A Short History of Scotland
Andrew Lang
CHAPTER XXVI. THE RESTORATION. Page 1
There was "dancing and derray" in Scotland among the laity when the king came to his own again. The darkest page in the national history seemed to have been turned; the conquering English were gone with their abominable tolerance, their craze for soap and water, their aversion to witch-burnings. The nobles and gentry would recover their lands and compensation for their losses; there would be offices to win, and "the spoils of office."
It seems that in Scotland none of the lessons of misfortune had been learned. Since January the chiefs of the milder party of preachers, the Resolutioners,--they who had been reconciled with the Engagers,--were employing the Rev. James Sharp, who had been a prisoner in England, as their agent with Monk, with Lauderdale, in April, with Charles in Holland, and, again, in London. Sharp was no fanatic. From the first he assured his brethren, Douglas of Edinburgh, Baillie, and the rest, that there was no chance for "rigid Presbyterianism." They could conceive of no Presbyterianism which was not rigid, in the manner of Andrew Melville, to whom his king was "Christ's silly vassal." Sharp warned them early in face of the irreconcilable Protesters, "moderate Episcopacy" would be preferred; and Douglas himself assured Sharp that the new generation in Scotland "bore a heart-hatred to the Covenant," and are "wearied of the yoke of presbyterial government."
This was true: the ruling classes had seen too much of presbyterial government, and would prefer bishops as long as they were not pampered and all-powerful. On the other hand the lesser gentry, still more their godly wives, the farmers and burgesses, and the preachers, regarded the very shadow of Episcopacy as a breach of the Covenant and an insult to the Almighty. The Covenanters had forced the Covenant on the consciences of thousands, from the king downwards, who in soul and conscience loathed it. They were to drink of the same cup--Episcopacy was to be forced on them by fines and imprisonments. Scotland, her people and rulers were moving in a vicious circle. The Resolutioners admitted that to allow the Protesters to have any hand in affairs was "to breed continual distemper and disorders," and Baillie was for banishing the leaders of the Protesters, irreconcilables like the Rev. James Guthrie, to the Orkney islands. But the Resolutioners, on the other hand, were no less eager to stop the use of the liturgy in Charles's own household, and to persecute every sort of Catholic, Dissenter, Sectary, and Quaker in Scotland. Meanwhile Argyll, in debt, despised on all sides, and yet dreaded, was holding a great open-air Communion meeting of Protesters at Paisley, in the heart of the wildest Covenanting region (May 27, 1660). He was still dangerous; he was trying to make himself trusted by the Protesters, who were opposed to Charles. It may be doubted if any great potentate in Scotland except the Marquis wished to revive the constitutional triumphs of Argyll's party in the last Parliament of Charles I. Charles now named his Privy Council and Ministers without waiting for parliamentary assent--though his first Parliament would have assented to anything. He chose only his late supporters: Glencairn who raised his standard in 1653; Rothes, a humorous and not a cruel voluptuary; and, as Secretary for Scotland in London, Lauderdale, who had urged him to take the Covenant, and who for twenty years was to be his buffoon, his favourite, and his wavering and unscrupulous adviser. Among these greedy and treacherous profligates there would, had he survived, have been no place for Montrose.
In defiance of warnings from omens, second-sighted men, and sensible men, Argyll left the safe sanctuary of his mountains and sea-straits, and betook himself to London, "a fey man." Most of his past was covered by an Act of Indemnity, but not his doings in 1653. He was arrested before he saw the king's face (July 8, 1660), and lay in the Tower till, in December, he was taken to be tried for treason in Scotland.
Sharp's friends were anxious to interfere in favour of establishing Presbyterianism in England; he told them that the hope was vain; he repeatedly asked for leave to return home, and, while an English preacher assured Charles that the rout of Worcester had been God's vengeance for his taking of the Covenant, Sharp (June 25) told his Resolutioners that "the Protesters' doom is dight."
