loot. Both armies lay across The
Hardgate, the Covenanters having some cottages for defences.
1 AcL Pari. Scot., vi. i. 317-23.
'^ Nathaniel Gordon was probably the third son of Gordon of Ardlogie : House of
Go?'don, New Spald. Club, Aberdeen, 1903, p. 51 ; Spalding, ii. 431 ; Pi-esb. Rec. Strafhbogie,
19th Jan. 1650.
3 Presbytery Book of Strathbogie : 'Att Botarie 15 Martii 1648. The Lady Altar, Jean
Gordon,' was accused of 'ane barne in adulterie to Nathaniel Gordon, and also of ane vther
bairne in fornication with Captain Mortimer' : quoted by Gordon, Chronicles of Keith, 150.
* Gordon, Briiane's Distemper, 81 ; Napier, Memoirs, ii. 450.
41
THE COVENANTERS
Montrose's
victory at
Aberdeen,
13th Septem-
ber 1644.
Argyll's
expedition.
Montrose placed a half troop of horse on each wing, and interspersed
them with musketeers. Macdonald's force held the centre, with
Nathaniel Gordon on his left, and Rollock on his right flank. The
movement of the Royalist wings left the Macdonalds so unprotected
that Forbes of Craigevar ventured a cavalry charge against the Irish
veterans. The latter coolly opened their ranks to let their assailants
pass, faced about, and sent a deadly shower of shot into the doomed
brigade. By its annihilation the battle was turned. The claymores
soon cut up the timid burghers like straws. Balfour and the officers
were scattered like chaff. The relentless Irish remembered the
drummer-boy, and waded to their booty through blood. Spalding
narrates how for four days horrible scenes of butchery, even of
unoffending citizens, ensued.^ Montrose gave their blood as a libation
in place of the wine they had poured out in May in honour of their
latest burgess, Argyll. The well-dressed were first stripped before
their throats were cut, lest their clothes should be smeared with
blood. Women were violated and then slain ; homes were sacked ;
corpses lay unburied. Yet this city of lamentation was once the
head-centre of revolt against the Covenant, and, as Montrose well
knew, was a spot dear to Charles, because it stood up for his preroga-
tive. On the same spot where the Covenanters came bare-headed,
crying * God speed the parting guest ' — Argyll — they lay nakeder
still, in a redder vintage pledging his terrible rival.
Montrose, despite his victory, by which he sustained few losses,
was embarrassed, seeing that the Gordons would not join his colours,
and Argyll, with a great force, was on his track. His only citadel
was the mountains.
Montrose marched up the Don valley, struck the Spey, and
descended to Blair- Athole, ravaging all unfriendly lands. Macdonald,
with 500 men, left him in order to strike the Campbells again
at the port of embarkation, so that Montrose's force was reduced to
1500 foot and 50 horse. Meantime Argyll advanced with studied
procrastination, his soldiers devouring everything on the route, with
^ Spalding, ii. 265-70 (Bann. Club).
THE GREAT CIVIL WAR 413
the gluttony of locusts. Montrose doubled back into the wilder
Highlands, and at length encountered Argyll at Fyvie Castle in
October. Argyll was repulsed, and, before he could rally to a fresh
attack, his foe had vanished. Argyll still continued the devious
hunt, but never touched his wily, elusive opponent. Discouraged,
Argyll returned to give up his commission to General John Baillie,
and was offered the thanks of the Committee of Estates for his
futile campaign.^
Macdonald soon returned with a unique contingent of western Montrose
bloods — from Lochiel, Glencoe, Glengarry, Keppoch, Moidart — some ^rgyie.
clad in medieval panoply, ring-mail, casques, and well armed, all
thirsting for Campbell blood. Black Angus of Glencoe offered to
guide Montrose into Argyle. This invasion of Argyleshire, proposed
at a council of war, was considered by Montrose to be a forlorn hope
in the winter season ; but the hardy mountaineers overruled his
judgment. They dreamed of their harvest of bestial and booty
waiting in the holds and garners of chiefs and vassals, who, by
heredity, were spoilers. The eager raiders made easy expedition by
Loch Tay, through Glen Lochy, Glenurchy, Glenaray, and in a
short time encamped before Inveraray Castle. No trackless wilds,
snow-clad hills, nor roaring torrents stayed them. The rugged scenes
which afterwards sickened the soldiery of Monk, in what the Cove-
nanters called their ' Highland Dance,' whetted their martial ardour
all the more. Fired homesteads, butchered men and boys, moaning,
hamstrung cattle, dreary desolation, marked out the merciless way the
Hero-Cavalier had taken. ^ The clan Campbell was to be reduced to a
tribe of wailing women, their land to a desert, their chief to an exile.
Argyll, after his military diversion in the north-west, went home
fancying himself secure in inaccessible Kintyre, but he was soon
fleeing down Loch Fyne in a fishing-boat. Montrose lingered in his
enemy's country for five weeks, before marching away through Lorn
and Lochaber, to try to capture Inverness, and rally the clans. The
' Willcock, T/te Great Marquess, 170.
^ Eight hundred and ninety-five men were slain ' without battle or skirmish ' — surely an
adequate holocaust for the ' stainless Cavalier' : Cameron, Rel. Celt., ii. 183.
414
THE COVENANTERS
Montrose's
mountain
marches to
Inverlochy.
local raiders once more ran home with their loot. The route now lay-
along the lovely chain of lochs intersecting Scotland. In the Glen-
garry country Montrose found his progress menaced by a large force
under Seaforth, while he heard that in his rear Argyll had mustered
three thousand Highlanders and two Lowland regiments, and was
posted at Inverlochy, two miles from Fort William, under the shadow
of Ben Nevis, in order to bar his retreat,^ Montrose rightly antici-
pated that Argyll would shun a fray, and laid a plan to trap him there.
At Abertarf, Montrose wheeled his mobile force about, took the old
drove-road up Tarff, and, guided by cowherds, trudged over the
snow-clad Lairc-thuirard as if he contemplated a retreat to Blair-
Athole ; then turning down Glenroy, over its torrents of thaw-slush
into friendly country, after an almost incredible march of forty miles
in two days, he reached the spurs of Ben Nevis. This masterly
retreat by a route parallel to that by which he advanced was as well-
devised a movement as is known in military annals. What made it
most memorable was the feat of the cavalry under Ogilvy, clambering
over fell and moorland along with the infantry. They reached Ben
Nevis at sunset, and saw the bivouac fires of Argyll on the meadows
drained by the Lochy. They captured the outposts before any alarm
could be sounded. Though perishing of hunger and cold, they stood
to arms all night. A stir-about of meal— Athole brose without its
essential of whisky — tasted badly enough from the points of skzan-du.^
The morrow was Sabbath, Candlemas day, 2nd February 1645, a
national day for reckonings.^ Argyll as usual sought safety in his
galley, devolved his command on his kmsman. Sir Duncan Campbell
of Auchinbreck, a brave soldier with experience in Ireland, and, like
a vulture, watched the slaughter from afar. For this pusillanimity he
pleaded a physical injury, his excusers, political necessity.*
Campbell drew up his Highlanders in the centre and flanked them
with the Lowland regiments. Behind he posted a strong reserve and
two field-guns. Montrose placed Alasdair Macdonald and his invin-
1 Napier, Memoirs^ ii. 484.
^ Gordon, loo.
■'' Uirks, or short daggers.
* Balfour, Atmals, iii. 256.
THE GREAT CIVIL WAR 415
cibles on the right wing, Magnus O'Cahan and another Irish battalion Montrose's
on the left, the Appin, Athole, Glencoe, and Lochaber men in the inverTochy,
centre, and Clanranald, Glenorarry, some Irish and horse in the second 2nd February
... 1645.
line. The Campbells opened the fight with spirit. Macdonald and
O'Cahan assailed the Lowlanders, reserving their fire till the muskets
almost touched the foe, then swept on with the broadsword. Mean-
time the trumpeters of Ogilvy's horse, like Gideon's braves, were "
blowing blasts to terrify the untried recruits. Next moved the solid
centre of the Royalist host. In unbroken force it rolled over the
falling Campbells, and this compact body of slaughterers met no check
till it hurled itself against the reserve, which, on the impact of Ogilvy's
horse, was overwhelmed. The usual carnage ensued. Every Royalist
claimed a victim. Some Lowlanders received quarter ; the Gaels who
found refuge in Inverlochy Castle were led out and butchered. Of the
Royalists few fell, among the number being the gallant Sir Thomas
Ogilvy, son of the Earl of Airlie. Auchinbreck also lay dead with forty
headmen of his kin, and fifteen hundred men around him, including
the laird of Carradale and the Provost of Kilmun.^'
With exulting spirit Montrose wrote to the King from the field of Montrose
victory, adjuring him to treat no longer with the rebels, and con- ^^"
eluding thus : ' Only give me leave, after I have reduced this country
to your Majesty's obedience, and conquered from Dan to Beersheba,
to say to your Majesty then, as David's general did to his master,
*' Come thou thyself, lest this country be called by my name." For
in all my actions I am only at your Majesty's honour and interest.''^
Subsequent events show how premature the exultation was. As
Dugald Dalgetty pithily put it : * It smells a little too much of selling
the bear's skin, before he has hunted him.' ^ Ten days afterwards,
Argyll — Gillespie Gruamach — with sourer face appeared in Parlia-
ment, his dislocated left arm in a sling. He told his simple tale,
how his sword-arm would not fight, how easily he fled, how true till
death his vassals fell. His sycophantic peers approved of his craven
^ Cameron, Rel. Celt., ii. 185 ; Wishart, Memoirs, 505, edit. Murdoch.
2 Napier, Memoirs, ii. 487. * Legend of Montrose, chap. iii.
4i6 THE COVENANTERS
conduct, and even gave him thanks.^ On the other hand, the Church
passed sentence of excommunication upon Montrose, and Parliament,
on nth February, declared him a traitor, twice over, for his invasion
of the south and of the north, Nithisdale being conjoined with him
in regard to the first invasion.^
Attempts at When Montrose imagined that Scotland crouched at his feet, he
peacema ing. n^js^nderstood the Covenanting spirit. So long as the Catholic traffic
existed, there could be no compromise. The new negotiations for
peace at Uxbridge were proceeding with consent of the King, while
his lieutenant waded the northern snows (29th January). The Scots,
from their religious standpoint, would have accepted the acknowledg-
ment of Presbytery as a basis of peace ; the English negotiators
went much further, and demanded increased Parliamentary powers.
Charles, with much subtlety, favoured a scheme of toleration, formu-
lated by the clergy in Oxford, which promised reform and also
protection to all conscientious observers of distinctive religious rites.
In such circumstances treaty-making was impossible. The paternal
platitude, ' No bishop, no king,' was the Royal creed. With singular
obstinacy Charles wrote to the Queen : * I will neither quit Episcopacy,
nor that sword which God hath given into my hands.' That was on
the day before his fatal councillor. Laud, stepped on to the scaffold
to die (loth January), a victim to the chimera of Uniformity, an
example of devotion to the Church of England, and a warning to all
innovators — which warning the inconsistent Parliamentarians were
slowest to take. The policy of cropped ears and slit noses was fully
avenged, and insulted Presbytery was on the eve of being elevated
into the established form of religion. The satisfaction of seeing Laud
die for tinkering with rites established by law, ill harmonised with
this new subversive policy. It was Satan reproving sin.
Baiiiie recalled If the King had an unbeaten champion in the north, he had also
Montrose. ^^ the New Modcl Army under Fairfax, and in the Ironsides of
Cromwell, a legion of Covenanted officers and red-coated Puritans
all pledged to the noblest interests, which were to dissipate his most
1 Balfour, Aftnals, iii. 256, 272. ^ Act. Pari. Scot.^ VI. i. 313, 317, 327.
THE GREAT CIVIL WAR 417
sanguine dream. Charles promised to join Montrose with cavalry —
his much-needed arm — somewhere south of the Forth. The Scottish
Estates recalled Lieutenant-General Baillie and Colonel Hurry from
Leven's army in the north of England to lead two expeditions against
Montrose, whom they had proclaimed to be a traitor, as the Church
had declared him to be an excommunicate. To their staff was
attached a Parliamentary council of war, four from each Estate. This
practice led to the ruin of many enterprises of the Covenanters by
displacing capable officers from their rightful function.^
Montrose had now moved north, dispersed the Seaforth High- Raids of
landers, swung round by Elgin and the coast to Aberdeen, fining,
firing, spoiling mercilessly, and recruiting Murrays, Mackenzies,
Gordons, and Grants in the King's name. The manses suffered
severely, and many libraries were tossed out. No wonder Cant and
other ministers were wont to rail in the pulpit against Montrose and
his associates as bloody butchers, a hellish crew, and persons given
to the devil ; but as soon as the Royalists drew near, the noisy
shepherds were the first to seek shelter in the strongholds. When
Montrose approached Aberdeen, the townsmen fled and the clergy
betook themselves to impregnable Dunnottar. Hurry's dragoons,
however, made amends by swooping down on Aberdeen, surprising
and capturing some of the Royalists in the city. They capped
this transaction by also securing a son of Montrose in Montrose.
The Royalists marched from Stonehaven to Brechin, burning as
they went, and killing what they could not drive — even the deer
in Fetteresso Park, 'which skirled at the sight of fire.' Baillie and
Hurry declined a conflict. Montrose pushed on to Dunkeld, where
once more he was weakened by the withdrawal of the kilted
raiders, and left with only the Irish legion, 600 in number, and 200
mounted men.
On 4th April, he made a dash at Dundee and seized that town. Capture of
from which he adroitly extricated his men, in the very face of Baillie, ^trApii 1645.
by fighting a rearguard action.
1 Calfour, iii. 257.
3G
4i8 THE COVENANTERS
' In spite of the loons, they set themselves free,
And so bade adieu to bonny Dundee.' ^
Baillie in vain tried to keep his wily opponent out of the Grampians,
but the latter soon wheeled his force round, got behind Baillie,
reached the Dee valley, then turned his face southward and made for
Strathearn, Balquhidder, and Loch Katrine, before heading away north
again through Athole up to the Moray Firth. At Balquhidder he was
cheered by the appearance of a handful of brave cavaliers, among
others, Aboyne, Keir, Napier, who had ridden — almost a forlorn hope
— out of Carlisle.
At this juncture Baillie and Hurry parted company. Hurry
moved towards Inverness, closely followed by Montrose, whom he
expected to lure into a trap in hostile territory. When Montrose, on
Montrose at the hcels of Hurry, reached Auldearn, a small village two and a half
miles south-east of Nairn, Hurry turned about and marched on
Auldearn, hoping to surprise the Royalists at break of day (9th May).
This they might have effected, had not the rainy night made it
imperative for Hurry's musketeers to discharge their pieces, to render
them effective on the morrow. The noise put Alasdair Macdonald
and his men on the qui vive. When the opposing armies met there
was a great disparity of numbers. Hurry's northern levies and
southern regulars numbering probably 4000 foot and 700 horse.
Besides the clansmen under Seaforth, Sutherland, and other Highland
chiefs, there were four famous regiments, Buchanan (Stirlingshire
and Forthside), Loudoun (Clydesdale), Lothian (Teviotdale), and
Lawers (Strathtay), lately recruited from Aberdeen, Banff, and Moray.
They outnumbered the Royalists three times over.^
The village of Auldearn in 1645 principally lay on the line of the
present Boath road, below and to the east of the eminence, whereon,
from time immemorial, stood St. Colm's Parish Church, at that time
* Old song, Adew, Dundee. The description ' Bonnie Dundee ' was afterwards applied to
John Graham of Claverhoiise.
2 Spalding gives Hurry 4006 foot and 500 horse ; Montrose, 3000 foot and horse.
P. Gordon gives Hurry 3000 foot and 700 horse. Montrose acknowledged he had 1400 men
all told. Montrose to Digby : Memoirs (Wishart, edit. Murdoch), 503.
THE GREAT CIVIL WAR 419
beautified by spoils from Elgin Cathedral. Southward from the
church, in the direction of Newmill Farm, stretches a ridge beneath
which on the eastern side the ground rolls. Montrose, by drawing Position of
up the main body of his infantry — the Macdonalds and Clanranalds ^^ °^" "^"^^ ^
— on the slope and below the level of the line of ridge, and by
disposing of his troop of horse under Lord Gordon in a hollow (still
pointed out in Kinsteary Park) on the left wing of his force, effectually
concealed his main strength and position from the foe approaching
from the west. He posted Alasdair Macdonald, with his tried
Irish contingent and 300 Gordons, in the area between the village
and the old Castle Hill, or Doocot Hill, his right wing extending
to the Castle Hill, on which probably he mounted a few guns, and
his left reaching as far as the Mill. He had his back to the village.
The garden dykes formed excellent defensive works. To the left,
towards Geddes, the ground was swampy with the recent rains, and
through it ran the Auldearn Burn, forming a ravine right in front of
the hidden men under Montrose. The royal standard was entrusted
to Macdonald as a decoy. No doubt when Hurry saw the yellow
banner he had a vision of the great reward offered for the traitor's
head. Tradition says that Montrose watched the fight from the steeple.
In front of Kinnudie, about three-quarters of a mile from the Battle of
. , , . 1 Auldearn,
village, Hurry marshalled his men, reserving under his own command ^j^ May 1645.
the main body of horse drawn up behind his infantry. On his right wing-
was posted a force of cavalry under Major Drummond, and it is not
improbable that the Lawers regiment, which bore the brunt of fighting
against Macdonald, was in the front line of the same wing. Cove-
nanters and Royalists advanced to meet each other in front of the
Royal standard. But the musketry, push of pike, showers of arrows,
and the greater weight of the Covenanters, bore the gallant Macdonald
behind his dykes. Three times his banner fell ; the ensign was
killed. He rallied his men and leaped out like a lion on the foe.
Hurry persisted in a frontal attack, till by sheer numbers he drove
Macdonald behind his defences again. Macdonald, holding the garden-
gate at Auldearn, anticipated the valour of his kinsman at Hougoumont.
420 THE COVENANTERS
Heroism of Two bladcs broke in his hand. Hurry's pikemen transfixed his
targe, but ' the red-armed horse-knight Alaster ' cut through a bunch
of the shafts like straws. Notwithstanding his herculean efforts he
would have been annihilated, had not Montrose marked the critical
moment, and come to his assistance. Addressing Lord Gordon,
Montrose said : ' Fy, my Lord, sturr, or Mackdonnell will carry the
honnour of the day.' ^ Off dashed the Gordons, round by what is
now the Deadmen's Wood, intending to cut into the rear of Hurry's
right wing. The hidden foot also advanced over the ridge. Con-
sequent on, or contemporaneously with, this movement, Hurry ordered
Drummond to advance on the right, but he, by mistake, or, as some
said, treachery, wheeled to the left and broke through Hurry's
infantry, and threw the line into confusion. As the stampede
developed, Montrose unleashed his hidden Highlanders — Macdonalds
and Clanranalds — and before Hurry could restore order, a torrent
of bloodthirsty clansmen, yelling for vengeance, and shouting
' Remember Gordon of Spynie ' and * Remember Farquharson ' (two
Royalists cruelly slain by the Covenanters), had mingled in the
melde. The Gordon horse rode right over Hurry's battalions, and
a portion wheeled and cut a passage back. Hurry's reserve either
stood demoralised, or craven, ran away. The regulars stood their
ground and fought to the death, their ranks being charged by Gordon
and his horse, who were followed by the broadswords. Hurry's
clansmen on the left and the reserves sought safety in flight.
Spalding records that Hurry, Seaforth, Sutherland, Findlater, the
Lairds of Boyn, Innes, Birkenbog, and the rest, 'wan safely away.'
Hurry and Drummond never drew rein till they reached Inverness,
where Hurry had Drummond tried by court-martial and shot on
the road to Tomnahurich. The reunited forces of Montrose sur-
rounded the Covenanters with a circle of death-dealing claymores,
by which fell 3000 men, among the number being the gallant Sir
Mungo Campbell, Colonel of the Lawers regiment, Drummond of
Meedhope, Sir John Murray, Master Gideon Murray, and Captain
^ Mackay, Chronicles of the Frasers^ 295 (Scot. Hist. Soc).
THE GREAT CIVIL WAR 421
Bernard Mackenzie.^ The victors captured sixteen stands of colours,
the baggage and ammunition, and much valuable loot. About a
score of Royalists bit the dust.'^
The Covenanting: Government was alarmed at the turn affairs had Alarm of the
^ • A L 1 Covenanters.
taken, although, with Baillie's army now approaching from Athole
through the devastated lands of the abettors of Montrose, there still
remained the hope of crushing the foe. That old campaigner, Baillie,
kept at a safe distance from, and hung on to the rear of, his ever-
moving antagonist, always ready to pounce on him when unprepared.
Leven's army lay between the loyal Scots and their master, Charles,
in England. The hopes of Charles, revived by the brilliant exploits
of Rupert, were now dissipated by the destructive battle of Naseby.
The only security for his lieutenant, Montrose, lay in the fastnesses
of the Grampians.
At length, 2nd July 1645, the opposing forces met at Alford, on Battle of
the Don in Aberdeenshire, well matched as far as numbers went.^ 3^^ j^iy ^5^5
Montrose selected the arena. On a green declivity facing the Don he
posted his Highlanders, supported on the right wing by cavalry under
Lord Gordon, among whom were interspersed some musketeers
under Nathaniel Gordon, and on the left wing by Lord Aboyne's
horse and a body of Irish under O'Cahan. The Master of Napier
and the reserve were drawn up out of sight of Baillie. The Cove-
nanters bravely crossed the river to make the attack. Baillie's horse
on his left wing, under Balcarres and Hackett, were soon in a hand-
to-hand fight with Lord Gordon's command, and were finally dis-
persed by the musketeers, who, after firing, drew their claymores and
began to hamstring the horses in the fierce vtelde. The Royalist
1 Lawers and othei- braves had honourable burial in Cawdor Church and Churchyard.
In Auldearn old choir a tablet memorialises Drummond and the Murrays ; a stone in the
churchyard commemorates Mackenzie.
2 Cameron, Rel. C^//.— ' Book of Clanranald,' ii. 185-93 ; Mackay, Chron. of Erasers, 295 ;
Gordon, Brit. Dist., 121-7 ; Bain, Hist, of Auldearn, 14; Spalding, Hist.^W. ^73; V^ishart,
Memoirs {De Rebus, cap. x.), edit. Murdoch, 98, 389, 503 ; Gardiner, Hist, of Great Civil
War, ii. 224. I am indebted to the Rev. J. Bonailo, B.D., Minister of Auldearn, for descrip-
tions of the field and fight, which have been valuable in correcting the commonly accepted
account of the battle. Recent writers do not appear to have consulted Mr. Bain's excellent
History of Auldearn. ^ Gordon, Brit. Dist., 129.
422
THE COVENANTERS
Flight of
Baillie.
Covenanters
appoint a War
Committee.
horse were free then to wheel round and attack the rear of BailHe.
A GaeHc chronicle declares that Lord Gordon fell when clutching the
very belt of BailHe, and that his death so mortified the clansmen that
it was ordered that no quarter should be given that day/
Meantime the infantry of Montrose, the Farquharsons, and men
of Badenoch, supported by the Irish and Aboyne, charged and broke
the right wing of Baillie. At this juncture Napier's reserve was seen
rushing on the centre and completing the bloody rout. It was
Auldearn over again — sabres behind and thirsty broadswords before
— the clansmen, mad for vengeance, making a speedy slaughter of
sixteen hundred men. Baillie left his men to be cut to pieces,
and fled to Stirling to make excuses to the Government.^ The
fall of Gordon was an irreparable loss to Montrose. His other
casualties were so trifling that one must conclude that the Covenanters
were as lambs for the slaughter, whenever the wild Highland slogans
were heard from the throats of the Invincibles of Montrose.
In the flight, Argyll, on his third horse, just escaped the avenging
hand of Glengarry.^
The Estates had no other option than that of reinstating the
defeated Baillie ; but, to secure some chance of escape in the day of
peril, they appointed sixteen wiseacres to be his council of war,
namely, Argyll, Tullibardine, Kinghorn, Burleigh, Arbuthnot, and
others.* They ordered the Lowland militia in force to meet at Perth,
and the Hamiltons under Lanark at their local rendezvous. Baillie
wished to quit the field. The thought of leading an undisciplined
mob against the Invincibles, and of being controlled by incapable
aristocrats appalled the veteran. He knew how the callow lads from
Clyde and Ayr, who had never grounded pike or lit a match, would
run like conies as soon as the Eagle of the North flapped his wings
and the dreaded redshanks appeared to claim a bloody prey.^
The bracing air of Aberdeen, and the loot of Angus and Mearns,
' Cameron, Rel. Celt., ii. 195.
2 For Baillie's own account of the battle, see R. Baillie's Letters, ii. 419.
•^ Cameron, Rel. Celt., ii. 195. * Balfour, Annals, iii. 294.
^ Act. Pari. Scot., vi. 431, 447, 448.
THE GREAT CIVIL WAR 423
refreshed the warriors of Alford, who, being reinforced by strong
recruits, whom Alasdair Macdonald led in from the west, Huntly
brought from the Gordon country, ' Black Pate ' from Athole, and
Airlie from Forfarshire, were ready to dash down on the Perth
muster, before Lanark could join Baillie. * Black Pate ' and Rollo
of Duncrub knew every inch of the possible routes. After some
manoeuvring around Perth, the Royalist leader drew out the Cove- Montrose
nanting army after him to the Wood of Methven. There he gave "'^"°^"^"'"-
Baillie and Hurry the slip, careered away over the hunting-ground of
his youth, through the Ochils, down Glendevon, into Kinross-shire,
as if he meant to devastate Fife. The baffled Covenanters had a
miserable revenge in murdering in cold blood the female camp-
followers — women and babes — left behind in this precipitate move-
ment, an illustration of inhumanity equalled by the Model Army
under Fairfax and Cromwell, who, at Naseby, butchered the Irish in
terms of the Ordinance of 24th October 1644, and imitated by Leslie
more than once, notably at Philiphaugh, when he dispatched the
women and captives, and at Dunaverty, where he extinguished the
garrison after its surrender on quarter given.
