Ringan Gilhaize, or, The Covenanters Part 37

"What mean you, Ringan?" said he, compa.s.sionately; for he knew of my infirmity, and thought that I was still fevered in the mind. But I told him, that for some time, feeling myself unable for warlike enterprises, I had meditated on a way to perplex our guilty adversaries, the which was to menace them with retaliation, for resistance alone was no longer enough.

"We have disowned Charles Stuart as our king," said I, "and we must wage war accordingly. But go your ways and execute your purposes; and by the time you return this way I shall have a paper ready, the sending forth of which will strike terror into the brazen hearts of our foes."

I perceived that he was still dubious of me; but nevertheless he promised to call as he came back; and, having gone away, I set myself down and drew up that declaration, wherein, after again calmly disowning the royal authority of Charles Stuart, we admonished our sanguinary persecutors, that, for self-preservation, we would retaliate according to our power, and the degree of guilt on such privy counsellors, lords of justiciary, officers and soldiers, their abettors and informers, whose hands should continue to be imbrued in our blood. And on the return of Quintin Fullarton, I gave the paper to him, that it might be seen and considered by Mr Renwick and others, previous to offering it to the consideration of the meeting.

He read it over very sedately, and folded it up and put it in the crown of his bonnet without saying a word; but several times, while he was reading, he cast his eyes towards me, and when he rose to go away he said, "Ringan Gilhaize, you have endured much; but verily, if this thing can be brought to pa.s.s, your own and all our sufferings will soon be richly revenged."

"Not revenged," said I; "revenge, Quintin Fullarton, becomes not Christian men. But we shall be the executioners of the just judgments of Him whose ministers are flaming fires, and pestilence, and war, and storms, and perjured kings."

With these words we parted; and next morning, by break of day, I rose, after the enjoyment of a solacing sleep, such as I had not known for many days, and searched my way across the fields towards Laswade. I did not, however, enter the clachan, but lingered among the woods till the afternoon, when, descending towards the river, I walked leisurely up the banks, where I soon fell in with others of the a.s.sociated friends.

CHAPTER Lx.x.xIV

The place where we met was a deep glen, the scroggy sides whereof were as if rocks, and trees and brambles, with here and there a yellow primrose and a blue hyacinth between, had been thrown by some wild architect into many a difficult and fantastical form. Over a ledge of rock fell the bright waters of the Esk, and in the clear linn the trouts shuttled from stone and crevice, dreading the persecutions of the angler, who, in the luxury of his pastime, heedeth not what they may in their cool element suffer.

It was then the skirt of the afternoon, about the time when the sweet breathing of flowers and boughs first begins to freshen to the gentle senses, and the shadows deepen in the cliffs of the rocks and darken among the bushes. The yellow sunbeams were still bright on the flickering leaves of a few trees, which here and there raised their tufty heads above the glen; but in the hollow of the chasm the evening had commenced, and the sobriety of the fragrant twilight was coming on.

As we a.s.sembled one by one, we said little to each other. Some indeed said nothing, nor even shook hands, but went and seated themselves on the rocks, round which the limpid waters were swirling with a soft and pleasant din, as if they solicited tranquillity. For myself, I had come with the sternest intents, and I neither noticed nor spoke to any one; but going to the brink of the linn, I sat myself down in a gloomy nook, and was sullen, that the scene was not better troubled into unison with the resentful mood of my spirit.

At last Mr Renwick came, and when he had descended into the dell, where we were gathered together, after speaking a few words of courtesy to certain of his acquaintance, he went to a place on the shelvy side of the glen, and took his station between two birch-trees.

"I will be short with you, friends," said he; "for here we are too nigh unto the adversaries to hazard ourselves in any long debate; and therefore I will tell you, as a man speaking the honesty that is within him, I neither can nor do approve of the paper that I understand some among you desire we should send forth. I have, however, according to what was exhibited to me in private, brought here a proclamation, such as those who are most vehement among us wish to propound; but I still leave it with yourselves to determine whether or not it should be adopted--entering, as I here do, my caveat as an individual against it.