Administration in Scotland was intrusted to the Committee of Estates whom Monk (1650) had captured at Alyth, and with them Glencairn, as Chancellor, entered Edinburgh on August 22. Next day, while the Committee was busy, James Guthrie and some Protester preachers met, and, in the old way, drew up a "supplication." They denounced religious toleration, and asked for the establishment of Presbytery in England, and the filling of all offices with Covenanters. They were all arrested and accused of attempting to "rekindle civil war," which would assuredly have followed had their prayer been accepted. Next year Guthrie was hanged. But ten days after his arrest Sharp had brought down a letter of Charles to the Edinburgh Presbytery, promising to "protect and preserve the government of the Church of Scotland as it is established by law." Had the words run "as it may be established by law" (in Parliament) it would not have been a dishonourable quibble--as it was.
Parliament opened on New Year's Day 1661, with Middleton as Commissioner. In the words of Sir George Mackenzie, then a very young advocate and man of letters, "never was Parliament so obsequious." The king was declared "supreme Governor over all persons and in all causes" (a blow at Kirk judicature), and all Acts between 1633 and 1661 were rescinded, just as thirty years of ecclesiastical legislation had been rescinded by the Covenanters. A sum of 40,000 pounds yearly was settled on the king. Argyll was tried, was defended by young George Mackenzie, and, when he seemed safe, his doom was fixed by the arrival of a Campbell from London bearing some of his letters to Lilburne and Monk (1653-1655) which the Indemnity of 1651 did not cover. He died, by the axe (not the rope, like Montrose), with dignity and courage.
The question of Church government in Scotland was left to Charles and his advisers. The problem presented to the Government of the Restoration by the Kirk was much more difficult and complicated than historians usually suppose. The pretensions which the preachers had inherited from Knox and Andrew Melville were practically incompatible, as had been proved, with the existence of the State. In the southern and western shires,--such as those of Dumfries, Galloway, Ayr, Renfrew, and Lanark,--the forces which attacked the Engagers had been mustered; these shires had backed Strachan and Ker and Guthrie in the agitation against the king, the Estates, and the less violent clergy, after Dunbar. But without Argyll, and with no probable noble leaders, they could do little harm; they had done none under the English occupation, which abolished the General Assembly. To have restored the Assembly, or rather two Assemblies--that of the Protesters and of the Resolutionists,--would certainly have been perilous. Probably the wisest plan would have been to grant a General Assembly, to meet _after_ the session of Parliament; not, as had been the custom, to meet before it and influence or coerce the Estates. Had that measure proved perilous to peace it need not have been repeated,--the Kirk might have been left in the state to which the English had reduced it.
This measure would not have so much infuriated the devout as did the introduction of "black prelacy," and the ejection of some 300 adored ministers, chiefly in the south-west, and "the making of a desert first, and then peopling it with owls and satyrs" (the curates), as Archbishop Leighton described the action of 1663. There ensued the finings of all who would not attend the ministrations of "owls and satyrs,"--a grievance which produced two rebellions (1666 and 1679) and a doctrine of anarchism, and was only worn down by eternal and cruel persecutions.
By violence the Restoration achieved its aim: the Revolution of 1688 entered into the results; it was a bitter moment in the evolution of Scotland--a moment that need never have existed. Episcopacy was restored, four bishops were consecrated, and Sharp accepted (as might have long been foreseen) the See of St Andrews. He was henceforth reckoned a Judas, and assuredly he had ruined his character for honour: he became a puppet of Government, despised by his masters, loathed by the rest of Scotland.
In May-September 1662, Parliament ratified the change to Episcopacy. It seems to have been thought that few preachers except the Protesters would be recalcitrant, refuse collation from bishops, and leave their manses. In point of fact, though they were allowed to consult their consciences till February 1663, nearly 300 ministers preferred their consciences to their livings. They remained centres of the devotion of their flocks, and the "curates," hastily gathered, who took their places, were stigmatised as ignorant and profligate, while, as they were resisted, rabbled, and daily insulted, the country was full of disorder.