Montrose carried red ruin on his track by Castle Campbell — a Montrose
stronghold of Argyll — Muckhart, Dollar; swept rapidly across the j^^j'^'^'j^^ ^°
Ochil hillfoots, and passed over the Forth at the Ford of Frew above
Stirling. He hurried over classic Bannockburn towards Kilsyth,
approaching that village by the old, rough, steep ' Tak-me-doon '
road. He bivouacked on the green uplands above Colzium House on
the evening of the 14th August.^ Next morning the Royal standard
fluttered over Riskend Farm. The battlefield he chose suited his
nimble infantry and small body of horse. Lord Advocate Hope
reckoning the former at 3500, the latter at 600.^ It was a green
plateau extending eastward a mile from Colzium Burn and Moss
' Chronicles of Strut heam, 194 ; Guthry, Memoirs, 193 ; Nimmo, Hist, of Stirling, 392 ;
Anton, Hist, of Kilsyth, loi ; Cameron, Rel. Celt., ii. 200 ; Gardiner, Hist, of Great Civil
War, ii. 294-9.
^ Hope, Diary Misc. Scot. Hist., 128. The Book of Clanranald gives Montrose four
thousand foot and five hundred horse : Cameron, Rcl. Celt., ii. 201.
424 THE COVENANTERS
to Banton Burn, having the Baggage Knowe for an excellent post
for a rearguard in the west. Its northern boundary is the Drum
Burn, flowing at the foot of a moorland slope, through what is
now called the 'Slaughter Howe,' a natural fosse which protected
the left wing and the front of Montrose's army. The southern
front, facing the hot sun, sloped steeply into a long meadow, now a
reservoir. Some field dykes increased the strategic importance
of the plateau. The landscape recedes from this elevation to the
east in many folds, and to the south in innumerable hummocks, grass
and tree clad, significantly termed * bullet knowes/ forming onward
from Dullatur Bog an insuperable obstacle to cavalry advancing
upon the right wing of Montrose,
i^'^^of Baillie had to approach througfh the cornfields in the east,
Councilor . . TT 1 T 1 r i 1
War. ripenmg to harvest. He led at least 5000 foot and 600 horse.
On the night of the 14th he also chose an impregnable position at
Holland Bush, three miles from his antagonist. The Council of War,
nearly all of them runaways in battle worsted by Montrose, would
not permit Baillie to sit tight. They would catch the wily bird,
Montrose, in the net they had spread for him. His change of front,
or a timely feint, which was interpreted to mean a contemplated
retreat, settled their plans. The Council decided that Baillie must
get between Montrose and the northern road. Lanark was expected
to be on the march to meet and to checkmate Montrose if he headed to
the west. Baillie reluctantly struck his camp and moved on Colzium,
across the cornfields by way of Auchencloch. It was a perilous move.
What made it disastrous was the order he received to march his
eight regiments right in front of the enemy's lines, so as to secure the
northern slopes. To do this he had to cross the Banton Burn, and to
expose the left flanks of all his regiments to assault. His three small
field-guns, which might have safeguarded the movement, seem to
have been unused.
A mixed force of musketeers and horse of Balcarres's regiment
was soon in touch with the advance-guard of Montrose in the houses
and enclosures near the farms of Auchinrivoch and Auchinvally, and
THE GREAT CIVIL WAR 425
this skirmish tempted the Macleans and Macdonalds into irregular
and perilous conflicts, which might have ended badly for Montrose,
had Baillie's general advance not failed. Neglecting to execute his
orders, the commanders of the Hume, Argyll, Glencairn, and Cassillis
regiments got involved with the van of the foe in the enclosures.
Montrose saw his opportunity, and let loose the agile, shoeless
Highlanders. Clad only in their shirts, knotted between their legs, Onset by
the lithe redshanks leapt the dikes, dirk in the left hand, targe on the '^
left arm, whirling broadsword in the right hand, and cut clean through
BailHe's centre before the Covenanters could prime for a second
volley, lay a pike, or form to the attack. The rout was instantaneous.
In the meantime the left wing of the Royalists had been engaged
with those regiments which tried to occupy the northern slopes
commanding the road by which Montrose had come. Airlie and his
Ogilvies as well as Aboyne were sorely pushed, until Nathaniel
Gordon and the main body of horse reinforced them, and in a wild
charge dashed through Baillie's cavalry under Murray, and the foot
under Crawford, and engaged Baillie's second line. In vain did
Baillie try to lead up the reserves from Fife. For them the sight of
the half-naked destroyers was enough. They fled and scarce struck
a defensive blow. Their fleet barefooted foes mowed them down in
the merciless pursuit which the horse kept up for ten miles. Dullatur
Bog also swallowed up many. Four thousand Covenanters were Slaughter at
slain and two thousand were captured. The victor's casualties were Augus^ie^"!^
slight. With despicable meanness Argyll and the blundering
Councillors early betook themselves to flight, and with equal nimble-
ness Baillie and the chief officers rode off, leaving their men to be
butchered. It was a sordid massacre of chicken-hearted rustics
impressed into war. The slayers were tired. Montrose, therefore,
rested two days at Kilsyth and 'refreshed' his braves. Without
vainglory he might now boast that he had regained Scotland for the
King.^ Charles himself was in a forlorn condition, as falls to be
shown.
^ For Baillie's Vindication, cf. R. Baillie. Letfets, ii. 421.
3H
426 THE COVENANTERS
The clansmen Before engaging BalUie, Montrose in an unlucky moment promised
Mmitrose.'" ^^e clansmcn the loot of Glasgow. As they approached the city their
visions of plunder were glorified. These were rudely dissipated by
their leader. He accepted a paltry sum from the magistrates, who
pleaded that their prosperous town should be spared. No excuses,
promises, or reprisals on the lawless would satisfy the petulant,
incorrigible freebooters, who lost faith in their leader, no longer a
man of his word. The gates of the capital were thrown open and
Royalist compatriots set free, but pestilence, that horror of the Celt,
kept the foe from enriching themselves with the plunder of
Edinburgh.
Montrose vainly imagined that the Lowlands would flock to him,
Nathaniel and Sent Nathaniel Gordon as a recruiting officer with his dashing
troops to rake through the southern counties, as far as Dumfries.
They made up for the chance they lost in Glasgow. Few of the
gentry came in. The easiest transported of their possessions sufficed
the Highlandmen. There was no enthusiasm for a cause which
undid the Covenant and spilled the blood of lovers of freedom. To
keep his men out of temptation Montrose retired to Bothwell —
another instance of faithlessness which threw the clansmen into such
a dudgeon that ' they shrunke all away.'' They could ravage and
spill Campbell blood without Montrose. With their Alasdair, now
knighted by Montrose, they would go anywhere, but preferably to
Argyle, where, according to a pitiable petition forwarded to the
Government, they ' nested ' four months ; or as Montereul graphi-
cally described the episode — ' Macdonald, who has two or three
thousand, is still the guest of the Marquis of Argyll and continues
to ravish his lands.' - Aboyne also, nettled at the advancement of
Crawford, President of Parliament, to the command of his horse,
rode away in a pet. Montrose was thus left with one battalion
of Irish, about 500 in number, under O'Cahan and M'Lachlan,
and a few horse under Airlie and Nathaniel Gordon. His position
was perilous. He moved to the south-eastern Borders to gather
' (Jordon, T53. '^ Montereul, Correspondence^ 23rd Nov. 1645, '• 60 (Scot. Hist. Soc).
THE GREAT CIVIL WAR 427
the auxiliaries promised by Douglas — who joined Montrose after
his victory at Kilsyth — Traquair, Roxburgh, and Hume. Twelve
hundred borderers, ' all gentlemen, barrones, and noblemen, gallantly
mounted,' joined his force. According to a contemporary letter
writer, Montrose's men disgraced their march by their immoral
conduct.^
Hearing that Leslie and a large force was sent to oppose him. Recall of
Montrose said, ' Though God should rain Leslies from heaven he
would fight them.'^ Meanwhile David Leslie, leaving Hereford
with 4000 horse and some infantry, had marched as far as Mid-
lothian, with the intention of preventing the retreat of Montrose,
and there learned, it is said from the slippery Traquair, that the
Royalist army was so attenuated that victory was within his grasp.
Leslie resolved to offer battle. He rapidly marched down Gala
Water, and up Ettrick, coming into touch with the outposts of his
enemy near Selkirk on the night of the 12th September. It was a
day of fasting and humiliation, which the Covenanters duly observed.
Montrose, being in a hostile country, had no warning of Leslie's
approach. The main body of the Royalists lay in fancied security on
the plain of Philiphaugh, while their leader and other officers had
quarters in Selkirk. This ancient burgh overlooks a picturesque
haugh, which stretches along the stream of Ettrick for a mile and a
half, its breadth being about half a mile. The western side of the
strath slopes up to higher ground, affording defensive positions ; the
southern entrance to the vale is dominated by the bosky Harewood-
head. A few entrenchments — 'dikes and ditches' — converted the
romantic scene into a fortified camp.
Early in the morning of Saturday Leslie's vanguard drew near,
' A cloud of mist them weel concealed,
As close as e'er might be.'
They halted at the Shaw Burn to sing a psalm. Montrose, surprised,
1 Rev. Ro. Balsome, 17th Sept. 1645 ; J- W- Kennedy, Tlie Teviotdale Regiment, 10
(Hawick, 1903). ^ Kow, Lrfe of Blair, 176.
42S THE COVENANTERS
Montrose had barely time to get into his stirrups, and with his horsemen to ride
rt^hiithtugh. down the steep bank towards the camp, when
' On Philiphaugh a fray begun,
- At Hairwoodhead it ended ;
The Scots out o'er the Graemes they ran,
Sae merrily it bended.' ^
He was too late to dispose his small army to suit his hitherto success-
ful tactics. The superior troops and well-armed battalions of Leslie
struck terror into the Gaels. The twelve hundred gentry drew off to
the rear to watch the fight before allying themselves with the victors.
The Irish veterans and the mounted men under Airlie and Gordon
bore the brunt of a well- contested fight. The latter dashed into
superior numbers only to be overwhelmed. The musketeers were
wiped out by waves of advancing infantry. At the height of the
battle a strong force emerged from the back of Linglee Hill and bore
down on the left flank of Montrose. According to James Hogg in
his tale, Wat Pringle o the Yair, * It was at the Lingly Burn where
the armies separated, and from thence old Wat Pringle, well mounted
on a gallant steed, led off 2000 troopers up Phillhope, over at the
Fowlshiels Swire, and then by a narrow and difficult path through
Covenanters the Harchcad Wood.' " This movement settled the day. Montrose
victorious at ^^ W\t\\ orreat heroism 300 Irish fought on till 250 of them
Philiphaugh, c> o & v^
i3thSeptem- fell, when their officers, O'Cahan, M'Lachlan, and Stewart
surrendered on quarter being promised. Ludorick Lindsay, Earl
of Crawford, was among the slain. There was no pursuit. Many
officers were captured in the battle, or in the vicinity afterwards —
the Earl of Traquair, Lord Johnston (Earl of Hartfell), Lords
Gray, Sinton, Drummond, and Ogilvy, Sir William Rollo, Sir Philip
Nisbet, Sir Alexander Leslie, Colonel Nathaniel Gordon, Lord
President Spottiswood, who was a non-combatant, Alexander Ogilvy
of Inverquharity, and others.^
' Local ballad, The Battle of Philiphaugh.
- J. W. Kennedy, The Teinotdalc Regiment, 7.
•■' ' Above a thousand were buried in that place ; whereof scarce fifteen were ours,' wrote
Baillie (ii. 321). I31air mentions ten slain : Row, Life of Blair, 177.
ber 1645.
THE GREAT CIVIL WAR 429
What follows is scarcely credible. The Irish soldiery were Butchery on
accompanied by their wives and children, and besides these were
other women, army scullions, and potboys, with probably the
wounded, to the number of 300 — these were butchered like vermin
in the courtyard of Newark Castle which overlooks the Yarrow,
near the scene of battle.^ This must have been done with the
concurrence of Argyll and the Council of War — Craufurd- Lindsay,
Buccleuch, Lauderdale, Lanark, Yester, Barganie, Rutherford,
Forrester, and William Scot. They watched the conflict throughout,
and at noon dispatched the news of victory, declaring to the English
Commissioners at Berwick, ' The Lord hath this day, here at Philip-
hauch i)ear Selkirk, appeared gloriously for His People.'^ 'His
People ' had no pity in their savage breasts, forgetting that many of
their own comrades had wives in the English and Irish camps.^ It
may have been true what Patrick Gordon wrote concerning these
Irish mercenaries: 'It seemed to them there was no distinction The Scois
betwixt a man and a beast : for they killed men ordinarily with no j^^jj^^
more feeling of compassion, and with the same careless neglect, that
they kill ane henn or capone for ther supper. And they were also
without all shame, most brutishlie given to uncleanness and filthie
lust.' But he also asserts : * Of those two cryeing sinnes the Scottes
were als giltie as they.'* It was the dying boast of Montrose that he
had always tried to stop unnecessary bloodshed ; and, if it was only
a boast, the conduct of brutal ruffians from Ireland was no pattern for
the saints of covenanted Scotland. Nor was the massacre at Newark
all. Leslie still further degraded his manhood by putting to death in
cold blood the fifty heroes who stood by Adjutant Stewart, and, on
his march to Edinburgh, by drowning at the bridge over the Avon,
near Linlithgow, eighty women and children, ' without sentence, or
the least formality of Law,' according to Sir George Mackenzie.^
* Tales of a Grandfather^ chap, xliii. •
2 Rec. Com. Gen. Assent., i. xxi. note; Willcock, The Great Marquess, 184, 387.
3 Montereul, ii. 555. * Brit. Dist., 161.
^ A Vindication of the Government, 20; Gordon, 160. The bridge still stands: on the
keystone the date 1626 is incised.
430
THE COVENANTERS
O'Cahan and M'Lachlan were reserved for execution in Edinburgh.
Nisbet, Rollo, and Alexander Ogilvy, a youth of eighteen, were
beheaded in Glasgow.^ Guthry tells the somewhat incredible story
that when the poetic professor of divinity in the University of
Glasgow, David Dickson, heard of these executions, he exclaimed,
'The work goes bonnily on.'- What steeled the hearts of the
Scots against the Irish was the fact that some of their officers
were prominent actors in the 1641 massacres.^
The Covenan- Less refined ministers at the meetino- of Assembly in December,
lers clamour ^ j
for vengeance Cant and others, clamoured for the blood of the captives, and said
KoyaHsts. ^^ Lord was angry at the law's delay. The old castle dungeons
in St, Andrews held the victims safe. In St. Andrews the Estates
assembled on 26th November, and the parish minister, Blair, opened
it with a bloodthirsty sermon. Wariston, lately returned from West-
minster, adjured the members by their divine Judge, and 'that sea
of innocent blood, which lay before His throne crying for vengeance
on these bloodthirsty rebels, the butchers of so many innocent souls,'
to steel their hearts and decree justice. He also trounced the run-
away generals, attributed the pestilence and the massacre at Kilsyth
to the discords of public men, and to malignancy, and asserted that
Parliament was ' lyke to Noa's arke, which had in it both foull and
cleine creteurs.' The Irish prisoners were ordered to be executed
without trial.*
Lord Ogilvy escaped from prison in his sister's clothes, and
Lord Johnston (Hartfell), a kinsman of Wariston, was pardoned.
But the others met a bloody doom. President Spottiswood had been
a consistent malignant and incendiary in sympathy with the King,
and had officially signed the Commission of Montrose. He was
* Montereul, i. 47. 2 Memoirs, 208.
^ The Estates ordered all prisoners taken 'at and after Philiphaugh' to be executed,
'without any assize or process, conform to the treaty between the two kingdoms passed in
Act.' Six Irish women were brought out of Selkirk gaol and executed : Balfour, Annals, iii.
341 ; Act. Pari. Scot., vi. i. 492 ; Brown, Hist, of Selkirkshire, i. 193. This was in keeping
with the English ordinance of date 24th October 1644, which ordered Irish captured in
England or Wales to be put to death : Lord's Jour., vii. 34.
^ Balfour, Annals, iii. 312, 341, 363 ; Napier, Memoirs, ii. 592.
THE GREAT CIVIL WAR 431
put on trial as a traitor, ' art and part ' with Montrose at Philiphaugh, Execution of
and sent to the block in St. Andrews on 20th January with the ^^^"^^^"^"^'"^^^^^^
brave cavaHers, Nathaniel Gordon and Captain Andrew Guthrie, Guthrie.
son of the Bishop of Moray.^ Blair had the satisfaction of melting
the heart of the gallant Gordon, who wished to die penitent
and at peace with the Church. Consequently he relaxed him from
excommunication, and received him as a member of the Church.
Blair hoped he had gone to heaven. The two bishops' sons, whom
Blair thought birds of ill feather,- were not so easily moved, the
judge dying railing, the officer stupid and impenitent, while Blair
reserved his hopes about them unexpressed. ' The Maiden ' was
brought from Dundee to dispatch them.^ William Murray, brother
of Tullibardine, a youth of nineteen, was respited two days. At the
old market cross where these Royalists fell the common hangman
burned Rutherford's Lex Rex in 1660, so quickly did Royalism revive
and triumph again.
Parliament on 8th January 1646 passed an Act of Classes against Act of classes.
the delinquents who had followed Montrose, making them incapable
of holding places of public trust.^
The Commission of the General Assembly made a disciplinary
raid upon the ministers in the north whose Royalism had incited them
to sign Huntly's bond and to sympathise with Montrose's enterprise.
The Commission sat in Aberdeen for twelve days — 12th May to Commission,
24th May — and made short work of the delinquents ^ in that region. " ^^ ' ^'^'
Alexander Clark of Skiralvie, for preaching to Huntly, and William
Douglas of Aboyne, for pledging Huntly and Aboyne in a stirrup
cup {deock an doruis) after the sermon, were deposed. While George
Hannay of Alves was deposed for signing Huntly's bond and
drinking his health, John Cheyne of Kintore was deposed for enter-
^ Act. Pari. Scot., v. i. 523-3. - Life, 179, 180: '■ mail corvi malum ovum. ^
' In Treason and Rebellion, etc. (two letters from Scotland, 26th January 1645, published
by authority in London, 1646, pp. 16) it is recorded (p. 5) that Gordon 'confessed he had been
an adulterer, a drunkard, and a shedder of innocent blood,' and that William Murray
'confessed himself guilty of adultery and drunkenness, but denyed he was a traitor to his
country' (p. 6).
* Act. Pari. Scot., vi. i. 503. ^ Rec. Com. Gen. Assem., i. 242-67.
432 THE COVENANTERS
taining Montrose and Huntly and 'saying grace to their meatt.
Ten ministers were put out, as many suspended, and others rebuked.
These rebel pastors, together with influential laymen, were made to
compear at the Commission, and on bended knee confess their sins.
The Presbytery of Mearns (Kincardine O'Neil) was ordered to
prosecute James Strachan, Coldstone, and make him satisfy in
sackcloth in the church for giving the Sacrament to Montrose.^
In September 1646 Presbyteries were ordered to make up a roll
of compilers to be sent to magistrates."
The Marquis of Douglas, who escaped from Philiphaugh, was
captured in April, and sent to Edinburgh prison, where he paid a
heavy fine. He had to compear before the Presbytery of Lanark, I
make his submission, and sign the Covenant in St. Bride's Church,
Douglas.^
Montrose and After the defeat at Philiphaugh, Montrose betook himself to his
fone?"^ impregnable stronghold of Blair in Athole, from which he issued
north to summon the Gordons to the Royal standard. His victor,
Leslie, returned to the army in England, but dispatched Colonel
Middleton with a regiment of horse to pursue Montrose.* The
jealous Huntly, who had never forgiven Montrose for his treacherous
treatment of himself in earlier days, drew off the Gordons from the
force his rival had assembled to undertake the perilous enterprise of
rescuino- their brave comrades from the southern scaffolds. Montrose
expected to meet the King, who was on the way to join him in the
Lowlands, according to arrangement. But again the King was
foiled, and he hurried off to the Borders a force of 1500 men
under Digby, who, on reaching Dumfries, was afraid to penetrate
further without guides, and got out of a fix by dispersing his rank
and file before crossing with his officers to the Isle of Man. Had
Digby boldly cut his way through, and joined hands with Montrose,
who hovered some time round Glasgow, it might have fared worse
for the cause of the Covenant. Montrose was compelled to retreat
» Rec. Covi. Gen. Assent., i. 271. ^ Ibid., i. 69.
3 Fraser, The Douglas Book, iii. 331-6. "* Montereul, i. 33.
The Netherbow Port, Edinburtjh
The Canongate Tolbooth, Edinljurgh
The Bass Rock
I'he Tolbooth of Edinburgh
ihc Whigs' Vauh m iJunn.jitur Cattle Dmuiottar Castle
PRISONS OF THE COVENANTERS
THE GREAT CIVIL WAR 433
again, and sought the fastnesses of the north, doubly crushed by the
deaths of his wife and his brother-in-law, Lord Napier.
Charles himself was in an evil case. The daring Rupert and he Charies in an
had quarrelled, and the former, now the spokesman of the peace ^^' ^^^^*
party among the Royalists, had become to his uncle as ' a rogue and
rascal,' removed from Court, 27th October 1645. South Wales was
also lost to the King. The toils were closing round him, indeed his
capture was imminent, and his sole English army was nearing its
last stand.
Lauderdale exhibited great shrewdness when he declared that the
success of Montrose ruined Charles. The campaigns of Montrose,
resulting in no good, merely tended to embitter all parties, who began
to lose sight of Christian principle in their anxiety to overreach each
other, and to practise cruelty and intolerance wherever there was no
chance of retaliation. The United Kingdom was in danger of losing
all the first-fruits of the Reformation struggle, and the Covenanters,
by forgetting their aims and distinctive teaching, laid themselves
open to the taunt —
' You lie, you lust, you break your trust,
And act all kind of evil ;
Your Covenant makes you a saint.
Although you live a Devil.'
(Old Song, You're Welcome, WTiigs.)
31
434
THE COVENANTERS
CHAPTER XVII
THE ENGAGEMENT : THE FALL OF CHARLES FIRST AND OF MONTROSE
Scots fight for The King vainly imagined that, by sowing discord between the
Presbytery and j.rr . r t mi • i • • i • i
Monarchy. aitierent sections ot the party still united in opposing him, by coquet-
ting with the military leaders of the Scots, by holding out liberty of
conscience to the Independents, who feared being obliterated by the
Presbyterians, all the while he was intriguing with the Catholics at
home and abroad, promising them toleration also, some triumphant
genii of politics would arise to plant him on a secure throne and dash
his enemies under his feet. The Scots military in England felt
uncomfortable in their invidious position — a mercenary army in
*the auld enemy's land,' unpaid although promised pay, flouted and
nicknamed in and out of Parliament, because they had to forage by
compulsion on their marches, which the English described as stealing
the butter off the children's bread. To fight without pay and then
be abused by the ingrates whom they were actually saving was not
to be brooked by Scots as proud as they were poor.^ They would
have both Presbytery and a Monarchy, cost what these might !
After some preliminary negotiations — in all likelihood initiated by
the French statesman Mazarin — Jean de Montereul, an accomplished
diplomatist, was sent to England by Mazarin to try to effect a
tripartite arrangement with Charles, the Scots, and the French.
From August 1645 onwards we find him in London and elsewhere
writing to Mazarin.- From the first, Leven, being proof against
seduction, considered it treachery to receive private communications
from the King, which he divulged to the committee in London. The
* T^e Correspondejice of De Montereul, etc., edit. J. G. Fotheringham (Scot. Hist. Soc,
2 vols., 1898-9), i. 83, 85. 2 ii,id.^ passim, cited as Montereul.
Montereul's
negotiations.
FALL OF CHARLES FIRST AND MONTROSE 435
representatives of Scotland in London — Loudoun, Balmerino, Hew
Kennedy, and Robert Barclay — however, were ready to negotiate a
peace on the basis of the establishment of Presbytery by both Parlia-
ments, and in October notified their willingness to aid and support
the King if this was agreed to.^ Montereul subtly ministered to
their prejudices and to their fear of Independency — now a powerful
agency protected by invincible arms — by suggesting that the King
might prefer to ally himself with that form of dissent. England
already had broken the League and left the Scots free to act alone ;
an ecclesiastical Synod might easily settle religious matters after a
peace was concluded. Montereul did not tell the Scots what he
wrote to Mazarin, that he anticipated that the first unfettered Carolan
Parliament would disestablish Presbytery. Montereul was a true
prophet.
The growth in influence of Independency outside more than Aims of the
•I'iTT /-y-. 1 -iio •!-• Independents.
withm the House of Commons determmed the bcots m their
uncompromising antagonism to their rivals in nonconformity. The
Independents demanded 'toleration, not only to themselves but to
other sects."- Such accommodation at the present crisis was not
feasible.^ The hope of the Scots wholly depended on a recruited
army. Montereul soon learned from Holland that the Independents
would rally round the King if he 'would give them Ireland, as a
retreat . . . in other words . . . establise independency.'*
But Charles never saw finality in any proposals. He alone knew ;
could be right; was infallible. If every other sword failed him he
would defend his crown with his own blade. Expecting foreign
allies to land, he played to gain time. At the end of the year only
' Montereul, i. j~ ; ii- 57 1-
2 The Commission of the General Assembly on 14th July 1647 in 'the Declaration and
Remonstrance of the present dangers' gave as a reason for opposing a universal toleration :
* Neither doeth this universall libertie reach only unto the riving [tearing up] of Religion and
razing the foundations of the Church but unto the subversion of policy and overturning the
pillars of the State.' 'We desire to construct the actions of all men to the best' : J?ec. Com.
Gen. Assent.., \. 289, 290, 291.
^ Baillie, Letters., ii. 326 ; Montereul, i. 85.
^ Montereul to Mazarin, 23rd Nov. 1645, i. 59.
436
THE COVENANTERS
Montereul ad-
vises Charles,
January 1646.