This paper will cut off all hope of reconciliation--we have already disowned King Charles, it is true; but this implies, that we are also resolved to avenge, even unto blood and death, whatsoever injury we may in our own persons and friends be subjected to suffer. It pledges us to a war of revenge and extermination; and we have to consider, before we wage the same, the strength of our adversary--the craft of his counsellors--and the malice with which their fears and their hatred will inspire them. For my own part, fellow-sufferers, I do doubt if there be any warrandice in the Scriptures for such a defiance as this paper contains, and I would fain entreat you to reflect, whether it be not better to keep the door of reconciliation open, than to shut it for ever, as the promulgation of this retaliatory edict will a.s.suredly do."

The earnest manner in which Mr Renwick thus delivered himself had a powerful effect, and many thought as he did, and several rose and said that it was not Christian to bar the door on peace, and to shut out even the chance of contrition on the part of the King and his ministers.

I heard what they said--I listened to what they argued--and I allowed them to tell that they were willing to agree to more moderate counsels; but I could abide no more.

"Moderation!--You, Mr Renwick," said I, "counsel moderation--you recommend the door of peace to be still kept open--you doubt if the Scriptures warrant us to undertake revenge; and you hope that our forbearance may work to repentance among our enemies. Mr Renwick, you have hitherto been a preacher, not a sufferer; with you the resistance to Charles Stuart's government has been a thing of doctrine--of no more than doctrine, Mr Renwick--with us it is a consideration of facts. Judge ye therefore between yourself and us,--I say between yourself and us; for I ask no other judge to decide, whether we are not, by all the laws of G.o.d and man, justified in avowing, that we mean to do as we are done by.

"And, Mr Renwick, you will call to mind, that in this sore controversy, the cause of debate came not from us. We were peaceable Christians, enjoying the shade of the vine and fig-tree of the Gospel, planted by the care and cherished by the blood of our forefathers, protected by the laws, and gladdened in our protection by the oaths and the covenants which the King had sworn to maintain. The presbyterian freedom of worship was our property,--we were in possession and enjoyment, no man could call our right to it in question,--the King had vowed, as a condition before he was allowed to receive the crown, that he would preserve it. Yet, for more than twenty years, there has been a most cruel, fraudulent, and outrageous endeavour inst.i.tuted, and carried on, to deprive us of that freedom and birthright. We were asking no new thing from Government, we were taking no step to disturb Government, we were in peace with all men, when Government, with the principles of a robber and the cruelty of a tyrant, demanded of us to surrender those immunities of conscience which our fathers had earned and defended; to deny the Gospel as it is written in the Evangelists, and to accept the commentary of Charles Stuart, a man who has had no respect to the most solemn oaths, and of James Sharp, the apostate of St Andrews, whose crimes provoked a deed, that but for their crimson hue, no man could have doubted to call a most foul murder. The King and his crew, Mr Renwick, are, to the indubitable judgment of all just men, the causers and the aggressors in the existing difference between his subjects and him. In so far, therefore, if blame there be, it lieth not with us nor in our cause.

"But, sir, not content with attempting to wrest from us our inherited freedom of religious worship, Charles Stuart and his abettors have pursued the courageous constancy with which we have defended the same, with more animosity than they ever did any crime. I speak not to you, Mr Renwick, of your own outcast condition,--perhaps you delight in the perils of martyrdom; I speak not to those around us, who, in their persons, their substance, and their families, have endured the torture, poverty, and irremediable dishonour,--they may be meek and hallowed men, willing to endure. But I call to mind what I am and was myself. I think of my quiet home,--it is all ashes. I remember my brave first-born,--he was slain at Bothwell-brigg. Why need I speak of my honest brother; the waves of the ocean, commissioned by our persecutors, have triumphed over him in the cold seas of the Orkneys; and as for my wife, what was she to you? Ye cannot be greatly disturbed that she is in her grave. No, ye are quiet, calm, and prudent persons; it would be a most indiscreet thing of you, you who have suffered no wrong yourselves, to stir on her account; and then how unreasonable I should be, were I to speak of two fair and innocent maidens.--It is weak of me to weep, though they were my daughters. O men and Christians, brothers, fathers! but ye are content to bear with such wrongs, and I alone of all here may go to the gates of the cities, and try to discover which of the martyred heads mouldering there belongs to a son or a friend. Nor is it of any account whether the bones of those who were so dear to us, be exposed with the remains of malefactors, or laid in the sacred grave. To the dead all places are alike; and to the slave what signifies who is master. Let us therefore forget the past,--let us keep open the door of reconciliation,--smother all the wrongs we have endured, and kiss the proud foot of the trampler.