Demands
of the
Covenanters.
two avenues of escape lay open to him — to accept the invitation
of the Scots and betake himself to their camp, or, uninvited, to enter
London and take his chances there.
Montereul arrived in Oxford on 2nd January 1646 and opened
negotiations with the King, persuading him that his best policy was
to trust the Scots, who were devoted to monarchy, and to distrust
the sectaries, who were plotting his destruction. Of course the point
of view from which Montereul looked was the advantage to France
of an alliance with the Scots. In vain did the diplomatist coax
Charles to accept Presbytery even temporarily, the King doggedly
replying, ' his conscience would not allow him to consent to the ruin
of the religion he had sworn to maintain, and that he would rather
lose his crown than his soul.' Montereul advised him to confer with
a Scots theologian and have his scruples cleared. This shrewd
advice he refused to take, although afterwards he acted on it. He
would agree to tolerate Presbyterian services and churches in
England, a concession which Montereul thought would suffice.^
The King, on the other hand, considered his counsellor to be a mere
juggler.
But the Anglo-Scottish Covenanters would now have nothing
less than Presbytery, a Protestant Ireland, the Covenant, and the
Parliamentary control of the militia. The King, while concealing
still more unworthy trafficking with the Papists, next proposed a
7nodus Vivendi for religion, which the English Parliament speedily
rejected, along with his overture that he should return to West-
minster, These secret necjotiations havino; been divulgfed broug^ht
both King and Scots into greater odium. Current events reacted
on the Westminster Assembly, which, in spring, was threatened with
dissolution. The Commons were determined to have Presbytery
subject to Parliamentary control. This cut at the root of Presby-
terian pretension.^
After a tangle of unsatisfactory adjustments with the Scots at
Newark-upon-Trent, Montereul being the intermediary, Charles
' Montereul, i. 104-5.
2 Baillie, Letters, ii. 362.
FALL OF CHARLES FIRST AND MONTROSE 437
deemed it expedient for himself to proceed to the Scottish camp chaiies seeks
and seek refuge and help there. Disguised as a common lackey ^^.,"y^ ^"j^ *^° ^
attendant on two cavaliers, the King left Oxford, and by circuitous ^^^y '646.
roads came unexpectedly to Southwell, near Newark, on 5th May.
According to Sir James Turner, who was present. Lord Lothian
received and treated the King with great discourtesy, demanded of
him to sign the Covenant, to establish Presbyterianism, to dismiss
Montrose,^ and to order Newark to capitulate. Two days afterwards
Leven struck his camp, and, with Charles a captive, marched north
to Newcastle. This was the signal for the English Parliament to
pay off the Covenanting army. The Scots pressed the King for
a settlement. He argued that he had come into camp on the assur-
ance that his freedom of conscience should be honoured, and that
he might be instructed in their peculiar tenets and aims. They
denied his interpretation of that transaction, asserting that he had
been received into camp on the condition that he would sign
the Covenant, which he had not done. Hallam was of opinion that
he came voluntarily and received no pledge." Charles then asked
for the theologian, Henderson, to come and solve his doubts, advised
Parliament to seek a solution of the religious question with the help
of the Westminster divines, and even desired the Pope to exercise
his plenary powers and ordain a settlement.
On 19th May, Charles wrote to Montrose regretfully commanding Escape of
hT-^ , ^ , . , . f~^ . , , Montrose in
im to retire to trance. Montrose, knowmg his Sovereigns realj^jy
wishes, procrastinated until a more emphatic command was sent,
on 1 6th July,^ ordering the Governor of Scotland to capitulate. This
he did at Rattray, 30th July, his men being indemnified, but himself
with Crawford and Hurry only obtaining passports to take them
abroad. Like his master, disguised as a servant — minister's-man to
the Reverend James Wood — he escaped to a wherry off Montrose,
and crossed the ocean on the 3rd November 1646.
Shattered in health, melancholy and broken-hearted with the
vexatious politics and polemics of Westminster, Alexander Henderson
1 Memoirs, 41. 2 ConsL Hist., ii. 196. ^ Napier, Memoirs^ ii. 634-7.
438
THE COVENANTERS
Henderson
debates with
Charles.
Death of
Alexander
Henderson,
19th August
1646.
came at the King's request to Newcastle, hoping to convert the
Sovereign to the Covenant. It was the middle of May. His task
was hopeless. The King was irrevocably bound to his father's creed,
which he deemed inspired : * I will say without hyperboly, that there
was not a wyser man since Solomon, than he who said No Bishop,
No King.' ^ It was impossible to debate with an idealist who asserted
that Presbytery was anti-monarchical, seditious, and intolerable, having
an iniquitous purpose.^ To this monomania of the King, Robert
Baillie traced the fatal disease of Henderson, who was crushed by
brooding over what others considered a foreordained curse of madness
resting on his Sovereign.^ The execution of the King was openly
canvassed in this belief.
The reasoning between King and subject was accomplished in
writing, the monarch beginning and forwarding five letters, to which
Henderson made four if not five replies, between 29th May and i6th
July.* The King's contribution shows literary gifts, adroit reasoning,
and the fruit of study of patristic authors and of Church traditions.
Henderson fortified his conclusions by Scripture only. It was not
to be expected that ' the incomparable Prince ' would be a match for
'the superexcellent Mr. Henderson.' An agreement was impossible.
The interlude was the pleasantest method of procrastination for
Charles.
Henderson sailed for Leith in a state of collapse, arriving on the
nth August. The haggard preacher had a premonition of death.
' In a few days,' said he, ' I am going home, and I am as glad of it
as a schoolboy, when sent home from the school to his father's house.'
The epitaph on his monument in Greyfriars' Churchyard, Edinburgh,
best describes the place he holds in the Scottish Pantheon : * Who
was a most strenuous defender of the liberty and discipline of the
church, in opposition to the aggressions, by fraud and violence, of
the Prelates ; a formidable foe alike to Superstition and growing
King to Queen, 5th March 1645.
' Clarendon, State Papers^ ii. 273.
3 Letters, ii. 385.
'• Works of Charles, 156-92 (Abcr., 1766) ; Rec. Com. Gen. Assem.., i. 47.
FALL OF CHARLES FIRST AND MONTROSE 439
Sectarianism ; a faithful advocate and champion of religion, and the
purity of divine worship ; in which services, after devoting to them
all the energies of body and mind, and accomplishing, both in his
native country, and in the neighbouring kingdom of England, unre-
mitting labours, at once useful to the church and honourable to
himself, he breathed his last on the 19th August 1646, in the 63d
year of his age.'^
While Charles remained at Newcastle he was visited by many Charles in
Newcastle
advisers, peacemakers, and diplomatists — Hamilton lately discharged
from prison, Argyll returned from a mission to Ireland, representatives
of the General Assembly's Commission with papers, and Montereul,
trying to make straight the crooked paths of intrigue.^ The terms
on which the King entered the Scottish camp resulted in fatal
misunderstandings. Montereul's warning to Charles that the Scots
would take advantage of their prisoner if he did not fulfil * the only
point they required of him ' — Presbytery— was justified. His cunning
counsel to the King that he should appear a convert to the hated
Covenant and anti-prelatic faith had less effect on Charles than the
logic of Henderson. Obdurate and infallible, the King would hie
away to Westminster, if the * barbarians ' — so he termed his Scottish
countrymen — would allow him. That they would not. He was the
only asset which the threadbare, haggard military had, or were likely
to get, almost bankrupt with their profitless business of arms. Mean-
time he utilised that * very civil and cunning ' courtier, as he described
Argyll, and sent him south to seek out for him some regal refuge.^
Argyll, in pursuance of a policy of his own as well as of this instruc-
tion, on 25th June appeared in the Painted Chamber to address
the Joint Committee of the English Houses of Parliament. After
discussing the situation and expressing his desire for the union of
both kingdoms, he pleaded for as broad a toleration and as charitable
^ M'Crie, Misc. Writ.., 84. He was buried before noon on the 21st, the Commission
being in Session in Edinburgh on that day : Rec. Com. Gen. Assem., i. 38-9.
^ The Commission of Assembly sent James Guthrie in December. In February he was
appointed Chaplain to Munro's regiment : Rec. Com. Gen. Assem., i. 47, 163, 204.
^ Willcock, T/ie Great Marquess., igi.
440 THE COVENANTERS
Argyll's policy, a policy as would permit the existence side by side of different religions
and political opinions and societies. He maintained that monarchy was
an essential factor in the creation of national righteousness. But he
had to acknowledge that the Peace accepted by the Scots enjoined the
Covenant on the King, abolished Episcopacy, and stripped the Crown
of its prerogatives. Such an illustration of charity could never be
acceptable to the Monarch. A revolutionary programme of this kind
better suited the ' honest men ' under Cromwell, of whom that saner
councillor wrote to Parliament : ' He that ventures his life for the
liberty of his country I wish he trust God for the liberty of his
conscience, and you for the liberty he fights for.' ^
Charles main- Still Charlcs maintained his position — as usual waiting for his
tains Episco-
pacy, angel of salvation. He openly discharged Montrose, but secretly
enjoined him to go about his disarmament leisurely. He discouraged
Macdonald, but countenanced other Royalist leaders. At the end of
July, between the English ultimatum and moderate overtures from
the Scots, he had to make a choice. Whether or not to become a
Presbyterian-Solemn- Leaguer was his problem. The Catholic Queen
urged him to become Presbyterian ostensibly and save his crown.
His Scottish friends on their knees prayed him to do the same. But
considering himself to be the Lord's Anointed, he held it to be his
divine function to uphold Episcopacy. Episcopacy was the brightest
jewel in the crown which God placed on his head. He could not
recognise the presbyter, on the ground that * it is less ill in many
respects to submit to one than many popes.' At the same time he
was willing to canton the bishops to certain* districts,^ and even
abdicate in favour of his son (2nd November).
The Covenanters, tired of incessant haggling and dissatisfied at
their prolonged absence, demanded their promised pay before packing
up and marching away with their captive King. Many Scots objected
to his presence In Scotland. Others declared his removal to be
treachery to their allies. It was agreed to confer with them on the
point. The military account amounted to one million and a half
^ Cromwell, Letter xxix. ^ Rushworth, vi. 328.
FALL OF CHARLES FIRST AND MONTROSE 441
pounds, and the Scots were willing to take one-third of this sum.
The Commons, on ist September, voted them four hundred thousand
pounds, payable in two instalments.^ After a debate the English Debates as to
Parliament declared that the custody of the person of the King in ^^^ ^ing.
England belonged to Parliament, and that, by English law, to remove
him was a casus belli. Notwithstanding this threat, it was understood
that if Charles would subscribe the Covenant the Scots would lift the
gage. The Scots Parliament sitting in December repeated the old
demands, only to find the King obdurate ; Charles would not seek
an asylum at the cost of principle.^ An attempt to rescue him failed ;
another to bribe the staunch Leven was also unsuccessful.^ In the
long-run the Scots yielded to the importunities of their allies, and on
the understanding that the English custodiers would not injure his
person, delivered up their King,
Charles, and his guard Leven, were playing golf on the 23rd January
when the commissioners sent from the English Parliament arrived in
Newcastle to take the King into custody. A few weeks earlier the
first instalment of the army pay arrived. When the convoy with it
reached York, the Scots danced in the churchyard with delight.'*
The hue and cry which followed the surrender —
' The traitor Scot
Sold his king for a groat ' —
was a political libel intended to intensify the English hatred of
Presbyterianism, and to mitigate the odium resting on the southern
regicides.^ On 3rd February the captive Monarch left the Scottish charies
camp for Holdenby House, Northamptonshire, escorted by military parHamenttry
wearing laurel on their head-pieces. When the northern army crossed ^'^'"y' 3rd
^^ ^ 11 1- February 1647.
the Borders it was partially disbanded. In the spring, a small standmg
army was sent to the north to quell Huntly, and to the west to
exterminate Macdonald's unconquered Celtic legion. General David
1 Com. Jour., iv. 664. '^ Act. Pari. Scot., vi. i. 635.
2 Montereul, i. 393. •* Terry, Leslie, 435.
^ Argyll vindicated the Scots from imputation of treachery : A Short Vindicaiiov. etc.,
Kirkton, 39.
3K
442 THE COVENANTERS
Leslie was in command. Contemporaries declared that he lacked
the traditional honour of a soldier. The butcheries of Philiphaugh
and Linlithgow were re-enacted. Huntly's strongholds fell before
him — ' who, after having promised to save the lives of all those who
were in the last castle that surrendered to him (I believe Lismore),
having said he would not take a drop of blood from any of the
garrison, did not hesitate to hang thirty-five or forty Irish that were
Leslie found there.' ^ Leslie and Argyll with a force of eight thousand men
Macdonaids. Surprised Macdonald in Kintyre, and drove his attenuated force into
Dunaverty — a sea-girt fortress in Southend, where Angus of the Isles
once entertained the fugitive Bruce — from which Macdonald escaped
in a galley. By treachery the castle fell. Of eight hundred men,
women, and children captured, wrote Montereul, who was in Edin-
burgh when the news of victory came, ' four hundred have been
massacred, in spite of a promise given that all their lives should be
spared.'^ Argyll at his trial repudiated the charge of having incited
Leslie to this butchery, and declared it to have been ordered by a
Council of War and approved by Parliament in 1648.^ Argyll looked
on and spared one hundred men for the French service, according
to sanguineous Turner, who was Leslie's adjutant-general there.*
Another actor was John Nevay, army chaplain, minister at Newmilns,
as thorough a Solemn Leaguer and hammer of malignants as existed,
who in his leisure sang the ' Song of Solomon ' and edited the Psalter
for the Assembly. Bishop Guthry echoes Turner in asserting that
Nevay instigated Leslie to make his sword drunk in the blood of the
Amalekites. When the brutal carnage was over, Leslie, turning to
Nevay, inquired, ' Now, Mr. John, have you not once gotten your
fill of blood ? ' ^ The feline tastes of Mr. Nevay otherwise are less
traceable than those of his traducers, and there is no justification for
the epithets ' bloodthirsty Nevoy ' and ' monster as he was ' of Mr.
Andrew Lang and Mr. W. L. Mathieson.^ For more than two
1 Montereul to Mazarin, 13/23 April 1647, ii. 103 ; Gordon, Brit. Dist., 199.
2 Montereul, ii. 151, 169. 2 Wodrow, i. 141. * Memoirs, 45-7.
^ Ibid., 45-7, 240 ; Guthry, Mefnoirs, 243, edit. 1748.
^ Lang, Hist, of Scot., iii. 181, 247 ; Mathieson, Politics and Religiojty ii. 71.
FALL OF CHARLES FIRST AND MONTROSE 443
hundred years the sword-hacked skulls and bones of these heroes lay
around Dunaverty, played with by the tides, blown on by the Atlantic
winds that hid and discovered them in the sand, and viewed with
superstitious awe by the peasantry, until a descendant of the sole
male child spared from the massacre — the Rev. Douglas Macdonald
of Sanda — with the Duke of Argyll's permission, collected the ghastly
relics, and gave them Christian burial in a walled enclosure still visible
in a field near the spot where the garrison was butchered.^
Leslie crossed to Islay on his exterminating business. He carried Trucuience of
.,,. . ^ 1 T^ 1 r i\ • c "'1 David Leslie.
with him a cousin of the Earl of Antrim, *a person 01 merit, whom
he threatened to hang before the castle of Dunyveg, if the garrison
did not surrender on receipt of a letter which the captive was com-
pelled to write.' Old Colkitto came out of Dunyveg to parley with
an officer and friend. Leslie surprised them, and ordered the officer
to hand over Colkitto, or his commission. Even Turner considered
this to be a stain on the General's honour. Leslie meanly conveyed
Colkitto to a spot in view of Finlaggan, an islet-hold in Kilmeny, and
informed his son in the castle that he would hang his father before
his eyes unless he capitulated. Young Macdonald scorned the threat.
Colkitto was sent to Edinburgh for trial, and after condemnation was
marched back to Dunstaffnage to be hanged, in all likelihood at the
suggestion of Argyll. Alasdair was driven back to Ireland, and
Huntly, betrayed by a ruffian called Donald Durk, suffered for his
loyalty.^ The country was now cleared of the belligerent opponents
of the Covenant*
Restraint mollified Charles, who began to see the wisdom of com- Charles favours
- . J J • ^ compromise.
promising with some section of the nonconformists, and to devise
a union of Royalists and Presbyterians against the Parliamentary
extremists. The Scots Estates sent Lauderdale and other three
representatives to reopen negotiations.^ When satisfied, the Scots
1 Cf. J. K. Hewison, 'Macdonald of Sanda,' Glasgow Herald, 9th March 1901.
2 Montereul, ii. 176. ^ Montereul, ii. 194, 255, 261, 280.
* For letters from Leslie and Argyll from Dunyveg, 5th July 1647, cf. Register House,
Hist. Dept., Q. 200, 201.
^ Act. Pari. Scot., VI. i. 73i-
444
THE COVENANTERS
Cromwell
attempts
conciliation,
20th October
1647-
The Engage-
ment, 26th
December
1647.
were to invade England. The news of this intrigue and treachery
exasperated the Model Army. As time wore on the far-seeing
Argyll realised the impossibility of accomplishing a retrieving scheme,
since English Presbyterianism was now imperilled, and he cooled
down. This was a political signal for the Hamiltons — Hamilton and
Lanark — with hot heads to take up the Royal cause.
Cromwell at the same time, October 1647, was pressing for an
accommodation, and expected to create a Royalist reaction and to
destroy the Scots' influence. He honestly attempted to conciliate the
King — for at first he was in favour of a monarchy — and then the
Presbyterians, but without avail. ^ He would have compromised with
the latter on a basis of toleration for all Christians, from which cate-
gory Catholics and Atheists were excluded. On the i6th December
Charles approved of a scheme of toleration for England, and ten days
afterwards secretly revoked it.
Charles having escaped to Carisbrook Castle, Isle of Wight, was
soon followed by friendly Scots Commissioners. There on the 26th
December he signed 'the Engagement' between himself, Loudoun,
Lauderdale, and Lanark, on the one hand binding him to obtain
Parliamentary authority for the Covenant, without enforcing it on the
unwilling, to establish Presbytery in Scotland for three years, to con-
tinue the Westminster Assembly augmented in membership, in order
to frame a settlement of religion, and in England to suppress Sectaries,
among whom Independents and 'Seekers' — the sect followed by
Cromwell — were classed ; and on the other hand binding the Hamilton
party to restore to the King all his prerogatives, even by the help of
the sword. 2 The shrewd Sovereign would not pledge himself to
establish Presbytery in England, nor yet to impose disabilities on
those who would not accept Presbyterianism. This secret treaty,
subscribed next day by the three Scots, was encased in lead and hid
in the castle garden, lest it should be seized. Before the Commis-
sioners left England they devised plans for an Anglo-Scottish revolu-
^ Gardiner, Hist. Great Civ. War, iii. 381 ; iv. 58.
- Airy, Lauderdale Papers, i. 2 ; Gardiner, Cons. Doc, 259, 264.
FALL OF CHARLES FIRST AND MONTROSE 445
tion. The English ParHament met the crisis firmly. No longer to
be fooled, Parliament on 17th January resolved that 'no addresses
be sent to or received from the King on pain of treason.' The
Solemn League was still their touchstone, which they ordered
members to accept again. ^
To Montereul, who was in the Capital at the time, we are indebted Scottish
for valuable information. The Estates met on 2nd March. The ^^^p^^^^e of the
members were carried away by the specious arguments of the Engagement.
Engagers, so that the Argyllian opposition was outvoted. Edinburgh
was in a ferment ; Glasgow was cowed by plundering military. The
preachers generally, and George Gillespie in particular, stormed in
every pulpit and hurled imprecations at the King and the Hamil-
tonians. In Glasgow, Major Turner silenced them with drums. In
Parliament, Lauderdale, the spokesman of the Engagers, banned the
Independents and the English at large for breaches of treaties and
the Covenant, hatred of everything Scottish, and violence to the
King. On loth June the Estates passed Acts approving of the
Engagement, and an Act for putting the country into a posture of
defence. The Committee of Estates further commanded all subjects
to subscribe a concurrence in the Engagement.^
Rumour ran that the Prince of Wales was coming personally to
lead the Royalist army, but that dishonour fell to Hamilton and the
Earl of Callendar, to Lieutenant-General William Baillie. and to the
rising Earl of Middleton.
Middleton and his cavalry had the honour of spilling the first skirmish at
- , J Mauchline.
blood at Mauchline, when dispersmg a force ot two thousand
enthusiasts from Clydesdale and Ayrshire, under John Nevay and
other clergy who had risen to protest against the Engagement, and
1 Gardiner, Hist. Great Civ. War, iv. 53, 56.
2 Montereul, ii. 393 et seg.; Act. Pari. Scot., vi. ii. 17, 30, 86, 106, 107, 108; Rec.
Com. Gen. Assent., i. 540 : ' ist June 1648. Major James Turner to be cited to appeare before
them the sixth day of Junii next, to answer for the tumultuous going out of the Kirk of
Glasgow upon the last Sabbath, being a day of humiliation ; and calling others out of the
Kirk whilst the minister was preaching,' for disturbing the worship, reviling the ministers, and
other 'scandalous miscarriages.' He did not compear, and was referred to the Assembly.
Cf. Baillie, Letters, iii. 48.
446
THE COVENANTERS
Assembly
condemn
Engagement.
to resist the levy for war, and to the horror of Turner held a
Communion — vinculum pads — with swords in their hands. They
expected to receive encouragement from Argyll and the Covenanters
of Fife, and being disappointed were about to disperse when attacked.
Middleton and Hurry were wounded in this action on 12th June.^
Argyll and the leaders of the General Assembly understood each
other. The Commission of the Assembly sat at the same time as the
Estates, and remonstrated with the Engagers on their folly. The
Commission issued ' A Short Information, etc.', to serve as a dissua-
sive, and till the Assembly met, took other steps to nullify the new
move.^
On 1 2th July, the Assembly met in Edinburgh, George Gillespie
being Moderator, approved of the Argyll policy, and condemned
the 'unlawful engagement' as sinful and censurable.^ The Church
opposed the Engagement because it violated the Solemn League
and Covenant, inasmuch as it proposed the reinstatement of an
Episcopal monarch, the formation of a party of Covenanters in
alliance with their opponents, and the delegation of power to a
government who ' mind not religion.' ^ The Assembly further
declared the Engagers to be malignants, non- Covenanters, sectaries,
and enemies to the one righteous cause. This was an emphatic
reinforcement of the principles of the old bonds. The Covenant was
to be the sole test of patriotism and of religion. Other bonds and
the toleration of sects were to be avoided like the pest. Favourers
of any other policy were to be excommunicated if unrepentant.
Ministers approving of the Engagement were to be deposed, a fate
which befell the veteran Andrew Ramsay, who figured in the Liturgy
riots in 1637.^
Lauderdale and Hamilton were reviled as treacherous Episco-
^ Turner, Memoirs^ 49; Peterkin, Records^ 571; Baillie, Letters^ iii. 49. Parliament
approved of the Engagers' feat, and Nevay and his associates were processed for a rising,
which a subsequent Parliament declared to be a ' Testimony for Truth and the Covenant ' :
Act. Pari. Scot.., vi. ii. 137a, 138.
- Rec. Com. Gen. Assem., i. 528, 547. ^ Peterkin, Records, 496-520.
* The original Protest of Argyll, etc, is preserved in the Laing Collection in Edinburgh
University. ^ Peterkin, Records, 509 ; Montereul, ii. 445.
FALL OF CHARLES FIRST AND MONTROSE 447
palians in disguise. Young communicants and students were ordered
to subscribe the test.^ This uncompromising Assembly, however,
distinguished itself on 20th and 28th July by authorising the Larger
and Shorter Catechisms sent down from Westminster.^ That very
week the English Commons had debated to the conclusion that the
Scots were their enemies. The latter, in turn, had reauthorised
the Committee on Uniformity to 'bring that Treaty to a happy
conclusion.' ^
On 8th July, Hamilton crossed the Borders into England with 10,500
foot and horse, verily a rabble of undrilled clod-hoppers, deficient in
artillery and commissariat. The addition of 3600 fitter Englishmen
under Langdale still made them no match for Cromwell, who marched
with 8000 of the Model to intercept them. They met on Preston Moor, Cromweii
17th August. With ill-considered strategy Hamilton permitted his j^^^^jj^^^^^ ^^
main body to be divided, Langdale on one side of the river Ribble Preston,
111 r I'lii 1 "7'^ August
and Baillie on the other, and both out of touch with the horse under 1648.
Middleton. Cromwell had an opportunity given to few generals.
He took the divisions in turn. First he overwhelmed Langdale's
force, then chased and captured Baillie and his men at Warrington,
and after three days' fighting found himself a victor with 10,000
prisoners. Soon Hamilton, Langdale, and Middleton fell into the
hands of the Parliamentarians. If the Covenanters were unmerciful
to the Engagers, the Parliamentarians showed them less pity. Of the
prisoners only pressed men were released, on condition of never
fighting in England without the sanction of the Government. The
volunteers were banished to the plantations as slaves, and to Venice
as soldiery.* Lauderdale's diplomacy was more successful than
Hamilton's arms. He induced the Prince of Wales to yield to the
Scottish demands, i6th August, but the Royalists had so few for-
tresses left to become bases of military operations that the Prince
had to flee to Holland. As soon as news reached Scotland that
* Peterkin, Records, 511. 2 /^/^_^ 4^5, 498. ^ /^/^^ ^j^,
* Carlyle, Letter Ixiv. ; Turner, 63; Gardiner, Hist. Great Civ. War, iv. 185, 193;
' Hamilton's Expedition,' Scot. Hist. Misc., ii. 290.