We have our lives; we have been spared; the merciless blood-hounds have not yet reached us. Let us therefore be humble and thankful, and cry to Charles Stuart, O King live for ever!--for he has but cast us into a fiery furnace and a lion's den.

"In truth, friends, Mr Renwick is quite right. This feeling of indignation against our oppressors is a most imprudent thing. If we desire to enjoy our own contempt, and to deserve the derision of men, and to merit the abhorrence of Heaven, let us yield ourselves to all that Charles Stuart and his sect require. We can do nothing better, nothing so meritorious, nothing by which we can so reasonably hope for punishment here and condemnation hereafter. But if there is one man at this meeting,--I am speaking not of shapes and forms, but of feelings,--if there is one here that feels as men were wont to feel, he will draw his sword, and say with me, Woe to the house of Stuart! Woe to the oppressors! Blood for blood! Judge and avenge our cause, O Lord!"

CHAPTER Lx.x.xV

The meeting, with one accord, agreed that the declaration should go forth; and certain of those who were ready writers, being provided with implements, retired apart to make copies, while Mr Renwick, with the remainder, joined together in prayer.

By the time he had made an end, the task of the writers was finished, and then lots were cast to see whom the Lord would appoint to affix the declaration on the trones and kirk doors of the towns where the rage of the persecutors burnt the fiercest, and He being pleased to choose me for one to do the duty at Edinburgh, I returned in the gloaming back to the house of Mrs Brownlee, to abide the convenient season which I knew in the fit time would be prepared. Nor was it long till the same was brought to pa.s.s, as I shall now briefly proceed to set down.

Heron Brownlee, who, as I have narrated, brought me to his mother's house, was by trade a tailor, and kept his cloth shop in the Canongate, some six doors lower down than St Mary's Wynd, just after pa.s.sing the flesher's stocks below the Netherbow; for in those days, when the court was at Holyrood, that part of the town was a place of great resort to the gallants, and all such as affected a courtly carriage. And it happened that, on the morning after the meeting, a proclamation was sent forth, describing the persons and clothing of the prisoners who had escaped from the tolbooth with me, threatening grievous penalties to all who dared to harbour them. This Heron Brownlee seeing affixed on the cheek of the Netherbow, came and told me; whereupon, after conferring with him, it was agreed that he should provide for me a suit of town-like clothes, and at the second-hand, that they might not cause observance by any novelty. This was in another respect needful; for my health being in a frail state, I stood in want of the halesome cordial of fresh air, whereof I could not venture to taste but in the dusk of the evening.

He accordingly provided the apparel, and when clothed therewith, I made bold to go out in the broad daylight, and even ventured to mingle with the mult.i.tude in the garden of the palace, who went daily there in the afternoon to see the n.o.bles and ladies of the court walking with their pageantries, while the Duke's musicants solaced them with melodious airs and the delights of sonorous harmony. And it happened on the third time I went thither, that a cry rose of the Duke coming from the garden to the palace, and all the onlookers pressed to see him.

As he advanced, I saw several persons presenting pet.i.tions into his hands, which he gave, without then looking at, to the Lord Perth, whom I knew again by his voice; and I was directed, as by a thought of inspiration, to present, in like manner, a copy of our declaration, which I always carried about with me; so placing myself among a crowd of pet.i.tioners, onlookers and servants, that formed an avenue across the road leading from the Canongate to the Abbey kirk-yard, and between the garden yett and the yett that opened into the front court of the palace.

As the Duke returned out of the garden, I gave him the paper; but instead of handing it to the Lord Perth, as I had hoped he would do, he held it in his own hand, by which I perceived that if he had noticed by whom it was presented, and looked at it before he went into the palace, I would speedily be seized on the spot, unless I could accomplish my escape.