448 THE COVENANTERS
Hamilton's army was wiped out, Argyll and his supporters seized the
reins of power and constituted themselves a government, to which the
The whiga- Chancellor, Loudoun, adhered. Lord Eglinton raised a Covenanting
more's Raid, (q^^q [^ ^)^q western Lowlands and, in what was called ' The Whiga-
more's Raid,' marched to the Capital and seized the Castle. The
remnant of the Engagers found a temporary refuge in Stirling
Castle.^
Establishment The English Parliament-men were still striving to come to some
ofPresby- finality regarding the vexed religious question, and while they pro-
mulgated an Ordinance establishing the Presbyterian system, 29th
August, they had also appointed a strong Committee to interview the
King at Newport and endeavour to arrive at some final arrangement
whereby Presbytery, Directory, and Covenant should be substituted
for Episcopacy and the Prayer Book. Charles was unalterable.
Presbytery, with other forms of faith, he would tolerate for three
years ; the Covenant he would neither sign nor enjoin. He would
promise to establish only primitive Episcopacy — bishops advised by
presbyters — a proposal which the Presbyterian party in power, on
27th October, rejected.^
Cromwell Cromwcll too was on the march, and arrived in Edinburgh on 4th
wh October October. Argyll, Wariston, Leven, and other notables gave him a
1648. hearty welcome and banqueted him in the Old Parliament House.
Argyll and Cromwell arrived at a complete understanding, which
Cromwell declared to be * a more glorious work in our eyes than if we
1 This expedition was afterwards referred to as ' The Whigamore's Raid,' and the extreme
western Covenanters from this time bore the name 'Whigs.' Burnet supposed the term to
be derived from the vulgar word used by carters when urging their horses onwards, namely,
' whiggam,' to ' whig,' or get on. ' Whig,' however, is an Ayrshire term for the sour water formed
when milk is lappered. There are considerable families in south-west Scotland bearing
the name ' Whigham,' but as to any Whigham moi\ or great Whigham, being a conspicuous
leader in this enterprise, nothing is known. ' Whigs ' latterly was the nickname applied to
all opponents of the Crown : Burnet, Hist., i. 72.
2 The King's reason why he could not in conscience consent to abolish the Episcopal
Government, as given in writing to the Divines at Newport on 2nd October 1648, was, 'I
conceive that Episcopall Government is most consonant to the Word of God, and of an
Apostolical institution, . . .' and he would not consent to its abolition 'untill the same shall
be evidenced to me to be contrary to the Word of God' : His Majesties Reason, etc. (Lond.,
1648). To this the Divines replied next day.
FALL OF CHARLES FIRST AND MONTROSE 449
had gotten the sacking and plunder of Edinburgh . . . and made
conquest from the* Tweed to the Orcades.' ^ It now boded ill for the
Malignants. The grim Ironside, after a few days' stay, left Scotland
with a warm feeling for the Covenanters, and fondly expected the
approach of ' the day to see union and right understanding between
the godly people— Scots, English, Jews, Gentiles, Presbyterians,
Independents, Anabaptists, and all.' 'Our brothers of Scotland,'
however, did not prove so tractable and tolerant.
In October, in the name of the Estates, Loudoun wrote to Charles Loudoun joins
1 T- A Argyll's party.
explaining the reason of their protest against the Engagement, and
pleading with his Sovereign to accede to the desires of the party in
power. After this it was easier for Loudoun to join the party of
Argyll. The King was busy devising means of escape, and was
often foiled. For years it had been whispered with bated breath that
the only solution of the national turmoils lay in the dispatch of the
Kino; as a traitor to the constitution. Now the demand was publicly
voiced, when all attempts at compromise had failed. Cromwell had
till now been averse to that extreme measure. But the tortuous,
treacherous course of events forced him to conclude that Divine
Providence was caUing for justice to be meted out to the creators of
the national troubles, and to him there was no doubt as to the prime
mover and cause of them.
The year 1649 began ominously for the King. The House of J?^^JJ^J^
Commons, such as it was after Pride's Purge, resolved to set up a resolved on.
High Court of Justice to try the King, and on 4th January passed
three resolutions to this effect : the people are under God, the
original of all just power ; the Commons wield that supreme power ;
the laws enacted by the Commons in Parliament bind all citizens
alike. Here was the fruit of the teaching of the Scots jurisprudents,
Buchanan and Rutherford, growing on English soil. These resolu-
tions gave the new court a show of legality. It assembled with
Bradshaw in the President's chair. In Westminster Hall, on the
20th January, the King was summoned to answer to the impeachment
' 6th November, Letter Ixxxiii.
3
L
450
THE COVENANTERS
Trial and
execution of
Charles i.,
30th January
1649.
Character of
Charles I.
of being 'a tyrant, traitor, murderer, and a public and implacable
enemy of the Commonwealth of England.' ^ The terrible charge was
amplified with many illustrations and supported by evidence. At
several diets the King refused to plead before a tribunal which he
stated to be unconstitutional. The Scottish Parliament also dissented
from the action of the Commons. At length the court resolved that
Charles was guilty and should die. He was summoned to answer
why the capital sentence should not pass. He protested that he had
only striven for true liberty to his subjects, and desired to appeal to
the representatives of the people. His pleas were unavailing. He
was formally sentenced to be beheaded.^ Three days afterwards, 30th
January, Charles entered on the scaffold from one of the windows of
the Great Hall of Whitehall. He addressed his confessor and the
few auditors near him, asseverating that Parliament, not he, began
the Civil War, that he was anxious for a settlement of religion, ever
strove for the establishment of just government among his subjects,
and that he died 'a Christian according to the profession of the
Church of England.' A few moments afterwards the masked execu-
tioner was seen lifting up a bloody head, while he exclaimed, ' Behold
the head of a traitor ! '
Charles was put to death at the time when his influence, long on
the wane, was at its lowest point. He had outlived his usefulness,
alienated every party, political and religious, betrayed and deserted
his most intimate accomplices, and deceived his subjects generally.
Charles had talents above the average. With much of the culture
and refinement of his epoch, he lacked that breadth of view, con-
sistency of purpose, and firmness of will which distinguish a good
ruler and a powerful statesman. His manliness was not of the
highest order, and his courage was spasmodic, which is not to be
wondered at, since in courting success Charles acted on the vicious
principle that the end justifies the means. The oft-repeated assertion
that Charles died a martyr to religion and to Episcopacy cannot be
maintained by any one cognizant of the unscrupulous stratagems
^ State Trials^ iv. 1070. - Ibid.^ v. i2ro-i3.
FALL OF CHARLES FIRST AND MONTROSE 451
which he used in order to restore himself to absolute power, such as
the temporary countenancing of Presbyterianism in Scotland in 1641,
and his offer to re-establish popery in Ireland in 1645.
No time was lost in brinofinor the schemer Hamilton to his doom. Doom of
*?> "t>
Hamilton and
He had long been suspect, especially in Scotland.^ He was arraigned Huntiy.
before the High Court of Justice as an English subject — having been
created Earl of Cambridge in 1643 — for traitorously and hostilely
invading England. The indictment ran that he ' levied war to assist
the King against the Kingdom and people of England, and had
committed murders, outrages, rapines, wastes, and spoils upon the
said people.' He pleaded in defence that he was a Scot and an
alien, an officer acting under Royal instructions, and a prisoner of war
entitled to quarter. But his pleas fell on deaf ears. He was sent
to the block on 9th March. Cromwell, it was said, 'watched with
perspective glasses ' his head falling.^ To the last true to himself, the
insincere and irresolute Hamilton left behind him the extraordinary
testimony : ' I am of the true Reformed Protestant religion as it is
professed in the Church of Scotland.' Holland and other Royalists
in England met a similar fate. The Earl of Huntiy was executed in
Edinburgh as a traitor on the 22nd March. All that was needed
now to satisfy the vengeful Covenanters was the head of Montrose,
and soon it also formed a gory finial upon the dread Tolbooth.
The Scots Parliament assembled in January 1649. The Govern- Scots Pariia-
1 , -I r 1 T" t. merit, January
ment made haste to pass statutes condemnatory ot the Lngagement, j^-,^^
to repeal Acts approving of it, to dismiss from the public service all
who had concurred in it, and to publish a testimony against the
toleration favoured in England and against all the proceedings of the
Sectaries in reference to the King's person.^ On the 5th January,
according to Sir James Balfour, Argyll 'had a verey long speiche,
consisting of five heads, wich he called the brecking of the malig-
nants' teeth, and that he quho was to speak after him [Wariston]
1 T/ie Manifold Practises and Attempts of the Hamiltons atid participating of the present
Duke of Hamilton . . . to get the Crown of Scotlatid {'Lond., 1648, pp. 24).
2 Digitus Dei^ 28 ; Lament, Chron., 3.
3 Act. Pari. Scot., vi. ii. 133 et seq.
452 THE COVENANTERS
wold brecke their jawes.'^ Such brutal language was not calculated
to increase concord and amity among 'our brothers of Scotland,'
nor among the would-be brothers of Sectarian principles in England.
More than teeth and jaws were broken by ' The Act of Classes
(1649, c. 30) for purgeing the judicatories and other places of public
trust.'" That evilly conceived statute did more than anything else to
embitter Scottish life and to engender hatreds and revenges which the
Engagers or their children indulged in after the Restoration. Many
of those who sat on the stool of repentance lived to harass and
destroy the Covenanters. The anti-Covenanters declared the enact-
ment to be directed against those who ' loved the King and Peace.'
Act of Classes, By the * Act of Classes,' passed on the 23rd January (Act 30), all
1649. public officials were ordered to compear before the Estates and
answer for their loyalty. Offenders were grouped into four classes
and found liable to a graduated scheme of punishment. The first
class consisted of officers and persons in public offices and places of
trust, who had been Malignants of the worst type — plotters against the
Covenant or actively engaged in promoting the Engagement either
before or after its inception, and in assisting Montrose. Such were
to be debarred from public offices and functions during their lifetime.
The second class consisted of Malignants who had been censured as
such and who had interfered with the opponents of the Engagement
and the means taken to nullify it. Their punishment was depriva-
tion of office for ten years, and the giving of satisfaction to both State
and Church.
The third class were lukewarm neutrals who had not supported
by protest and help the anti- Engagers. Five years' deprivation and
production of proof of non-malignancy was their penalty.
The last class were frail brethren, members of judicatories and
holders of places of trust, fallen in uncleanness, bribery, swearing,
drunkenness, profanity, and neglect of worship. They were super-
seded for one year and had to show proofs of their change to the
Christian life.
' Balfour, Anfials, iii. 377. ^ AcL Pari. ScoL, VI. ii. 143.
FALL OF CHARLES FIRST AND MONTROSE 453
In consequence of the Act of Classes the Treasurer, Crawfurd,
was superseded by four Commissioners, Argyll, Eglinton, Cassillis,
and Burleigh ; Lord Privy Seal Roxburgh, by Sutherland ; Secretary
Lanark, by Cassillis and Lothian ; Clerk-Register Gibson of Durie, by
Lord Advocate Johnston ; and eight Lords of Session made room for
others of the ruling party.^
Throughout the kingdom persons of all ranks, from the Lord
Chancellor down to the peasant, were compelled to compear in church
and publicly confess the sin of joining the Engagers, and these were
not permitted to give or receive Church privileges until their repent-
ance was proved.^ Such bitter humiliation had hitherto been
reserved for the basest offenders. No wonder the old pikeman,
Middleton, never forgot his humiliation in the church of Dundee, and
paid off old scores in his ' Drunken Parliament.' The ill-advised Abolition of
_ , 1 Church
policy embodied in the Act of Classes was compensated for by the patronage.
passing, on 9th March, of a statute abolishing 'all patronages and
presentations of Kirks ' as being unlawful, unscriptural, and sub-
versive of the freedom of the Church.^ In consequence of this new
patronage Act the Assembly, on 4th August 1649, drew up a Directory
of Election, which confirmed the selection of preachers by Presby-
teries and Kirk-sessions and the right of the choice of a pastor by
each covenanted congregation." This Directory gave power to the
Presbytery to settle the pastorship of a disaffected or malignant
congregation. Had this sane and beneficent Act remained on the
Statute Book, Scotland would have been saved money, tears, and
blood. The melancholy divisions in, and increasing impotence of,
the Presbyterian Church can be traced to the abolition of this
* Balfour, Annals, iii. 390.
2 Rec. Com. Gen. Assein., ii. 125. If Burnet is to be credited (//zV/., i. 74), it was Margaret
Gordon of Lochinvar, a chaste wife and ' fierce Covenanter,' who brought her unfaithful
husband to his knees in the Kirk of Edinburgh (5th December 1648), rather than fear of
the Assembly's Commission— Dickson, Blair, Rutherford, Guthrie, and others who were busy
hunting the Engagers into submission.
3 Samuel Rutherford and James Wood drew up the reasons for this abolition : Rec.
Com. Gen. Assem., ii. 206 ; Act. Pari. Scot., 1649, c. 206, vi. ii. 261.
' Peterkin, Records, 550.
454
THE COVENANTERS
redemptive statute. A remarkable debate took place in the
Assembly on 29th July 1649, on the motion of Naysmithe, a minister
who declared that all the teinds should be given up to the Church.
Argyll, Cassillis, and the other laymen interested, repudiated this
'shamefast Caroll,' and declared that teinds were only jure htunano.
The clergy, Argyll asserted, numbered less than one-hundredth part
of the population and yet got one-tenth of the rents. ' It is not
good to awalkin sleeping dogs,' said that astute law-giver.^ During
the quiet summer of 1649, the pious activities of divines and elders
were exercised in hunting down, worrying, and burning of witches.
The clergy were not the only professional class, however, who
devoted its leisure hours to this diversion, which King James vi.
patronised and deemed imperative, so that Satan might be kept
under.
While Parliament was still in session news of the execution of
King Charles arrived. On Monday, the 5th February, Chancellor
5th February Loudoun, surrounded by the members of Parliament, proceeded to
the Cross of Edinburgh and proclaimed Charles 11., King of Great
Britain, France, and Ireland." This proclamation expressed the
almost universal protest of the Scots against what they styled the
' murder of the King.'
The Courts of Europe were struck with horror on hearing of
the fate of King Charles. More than sympathise they did nothing.
The heir to the crown, Charles 11., a pleasure-loving youth not
yet arrived at his majority, had with many Royalists found an
asylum at the Hague, where the States-General immediately waited
upon him and treated him with the deference due to a crowned
monarch. Among those who soon sought an audience was Montrose.
When Montrose, who left Scotland in 1646, and had been elevated
to the rank of Field-Marshal by the Emperor Ferdinand in., was
informed of the death of his master, he fell into a swoon. On his
recovery he shut himself up alone, and produced a memorial rhapsody
Proclamation
of King
Charles ii.,
' Balfour, Annals^ iii. 418.
2 Ibid.^ iii. 387.
venceance.
FALL OF CHARLES FIRST AND MONTROSE 455
which, it was said, he wrote with the point of his sword, thus
expressing his determination : —
' I '11 sing thy obsequies with trumpet sounds,
And '.vrite thine epitaph with bloody wounds.'
He also vowed ' before God, angels, and men,' to avenge 'the martyred Montrose vows
sire,' and to place his son upon the throne. His enemy, Argyll,
had virtually forestalled him, and expressed the general opinion,
which Parliament formulated in a statute,^ that the Scots were ready
to allow Charles to sit in peace on the throne of his fathers, provided
he accepted the two Covenants, all the Westminster Standards,
Presbyterial government, and removed from his presence * the most
bloody murderer in our nation ' — Montrose, already * cast out of the
Church of God.' The proclamation of his accession bore 'That
before he be admitted to the Exercise of his Royal Power, he shall
ofive satisfaction to the Kinofdom in those thino^s that concern the
Security of Religion, the Uniformity betwixt the Kingdoms, and the
Good and Peace of this Kingdom, according to the National
Covenant and the Solemn League and Covenant.' ^ The statute
(c. 58) made it imperative that the Sovereign should be both a
Presbyterian and a Covenanter. The Commission of the General
Assembly, on 7th February 1649, sent a letter with Sir Joseph
Douglas, craving him to avoid both Malignants and Sectaries, to
establish Presbyterianism, to enjoin the Covenants, and to promote
uniformity in all his dominions.^ An embassy was crossing the sea
to convey this resolution. The Commissioners sent were the Earl of
Cassillis, George Wynram, afterwards Lord Libbertoun, Brodie, laird
of Brodie, and two ministers, Robert Baillie of Kilwinning, and James
Wood of St. Andrews.^ These ambassadors arrived too late to shape
the policy of the young and inexperienced King, then angrily bent on
avenging his father's death and seizing the throne by force.^ He
had already, 22nd February, commissioned his father's indomitable
' Act. Pari. Scot., 1649, c. 58, vi. ii. 161, 7th September.
2 Ibid.., 1649, c. 52, VI. ii. 157 ; c. 53, 158. ^ Peterkin, Records, 563.
^ Act. Pari. Scot., vi. ii. 232. '" Wodrow, Select Biog., i. 185.
456
THE COVENANTERS
The aim of
Charles ii.
Character of
Charles.
lieutenant, Montrose, to be the Governor of Scotland and his general-
issimo there. This precipitation proves that Charles inherited the
fixed idea of the Stuart kings regarding their divinely appointed
dynastic superiority. Thus, possessed of a definite aim, boyishly
enthusiastic over the herculean capabilities of Montrose, and
encouraged in his resentment against the stiff-necked, rebellious
Covenanters, by exiled English Royalists and Scottish Engagers —
refugees from Parliamentary vengeance and the Draconian discipline
of the Church — Charles was not a youth likely to be biased by the
arguments of the deputies from the Argyll Government. Besides,
they had most unpalatable counsels to offer, being authorised to ban
Popery, Prelacy, and Malignancy, to inform Charles that his Popish
mother's idolatry was * a maine cause of the evills ' in Britain, to
advise him to avoid a Popish sweetheart, and to order him to dismiss
that 'unhappy and cursed man, James Graham.'^ In Scotland this
was the traditional method of dealing with kings by aggressive
agitators, who usually had some inkling of latent intrigues which
long afterwards were exposed. They began by cursing, and ended
with a petition for a blessing. The staunchest Covenanters displayed
discrimination in distrusting Charles from the beginning. Time
developed him in his true colours as a man who concealed his lack
of virtue, principle, and grace by plausible manners, courteous acts
done for expediency, and pleasant promises made to be broken if
convenient. He inherited his father's genius for dissimulation, and
his grandfather's inability to understand that subjects had rights as
well as rulers.
If the account of James Stuart (De la Cloche) is true, the Prince
had already lost his virginal virtue, and begun his carnal and salacious
career in Jersey during his boyhood." In fact, on 9th April 1649,
Lucy Walters, or Barlow, had given birth at Rotterdam to a child,
afterwards Duke of Monmouth, whom Charles acknowledged to be
' Baillie, Letters, iii. 84, 458-521.
- Scot. Rev., 1885, p. 314 ; Airy, Charles II.' ^l- Mr. Osmund Airy's Life of Charles II.
(Lond., 1904) presents the portrait of a second Tiberius Cc-esar.
FALL OF CHARLES FIRST AND MONTROSE 457
his son.^ It is asserted that Buckingham set himself to corrupt the
callow youth. To the credit of the Covenanters, they practised the
charity which ' thinketh no evil,' when they began negotiations with
him at the Hague ; yet all the while he was over head and ears in
the subtlest intrigues, and was only fooling the delegates, as Hyde led
the King of Spain to understand ; and even deferring his visit to
Scotland ' till the affections of that people be reformed or reduced,
which he doubts not will shortly be done by the Marquis of Montrose.'^
So much deceived were the Scots Commissioners by the courteous The Scots
and artless demeanour of Charles, that Baillie wrote to Robert Douglas ^nd Charles.
regarding him : ' He is one of the most gentle, innocent, well inclyned
Princes, so far as yet appears, that lives in the world ; a trimme person,
and of a manlie carriage ; understands prettie well ; speaks not much :
would God he were amongst us.'" Removed from his evil counsellors,
thought Baillie, ' he would make, by God's blessing, as good a King
as Brittaine saw these hundred years.' Simple Baillie !
Nor is it improbable that at this epoch he was a Papist. Burnet
declared that he was confirmed in the Romish faith before he left
Paris to assume the English crown,* To a prince having autocratic
notions, a natural distaste for restrictive Puritanism, and predilections
for indulgent, sensuous Romanism, which his mother would not
neglect to foster, the counsels of the Scottish purists would come as
insufferable insults. Further, their demand was unheard of for
audacity — that the King before he was allowed to mount his own
paternal throne must promise to establish Presbytery in his empire,
and enforce the penal statutes against the Papists ! The Commissioners
' Airy, Charles 11.^ 51. 'Of the children whom Charles ll. owned, the following grew
up: James, Duke of Monmouth and Buccleuch, son of Lucy Walters ; Mary, daughter of
Lucy Walters ; Charlotte Boyle Fitzroy, daughter of Viscountess Shannon ; Charles Fitz-
Charles and a girl, children of Catherine Peg ; Henry Fitzroy, Duke of Grafton, George,
Earl of Northumberland, and Charlotte Fitzroy, Countess of Sussex, the children of the
Duchess of Cleveland ; the two Beauclercs, sons of Nell Gwynn ; the Duke of Richmond,
son of Louise de Keroualle ; Mary Tudor, daughter of Moll Davis, and married to the Earl
of Derwentwater ; and Benedicte Fitzroy, Prioress of the Hotel Dieu de St. Nicolas at
Pontoise' : H. Forneron, The Court of Charles II., 1649-1734, p. 293 (Lond., 1897).
2 Airy, Charles II., 64. •' Letters, iii. 88, April 3, 1649 ; 89, April 17.
■* Hist., i. 133 ; Foxcroft, SuppL, 139.
3M
458
THE COVENANTERS
Charles pre-
sented with
the Covenant.
Concessions
by Charles.
politely introduced their ultimatum by presenting to the King a
beautifully bound volume containing the Covenants, the Westminster
Standards, and other constitutional documents of the Church. A
sporran filled with gold would have appealed more readily to their
penniless Prince. There is good ground for inferring that Argyll,
quick to feel the pulse of those in high places, which was not always
the pulse of the people, was doubtful of the possibility of securing
universal Presbytery, and would have been content with the Royal
acknowledgment of the restricted aims of the National Covenant,
which had been framed to apply only to the northern part of the
United Kingdom — and this much the Prince of Orange pressed
Charles to accede to ; but the cunning diplomatist did not express in
writing the minimum of his expectations. The capable Hyde had
the ear of Charles. Lauderdale, too, had many opportunities of
knowing the limits of Argyll's concessions, and could assure the King
how pliable Argyll was. The embassy, therefore, received a sensible
reply, worthy of a king who understood his constitutional position.
Of course, he concealed the arrangements completed with Montrose
and Ormond.
Charles declared his willingness to accept the Covenant and
Presbytery for Scotland ; for the other portions of his realm he would
refer these disputable affairs to a free Parliament which he would
indict ; he would also sanction an Act of Oblivion for all insurgents
save those who could be judicially proved to have had a share in the
murder of his father. But he would not interfere with the Irish
Treaty of 17th January, guaranteeing religious and political freedom
to the Irish. So far this was a reasonable and fair offer, but the Com-
missioners, having no authority to compromise, set sail for Scotland
to report their failure.^ They arrived at Leith on 27th May. The
compliance and moderation of Charles were a cloak for his real
designs. This was the first example of his exercise of a corrupt
and deceitful nature, which brought forth such bitter fruits in the
^ The Proceedins;s of the Co7)wnsswners, etc., at the Haj^ie (Edin., 1649) ; Baillie, Letters,
iii. 84-90, 510, App. ; Act. Pari. Scot., vi. ii. 411, 727-32.
FALL OF CHARLES FIRST AND MONTROSE 459
sordid and adulterous career of this would-be Covenanter. Indeed,
before the Commissioners departed, the impatient deceiver had begun
to importune the Pope and other foreign sovereigns for subsidies
for his military enterprises/ That very day, 29th May, on which Montrose
Charles notified his pious intentions, he appointed Montrose Admiral ^gg"Q^°^\Q
of Scotland, and shortly afterwards confirmed the Grand Vizier in his ^2^'-
naval and military appointments. The new Pope of Scotland blessed
where the old Church cursed. The latter seemed more potent.
Montrose could raise few dollars and in consequence few mercenaries.
Only a handful of Danes and Swedes joined the filibuster's flag.
Even the sea was unpropitious to the Admiral. In August, he was
able to embark and throw Into Orkney a pioneer force, with recruit-
ing-officers attached, under the command of the Earl of Kinnoull, but
he himself was not able to join them for seven months afterwards.
His irritating and vituperative declarations preceded him, and these
formed a terrible indictment of the Covenanters, whom he accused
of unsettling religion, gendering errors, subverting law, selling and
murdering the King, ' as if they had made a covenant with hell to
banish modesty.'" Such lurid language did not bespeak a loving
welcome for the Royalist Governor. The Committee of Estates and
the Commission of the General Assembly issued as forcible answers
to these libels.^ A declaration issued by Montrose in November
1649 called on all who maintained the justice of the King's cause to
join him in ' opposing a horrid faction of rebels,' who after the late
King had granted them all their desires, allied themselves to English
rebels, so that ' they thrust in oil to the fire and ginger to the wound
until they rendered all irrevocable.' He further accused his country-
men of plotting with other traitors to destroy the late King. The
party of Argyll, he declared, * sold their sovereign unto death, and
yet dig in his grave.' To all but such regicides he offered an amnesty."
1 Gardiner, Letters and Papers, etc. ; Charles II. and Scotland in 1650 (Scot. Hist. Soc),
3^, 39-
2 A Declaration, etc., July 1649 (Lond., 1649) ; Rec. Com. Gen. Assem., ii. 441, 446, 447.
^ Rec. Com., ii. 341, 447 ; A Declaration of the Committee of Estates, etc. (Edin., 1650J ;
A Declaration and Warning, etc., by Com. of Gen. Assem., etc. (Edin., 1650).
* Cal. State Pap., \. 416.