But how to effect that was no easy thing; for the mult.i.tude around was very great, and but three narrow yetts allowed of egress from the enclosure--one leading into the garden, one to the palace, and the other into the Canongate. I therefore calmly put my trust in Him who alone could save me, and remained, as it were, an indifferent spectator, following the Duke with an anxious eye.

Having pa.s.sed from the garden into the court, the mult.i.tude followed him with great eagerness, and I also went in with them, and walked very deliberately across the front of the palace to the south-east corner, where there was a postern door that opened into the road leading to the King's park from the Cowgate-port, along the outside of the town wall. I then mended my pace, but not to any remarkable degree, and so returned to the house of Mrs Brownlee.

Scarcely was I well in, when Heron, her son, came flying to her with a report that a man was seized in the palace garden who had threatened the Duke's life, and he was fearful lest it had been me; and I was much grieved by these tidings, in case any honest man should be put to the torture on my account; but the Lord had mercifully ordained it otherwise.

In the course of the night Heron Brownlee, after closing his shop, came again and told me that no one had been taken, but that some person in the mult.i.tude had given the Duke a dreadful paper, which had caused great consternation and panic; and that a council was sitting at that late hour with the Duke, expresses having arrived with accounts of the same paper having been seen on the doors of many churches, both in Nithsdale and the shire of Ayr. The alarm, indeed, raged to such a degree among all those who knew in their consciences how they merited the doom we had p.r.o.nounced, that it was said the very looks of many were withered as with a pestilent vapour.

Yet, though terrified at the vengeance declared against their guilt, neither the Duke nor the Privy Council were to be deterred from their malignant work. The curse of infatuation was upon them, and instead of changing the rule which had caused the desperation that they dreaded, they heated the furnace of persecution sevenfold; and voted, That whosoever owned or refused to disown the declaration should be put to death in the presence of two witnesses, though unarmed when taken; and the soldiers were not only ordered to enforce the test, but were instructed to put such as adhered to the declaration at once to the sword, and to slay those who refused to disown it; and women were ordered to be drowned. But my pen sickens with the recital of horrors, and I shall pa.s.s by the dreadful things that ensued, with only remarking that these b.l.o.o.d.y instructions consummated the doom of the Stuarts; for scarcely were they well published when the Duke hastened to London, and soon after his man-sworn brother, Charles, the great author of all our woes, was cut off by poison, as it was most currently believed, and the Duke proclaimed King in his stead. What change we obtained by the calamity of his accession will not require many sentences to unfold.

CHAPTER Lx.x.xVI

As soon as it was known abroad that Charles the Second was dead, the Covenanters who had taken refuge in Holland from the Persecution a.s.sembled to consult what ought then to be done; for the papist James Stuart, on the death of his brother, had caused himself to be proclaimed King of Scotland, without taking those oaths by which alone he could be ent.i.tled to a.s.sume the Scottish crown.

At the head of this congregation was the Earl of Argyle, who, some years before, had incurred the aversion of the tyrant to such a degree that, by certain of those fit tools for any crime, then in dismal abundance about the court of Holyrood, he had procured his condemnation as a traitor, and would have brought him to the scaffold, had the Earl not fortunately effected his escape. And it was resolved by that congregation that the princ.i.p.al personages then present should form themselves into a Council, to concert the requisite measures for the deliverance of their native land; the immediate issue of which was, that a descent should be made by Argyle among his va.s.sals, in order to draw together a sufficient host to enable them to wage war against the Usurper, for so they lawfully and rightly denominated James Stuart.

The first hint that I gleaned of this design was through the means of Mrs Brownlee. She was invited one afternoon by the gentlewoman of the Lady Sophia Lindsay, the Earl's daughter-in-law, to view certain articles of female bravery which had been sent from Holland by his Lordship to her mistress; and, as her custom was, she, on her return home, descanted at large of all that she had seen and heard.