46o THE COVENANTERS
Meantime, in England, monarchy had been abolished and the
memorable Act passed on 19th May declaring the People of England
and all its dominions to be a Commonwealth and Free State to be
henceforth governed by the representatives of the People in Parlia-
ment, Charles at first thought of utilising Ormond and the loyal
Irish, to whose aid Montrose was also to be sent, for the recovery
of the crown, but the victories of pitiless Cromwell in Ireland for
ever shut that gate of hope. The Sovereign was thrown back on his
Proposed Original design of trusting to the arms of Montrose. Early in July,
Cove"nrn°ers ^ juuto of lay and clerical Covenanters, including Argyll, Wariston,
and Sectaries. Loudoun, LesHc, Sir John Chiesley, and Baillie, Wood, Douglas,
Dickson, and James Guthrie, ministers, discussed the question of an
alliance with the new Commonwealth or a submission to their
Monarch, provided he gave satisfactory pledges of his adherence
to the Covenants and the national Faith. The majority, led by
Argyll, declared themselves more afraid of the English Sectaries with
their loose views of toleration than of the Malignants at home under
a weak-kneed sovereign. They preferred to treat with Charles.
The minority, consisting of Wariston, Chiesley, and Guthrie, favoured
the alliance. The Assembly convened to pass laudable measures
confirming the Covenanting policy, and to prepare an address to the
King. In it they trounced him well, said the curse of heaven was
on his idolatrous house, and adjured him to make his peace with God
and to walk no longer ' in the counsel of the ungodly.'^ In September
Argyll wrote to the Prince of Orange requesting him to persuade
Charles to accept the Covenant and the terms of the regnant
party in Scotland, and thus disappoint his enemies.^ That Prince
and the Queen-Mother had advised Charles to accept the Covenant
conditionally. The impecuniosity of Charles rendered some settle-
ment necessary, but the enthusiast for autocracy was not prepared
to buy his regal seat at such a price. Even his vexed soul
demurred at first to soil itself further. Some said the Covenant
1 Peterkin, Records^ 553 (Edin., 6th August).
'-^ Gardiner, Letters and Papers^ etc. j Charles II and Scotland {i^coi. Hist. Soc), i.
FALL OF CHARLES FIRST AND MONTROSE 461
would involve him in the murder of his father, others that it would be
a stepping-stone to higher things, namely, power to gratify his own
pleasure. The sin of acceptance appeared less enormous when other
possibilities were reckoned up. In October, the Estates again sent Mission of
Wynram, now Lord Libbertoun, to press their requests upon the ^^^^
exile ; but Charles, cynically believing that fear of Montrose rather
than principle incited the Whigs, and expecting military developments,
remained obdurate. He had in September entreated Montrose 'to
go on vigorously,' as he had not changed in his antagonism to the
Presbyterians; and even in the middle of January 1650 he also
informed his Grand Vizier that any proposed treaty was not to
'give the least impediment ' to his movements, nor diminish the power
in his commission.^ The King might parley, his viceroy was to use
force. Charles evidently had dreams of Inverlochy, Alford, and
Kilsyth, of Argyll fleeing in his black galley, of a Carolan apotheosis
in ancient Holyrood. Montrose was warned to accept unconcernedly instructions
all other reports regarding treaty-making as details of diplomacy.
In January, Charles himself invited the Scots Estates to renew
negotiations at Breda ; before the ink was dry he instructed Montrose
to 'proceed on your business with your usual courage and alacrity,'
and sent him the Order of the Garter as a token of implicit trust
(22nd January 1650). This bauble Montrose had to throw away in
the wilds of Carbisdale. Charles, in an impolitic instruction, gave
Montrose liberty to inform the loyal that he was conserving their
interests. Wood, the agent of Montrose in Paris, published the
letter of Charles to the Estates and that to Montrose together, and
soon the Covenanters realised their irreconcilableness and the King's
duplicity. As was to be expected, a fiery debate arose out of this
revelation when the Committee of Estates met to choose and instruct
Commissioners to wait on their perfidious Sovereign once more. The
Argyll policy of moderation was again accepted.
Before the Scottish Commissioners and the King had arrived in
Breda, 27th March, to discuss the treaty, Montrose, obedient to his
1 Napier, Memoirs, ii. 750, 752.
462
THE COVENANTERS
Negotiations
at Breda,
27th March
1649.
Sovereign, had sailed to draw the sword in Scotland. The Com-
missioners were Cassillis, Brodie, and three ministers, John Living-
stone, James Wood, and George Hutchinson, to represent the Church,
and Lothian, Cassillis, Brodie, Sir John Smith, and Alexander Jaffray
to represent the Estates/
Honest John Livingstone, minister of Ancrum, foreboded evil from
their negotiations, and said before setting out, he would rather ' be
drouned in the waters by the way' than enter on the business. He
had afterwards seven reasons to give for thinking that the proceed-
ings were not honourable and that the result would not please ' the
honest partie.'- His wife at home fell into the mill-race, and was
borne to the wheel, which her bruised body stopped. She, a true
Pythoness, wrote to her husband that the incident was an emblem of
what the treaty would bring on the land. That was exactly what
the Rump Parliament in England was thinking.
When, at length, Sovereign and subjects met, Cassillis began
with excessive courtesy to offer a humble submission to * the Great
Lyon of our Tribe' in return for an admission of their 'just desires.'
If Charles would accept the Covenant, the Scots would invade
England with an army blessed by the Church, as Hamilton's accursed
force had not been.^ At their second interview they sought the
dismissal of Montrose. Charles haggled and was in no hurry. He
set others — Lauderdale, Lanark — to haggle too. He was longing to
hear from Montrose, and to be sheltered under his wing. To gain
that, he was willing even to use Argyll, on the principle, ' It 's needful
sometimes to hold a candle to the devil.'* But the devil himself held
a candle to the King. Among the many schemes, plots, and proposals,
abandoned and in vogue, not the least interesting was the overture
of Argyll that his daughter Ann, a sprig of red heather, was suitable
* Jaffray, Diary, 54, 55; Brodie, Diary, 15, 140; Rec. Com. Gen. Assent., ii. 212; Act.
Pari. Scot., VI. ii. 557 ; Register House, Papers on Breda, Q. 224.
2 'Account of the Treaty.' etc.. Select Biog., i. 170, Wodrow Soc.
^ Gardiner, Letters and Papers, etc. ; Charles II. and Scotland, 40 ; The Proceedings,
etc., 15.
^ Gardiner, Letters and Papers, etc. ; Charles //. and Scotland, Ti.
FALL OF CHARLES FIRST AND MONTROSE 463
for a queen. War, however, not love, was In the other suitor's heart,
although he had not the manly will to wage it. He had received
the plaintive letter of Montrose, written in Kirkwall, 26th March
1650, in which he regretted the King's complacency to his foes, and
offered nobly to ' abandon still my lyfe to search my death for the
interests of your Majesty's honour and service, with that integrity and
dearness as your Majesty and all the world shall see that it is not
your fortunes in you, bot your Majesty in whatsomever fortune, that
I make sacred to serve.' The nobility of Montrose always stands in
contrast with the pitiable pusillanimity of his treacherous Sovereio-n.
While the banner of Montrose, bearing the bleeding head of Charles i., Montrose
with its bold motto, 'nil medium,' beneath the figure of a Jion ''^''"'^""^'^•
springing over an abyss, fluttered in the Pentland breezes, Charles in
Breda was trying to steer a middle course in a troubled sea full of
shoals. Not a skilled procrastinator, as his father was, Charles
succumbed to the negotiators. On loth April, Sir John Hurry, now
a Royalist, and his force of Danes, Germans, and Orcadians, by
command of Montrose, landed in Caithness to fight for the Crown.
In May, the King signed the Referendum, which on nth June
became the so-called Treaty of Breda — signed at sea near Heligo-
land.
General David Leslie mustered at Brechin to march against the The defeat at
descending army of the enemy. He dispatched Lieutenant-Colonel ^''^',^^s^^'^'
Strachan, Colonel Ker, and Colonel Halkett with cavalry to meet 1650.
Montrose. The latter had advanced through the Kyle of Sutherland
as far as Carbisdale on its west side, and encamped there
with 1200 infantry, of whom 450 were foreigners, and 40 horse.
Strachan, Ker, and Halkett, in command of 230 troopers, 36
musketeers, and 400 foot-soldiers — Munroes and Rosses — left Tain
to give battle to Montrose. They met on the 27th April. By
a stratagem Strachan deceived his opponent into the belief
that the Covenanting force was as weak in cavalry as he was.
Montrose drew up his men to meet infantry supported by a small
mounted force, and was busy with his movements when Strachan
464
THE COVENANTERS
Flight of
Montrose.
Capture of
Montrose.
hurled his hitherto concealed horsemen upon the unprepared
Royalists. In vain the mercenaries made a bold stand, but the
undisciplined Orcadians and clansmen fled helter-skelter from the
avenging sabres. The foot and musketeers ran in to have their fill
of blood and booty. Montrose fought hardily and was sorely
wounded, but ingloriously fled from the stricken field on a steed as
nobly proff'ered to him by the wounded Frendraught. The young
Earl of Kinnoull fled with him into the wilds. Hurry and hundreds
of prisoners were captured. Strachan's losses were inconsiderable.^
When the news of the victory reached Edinburgh the fortunate
colonels were acclaimed as heroes, and a day of Thanksgiving was
ordered by the General Assembly. Universally and heartily the day
was observed, and the paeans of joy were sung with no little incon-
sistency from the newly edited metrical Psalter of the English
Sectary, Rouse.^ Strachan, an old trooper of the Model Army who
had foucrht with Cromwell against Hamilton, was a lewd and
scandalous fellow, whose half-conversion by Blair and James Guthrie
gave him entrance from Sectarian into Covenanting Councils, which
Baillie thought he did not improve.
Having changed his accoutrements to don less conspicuous cloth-
ing, Montrose, starved and eating his gloves, leaving behind the
famished Kinnoull to 'find an unknown grave, continued his pathless
wanderings until he was forced to surrender to a party who brought
him to Neil Macleod of Assynt, a Sheriff- Depute of Sutherland, who
at the time was loyal to the Government. Macleod had no alternative
but to hand him over to Leslie's military. For this conduct, long
blamed, Macleod was, in 1674, 'found clean by ane assyse.'^
Fevered by his wounds, clad in a beggar's duds, tied hands and
feet on a shaggy Highland shelty, the fallen hero and a band of
other miserables were conducted to the Capital. As the sorry convoy
wended along, women here and there came out to curse Montrose,
1 Lament, Chron., 19. ^ Rec. Co?n. Gen. Asse?n., ii. 263.
■' Scot. Hist. Misc., i. 221 ; Gardiner, Letters and Papers, etc. ; Charles II. and Scot-
land, 159.
FALL OF CHARLES FIRST AND MONTROSE 465
one minister in a vindictive sermon on Agag abused him to his face,
and the populace greeted him with expressions of execration or of
pity. In his case a criminal trial was not necessary, since the doom
of treason with all its savagery, passed in f644, still held good.^ The
Government arranged every detail of his entry into Edinburgh, so Entry of
that it would be for ever memorable. There was to be a mock Edinburgh.
triumph, the traitor its central figure. He arrived on the i8th May.
At the Watergate, the city magistrates, in their robes and with
insignia of office, met the ' Governor of Scotland ' and took him into
custody. A common cart was his chariot, a lofty chair within it his
throne, on which bare-headed he sat tied with ropes. The hangman,
hideous in his bloodstained livery and mask, was Master of his
Horse ; Hurry and other prisoners, walking chained in pairs, were
his retinue. Yet, contrary to expectation, his dejected appearance
provoked no howling or hissing from the multitude of Covenanters,
who, massed on the streets and filling every window from the city
wall to the common prison in High Street, were his bodyguard on
this humiliating progress. It is to be hoped that it is mere fiction
that Jean, Countess of Haddington, spat upon the passing victim,
and that the gaieties at the marriage of Lord Lome to Moray's
daughter were stopped to permit Argyll and other wedding guests
to look exultingly over the balcony or through the half-closed lattices
of Moray House at their fallen foe. As Montrose approached Moray
House a less observant eye than his might have found comfort in the
suggestive mottoes on the fronts of the houses between the Bake-
house Close and the Tolbooth in Canongate, which still remain :
' Hodie mihi: eras tibi: 1570'; ' Constanti pectori res mortalium
umbra ' ; ' Spes alterae vitae ' ; and the advice on the Tolbooth, ' Bs^o
Fidus.' Yet everything else was prepared to make Montrose rue his
career and shudder at his horrible end. Passing under the Nether-
bow Port, a long way off he could discern the grim gibbet, thirty
feet high, specially erected on a huge black platform, sarcastically
designated 'The Ministers' Altar.' A bowshot beyond that the
' Register House, Hist. Dept., Q. 223, Papers relating to the Trial.
3N
of Montrose.
466 ' THE COVENANTERS
Tolbooth stood, and soon, behind the door of the Iron House, the
* Eagle of the North ' lay caged.
He had next to endure the insults of his masters. The jailer,
Major Weir, the wizard afterwards burnt, smoked him with his vile
tobacco. Commissioners from the Estates were sent to question him
so as to incriminate Hamilton and other Incendiaries. The Church
also sent deputies — Professor David Dickson, James Durham, James
Guthrie, Robert Traill, and Hugh Mackail — to pry into the state of
his mind regarding the Covenant, and of his soul regarding salvation,
as well as to relax him from the pain of the greater excommunication
(from which he desired release), should his show of repentance be
deemed to be genuine. Sir James Stewart also accompanied the
Examination deputies.^ When the ministers charged him with breach of the
Covenant, he answered, ' The Covenant which I took I own it and
adhere to it. Bishops, I care not for them. I never intended to
advance their interest. But when the King had granted you all your
desires, and you were every one sitting under his vine and under his
fig-tree, — that then you should have taken a party in England by the
hand, and entered into a League and Covenant with them against
the King, was the thing I judged my duty to oppose to the yondmost.' ^'
According to Traill, he exclaimed, ' I pray you, gentlemen, let
me die in peace.'
These interrogators returned very little wiser. ' With sad hearts,'
said Patrick Simson, who was permitted to accompany the clergy,
they left the wretch, bound with his excommunication, to God.^ The
clergy considered him for ever lost. His guardians would not permit
a barber to shave him, lest Montrose would cut his own throat and
balk the legal sacrificers of their own privilege of ordering him to a
traitor's doom with its spectacular mangling, which, it is said, formed
a pleasing interlude in Lord Lome's honeymoon.
On the 20th May he made a spirited defence at the bar of Parlia-
ment, and pleaded that he was merely an officer acting for his
' Coltness Papers, 30. - Patrick Simson's Testimony, Napier, Metnoirs, ii. 787.
■■'■ llmt, 788.
FALL OF CHARLES FIRST AND MONTROSE 467
Sovereign. The Lord Chancellor, Loudoun, rudely harangued the
prisoner. He was commanded to kneel while Wariston read in
barbarous terms his prearranged sentence, which he heard with the
dignified bravery of a martyr. ' I could heartily wish,' said the
fearless cavalier, ' that I had flesh and limbs enough to have a piece
sent to every city in Christendom, as proofs and tokens of my
unshaken love and loyalty to King and country.'
On the 2ist May he walked down the High Street, a few yards Execution of
past the church of St. Giles, to the gallows. Now he was fault- 21st May'
lessly, even gaudily, attired in a black suit trimmed with silver, over '^so.
which was thrown a scarlet cloak embroidered with silver and lined
with crimson. He wore carnation-coloured silk stockings and garters,
with shoes having rosettes of the same hue. A fashionable beaver
hat with a band of silver lace shaded a fine face and partially covered
his locks of beautiful auburn hair. Seldom had so handsome a
galliard adorned a gallows. He was but thirty-eight years of age.
To the people he spoke in exoneration of himself, in praise of his
late Sovereign, and in kindly terms of his enemies, then prayed for
mercy on Scotland and on himself. The executioner tied Montrose's
Declarations and Wishart's account of his campaigns around his neck.^
He boldly ascended the ladder, and soon Royalism had lost its ideal
champion. Before the body was cold the hangman hacked it into
portions for distribution and exhibition on the pinnacles of gaols.
The trunk, because it contained the heart that did not repent, was
consigned to accursed ground under the gallows on the Borough
Moor. The head, fixed on a spike on the top of the west gable of
the Tolbooth of Edinburgh, once served as a prominent target for
gunners in the castle, and remained in that position till the Restora-
tion, when it was removed, and, with the other remains, was buried
with a great pageant in St. Giles on nth May 1661.^ There is no
valid excuse for all this feline ferocity evinced by educated men who
set themselves up as defenders of the honour of Jesus Christ. The
1 De Rebus . . . Jacobi Montisrosarum Marchionis. . . . (Paris, 1647).
'■^ Napier, Memoi/s, ii. 825 ; Proc. Soc. Antiq. Scot., vii., 3rd Series, 65 ; Lament, Chron., 21.
468 THE COVENANTERS
only regret which Argyll appears to have expressed in connection with
this dispatch of his noble antagonist was that Montrose had not
repented of his policy and conduct, and had refused to implicate his
associates by command of the King.' Montrose was somewhat
avenged when Middleton, after Argyll's execution, suggested that
Argyll had gone to hell.
In this ignominious manner perished a brave, cultured, and
capable Scot, who in a less troubled and more refined age might have
given to his country the fruits of a genius which had the power to
create trust, enthusiasm, and admiration among those whom the
hapless hero came into contact with. A mistake of judgment made
him the champion of an indefensible cause, and an evil fate set him
at the head of armies whose bravery yet invokes merited praise, but
whose weakness is accounted for by the fact that the Celtic race,
having lost its solidarity and become quite sectional, was not imbued
with that constant ambitious spirit which constrains the Saxon to
extend the personal, family, and national acquirements and lands all
at the same time. Had the victors of those battles from Auldearn to
Kilsyth possessed even a trace of the colonising spirit of the Saxon,
they would never have dispersed with trivial loot, but have held the
Character of field and maintained Charles and his cause upon it. Montrose had
all the valour, with the defects, of his Celtic ancestry, and failed in
realising high ideals because the sentiment which dominated him was
tribal rather than cosmopolitan. A chieftain himself, he wrongly
imagined that it was a first duty to obey the King as the infallible
vicegerent of God. Unlike many Royalists, he had a clean life,
although his Covenanting confessors suggested otherwise. A love of
praise and distinction detracted from a magnanimous character, but
he was not cursed with the mean land hunger that degraded the
succeeding defenders of the Carolan Faith and spoilers of the
Covenanters — Dalyell, Bruce, Claverhouse."
' Argyll to Lothian, 22nd May 1650, Lothian MSS.
''■ Sir John Hurry and Captain John Spottiswood, grandson of the Archbishop, were
executed by ' The Maiden,' and many of the other prisoners of war were transported to
France to become soldiers (Register House, Q. 226, 227, 228, 229).
Montrose.
FALL OF CHARLES FIRST AND MONTROSE 469
A strong reason for the Government refusing to consider any
clemency for hapless Montrose and his men was their surmise, it may
have been direct information, that Charles was using him as a catspaw,
to be discarded if a better instrument to gain the Royal ends were
forthcoming. They were in possession of incriminating papers showing
the true position of affairs. With Lauderdale at the ear of Charles
they could be well informed. The bloodthirsty bombast of Montrose,
when in an exalted mood, lent credibility to the partisan statements
that the Hero - Cavalier was a pitiless Goth. And if Lauderdale
could tell Clarendon that Scotland would never forgive Montrose for
his inhumanity and savagery, and that personally he preferred no
King to the restoration of Charles and his Grand Vizier, he was fit
to confide the same convictions to Argyll, and at the same time to
conceal from his trustful Sovereign his enmity to Montrose.^
Intriguing Argyll himself was no pleasant companion to ride the Mendacity and
• I X 1-111 • u J treachery of
water with. It seems not unlikely that some secret compromise had ^,^g i^jn^^
been arrived at between Charles and Argyll, by which Montrose and
his force were to be withdrawn for operations against the Sectaries
elsewhere. Montrose was too rapid in his advance to his own defeat,
and thus spoiled this latest project. Charles was too sanguine of a
victory that would nullify his truce. His order to Montrose to lay
down his arms came too late. It was only to be observed if success
otherwise was impossible. The news of Carbisdale threw Charles
into a dilemma. He condescended to an atrocious lie to shield
himself. He wrote to Parhament a letter, which was produced on
25th May, showing that he was heartily sorry that James Graham
had invaded this kingdom, and how he had discharged him from
doing the same ; ' and earnistly desyres the estaits of parliament
to doe himselue that justice as not to belive that he was acces-
sorey to the said inwasione in the lest degree.' This letter was
accompanied with a copy of the discharge of date 15th May. But
Argyll had a still greater surprise in store. He reported to the
House that he himself had a letter from Lord Lothian, the Secretary,
' Clarendon, vi. 290.
470 THE COVENANTERS
'which shew him that his Majesty was no ways sorry that James
Graham was defeated, in respect (as he said) he had made that
invasion without and contrary to his command.' No knave could
have stooped lower than Charles to betray and then to calumniate a
noble friend. It is inexplicable how, after this revelation, men who
prayed for hours and kept, and made others keep, every jot and tittle
of the law, could again condescend to negotiate with so faithless and
unscrupulous a creature as Charles was.^ Charles had outmanoeuvred
himself and so had Argyll. While Montrose lay in blood, the first
sacrifice of both intriguers, their mutual advantage in the inflammable
situation depended upon their silence regarding unexplained factors
in the case.
Montrose met his fate with the dignity of a gentleman and the
courage of a hero, exhibiting
' no weakness, no contempt,
Dispraise or blame ; nothing but well and fair.
And what may quiet us in a death so noble.'
Montrose's His exccution was a great political mistake, fraught with the bitterest
po^iticri" ^ results. The thought of it long deepened the hatred and stimulated
blunder. j-j^g vigour of Royalist persecutors. Had he been preserved till he
became convinced of the treachery of the two sovereigns whom he
too exuberantly trusted, Montrose would in all likelihood have used
his influence and martial genius to secure a purely constitutional
monarchy in alliance with a pure and free Church. His policy and
position have been much misunderstood. He was simply a con-
servative and a constitutionalist who strove in vain to bring both
Kings and Covenanters back to the old standpoints in politics and
religion, as far as these were accepted by truly consistent Presby-
terian legislators. His views were definite, well considered, and
openly expressed to both parties. Till his death he renounced the
pretended bishops, because he traced the irreparable evils in the land
to their perverse practices ; he maintained himself to be a consistent
^ Balfour, iv. 24, 25.
FALL OF CHARLES FIRST AND MONTROSE 471
subscriber of the Covenant, willing to defend the liberties of both Montrose a
Church and State ; he was an opponent of the Royal absolutism ^^ "° '
practised by Charles, whom he warned of it as an evil which the
Scots could never brook ; he was a strenuous defender of those
constitutional principles on which the National Covenant was based,
and by which it became that defensible, legal instrument safeguarding
the popular rights, which jurists have acknowledged it to be. The
more aggressive and revolutionary character of the Solemn League
was the cause of that cleavage of parties, on account of which
Montrose, with no little insight into sound statesmanship, found him-
self compelled to oppose his former associates. Notwithstanding
this apparent defection, the man who could so honestly assert to the
King that his fatal idea that the Covenanters of 1638 were mere
conspirators against monarchical government was a calumny, deserved
more generous treatment at the hands of his opponents. But the
mendacity and treachery of public men at this epoch were such that
it was deemed impossible to make workable compromises, and
concord had to be produced with the help of the halter and
the headsman's axe.^
Before Charles left Breda for Scotland he consecrated himself to
his new enterprise by partaking of the Eucharist. He received the
elements kneeling, notwithstanding the remonstrance of the Scots
Commissioners, who argued that this obnoxious mode would blast
all his designs. His use of the English Liturgy, his lax moral
code, and his free-thinking had already scandalised the Covenanters.
Yet they deluded themselves with the idea that he would come to
mean what he said and vowed. 'They must make a property of
him : no other will serve to stalk their ends by.'^
' Napier, Memoirs, i. 283-5, 3'i-i2 ; App. xlv.
"^ Airy, Charles 11. , 81-5.
472 THE COVENANTERS
APPENDIX I
THE NATIONALL COVENANT
OR
The Confession of Faith of the Kirk of Scotland, subscribed at first by the Kings Majesty
a?td his Houshold, in the yeare 1580. Thereafte?', by Persons of all rankes, in the
yeare 1581, By ordinance of the Lords of the Secret Couficill, and Acts of the general
Asse?nbly. Subscribed againe by all sorts of Persons in the Yeare 1590, By a new
Ordinance of Council, at the desire of the General Assembly : With a General Band
for 77iaintenance of the true Religion &= the Kings Person. And now subscribed in
the Year 1638. By Us, Noblemen, Barons, Gefttlemen, Burgesses, Ministers, and
Com??ions, then under-subscribing : Together, with our resolution and promises for the
causes after specified, To maintaine the said true Religion, and the Kings Majesty,
according to the Confession foresaid, and Acts of Parlia7?ient. And now, upon the
Supplication of the General Assetnbly to His Majesty's high Cotmnissioner, and the
Lords of his Majesty's Honorable Privy Council, subscribed agaiji in the Year 1639.
by Ordinance of Cou?icil, and Act of Getieral Assembly. The Tenor whereof here
followeth.
We All, and every one of Us underwritten, Protest, that, after long and due Examination
of our owne Consciences, in matters of true & false Religion, We are now throughly
resolved of the Truth, by the Word and Spirit of God ; and therefore we believe with
our hearts, confess with our mouths, subscribe with our hands, and constantly afifirme
before God, and the whole World, that this onely is the true Christian Faith and
Religion, pleasing God, and bringing Salvation to man, which now is by the mercy of
God revealed to the world, by the preaching of the blessed Evangel, and receaved,
believed, and defended, by many and sundry notable Kirks and Realmes, but chiefly by
the Kirk of Scotland, the Kings Majesty, and three estates of this Realme, as Gods
eternall Truth, and onely ground of our Salvation : as more particularly is expressed in
the Confession of our Faith, stabhshed, and publickly confirmed by sundry Acts of
Parliament, and now of a long time hath beene openly professed by the Kings Majesty,
and whole body of this Realme both in Burgh and Land. To the which Confession
and forme of Religion, wee willingly agree in our consciences in all points, as unto
Gods undoubted Truth and Verity, grounded onely upon his written Word. And
therefore, we abhorre and detest all contrary Religion, and Doctrine : But chiefly, all
kinde of Papistry, in generall and particular heads, even as they are now damned and
confuted by the Word of God, and Kirk of Scotland : but in special we detest and
refuse the usurped authority of that Roman Antichrist upon the Scriptures of God,
upon the Kirk, the civill Magistrate, and conscience of men, All his tyrannous lawes
made upon indifferent things against our Christian liberty, His erronious Doctrine,
APPENDIX I 473
against the sufficiency of the written Word, the perfection of the Law, the office of
Christ, and his blessed Evangel. His corrupted Doctrine concerning originall sinne,
our naturall inability and rebellion to Gods Law, our Justification by faith only, our
imperfect Sanctification and obedience to the Law, the nature, number and use of the
Holy Sacraments. His five bastard Sacraments, with all his Rites, Ceremonies, and
false Doctrine, added to the ministration of the true Sacraments without the Word of
God. His cruell judgement against Infants departing without the Sacrament : his
absolute necessity of Baptisme : his blasphemous opinion of Transubstantiation. or reall
presence of Christs body in the Elements, and receiving of the same by the wicked, or
bodies of men. His dispensations with solemne Oathes, Perjuries, and degrees of
Mariage forbidden in the Word : his cruelty against the innocent divorced : his divellish
Masse : his blasphemous Priesthood : his profane Sacrifice for the sinnes of the dead
and the quick : his Canonization of men, calling upon Angels or Saints departed,
worshipping of Imagery, Relicts, and Crosses, dedicating of Kirks, Altars, Dayes,
Vowes to creatures; his Purgatory, Prayers for the dead, praying or speaking in a
strange language, with his Processions and blasphemous Letany, and multitude of
Advocates or Mediators : his manifold Orders, Auricular Confession : his desperate and
uncertaine Repentance ; his general and doubtsome Faith ; his satisfactions of men for
their sinnes : his Justification by works, opus operatum, works of Supererogation, Merits,
Pardons, Peregrinations, and Stations: his holy water, baptising of Bells, conjuring of
Spirits, crossing, saning, anointing, conjuring, hallowing of GODS good creatures, with
the superstitious opinion joyned therewith : his Worldly Monarchy, and wicked
Hierarchy : his three solemne vowes, with all his shavelings of sundry sorts, his
erronious and bloudy decrees made at Trent, with all the subscribers and approvers of
that cruell and bloudy Band, conjured against the Kirk of GOD: and finally, wee
detest all his vaine Allegories, Rites, Signes and Traditions, brought in the Kirk,
without or against the Word of GOD, and Doctrine of this true reformed Kirk, to the
which we joyne our selves willingly, in Doctrine, Faith, Religion, Discipline, and use of
the Holy Sacraments, as lively members of the same, in Christ our Head : promising
and swearing by the Great Name of the Lord our GOD, that we shall continue in the
obedience of the Doctrine and Discipline of this Kirk, and shall defend the same
according to our vocation and Power, all the dayes of our lives, under the pains
contained in the Law, and danger both of Body and Soul, in the day of GODS fearful
Judgment : And seeing that many are stirred up by Sathan, and that Roman Antichrist,
to promise, sweare, subscribe, and for a time use the Holy Sacraments in the Kirk
deceitfully against their own Consciences, minding thereby, first, under the external
cloak of Religion, to corrupt and subvert secretly GODS true Religion within the Kirk,
and afterward, when time may serve, to become open enemies and persecutors of the
same, under vain hope of the Popes dispensation, devised against the Word of GOD,
to his greater confusion, and their double condemnation in the day of the Lord Jesus.
Wee, therefore, willing to take away all suspicion of hypocrisy, and of such double
dealing with GOD and his Kirk, Protest, and call The Searcher of all hearts for witnesse,
that Our mindes and hearts, do fully agree with this our Confession, Promise, Oath and
Subscription, so that Wee are not moved for any worldly respect, but are persuaded
onely in our Consciences, through the knowledge and love of Gods true Religion,
printed in our hearts by the Holy Spirit, as we shall answer to him in the day, when
474 THE COVENANTERS
the secrets of all hearts shall be disclosed. And because we perceave that the quietness
and stability of our Religion and Kirk, doth depend upon the safety & good behaviour
of the Kings Majesty, as upon a comfortable Instrument of Gods mercy, granted to
this Countrey, for the maintaining of this Kirk, and ministration of Justice amongst us,
we protest and promise with our hearts under the same Oath, Hand-writ, and Pains,
that we shall defend his Person and Authority, with our goods, bodies and lives, in the
defence of Christ his Evangel, Liberties of our Country, ministration of Justice, and
punishment of iniquity, against all enemies within this Realm, or without, as we desire
our GOD to be a strong and merciful defender to us in the day of our death, and
coming of our Lord Jesus Christ : To whom with the Father, and the Holy Spirit, be
all Honour and Glory Eternally.
Like as many Acts of Parliament not onely in general do abrogate, annull, and
rescind all Lawes, Statutes, Acts, Constitutions, Canons, civil or municipall, with all
other Ordinances and practique penalties whatsoever, made in prejudice of the true
Religion and Professours thereof; Or, of the true Kirk-discipline, jurisdiction, and
freedome thereof; Or in favours of Idolatry and Superstition; Or of the Papisticall
Kirk; As Act. 3. Act. 13. J^ar/. i. Act. 23. Par/. 11. Act. 114. Far/. 12. of King lames
t/ie sixt, That Papistry and Superstition may be utterly suppressed according to the
intention of the Acts of Parliament repeated in the 5. Act. Par/. 20. K. latnes 6. And
to that end they ordaine all Papists and Priests to be punished by manifold Civill and
Ecclesiastical pains, as adversaries to Gods true Religion, preached and by Law
established within this Realme, Act. 24. Par/. x\. K. lames 6. as common enemies to
all Christian government, Act. 18. Par/. 16. K. lames 6. as rebellers and gainstanders
of our Soveraigne Lords Authority, Act. 47. Par/. 3. K. lames 6. and as Idolaters.
Act. 104. Par/. 7. K. Ia?nes 6. but also in particular (by and attour the Confession of
Faith) do abolish and condemne the Popes Authority and Jurisdiction out of this
Land, and ordaine the maintainers thereof to be punished. Act 2. Par/, i. Act 51.
Par/. 3. Act 106. Par/. 7. Act 114. Par/ 12. K. lames 6. do condemne the Popes
erronious doctrine, or any other erronious doctrine repugnant to any of the Articles of
the true and Christian religion publickly preached, and by law established in this
Realme : And ordaines the spreaders and makers of Books or Libels, or Letters, or
writs of that nature to be punished. Act 46. Pari. 3, Act 106. Pari. 7. Act 24.
Par/. \\. K. lames 6. do condemne all Baptisme conforme to the Popes Kirk and the
Idolatry of the Masse, and ordaines all sayers, willfull hearers, and concealers of the
Masse, the maintainers and resetters of the Priests, Jesuites, traffiquing Papists, to be
punished without any exception or restriction. Act 5. Pari. i. Act. 120. Par/. 12.
Act. 164. Par/. 13. Act. 193. Par/ 14. Act. i. Par/. 19. Act. 5. Par/. 20. K. lames 6.
do condemne all erroneous bookes and writtes containing erroneous doctrine against
the Religion presently professed, or containing superstitious Rites and Ceremonies
Papisticall, whereby the people are greatly abused, and ordaines the home-bringers of
them to be punished. Act 25. Pari 11. K. lames 6. do condemne the monuments and
dregs of by-gone Idolatry ; as going to the Crosses, observing the Feastivall dayes of
Saints, and such other superstitious and Papisticall Rites, to the dishonour of GOD,
contempt of true Religion, and fostering of great errour among the people, and ordaines
the users of them to be punished for the second fault as Idolaters, Act 104. Pari. 7.
K. lames 6.
APPENDIX I 475
Like as many Acts of Parliament are conceaved for maintenance of GODS true and
Christian Religion, and the purity thereof in Doctrine and Sacraments of the true
Church of God, the liberty & freedom thereof, in her National, Synodal Assemblies,
Presbyteries, Sessions, Policy, Discipline and Jurisdiction thereof, as that purity of
Religion and liberty of the Church was used, professed, exercised, preached and
confessed according to the reformation of Rehgion in this Realm. As for instance.
The 99. Act. Pari. 7. Act. 23. Pari. 11. Act. 114. Pari. 12. Act. 160. Pari. 13, of King
lames 6. Ratified by the 4. Act. of King Charles. So that the 6. Act. Pari. 1. and
68. Act. Pari. 6. of King lames 6. in the Yeare of God 1579. declares the Ministers of
the blessed Evangel, whom GOD of his mercy had raised up, or hereafter should raise,
agreeing with them that then lived in Doctrin, and Administration of the Sacraments,
and the People that professed Christ, as he was then offered in the Evangel, and doth
communicate with the Holy Sacraments, (as in the reformed Kirk's of this Realm they
were publickly administrat) according to the Confession of Faith, to be the true and
Holy Kirk of Christ Jesus within this Realm, and decerns and declares all and sundry,
who either gainsayes the Word of the Evangel, received and approved, as the heads of
the Confession of Faith, professed in ParUament, in the Yeare of God 1560. specified
also in the first Parliament of King lames 6. and ratified in this present Parliament,
more particularly do specify, or that refuses the administration of the Holy Sacraments,
as they were then ministrated, to be no members of the said Kirk within this Realme,
and true Religion, presently professed, so long as they keep themselves so divided from
the society of Christs body : And the subsequent Act. 69, Pari. 6. of K. lames 6.
declares. That there is none other Face of Kirk, nor other Face of Religion, then was
presently at that time, by the Favour of GOD established within this Realme, which
therefore is ever stiled, Gods true Religion, Christs trice Religion, the true and Christian
Religion, and a perfect Religion, Which by manifold acts of Parliament, all within this
realme are bound to subscribe the articles thereof, the Confession of Faith, to recant
all doctrine & errours, repugnant to any of the said Articles, Act. 4. <^ 9. Pari i.
Act. 45. 46. 47. Pari. 3. Act 71. Pari. 6. Act 106. Pari. 7. Act 24. Pari. 11. Act 123.
Pari 12. Act 194. and 197. Pari. 14. of K. lames 6. And all Magistrats, Sherifs, &c.
on the one parte are ordained to search, apprehend, and punish all contraveeners; For
instance. Act 5. Pari. i. Act 104. Pari. 7. Act 25. Pari. 11. K. lames 6. And that
notwithstanding of the Kings Majesty's licences on the contrary, which are discharged
& declared to be of no force in so farre as they tend in any wayes, to the prejudice &
hinder of the execution of the Acts of Parliament against Papists & adversaries of true
Religion, Act. 106. Pari. 7. K. lames 6. On the other part in the 47. Act. Pari. 3.
K. Ia?nes 6. It is declared and ordained, seeing the cause of Gods true Religion, and
his highnes Authority are so joyned, as the hurt of the one is common to both : and
that none shal be reputed as loyall and faithfull subjects to our Soveraigne Lord, or his
Authority, but be punishable as rebellers and gainstanders of the same, who shall not
give their Confession, and make their profession of the said true Religion, and that they
who after defection shall give the Confession of their Faith of new, they shall promise
to continue therein in time comming, to maintaine our Souveraigne Lords Authority, and
at the uttermost of their power to fortify, assist, and maintaine the true Preachers and
Professors of Christs Evangel, against whatsoever enemies and gainestanders of the
same ; and namely (against all such of whatsoever nation, estate, or degree they be of)
476 THE COVENANTERS
that have joyned, and bound themselves, or have assisted, or assists to set forward, and
execute the cruell decrees of Trent, contrary to the Preachers and true Professors of the
Word of God, which is repeated word by word in the Article of Pacification at Ferih
the 23 of Februar. 1572. approved by Parliament the last of Aprile 1573. Ratified in
Parliament 1587. and related. Act 123. Pari. 12. of K. James 6. with this addition, that
they are bound to resist all treasonable uproars and hostihties raised against the true
Religion, the Kings Majesty, and the true Professors.
Like as all Lieges are bound to maintaine the King Majesty's Royal Person, and
Authority, the Authority of Parliaments, without the which neither any lawes or lawful
judicatories can be established. Act 130. Act. 131. Pari. 8. K. lames 6. and the
subjects Liberties, who ought onely to live and be governed by the Kings lawes, the
common lawes of this Realme allanerly. Act 48. Pari. 3. K. lames the first. Act. 79.
Pari. 6. K. lames the 4. repeated in the Act 131. Pari. 8. K. lames 6. Which, if they
be innovated or prejudged, the commission anent the union of the two Kingdoms of
Scotland and England, which is the sole Act of the 17. Pari, of K. lames 6. declares
such confusion would ensue, as this Realme could be no more a free Monarchy,
because by the fundamental! lawes, ancient priviledges, offices and liberties, of this
Kingdome, not onely the Princely Authority of his Majesty's Royal discent hath been
these many ages maintained, but also the peoples security of their Lands, livings,
rights, offices, liberties, and dignities preserved, and therefore for the preservation of
the said true Religion, Lawes, and Liberties of this Kingdome, it is statute by the
8. Act Pari. i. repeated in the 99. Act Pari. 7, Ratified in the 23. Act Pari. 11. and
114. Act Pari. 12. of K. lames 6. and 4. Act of K. Charles. That all Kings and
Princes at their Coronation and reception of their Princely Authority, shall make their
faithfuU promise by their solemne oath in the presence of the Eternal God, that,
enduring the whole time of their lives, they shall serve the same Eternal God to the
uttermost of their power, according as he hath required in his most Holy Word,
contained in the old and new Testament. And according to the same Word shall
maintain the true Religion of Christ Jesus, the preaching of his Holy Word, the due
and right ministration of the Sacraments now receaved and preached within this Realme
(according to the Confession of Faith immediately preceeding) and shall abolish and
gainstand all false Religion contrary to the same, and shall rule the people committed
to their charge, according to the will and command of God, revealed in his foresaid
Word, and according to the laudable Lawes and Constitutions received in this Realme,
no wayes repugnant to the said will of the Eternall God ; and shall procure, to the
uttermost of their power, to the Kirk of God, and whole Christian people, true and
perfite peace in all time coming : and that they shall be careful to root out of their
Empire all Hereticks, and enemies to the true worship of God, who shall be convicted
by the true Kirk of God, of the foresaid crimes, which was also observed by his
Majesty, at his Coronation in Edinburgh 1633. as may be scene in the order of the
Coronation.
In obedience to the Commandment of GOD, conforme to the practice of the godly
in former times, and according to the laudable example of our Worthy and Religious
Progenitors, & of many yet living amongst us, which was warranted also by act of
Councill, commanding a general band to be made and subscribed by his Majesty's
subjects, of all ranks, for two causes : One was. For defending the true Religion, as it
APPENDIX I 477
was then reformed, and is expressed in the Confession of Faith abovewritten, and a
former large Confession established by sundry acts of lawful general! assembUes, & of
Parliament, unto which it hath relation, set down in publick Catechismes, and which
had been for many years with a blessing from Heaven preached, and professed in this
Kirk and Kingdome, as Gods undoubted truth, grounded only upon his written Word.
The other cause was, for maintaining the Kings Majesty, His Person, and Estate : the
true worship of GOD and the Kings authority, being so straitly joined, as that they had
the same Friends, and common enemies, and did stand and fall together. And finally,
being convinced in our mindes, and confessing with our mouthes, that the present and
succeeding generations in this Land, are bound to keep the foresaid nationall Oath &
Subscription inviolable. Wee Noblemen, Barons, Gentlemen, Burgesses, Ministers &
Commons under subscribing, considering divers times before Sz especially at this time,
the danger of the true reformed Religion, of the Kings honour, and of the publick
peace of the Kingdome : By the manifold innovations and evills generally conteined,
and particularly mentioned in our late supplications, complaints, and protestations, Do
hereby professe, and before God, his Angels, and the World solemnly declare, That,
with our whole hearts we agree & resolve, all the dayes of our life, constantly to adhere
unto, and to defend the foresaid true ReHgion, and (forbearing the practice of all
novations, already introduced in the matters of the worship of GOD, or approbation of
the corruptions of the publicke Government of the Kirk, or civil places and power of
Kirk-men, till they be tryed & allowed in free assemblies, and in Parliaments) to labour
by all meanes lawful to recover the purity and liberty of the Gospel, as it was stablished
and professed before the foresaid Novations : and because, after due examination, we
plainely perceave, and undoubtedly believe, that the Innovations and evils contained
in our Supplications, Complaints, and Protestations have no warrant of the Word of
God, are contrary to the Articles of the Foresaid Confessions, to the intention and
meaning of the blessed reformers of Religion in this Land, to the above written
Acts of Parliament, & do sensibly tend to the re-establishing of the Popish Religion
and Tyranny, and to the subversion and ruine of the true Reformed Religion, and of
our Liberties, Lawes and Estates, We also declare, that the Foresaid Confessions are to
be interpreted, and ought to be understood of the Foresaid novations and evils, no
lesse then if every one of them had been expressed in the Foresaid confessions, and
that we are obliged to detest & abhorre them amongst other particular heads of
Papistry abjured therein. And therefore from the knowledge and consciences of our
duety to God, to our King and Countrey, without any worldly respect or inducement,
so farre as humane infirmity will suffer, wishing a further measure of the grace of God
for this effect, We promise, and sweare by the Great Name of the Lord our GOD, to
continue in the Profession and Obedience of the Foresaid Religion : That we shall
defend the same, and resist all these contrary errours and corruptions, according to our
vocation, and to the uttermost of that power that GOD hath put in our hands, all the
dayes of our life : and in like manner with the same heart, we declare before GOD and
Men, That we have no intention nor desire to attempt any thing that may turne to the
dishonour of GOD, or to the diminution of the Kings greatnesse and authority : But
on the contrary, we promise and sweare, that we shall, to the uttermost of our power,
with our meanes and lives, stand to the defence of our dread Soveraigne, the Kings
Majesty, his Person, and Authority, in the defence and preservation of the foresaid true
478 THE COVENANTERS
Religion, Liberties and Lawes of the Kingdome : As also to the mutual defence and
assistance, every one of us of another in the same cause of maintaining the true
Religion and his Majesty's Authority, with our best counsel, our bodies, meanes, and
whole power, against all sorts of persons whatsoever. So that whatsoever shall be done
to the least of us for that cause, shall be taken as done to us all in genearal, and to
every one of us in particular. And that we shall neither directly nor indirectly suffer
our selves to be divided or withdrawn by whatsoever suggestion, allurement, or terrour
from this blessed & loyall Conjunction, nor shall cast in any let or impediment, that
may stay or hinder any such resolution as by common consent shall be found to
conduce for so good ends. But on the contrary, shall by all lawful meanes labour to
further and promove the same, and if any such dangerous & divisive motion be made
to us by Word or Writ, We, and every one of us, shall either suppresse it, or if need be
shall incontinent make the same known, that it may be timeously obviated : neither do
we fear the foul aspersions of rebellion, combination, or what else our adversaries from
their craft and malice would put upon us, seing what we do is so well warranted, and
ariseth from an unfeined desire to maintaine the true worship of God, the Majesty of
our King, and peace of the Kingdome, for the common happinesse of our selves, and
the posterity. And because we cannot look for a blessing from God upon our
proceedings, except with our Profession and Subscription we joine such a life &
conversation, as beseemeth Christians, who have renewed their Covenant with God ;
We, therefore, faithfully promise, for our selves, our followers, and all other under us,
both in publick, in our particular families, and personal carriage, to endeavour to keep
our selves within the bounds of Christian liberty, and to be good examples to others
of all Godlinesse, Sobernesse, and Righteousnesse, and of every duety we owe to God
and Man, And that this our Union and Conjunction may be observed without violation,
we call the living GOD, the Searcher of our Hearts to witness, who knoweth this to be
our sincere Desire, and unfained Resolution, as we shall answere to JESUS CHRIST,
in the great day, and under the pain of Gods everlasting wrath, and of infamy, and
losse of all honour and respect in this World, Most humbly beseeching the Lord to
strengthen us by his holy Spirit for this end, and to blesse our desires and proceedings
with a happy successe, that Religion and Righteounesse may flourish in the Land, to
the glory of GOD, the honour of King, and peace and comfort of us all. In witnesse
whereof we have subscribed with our hands all the premisses, &c.^
[The Glasgow Determination
The Article of this Covenant, which was at the first Subscription, referred to the
determination, of the General Assembly, being determined, and thereby the Five Articles
of Perth^ the Government of the Kirk by Bishops, the Civill places and Power of
Kirkmen, upon the reasons and grounds contained in the Acts of the General
Assembly, declared to be unlawful within this Kirk, we subscribe according to the
determination foresaid."]
1 Act. Pari. Scoi., v. 294-8 ; Peterkin, Records, 9-13 ; Reg. Privy Counc, vii. 67-9.
2 Peterkin, Records, 187, 189, 208, 269,270. Variations in the spelling and slight changes
of words are noticeable in different editions of the Covenants.
APPENDIX II 479
APPENDIX II
A SOLEMN LEAGUE AND COVENANT
For Reformation, and Defetice of Religion, The Honour atid Happiness of the King, and
the Peace and Safety of the three Kingdoms tf/ Scotland, England, a7id Ireland.
We Noblemen, Barons, Knights, Gentlemen, Citizens, Burgesses, Ministers of the
Gospel, and Commons of, all sorts in the Kingdoms oi Scotla?id, England 2.n^ Ireland,
by the providence of GOD living under one King, and being of one reformed Religion,
Having before our eyes the glory of GOD, and the advancement of the Kingdom of our
Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, the Honour and Happinesse of the Kings Majesty and
his Posterity, and the true publick Liberty, Safety, and Peace of the Kingdoms, wherein
every ones private condition is included; And calling to minde the treacherous and
bloody Plots, conspiracies. Attempts and Practices of the Enemies of GOD against the
true Religion and Professours thereof in all places, especially in these three Kingdoms,
ever since the Reformation of Religion, and how much their rage, power and presump-
tion are of late, and at this time increased and exercised ; whereof the deplorable estate
of the Church and Kingdom of Ireland, the distressed estate of the Church & Kingdom
of England, and the dangerous estate of the Church and Kingdom of Scotland are
present and publick testimonies : We have now at last (after other means of Supplica-
tion, Remonstrance, Protestation and Suffering) for the preservation of our selves and
our Religion from utter mine and destruction, according to the commendable practice
of these Kingdoms in former times, and the example of GODS People in other
Nations, after mature deliberation, resolved and determined to enter into a mutuall and
solemn League and Covenant : Wherein we all subscribe, and each one of us for
himself, with our hands lifted up to the most high GOD, do Swear,
1. That we shall sincerely, really and constantly, through the grace of GOD,
endeavour in our several places and callings, the preservation of the Reformed Religion
in the Church of Scotland, in Doctrine, Worship, Discipline and Government, against
our common Enemies ; The Reformation of Religion in the Kingdoms of England and
Ireland, in Doctrine, Worship, DiscipHne and Government, according to the Word of
GOD, and the example of the best Reformed Churches ; And shall endeavour to bring
the Churches of GOD in the three Kingdoms, to the nearest conjunction and
Uniformity in Religion, Confession of Faith, Form of Church-government, Directory for
Worship and Catechizing ; That we and our Posterity after us, may, as Brethren, live
in Faith and Love, and the Lord may delight to dwell in the midst of us.
2. That we shall in like manner, without respect of persons, endeavour the
Extirpation of Popery, Prelacy (that is. Church-government by Arch-bishops, Bishops,
their Chancellours and Commissaries, Deans, Deans and Chapters, Arch-deacons,
and all other Ecclesiasticall Officers depending on that Hierarchy) Superstition, Heresy,
Schism, Prophanesse, and whatsoever shall be found to be contrary to sound Doctrine,
48o THE COVENANTERS
and the power of Godliness ; Lest we partake in other mens sins, and thereby be in
danger to receive of their plagues ; And that the Lord may be one, and his Name one
in the three Kingdoms.
3. We shall with the same sincerity, reality and constancy, in our several! vocations,
endeavour with our estates and lives mutually to preserve the Rights and Priviledges
of the Parliaments, and the Liberties of the Kingdoms ; And to preserve and defend
the Kings Majesty's Person and Authority, in the preservation and defence of the true
Religion, and Liberties of the Kingdoms ; That the world may bear witnesse with our
consciences of our Loyalty, and that we have no thoughts or intentions to diminish his
Majesty's just power and greatnesse.
4. We shall also with all faithfulnesse endeavour the discovery of all such as have
been, or shall be Incendiaries, Malignants, or evil instruments, by hindering the
Reformation of Religion, dividing the King from his people, or one of the Kingdoms
from another, or making any faction, or parties amongst the people contrary to this
League and Covenant, That they may be brought to publick triall, and receive
condigne punishment, as the degree of their offences shall require or deserve, or the
supream Judicatories of both Kingdomes respectively, or others having power from
them for that effect, shall judge convenient.
5. And whereas the happinesse of a blessed Peace between these Kingdoms, denyed
in former times to our Progenitors, is by the good Providence of GOD granted unto
us, and hath been lately concluded, and settled by both Parliaments, We shall each
one of us, according to our place and interest, endeavour that they may remain
conjoyned in a firme Peace and Union to all Posterity, And that Justice may be done
upon the willfuU Opposers thereof, in manner expressed in the precedent Article.
6. We shall also according to our places and callings in this Common cause of
Religion, Liberty, and Peace of the Kingdoms, assist and defend all those that enter
into this League and Covenant, in the maintaining and pursuing thereof; And shall
not suffer our selves directly or indirectly by whatsoever combination, perswasion or
terrour, to be divided and withdrawn from this blessed Union and conjunction, whither
to make defection to the contrary part, or to give our selves to a detestable indifferency
or neutrality in this cause, which so much concerneth the Glory of GOD, the good of
the Kingdoms, and honour of the King ; But shall all the dayes of our lives zealously
and constantly continue therein, against all opposition, and promote the same according
to our power, against all Lets and Impediments whatsoever; And, what we are not
able our selves to suppresse or overcome, we shall reveale and make known, that
it may be timely prevented or removed : All which we shall do as in the sight
of GOD.