The receipt, at that juncture, of such gear from the Earl of Argyle, by such a Judith of courage and wisdom as the Lady Sophia Lindsay, seemed to me very remarkable, and I could not but jealouse that there was some thing about it like the occultation of a graver correspondence. I therefore began to question Mrs Brownlee how the paraphernalia had come, and what the Earl, according to the last accounts, was doing; which led her to expatiate on many things, though vague and desultory, that were yet in concordance with what I had overheard the Lord Perth say to the Earl of Aberdeen in the Bishop's house. In the end, I gathered that the presents were brought over by the skipper of a sloop, one Roderick Macfarlane, whom I forthwith determined to see, in order to pick from him what intelligence I could, without being at the time well aware in what manner the same would prove useful; I felt myself, however, stirred from within to do so; and I had hitherto, in all that concerned my avenging vow, obeyed every instinctive impulse.

Accordingly, next morning I went early to the sh.o.r.e of Leith, and soon found the vessel and Roderick Macfarlane, to whom I addressed myself, inquiring, as if I intended to go thither, when he was likely to depart again for Amsterdam.

While I was speaking to him, I observed something in his mien above his condition; and that his hands were fair and delicate, unlike those of men inured to maritime labour. He perceived that I was particular in my inspection, and his countenance became troubled, and he looked as if he wist not what to do.

"Fear no ill," said I to him; "I am one in the jaws of jeopardy; in sooth I have no intent to pa.s.s into Holland, but only to learn whether there be any hope that the Earl of Argyle and those with him will try to help their covenanted brethren at home."

On hearing me speak so openly the countenance of the man brightened, and after eyeing me with a sharp scrutiny, he invited me to come down into the body of the bark, where we had some frank communion, his confidence being won by the plain tale of who I was and what I had endured. The Lord indeed was pleased, throughout that period of fears and tribulation, marvellously to endow the persecuted with a singular and sympathetic instinct, whereby they were enabled at once to discern their friends; for the dangers and difficulties, to which we were subject in our intercourse, afforded no time for those testimonies and experiences that in ordinary occasions are required to open the hearts of men to one another.

After some general discourse, Roderick Macfarlane told me, that his vessel, though seemingly only for traffic, had been hired by a certain Madam Smith, in Amsterdam, and was manned by Highlanders of a degree above the common, for the purpose of opening a correspondence between Argyle and his friends in Scotland. Whereupon I proffered myself to a.s.sist in establishing a communication with the heads and leaders of the Covenanters in the West Country, and particularly with Mr Renwick and his a.s.sociates, the Cameronians, who, though grievously scattered and hunted, were yet able to do great things in the way of conveying letters, or of intercepting the emissaries and agents of the Privy Council that might be employed to contravene the Earl's projects.

Thus it was that I came to be concerned in Argyle's unfortunate expedition--if that can be called unfortunate, which, though in itself a failure, yet ministered to make the scattered children of the Covenant again co-operate for the achievement of their common freedom. Doubtless the expedition was undertaken before the persecuted were sufficiently ripened to be of any effective service. The Earl counted overmuch on the spirit which the Persecution had raised; he thought that the weight of the tyranny had compressed us all into one body. But, alas! it had been so great, that it had not only bruised, but broken us asunder into many pieces; and time, and care, and much persuasion, were all requisite to solder the fragments together.

As the spring advanced, being, in the manner related, engaged in furthering the purposes of the exiled Covenanters, I prepared, through the instrumentality of divers friends, many in the West Country to be in readiness to join the Earl's standard of deliverance. It is not however to be disguised, that the work went on but slowly, and that the people heard of the intended descent with something like an actionless wonderment, in consequence of those by whom it had been planned not sending forth any declaration of their views and intents. And this indisposition, especially among the Cameronians, became a settled reluctance, when, after the Earl had reached Campbelton, he published that purposeless proclamation, wherein, though the wrongs and woes of the kingdom were pithily recited, the nature of the redress proposed was in no manner manifest. It was plain indeed, by many signs, that the Lord's time was not yet come for the work to thrive.

The divisions in Argyle's councils were greater even than those among the different orders into which the Covenanters had been long split--the very Cameronians might have been sooner persuaded to refrain from insisting on points of doctrine and opinion, at least till the adversary was overthrown, than those who were with the ill-fated Earl to act with union among themselves. In a word, all about the expedition was confusion and perplexity, and the omens and auguries of ruin showed how much it wanted the favour that is better than the strength of numbers, or the wisdom of mighty men. But to proceed.