And because these Kingdoms are guilty of many sins, and provocations against
GOD, and his Son Jesus Christ, as is too manifest by our present distresses and
dangers, the fruits thereof. We professe and declare before GOD, and the world, our
unfained desire to be humbled for our own sins, and for the sins of these Kingdoms,
especially that we have not, as we ought, valued the inesteemable benefit of the Gospel,
that we have not laboured for the purity and power thereof, and that we have not
endeavoured to receive Christ in our hearts, nor to walk worthy of him in our lives,
wich are the causes of other sins and transgressions so much abounding amongst us,
And our true and unfained purpose, desire, and endeavour for our selves, and all others
APPENDIX III 481
under our power and charge, both in publick and in private, in all dutyes we owe to
GOD and man, to amend our lives, and each one to go before another in the example
of a real Reformation ; That the Lord may turn away his wrath, and heavy indignation,
and establish these Churches and Kingdoms in truth and Peace. And this Covenant
we make in the presence of Almighty GOD the Searcher of all hearts, with a true
intention to perform the same. As we shall answer at that great Day when the secrets
of all hearts, shall be disclosed ; Most humbly beseeching the Lord, to strengthen us
by his Holy Spirit for this end, and to blesse our desires, and proceedings with such
successe, as may be deliverance and safety to his people, and encouragement to other
Christian Churches groaning under, or in danger of the yoke of Antichristian Tyranny,
or to joyn in the same, or like Association & Covenant, To the Glory of GOD, the
enlargement of the Kingdom of Jesus Christ, and the peace & tranquillity of Christian
Kingdoms, and Common-wealths.^
APPENDIX III
EXTANT COPIES OF THE SCOTTISH COVENANTS
Dr. David Laing, on 24th May 1847, read to the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland
a paper entitled ' The Names of Some of the Persons who have Original Copies of our
Covenants, National, and Solemn League.' It was published in their Froceedi?igs, vol. iv.
238-50 (Edin., 1863). The following notes supplement that catalogue of Covenants,
some of which cannot now be traced.
(i) The Common, or Godlie Band. Cf. Proceedmgs of Society of Antiquaries of
Scotla?id, iv. 243; xii. 63, 64, 216. This interesting parchment, measuring 20?, Xi5^
inches, in a fine state of preservation, is preserved and displayed in the Museum of the
Society of Antiquaries in Edinburgh {Catal., No. OA.7). Cf. reduced (photographic)
facsimile in this volume, p. 1 2.
It was found among the papers of the Erskines of Little Sauchy. Presented by
Captain John Cunningham in 1877.
(2) The Edinburgh Bond, subscribed on 27th April 1560, which Dr. Laing did not
trace, is preserved in Hamilton Palace. The skin on which it is written is abraded,
wrinkled, and mutilated, having four holes through it. It measures 26^X20^ inches.
It is signed by Chatelherault, Arran, Huntly, Argyll, Glencairn, Rothes, Morton, James
Stewart (Regent Moray), the abbots of Kinloss, Cupar, and Kilwinning, and many
others. Cf. Hist. MSS. Com. Rep., ix. vi. 43, for text. Cf. reduced facsimile in this
volume, p. 28.
1 Act. Pari. Scot., vi. 41-2 ; Peterkin, Records, 362, 363.
3P
482 THE COVENANTERS
(3) 1567 Bond in Glasgow University Library.
On a separate parchment sheet this document is described as ' The Original Bond
subscribed by the Earle of M. [letters defaced and rewritten Murray] Regent, with most
of the Nobility, Gentry and Burgesses [at] the Coronation [in] Defence of King
James 6th, anno 1567.' Among many signatures appear Mortoun, Mar, James Stewart,
Ruthven, Sanquhar, Methven, Tulibardin, Dalyell, Bargany, Fraser of that Ilk,
Alexander, Bishop of Galloway, the Commendators of Culross and Cambuskenneth,
and many others. The parchment measures 46-|xii| inches. It was one of three
such deeds 'Given to the library of Glasgow Colege by John C. [letters defaced], 1696,'
during Dunlop's principalship. The text is printed in Calderwood, ii. 378-83 ; the
subscribers' names are also given there and in The Booke of the U. Kirk, i. no.
(4) 1572-8 Bond in Glasgow University Library.
The above-mentioned parchment sheet indexed another deed entitled ' Ane Originall
Bond containing ane Confession of Religion in the tyme of Morton's Regency
[1572-8] subscribed by Churchmen.' This parchment, subscribed by six or seven
persons — signatures difficult to make out — measures 2i^x 13 inches and is in a good
state of preservation.
[1589 Bond. A third Covenant in the same folio is now lost. It was thus
described : ' Ane Bond of Association for defence of the Protestant Religion against
the detestable Conspiracy, then called the Holy League, made by Foreign Papists,
which was subscribed by King Ja. ; with a great number of the Nobility and Burgess,
anno 1589.' A copy of this document is preserved among the Wodrow MSS.'m. the
Advocates' Library, fol. Ixiv. 75. It is printed in Calderwood, Hist., v. 49.]
(5) The King's Confession, 1580-1. Cf. Fro. Soc. Antiq. of Scotland, vi. 243;
National MSS. of Scotland, 111. Ixx. Cf. reduced facsimile in this volume, p. 102.
The original parchment deed is preserved in the Advocates' Library. Nine blots and
a hole disfigure the skin. A draft is preserved in the Register House, Edinburgh. The
deed was subscribed on 28th January 1581. The writing is much faded, but the signa-
tures of King James, Lennox, Morton, Argyll, Ruthven, ' Mr, Johne Crag,' Duncanson,
and other thirty-one subscribers are still discernible. It measures 23 inches square.
[The King, Lennox, Huntly, and ninety-six others signed this Confession on 25th
February 1588; the deed was preserved among the muniments at Pollok {Froc. Soc.
Antiq., iv. 244). It cannot now be found. A copy of part of this Covenant appears
in the Record of Laureations of the University of Edinburgh in 1585, and graduates
thereafter signed it {Catal. of Grad., Edin., 1858). It begins with 'We all' and
finishes with ' fearful judgment.' Among the signatures are : (1585) 'Mr. Johne Craig,'
'Robert Rollock,' ' Patrik Home'; ' Jhone Earl of Gowrye' (1598); (July 23, 1631)
'Robertus Leighton'; (1645) 'Thomas Hog'; (1647) 'Jacobus Kirktoun.'
There is in the possession of the Presbytery of Stirling, and now bound up with
vol. i. (1581-9) of their Records, a manuscript with the following heading: 'Ane
Schort and generall Confessione of ye trew Christiane faithe and Religione according
to God's word and actis of our pliaments Subscryved be ye King's Majestic and his
househald, w' sindrie uthers, to ye glorie of god and gude exampill of al men, At
Edinbrugh the xxviii day off Januar, ye zeir of god i"Wlxxx zeirs And ye fourtein zeir
APPENDIX III 483
of his Majeste's Regne And now subscyvit be the Ministers and Raiders of the evangell
of Jesus Christ w*in ye bounds of the Presbyterii of Sterling. At the brugh thairof the
[blank] day of [blank] The zeir of god i™ v'^lxxxviii zeirs.'
The signatures appended are those of James Andersone (Stirling), Henry Leving-
stoune (St. Ninians), Andro Murdo (Kippen), William Couper (Bothkennar), Alex-
ander Fargy (Logie), Henrie Laing (Airth), Alexr. Wallace (Clackmannan), Andro
Foster (Falkirk), Robert Mentayth (Alva), and John Duncansone, ministers; and by
four readers — one of whom is James Duncansone, the Clerk.
A folio printed broadsheet with the title ' Ane Shorte and Generall Confession of
the Crede, Christian Faith and Religion,' with the date 'At Holyrudhouse 1580
the 2 day of March,' and the printer's name, ' Imprented at Edinburgh be Robert
Lekprewike,' is preserved in the Advocates' Library : Wodroiv MSS., xliii. fol. M. 6. 8.
This probably is the first printed copy of the Confession. No signatures are added.
A printed copy of the Confession is appended to Craig's own Catechism (i2mo)
(1581), the signatures being omitted. Aldis, List, 176, 211.]
[A General Band, 1588 {Proc. Soc. Antiq., iv. 244). The original deed
formerly preserved in the University Library, Glasgow, has gone amissing.]
(6) 'The Copy of the General Band and Act of Counsail,' 1589-90, in Advocates'
Library {Booke of the U. Kirk, ii. 748; text, 759-61). The draft of this Covenant,
4 pp. fol., is preserved in the Wodrow MSS., Ixiv. 75 fol. It is in a small crabbed hand
and bears to have been 'signet at Edr. the sext of March [1590] and of our reigne the
23 year.' Cf. Calderwood, v. 49-52, 90. A draft of the 1589 Band is preserved in the
Register House, Edinburgh. The Band, signed at Aberdeen in March 1593, is printed
in Calderwood, Hist., 233-5, 773- Cf. Wodrow MSS., fol. xliii. 43. Cf. Frivy Counc.
Rec, iv. 254 note, 467 note.
[1590. The Confession of Faith : Trinity College, Cambridge. Press mark, via.
6, 8. Edin., 1590. 7x5 inches: printed.]
[The General Assembly subscribed the National Covenant on 30th March 1596.
The deed has not come under my notice. Row, Hist., 78; Booke of the U. Kirk, iii.
862, 869, 870.]
(7) 1638 Covenant in the Museum of the Corporation of Edinburgh. This magni-
ficent parchment is par excellence the Covenant of 1638. It is preserved and framed
between two sheets of glass. The skin, probably that of a deer, is the largest engrossed
with the Covenant, and measures 43! inches long and 46^ inches broad. Both sides
are fully occupied with the names, initials, and marks of subscribers, 3250 in all — 1350
on one side and 1900 on the other. The skin shows two cuts and one large hole. It
was 'written be James Davie, Schoolmaister in Edinburghe.' Immediately below the
terms of the Covenant, but in smaller script and clearer ink, appears the following
addendum (of 30th August 1639) embodying the Determination of Glasgow Assembly :
' The article of this Covenant which wes at the first subscription referred to the
determination of the General AssembUe being determined, and thereby the fyve
articles of Perthe, the governement of the Kirk by bishops, the civill places and
power of Kirkmen, upon the reasons and grounds contained in the actis of the General
Assembhe, declared to be unlawfuU within this Kirk, wee subscribe according to the
484 THE COVENANTERS
determination foirsaid' (Peterkin, Records, 208; Scottish Hist, and Life, 1902, p. 98).
Then follow these names in order : Montrose, Rothes, Eglinton, Cassillis, Lothian,
Boyd, Forrester, Wemyss, Yester, Sinclare, Elcho, Lindesay, Cranstoune, Loudoun,
Johnstoun, Balmerino, Flemyng, Lyone, and others of the nobility. Then follow the
leading lairds and members of Parliament : S[ir] H[ew] Campbell, the lairds of
Drumlanrig, Lag, Duncrub, Craigdarroch, Keir, Rowallan, Gaitgirth, S[ir] D[uncan]
Campbell of Auchinbreck, and scores of others. On the fifth line appears
' S[ir] A[ndro] Moray of Balvaird ' ; on the eighth line, ' Alex. Henderson, Leuchars ' \
on the ninth line ' M[r] Patrik Henrysone publict lector ' (the reader of St. Giles in
July 1637); on the twenty-fifth line, ' Johne Cunynghame till daith,' written as others
are with reddish pigment, as of blood. Grahames, Murrays, Hays, Shaws, Lawmonths,
Semples, Johnstones, of their particular 'ilks,' subscribe. A[rchibald] Jhonston
(afterwards Lord Wariston) signs ; and ' E. Johnestoun with my ^ ' is also appended.
On it one pious wish is thus expressed : ' Exurgat Deus et dissipentur omnes inimici
eius, Johannes Paulicius manu propria.' ' Mr. Andro Cant ' made a clear subscription,
as did David Dickson, minister in Irvine, Harie Rollok, minister in Edinburgh, many
dames, doctors, advocates, ministers, magistrates ; and illiterates made marks or penned
huge initial letters. Notaries signed on behalf of many others.
A notarial attestation, ' At the South Kirk of Edinburgh the threttein, twentie, and
xxvii dayis of March 1638,' indicates that this deed was subscribed before the 1638
Glasgow Assembly, more than it favours the supposition that the date 1638 should read
1639. Having examined many examples of the Covenant, I have come to the
conclusion that this example is the original deed subscribed in Greyfriars Churchyard,
and, as a poetic friend described it while we looked on its fate-bearing face, 'the holiest
thing in all Scotland — a vow registered in heaven ! ' Cf. reduced facsimile in this
volume, p. 264.
(8) 1638 Covenant in Museum of Society of Antiquaries, Edinburgh. Press mark,
OA.18. This irregularly dressed skin, measuring 31X28I inches, is punctured with
twelve holes. Has small writing ; no ornamental capitals. Has three hundred signatures :
Montrose, etc., some Argyleshire lairds ; notable in centre ' Mr. Alexander Henderson,
Leuchars.' Lacks Glasgow Determination above signatures, but has faint addenda at
bottom. Inscribed ' For the Burghe and Parochin of Dumbarton.' Presented by
Alexander Fergusson of Craigdarroch, 1784.
(9) 1638 Covenant in Museum of Society of Antiquaries, Edinburgh. Press
mark, OA.28. This untrimmed skin measures 29IX24 inches, with the usual signa-
tures of Montrose, CassilHs, and of many Ayrshire lairds, Cunninghamheid, Carberry,
Cairnhill, Innerkip, Rowallan. Was subscribed by three hundred persons in Ayrshire,
probably in Maybole ; among others by Jane Stewart, Margaret Stuart, Anna Stewart,
Elizabeth Stewart. Presented by Thomas Rattray in 1782.
(10) 1638 Covenant in Museum of Society of Antiquaries, Edinburgh. Press
mark, OA.25. This example is faintly written, has no border, and measures 22\%zo\
inches ; is signed by Rothes, Montrose, and other members of the Tables : ' S. A. Murray
of Balvaird,' ' George Wynrame of Liberton.' It lacks Glasgow Determination. Pre-
sented by Thomas Rattray in 1782.
APPENDIX III 485
(11) 1638 Covenant in Museum of Society of Antiquaries, Edinburgh. Press
mark, OA.21. This fine example, somewhat similar to that preserved in the New
College, Edinburgh, measures 32|x26f inches; has a pink -coloured border, with
pattern picked out in white, and some words picked out in red and gold ; was ' written
be Johne Laurie, writer in Edinburgh.' It bears thirty-two names (of the Privy Council)
still visible and others undecipherable. It has the Glasgow Determination. It has
three large holes in the centre of the skin. It was presented to the Society by John
Leslie in 1784. Cf. reduced facsimile in this volume, p. 306.
(12) 1638 Covenant in Museum of Society of Antiquaries, Edinburgh. This
Covenant, formerly possessed by Miss Agnes Black, Perth, is assigned to no district.
It is described in Proc. Soc. Antiq., xii. 63, 64. The parchment measures 29^X23
inches ; is carefully written ; has been washed by some preservative ; has signatures of
nobles, and one hundred signatures of ministers and land-owners, among others being
Mr. John Adamson, Principal of Edinburgh College, Foulis of Colinton, Mr. John
Skene of Halzairds, Mr. Alexander Henderson, Leuchars, Graeme of Tnchbraikie, and
other Graemes.
(13) 1638 Covenant in Advocates' Library. This example measures 41X32^
inches; has plain script, no capitals; a little torn. Signed April 1638. Subscribed
on both sides with five hundred signatures of nobility, gentry, and persons from all
quarters, probably at Edinburgh.
(14) 1638 Covenant in Advocates' Library. This magnificent example, measuring
40X32 inches, is framed and exhibited in the Laigh Parliament House. It is dated
12th January 1639; written by 'William Aytoun, Maison,' and presented by William
Aytoun, junior, to the Library in 1703. It is written in double columns, with some
of the letters in gold. In circles round the edge the names of Montrose, Argyll, other
nobles, and members of Parliament are subscribed. It contains the Glasgow Determina-
tion in a special paragraph at the bottom.
It was engraved in facsimile by Davidson, Edinburgh {Proc. Soc. Antiq., iv. 246).
A reduced facsimile appears in this volume, p. 336.
(15) 1638 Covenant in Advocates' Library. A parchment similar to the above,
measuring 32^X22! inches, is also preserved in the Advocates' Library. There is a
border ornament, capitals in gold letters, special words in red capitals ; has signatures
of J. Leslie, J. Mar, Rothes, Dunfermline, Sinclare, Loudoun, Forester, J. Erskine,
Boyd, Balmerino, Linlithgow, G. Gordon, and no others. Has Glasgow Determination.
In splendid condition : similar to Laurie's work on Covenant in U.F. Church College
Hall.
(16) 1638 Covenant in Advocates' Library. This parchment, very red-stained,
measures 31IX29 inches, and is written in cursive with a few lines in Gothic text.
' R. M. M'Ghie wrotte it.' It has Glasgow Determination at the foot of the deed ;
about two hundred signatures, the last being ' W. Burnett ' : among others. Eraser,
J. Dalyell, ' John Lewis, prouest, Pat. Thomson, baillie,' and other bailies. It is
probably the Covenant of Peebles.
[A facsimile of the Covenant for the Burgh of Peebles was engraved {Proc. Soc.
Antiq., iv. 247). Cf. facsimile by Schenck.J
486 THE COVENANTERS
(17) 1638 Covenant in Advocates' Library, Edinburgh. This shield-shaped parch-
ment measures 34X28^ inches; is subscribed by hundreds on both sides, probably at
Ayr; has, besides the names of Rothes, Montrose and J. Home, ' Robert Blair, minister
at Ayr,' Robert Gordoun, provost of Ayr ; has the notarial attestation, ' decimo tertio
Mertii, 1638,' by George Maxwell. Cf. Ayr Advertiser, 8th October 1874; Scot. Nat.
Mem., 89-90 ; Row, Hist., 74-5.
It is much stained. Has no reference to Glasgow Determination. It records about
five hundred and fifty names. Plain calligraphy ; no ornamental capitals.
(18) 1638 Covenant in Advocates' Library. This example, covered with four
hundred and thirty-two signatures, measures 32IX34I inches; has indistinct script;
signed by Montrose, Boyd, Loudoun, Keir, Sir J. Cochrane, W. Riccartoune, Dalmahoy,
Shaw of Sauchie, Lugton, ' David Home at Ladykirk ' ; has no reference to Glasgow ;
has subscriptions by notary George Aytoun, on 22nd-25th day of (Marche?) 1638; and
the inscription, ' Ex dono Mri Adami Coult ' (?). A Mr. Adam Colt was minister at
Inveresk in 1643.
(19) 1580-1 Covenant subscribed in 1638 — in Advocates' Library. This printed
document (quarto with blank pages). No. 34. 5. 15, is the King's Confession of 1580
(signed by Hamilton, Traquair, Roxburgh, and the Privy Council oh 22 nd September
1638 at Holyroodhouse) ; attested by * J. Prymrois.' It was also signed in Kirriemuir,
Aberbrothock, Arbuthnot, Arbirlot, Alyth, Forfar, and other parishes in Forfarshire, by
nine hundred and thirteen persons. Cf. Peterkin, Records, 84.
(20) 1638 Covenant in Advocates' Library. This example measures 35X25J
inches ; is very cracked ; torn on both of top corners ; is signed by Leslie, Amont,
Argyll, Montrose, Cassillis, Sir R. Moray, Sir Thomas Hope, Ja. Sword, W. Hamilton,
M. Gibsone Durie, S. J. Rutherfurd, G. Gordone, and four others. It records Glasgow
Determination. Calligraphy small ; no ornamental capitals.
(21) 1638 Covenant in Register House, Edinburgh (Hist. Dept., Q. 133). This
example, measuring 24I-X22J inches, is very small compared with others; is signed by
Montrose, Rothes, Lothian, Boyd, Lyone, Hume of Polwarth, Sir Duncan Campbell
of Auchinbreck, and other peers and members of Parliament. James Cheyne sub-
scribes as penman of the deed. No Glasgow Determination.
(22) 1638 Covenant in Register House (Q. 134A). This document was subscribed
in Borgue, Kirkcudbrightshire, and is dated 22nd April 1638. It measures 25x27
inches. Has three holes in parchment. Has Glasgow Determination on back with
many signatures following.
(23) Humble Supplication and Confession in Register House (Q. 134B). It was
signed in Edinburgh on 12th August 1639 by Lennox, Hamilton, Traquair, Argyll,
Marischal, Wigtoune, Buccleuch, 'J. E. Southerland' (his first signature), 'S. Jo.
Maitland ' (Lauderdale), A. Johnston (Wariston), and one hundred and twenty others.
Measures 34IX36 inches. Has Glasgow Determination.
(24) 1638 Covenant in Register House (Q. 135). This Covenant measures 26 X 12
inches, and has no date. It was the bond for the parish of Gartly, Strathbogie, and is
subscribed by William Reid, the parish minister, and twenty-five other persons. On the
APPENDIX III 487
edge is wriiten boldly 'J. Huntlye.' Huntly signed the King's Confession in 1639
(Spalding, i. 88). This deed is written on paper. George Jope, notary, signs for some.
(25) Edinburgh Confession and Supplication in Register House (Q. 136). It is on
parchment, dated 12th August 1639. Measures 42X27^ inches. Has no signatures.
Has Glasgow Determination.
(26) 1581 Covenant in Register House (Q. 137). This parchment, measuring
2o|xio^ inches, contains the Confession, and is a copy of the Covenant signed at
Holyrood House on 20th September 1639, the names attached not being iiolograph.
Three paper sheets in Register House (Q. 138) form an incomplete copy of the
Confession. None of the examples of the Covenant in the Register House are fine
copies and some are nearly undecipherable.
(27) 1638 Covenant in New College Library, Edinburgh. This parchment,
bequeathed by the late Earl of Dalhousie, measures 37X27 inches; is framed and
exhibited ; is subscribed by Rothes, Montrose, Boyd, and eight hundred others. Lacks
the Glasgow Determination ; is disfigured by one hole.
[Up till lately other three Covenants were preserved in this Library. One was
without signatures ; another was signed by Argyll and other nobles ; and a third, soiled
and yellow, said to have been signed at North Leith, had many signatures. These
three have gone amissing.]
(28) 1638 Covenant in New College Hall, Edinburgh. This fine example measures
38x32 inches; has ornamental border and capitals in gold; was written by John
Laurie in Edinburgh ; subscribed by one hundred and eighty persons, including the
nobles, Rothes, Lindesay, Ker, and ministers of Muthill, Fyvie, Stonykirk, by bailies
and counsellors at Lauder. Many subscriptions are faded. It was bequeathed by
the Rev. Dr. Thomas Guthrie. Is framed and exhibited. It has the Glasgow
Determination.
(29) 1638 Covenant in Library of General Assembly of the Church of Scotland,
Edinburgh. This interesting deed was presented by James Wilson, blacksmith,
foot of Liberton's Wynd, to the Incorporation of Hammermen, who, in 1876, presented
it to the General Assembly. It measures 35X27 inches. It has the usual signatures,
Montrose excepted, as well as those of some Dumfriesshire and Ayrshire lairds, notable
as Covenanters and sufferers — Craigdarroch (Ferguson), Johne Kirko of Sundyvel
Riddell, J. Laurie (Maxwelton) — in all one hundred and eighty names. 'Alexander
Henderson, Leuchars,' subscribed this parchment. It is in good state of preservation ;
a full skin, untrimmed ; has a few blots. Glasgow Determination is absent. It was
subscribed at various places and also by notaries. Cf. Proc. Soc. Antiq., iv. 239, 242.
(30) 1638 Covenant in Edinburgh University Library. This example measures
27^X23 inches; is a white uncut skin, framed; is signed by Montrose, Rothes, and
other members of the Tables, by Sir J. Dalyell, Craigdarroch, J. Erskine of Dun, many
Grahames, Ja. Sharp (Govan), Robertson (Cluny), Mr. H. M'Kaile — in all two hundred
subscribers. It lacks the Glasgow Determination.
(31) 1638 Covenant in Riccarton, Currie. This example, now the property of Sir
James H. Gibson-Craig, was signed on i8th October 1638 (?), among others, by Argyll,
488 THE COVENANTERS
Mar, Maitland (Lauderdale). Cf. Proc. Soc. Antig., iv. 247. It is written in a large
hand ; has the title and some letters in gold ; has been repaired. Cf. Letter from
present possessor.
[A facsimile of a fine example of the 1638 Covenant, with beautiful border and
three large capitals, and signed by Argyll, Rothes, Montrose, Cassillis, Lothian, Wemyss,
Thos. Hope, A. Jhonstoun — fifty signatures in all — appears in the Nat. MSS., iii., No.
xcvii. There is no reference to the depository of this Covenant — one of the few signed
by Argyll. It has the Glasgow Determination. It is not unhke Laurie's work.]
(32) 1638 Covenant in Newbattle Abbey. This example, over a yard square, was
subscribed by about one hundred persons, including Lothian, Sinclair, Wemyss, etc.
It is folded and cut. 'John Laurie writer in Edinburgh,' who wrote the Covenant
preserved in the New College, Edinburgh, appended his name as a witness.
(33) 1638 Covenant in Duns Castle. This example was 'written be Johne Trotter
nottar publict ' ; has about one hundred signatures. It lacks the Glasgow Determina-
tion. Cf. Scot Hist, and Life ^ 100; Brown, Covenanters of the Merse, 24, 82.
(34) 1638 Covenant in Kelvingrove Museum, Glasgow. This example, formerly
the property of David Pulsifer, and purchased by Glasgow Corporation for ;^5o, is
framed, and hangs in Kelvingrove Museum. It measures 28^X37 inches ; has a strip
cut off the lower edge ; has two holes in parchment ; is signed by Rothes, Montrose,
etc. — twenty nobles, fifty barons, seventy ministers, and subscribers from various
counties. Has Glasgow Assembly Determination at foot. Has 'The Confessioune of
Faithe' written on back. Cf. Scot. Nat. Metn., 1890, p. 90. Condition fair.
(35) 1638 Covenant in Library of University of Glasgow. This example, on a skin
with neck-piece retained at bottom, is iri good condition ; measures 33J x 24 inches ; was
probably signed in Argyleshire, having signatures of Colin Campbell of Strachur, James
Couper, George Hutcheson, Andro Park, David Mitchell, Jhon Liddell, James Or,
William Broune, J. Grahame, and others ; no nobles or barons sign. On the back is
written: 'May 20, 1782. Presented to the University of Glasgow by Mr. James
Wardrop, merchant in Glasgow.' No Glasgow Assembly Determination. Cf. Froc.
Soc. Antiq., iv. 239.
Brown in Apol. Narr., 1665, p. 48, mentions that landlords kept private copies of the
Covenants in their charter chests. At Newbattle, Riccarton, Cavers, and other houses,
the family Covenant is kept usually in the strong room.
(36) 1638 Covenant in Mitchell Library, Glasgow. This unevenly cut parchment,
27^X 21^ inches, is the property of Glasgow Corporation; was probably the Covenant
signed at Biggar in 1638 (as indicated on the back of the deed); was purchased in
April 1875 at the sale of the library of John Young, F.S.A., for ^100. It is subscribed
by Rothes, Montrose, and one hundred and fifty subscribers. It lacks the Glasgow
Determination.
(37) 1638 Covenant in Mitchell Library. This example, measuring 30^ X 33-J inches,
is unsigned ; was beautifully engrossed by William Lawrie in Edinburgh ; has orna-
mental border, and opening words in gold ; was bought along with the former example.
It shows the Glasgow Determination.
APPENDIX III 489
(38) 1638 Covenant preserved in Hamilton Palace. This parchment is in perfect
condition except at the upper left corner, which is torn. It measures 33 X 26 inches. It
is an Aberdeenshire specimen, and, among others, appear the names of 'Master
Alexander Cant, student of Theologie in Aberdeen,' * Pat rile Cramond, preacher to the
Earl of Fyffe,' 'J. Southerland,' 'Sir H. Campbell fiar of Auchinbreck,' and sub-
scribers in Ardersier, Fetteresso, Aberdeen, and Drum. Has Glasgow Determination in
centre of the Covenant.
(39) 1638 Covenant in possession of Alfred Morrison, Esq., Fonthill House,
Hindon. Cf. Hist. MSS. Com. Rep., ix. ii. 431.
(40) 1638 Covenant preserved in Saltoun Hall, by Andrew Mansie Talbot Fletcher,
Esq. It is a splendid example ; measures 38-^ x 23 inches ; similar to that preserved in
the Advocates' Library ; it was also written by ' William Aytoun, Maison ' ; the title is in
gold letters, and the names are enclosed in circles, and include ' J. Southerland.'
Cf. Proc. Soc. Antig., iv. 248.
(41) 1638 Covenant preserved in Knox College, Toronto. This beautifully engrossed
copy of the Covenant was formerly preserved in Prestonfield House, Edinburgh ; was
sold by Mr. W. Brown, bookseller, Edinburgh, for £2^, to the Hon. W. M. Clark,
Lt.-Governor of Ontario, in 1906. (Brown's Catal., 163, 31.) It measures 38X39J
inches. It was written by James Cheyne. It is subscribed by the members of ' The
Tables ' and a few others, including ' Mr. Andrew Fairfull at Leith,' afterwards a bitter
opponent of the Covenanters, and Archbishop of Glasgow.
(42) 1638 Covenant in British Museum (Add. Charters, 1380). This parchment
measures 33X26 inches; signatures begin with Montrose and Rothes; statements
on back of Covenant indicate that it was subscribed at the end of March and beginning
of April 1638 in Peebles, Stobo, Athelstone (Eddleston), Skirling, Newlands and
Traquair. Cf. Froc. Soc. Ajitiq., iv. 247, The copy therein mentioned as marked 5961
was not reported as catalogued in 1907.
(43) 1638 Covenant in British Museum {Add. MSS. 4851). This parchment
measures 44X37! inches; the first signatures are Montrose and Rothes; apparently
subscribed at Edinburgh ; has words 'written be William Cummine at Edr.'
(44) 1638 Covenant, preserved in Cavers. This deed, a parchment 36x28 inches,
was subscribed by Montrose, Lothian, and 'The Tables,' and by Sir William Douglas of
Cavers, his son, Archibald, and many border lairds and their dependants. Some appear
to have signed in blood. This Covenant was ' For Tividail,' and was probably signed
at Jedburgh. It is framed, and hangs in the library of Cavers House. Cf. Stewart,
Hawick and Teviotdale Covenanters, 1885 ; Letter from present possessors, Captain and
Mrs. Palmer Douglas of Cavers, Roxburghshire.
(45) 1638 Covenant in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. This fine example, measuring
3i| X 27I inches, has a floral edge and ornamental capital. It was the gift of the Hon.
General Charles Rosse of Balnagoun in 1728 ; is in a case (S. c. 276, 80. E. Museo 247).
It bears the names of thirty nobles, Argyll, Rothes, Montrose, Kenmore, Kirkcud-
bright. The Glasgow Determination is in a different ink.
3Q
490 THE COVENANTERS
(46) 1638 Covenant in Trinity College Library, Cambridge. This well-preserved
example, on a white skin measuring 26 x 24I inches, is framed for exhibition. The
first signature, that of Montrose, is nearly obliterated. It is followed by J. Lauderdaill,
Dunfermline, Rothes, and other nobles and barons, etc., in all one hundred and fifty
names, among which appear Robert Traill, Scott of Ardross, Hamilton of Spango, T.
Gourlay of Kingscraig, S. J. Mackenzie, S. J. M. Rowallan, Thomas Skene Munro,
minister at Kilbucho, Sir John Broun of Fordell, Hamilton of Kilbrachmont.
At the foot is a faint addendum, probably the Glasgow Determination. This
Covenant was probably signed in Fifeshire.
(47) 1638 Covenant in the Kirk-Session Records of Galston. This example is
bound with a volume of the Session Records, 1 1 X 7 inches. The Covenant occupies
eight and a half pages and the signatures three pages more. It was subscribed at
Galston Church on 3rd January 1640. Cf. Note from Rev. J. A. Hogg, Minister of
Galston, 1907.
(48, 49, 50, 51) Two examples in Penicuik House, and two in Dundas Castle,
mentioned in Dr. Laing's report {Froc. Soc. Antiq.^ iv. 240, 248), if still existing, were
not available for this report.
(52,53, 54) 1638. Three printed copies of The Covenant and Account of Proceedings
in Cambridge University Library. Press mark, 8. 28. 19.
(55) 1638. A printed copy in Trinity College, Cambridge. Press mark, K. 15.
10. (9).
(56) 1638 Covenant with Glasgow Determination, signed by twenty-one persons ; is
incorporated in the Minute Book of Dalkeith Presbytery. It was probably signed in
May and June 1639.
APPENDIX IV
EXTANT COPIES OF THE BRITISH SOLEMN LEAGUE
AND COVENANT
(i) 1643 Solemn League and Covenant in the Bodleian Library (Eng. Hist., d. 3).
This example of the Solemn League and Covenant, printed in Edinburgh by Evan
Tyler in 1643, with pages for subscription, bears to have been signed at 'Edinburgh
in Templo oriental!, 13 October 1643,' by ninety-four persons, including Loudoun,
Dunfermline, Leven, J. Lauderdaill, Argyll, Balmerino, Cassillis, Forrester, Lindesay,
J. M. Hamilton, Wemyss, Sinclare, Balcarres, A. Jhonston. It was also signed at
Edinburgh on 8th January 1644. On 13th October it was subscribed by Stephen
Marshall, W. Armyne, Vane, Edward Bowles; on 22nd December 1643 by Hatcher,
Darley, Robert Goodwin, Robert Fenwick, Robert Barwis ; and on 7th November by
Angus, Brodie and others. It was once possessed by William Ermyn, Bishop of Durham.
APPENDIX IV 491
This Covenant is noteworthy as being the deed subscribed by the Commission of
the Church, Committee of Estates, and the EngUsh Commissioners (Peterkin,
Records, 395).
(2) 1643 Solemn League and Covenant. Examples in the Bodleian Library: (i)
Press mark, 56. 1643, i. Lond. Husbands, 8 pp. printed. (2) Ibid. (Ash. 1214). (3)
Rawl. 165, Edin., 1648, Evan Tyler. Subscribed by sixty-six persons (among others
'W. Thomson, Minister,' 'in the parochine of Traquair,' (4) Lond., 1645. One
sheet: Carte papers 65. f. 267. No signatures.
(3) 1643 Foedus Pactum, etc. Covenant in Latin in the Bodleian Library. Lond.,
1644. Th. 4. v. 7. B. 5 : not subscribed. (2) Another example, Pamph. 63. 1644. 2.
(4) 1643 Solemn League and Covenant in Oxford. This is the famous bond signed
by King Charles 11., in 1650, and is preserved in the Clar. MSS. 40. f. 80. in the
Bodleian Library, Oxford. The parchment measures 30^X24?? inches and bears only
the monarch's signature. It is endorsed by A. Johnston (Wariston) and by A. Ker,
Clerk to the General Assembly. A reduced facsimile appears in volume ii. p. 2.
[A 'National Covenant and Solemn League and Covenant subscribed by King
Charles the Second at his coronation, anno 1651,' was sold at the Burton-Constable
sale on 26th June 1889. Cf. Burnet, Hist, i. 200 note (Airy's edition, 1897).
(5) 1643 Solemn League and Covenant (Printed by Evan Tyler, Edinburgh, 1643)
in St. Andrews University Library. This is a quarto. The Covenant covers five pages
and part of sixth. The volume contains four relative documents, and blank pages
for signatures. It is subscribed by Provost and bailies. Samuel Rutherford signs
three times; second date of signing 31st December 1648. Cf. reduced facsimile of a
page, with signatures, in this volume, p. 360.
(6) 1643 Solemn League and Covenant in Edinburgh University Library. It
was printed by Evan Tyler in 1648. It belonged to Andrew Livingston ; is one of the
Laing MSS., 229 ; has six pp. in print, fifty pp. blank ; was signed on nth April 1649,
infer alios, by Edinburgh Presbytery — James Hamilton, moderator (St. Giles), John
Adamson, William Arthur, Robert Douglas, John Charteris, Mr, Robert Traill, M. A.
FairfuU (Archbishop of Glasgow), Mr. R. Baylie, William Thomson, Hew Mackaile,
A. Prymerose, James Kirktoun, Mr. Patrick Henderson (reader), Thomas Hoge, — a
company of distinguished presbyters. There are ninety-one subscribers and another on
20th February 1650.
(7) 1643 Solemn League and Covenant in Edinburgh University; Edin., 1648,
unbound ; subscribed by three hundred and twenty-two persons ' in the parish Kirk of
Kilbarchan the 14th — 1648' in the presence of the Minister, Mr. James Glendinning;
records the subscriptions of local families. Kings, Cochranes, Seniples and Knoxes.
(8) 1643 Foedus Sacro-sanctum pro Religione repurganda et propugnanda Pro
Honore et Felicitate Regis afferenda, etc. Edin., 1643. Mr. Robert Young's Copy.
No signatures. In Edinburgh University. Press mark, Dd 7. 62.
(9) 1643 Solemn League and Covenant in Museum of Society of Antiquaries,
Edinburgh. Press mark, O.A.19. This example of the printed League was subscribed
492 THE COVENANTERS
in Newbattle parish, among many others, by Robert Leighton, minister there, afterwards
Archbishop of Glasgow.
(10) 1643. 'A Solemne League and Covenant.' Evan Tyler, 1643, in the Advocates'
Library; Press mark, 23.3.16 : K. 199. This printed example, 14 pp. with 18 pp. for
subscriptions, is bound in vellum. It was subscribed at ' Edinburgh in eccl. orientally
23 October 1643,' by 'Mr, Robert Douglas, minister,' his elders and deacons, and
about seven hundred and fifty persons, of whom five hundred and twenty-two subscribed
personally.
(11) 1643. ' The Puritans' Covenant ' in Trinity College, Cambridge, This deed on
paper contains a portion of the Solemn League and Covenant subscribed by inhabitants
of Swinshead in the County of Huntingdon. The document is imperfect and mended,
and shows fifty-one names. It measures 35X11I inches, and was signed on 30th
June 1644.
(12) 1643 Solemn League and Covenant, Lend., 1643, in Trinity College. Press
mark, Y. i. ^tZ (14)^ another, Y. i. 52 (36); several other editions.
(13) 1643 Solemn League and Covenant, (i) Ibid., Dd. 3. 37". (2) Ibid., Adams
7. 64. 37. (3) Foedus, 8. 24. 7 (1644). Cambridge University Library.
(14) 1643 Solemn League and Covenant. A copy of this Covenant is in the
Egerton MSS., British Museum, 2711 f. 84. It has no signatures. Another copy
entitled 'A Copy of the Covenant taken by the Lords, 15th October 1643, with their
subscriptions, from ye originall on vellum, now in the hands of ye Lady Lansdowne,
December 29, 17 18,' is in Add. MSS. 32093, f. 198. The original of the latter is not
among the Laftsdowne MSS. in the British Museum.
(15) 1643 Solemn League and Covenant in New College, Edinburgh. This
example belonged to Edzell parish, and contains one hundred and ninety-one signatures.
(16) 1643 Solemn League and Covenant in Hunterian Museum (Graham Copy).
This copy was subscribed in 1643-9 ^y four hundred and sixty members of the
University of Glasgow. It was the gift of Mr. James Graham. Both of these
examples are described in the Transactions already referred to. Cf. reduced fac-
simile, in this volume, p. 378,
[Renunciation of the Covenants in 1662 by the leading men of Scotland, Glencairn,
Rothes, Morton, Moray, Lauderdale, eleven bishops, etc. In Register House, Hist.
Dept., Division Q., No. 247.]
[Covenant in Register House. Four fol. pages paper. (S. 206.) Probably a late
Cameronian bond. No signatures.]
[Declaration by the Lords and Senators of the College of Justice against the lawful-
ness of the Solemn League and Covenant. Preserved in the National Museum of
Antiquities. Press mark, O.A. 24.]
(17) 1643 Solemn League and Covenant in Hunterian Museum, Glasgow. This
copy was bequeathed by Miss Brown of Lanfine to the Hunterian Museum. It
contains two hundred and forty-three subscriptions; the place of signature is not
given; it is dated 17th December 1648. Cf. Trans. Glasg. Arch. Soc, new series,
IV. i. 121-54. A reduced facsimile appears in this volume, p. 360.
APPENDIX V 493
APPENDIX V
THE ACTS OF SCOTTISH PARLIAMENT RELATIVE TO
THE COVENANTS ARE AS FOLLOWS :—
1639, vol. v., 593^. Act ratifying General Assembly's Act prefixed to Covenant.
1639, 598a. Covenant ratified in Articles.
1639, 605 a. Covenant to be sworn by all commanders before leaving the country.
1640, c. 18, 270, Confession of Faith and Covenant ratified : all public officials
enjoined to subscribe {all lieges^ Privy Council Act, ibid.^ 2'jiab).
1640, c. 19, 276. Acts of Privy Council and General Assembly ordaining sub-
scription ratified; the National Covenant, v. 2']2a-2']6a.
1 64 1, 329a. Noblemen non-subscribers to have no voice in Parliament.
1641, c. 13, 348. Non-subscribers to hold no office as judge, procurator, etc.
1643, vi. i. 41-42. Terms of Covenant agreed upon in 1643.
1643, 17 August, vi. i. 4312. Convention of Estates approve of Covenant.
1644, vi. i. 61 b, 92a. Non-subscribers to be summoned and estates forfeited.
1644, vi. i. 89 a. Lanark, Secretary, deprived for non-subscription.
1644, 15 July, c. 134, vi. i. 150. Solemn League and Covenant recited; 151,
approved by Assembly and Convention; 152, to be read by ministers; non-
subscribers to be censured; 152, or be held as traitors.
1646, c. 170, vi. 554. Patronage held by non-subscribers to be exercised by Pres-
bytery.
1649, vi. ii. 132. Solemn League and Covenant read in Parliament and subscribed
by those present.
1649, c. 6, vi. ii. 127. A copy of National Covenant on parchment tabled in
Parliament.
1649, c. 58, vi. ii. 161. The King to swear the National and also Solemn League
and Covenant.
1650, I July, vi. ii. 596a. The King's subscription to Covenants and oath, read
and delivered to clerk in Parliament by Brodie and Libbertoun.
1650, vi. ii. 6o^b. Parliament on 5th July 1650 'appoyntis the motto to be upoun
the haill cuUoris and standartis to be (for Covenant, Religion, King, and
Kingdom).'
1650, vi. i. 625a. Non-subscribers to be debarred from levy.
1661, 25 January, c. 22, vii. 18. Scottish League and Covenant and other bonds
without regal sanction, not binding, and forbidden ; also the relative treaties.
1662, 24 June, c. 12, vii. 378a. National Covenant, 1638, and Solemn League
and Covenant declared unlawful and annulled.
1681, 31 August, c. 6, viii. 245^. Oath to be taken renouncing both Covenants —
1638 and 1643.
1685, I May, c. 5, viii. 461. Both Covenants declared to be treason.
494 THE COVENANTERS
APPENDIX VI
THE IRISH MASSACRES OF 1641-2
Professor Matthew Crawford in A Brief Discovery of the Bloody Principles and
Practises of the Papists^ 1672, records the most incredible atrocities of the Irish rebels,
proving that the Irish Catholics were glutted with Protestant blood. Miss Mary
Hickson in her Ireland in the Seventeenth Century, or The Irish Massacres of 1641-2
(Preface by J. A. Froude; Lond., 1884; 2 vols.), corroborates Crawford from the
depositions used at the trials of the criminals. The barbarities perpetrated would
shame the heathen — dead thrown to dogs (i. 170); children killing children and adults
with fiendish cruelty (196, 339); children hung up on tenter hooks to die (221); death
by the pointed stake (341) ; atrocities of such Chinese brutality that the Lord President
at the trial of Sir Phelim O'Neil asked, ' What, was he born of a woman who did this? '
Miss Hickson calculated that twenty-seven thousand persons were murdered at the
'instigation of priests, Phelim O'Neil, the Maguire brothers, and that the king and
Macdonell were responsible for the retaliations' (163). To understand the enormities
practised, the reader must turn to these two works. Scottish Kirk-Session Records
refer to these crimes in paragraphs such as these : —
Carnock, 8th September 1644 (cf. Row, i7z5/., ref. xxviii.) : Gave 30 sh. to Geils
Hamilton, widow of an Irish minister, ' who wes pitifullie murderit and cuttit in pieces
be the Erische rebellis, and had two bairns burnt quick, and Geils hirself at the same
time wes traveling (travailing), and borne out of the house quhen it-wes burning, and
baire her bairne (gave birth to her child) in the feildis, being naked, and had no clothes
to cover hir withe . . . became distracted in hir wittes.'
Tyninghame: 'Dec. 5, 1641. Intimation maid of Collection the next Lord's Day
for ane pure honest woman, spouse to umquhile James Freeman. He was slain in
Ireland and quarteret, as is allegit, for mainteining the Scottis Covenant.'
APPENDIX VII
THE WESTMINSTER CONFESSION OF FAITH AND THE PROOFS
The (Westminster) Confession of Faith authorised for Scotland has always had the
texts annexed. A printed copy of the Confession, without texts, was brought to the
Commission of the Scots Assembly in January 1647, by Baillie. On 5th April 1647,
the Westminster Divines completed the annexation of texts, reviewed the complete
Confession, and, on 29th April, handed Confession and texts to the English Parliament.
APPENDIX VII 495
Between 19th May and 28th May, the Commons debated Chapter I. and voted it
passed. On i6th July 1647, George Gillespie left the Westminster Assembly. Baillie
and Gillespie, on 6th August, reported their diligence to the Edinburgh Assembly,
being ' loadened with more of those precious fruits.' Baillie in his Report said, 'A
large Confession is perfyted.' When? What did he mean ? (Draft II.) Gillespie in
his Report said, 'The House of Commons have approved the first chapter of it'
{i.e. Draft III.). If Baillie's 'perfyte' Confession was only the draft of January,
Gillespie's was the printed one of 26th April; i.e. if the precious fruits he bore were
up to date, since he refers to the final (third) version of the Westminster Divines. It is
not to be supposed that a Commissioner would arrive without his instruments and
protocols. The Assembly ordered the Confession to be printed by their own printer,
Evan Tyler. The first edition of the Confession printed in Scotland is that of Tyler,
1647, with texts. No other is forthcoming in that year. This first Scots edition extant,
or known, is a double of that printed in London in April-May, 1647, as used by the
Commons (Draft III.). The Act of 1690 (7) says it ratifies and establishes the
Confession of Faith ' now read in their presence (which Confession of Faith is sub-
joined to this present Act).' But they forgot to subjoin it ! Indeed a Confession of
Faith is attached to the Act of Succession, quite another Act altogether. On 23rd
May 1690 the Clerk Register was ordered to cause a 'double' of 'the printed
Westminster Confession of Faith to be brought in at next dyet.' A Confession was
produced, read, and approved on the 26th May by Parliament. The Minutes of
Parliament aver that this Confession was different from that approved of in 1647 by the
General Assembly of Scotland. The Scots Parliament rejected the Confession of 1647,
accepted by the Scots Assembly, and ratified by Parliament in 1649. The printed
Westminster Confession of Faith {i.e. the English Parliamentary version of 20th June
1648, and 2nd March 1660) wants chapters 30 and 31, and embodies some modifications.
It had the texts, however. The Confession was read the second time, on 7th June 1690.
The Clerk was ordered to subjoin it, and being careless, like the Assembly Clerk, with
his details, he omitted to do so in connection with the Ratifying Act ! What then
was legalised} The printed Westminster Confession and its texts as understood in
England, if we are to interpret the illustrative facts in the case. Certainly not the Scots
edition, either in the draft or in the final edition. Now the Act of 1707 ratifies 1690.
It is Act 1690 (7) that revives Act 1649, and makes the subscriber of the Westminster
Confession also bound to a Confession quite different in some respects. The Act
1690 (7) revives all laws 'for the true Church of Christ within this kingdom, in so
far as they confirm the same or are made in favours thereof.' It is plain that Act
1649 (16) ratifying the Confession is one in favour of the true Church — from the
Presbyterian standpoint — and is revived.
496
THE COVENANTERS
APPENDIX VIII
CRIMES AND SUFFERINGS OF THE SCOTTISH CLERGY
FROM 1560 TILL 1690
From 1560
From 1638
From 1660
till 1638.
till 1660.
till 1690.
Executed,
2
I
8 (laity 197)
Murdered, .
2
4
2
Killed,
I
2
3
Imprisoned,
31
21
78
Banished or fugitated,
18
13
17
Deposed,
35
126
46
Deprived, .
14
12
548
Suspended, .
3
7
4
Outed and rabbled,
I
3
142
Offences for which they Suffered.
Immorality,
II
II
21
Scandalous irregularities and ministerial in-
sufficiency,
18
15
15
Murder,
2
I
I
Petty offences.
16
15
13
Witchcraft, .
■^
0
...
Political offences,
40
80
22
Drunkenness,
2
12
32
Nonconformity to Episcopacy (Presbyterian-
ism),
34
5
275
Nonconformity to Presbytery (Episcopacy) ;
adoption of the Liturgy, ....
14
70
345'
The Test,
45
Note. — The compilation of this table was accompanied by much difficulty, as
oftentimes ministers were indicted for various offences at the same time, and in some
cases it is impossible to state the offence considered most incriminating, and to
differentiate political from ecclesiastical offences.
'' For list of ministers outed in 1661-2 cf. Wodrow MSS. (Edin., Advoc. Lib.), Rob. iii. 5, 17, No. 2 ;
lae. V. 9-1.
APPENDIX IX 497
APPEN DIX IX
THE SAMUEL RUTHERFORD SCANDAL
* For sumeikle as it being declared be the principall of the colladge that Mr. Samuell
Rutherfuird regent of Humanitie hes fallen in furnication with Euphame Hamiltoun
and hes committit ane grit scandle in the College and lyckwayis hes since dimittit
himself from his chairge therin Thairfor elects and nominates Nicol Vduard one of the
baillies and Henrie Aikman deykin of the chirurgianis Comissioneris for them and in
their name to convein with the Commissioners appointit be the Lordis of Session
and Commissioneris appointit be the Laweris and Writteris and principall judges
appointit be contract betwaxt the saidis partis for depryving of the said Regent gyf
onie scandle sould happin to fall furth in his persone with power to thir saidis commis-
sioners to insist for depryving of the said Mr. Samuell and being depryvit for filling of
the said plaice.'^
On 29th March 1626 compear John Adamson for the Session and Writers, and
the two bailies, and report that they have appointed Thomas Crauford ' in plaice of Mr.
Samuell Rutherfurd quha hes maid demission of the same.'^
On 27th June 1649 it is recorded that Samuel Rutherford, Professor of Divinity
in St. Andrews, was appointed ' Professor of Divinity in this College.'^
Rutherford married Jean Macmath in Edinburgh on 24th March 1040. She was
buried in Greyfriars Churchyard on 15th May 1675.*
No trace of Eupham Hamilton has been found in the Register of Marriages.
Thomas Crawfurd (who succeeded Rutherford as regent) in his History of the Univer-
sity of Edinburgh (1646, pubHshed in 1808) at page 104 states: 'In the end of this
year Mr. Samuel Rutherford, Professor of Humanitie, having given some scandal in his
marriage, was forced to dimit his charge : according to the wonted bountie of the citie,
Mr. Samuel Rutherford had an honest gratification at his dimission.'
Professor H. M. B. Reid in his Preface to Maxwell's Guide Book to the Stewartry of
Kirkcudbright, p. 14 (Castle Douglas, 1902), designates Rutherford ' a native of the
Stewartry.'
1 Minutes of Edinburgh Town Council, xiii. 323, 3rd February 1626.
2 Ibid., 333. 3 iiji(f_^ xvi. 166. * City Registers.
3R
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at the Edinburgh University Press
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