The Government thus mortally offended the devout classes, though no attempt was made to introduce a liturgy. In the churches the services were exactly, or almost exactly, what they had been; but excommunications could now only be done by sanction of the bishops. Witch-burnings, in spite of the opposition of George Mackenzie and the Council, were soon as common as under the Covenant. Oaths declaring it unlawful to enter into Covenants or take up arms against the king were imposed on all persons in office.
The Parliament of June 1663, meeting under Rothes, was packed by the least constitutional method of choosing the Lords of the Articles. Waristoun was brought from France, tried, and hanged, "expressing more fear than I ever saw," wrote Lauderdale, whose Act "against Separation and Disobedience to Ecclesiastical Authority" fined abstainers from services in their parish churches. In 1664, Sharp, who was despised by Lauderdale and Glencairn, obtained the erection of that old grievance--a Court of High Commission, including bishops, to punish nonconformists. Sir James Turner was intrusted with the task of dragooning them, by fining and the quartering of soldiers on those who would not attend the curates and would keep conventicles. Turner was naturally clement and good-natured, but wine often deprived him of his wits, and his soldiery behaved brutally. Their excesses increased discontent, and war with Holland (1664) gave them hopes of a Dutch ally. Conventicles became common; they had an organisation of scouts and sentinels. The malcontents intrigued with Holland in 1666, and schemed to capture the three Keys of the Kingdom--the castles of Stirling, Dumbarton, and Edinburgh. The States-General promised, when this was done, to send ammunition and 150,000 gulden (July 1666).
When rebellion did break out it had no foreign aid, and a casual origin. In the south-west Turner commanded but seventy soldiers, scattered all about the country. On November 14 some of them mishandled an old man in the clachan of Dalry, on the Ken. A soldier was shot in revenge (Mackenzie speaks as if a conventicle was going on in the neighbourhood); people gathered in arms, with the Laird of Corsack, young Maxwell of Monreith, and M'Lennan; caught Turner, undressed, in Dumfries, and carried him with them as they "went conventicling about," as Mackenzie writes, holding prayer-meetings, led by Wallace, an old soldier of the Covenant. At Lanark they renewed the Covenant. Dalziel of Binns, who had learned war in Russia, led a pursuing force. The rebels were disappointed in hopes of Dutch or native help at Edinburgh; they turned, when within three miles of the town, into the passes of the Pentland Hills, and at Bullion Green, on November 28, displayed fine soldierly qualities and courage, but fled, broken, at nightfall. The soldiers and countryfolk, who were unsympathetic, took a number of prisoners, preachers and laymen, on whom the Council, under the presidency of Sharp, exercised a cruelty bred of terror. The prisoners were defended by George Mackenzie: it has been strangely stated that he was Lord Advocate, and persecuted them! Fifteen rebels were hanged: the use of torture to extract information was a return, under Fletcher, the King's Advocate, to a practice of Scottish law which had been almost in abeyance since 1638--except, of course, in the case of witches. Turner vainly tried to save from the Boot (208) the Laird of Corsack, who had protected his life from the fanatics. "The executioner favoured Mr Mackail," says the Rev. Mr Kirkton, himself a sufferer later. This Mr Mackail, when a lad of twenty-one (1662), had already denounced the rulers, in a sermon, as on the moral level of Haman and Judas.
It is entirely untrue that Sharp concealed a letter from the king commanding that no blood should be shed (Charles detested hanging people). If any one concealed his letter, it was Burnet, Archbishop of Glasgow. Dalziel now sent Ballantyne to supersede Turner and to exceed him in ferocity; and Bellenden and Tweeddale wrote to Lauderdale deprecating the cruelties and rapacity of the reaction, and avowing contempt of Sharp. He was "snibbed," confined to his diocese, and "cast down, yea, lower than the dust," wrote Rothes to Lauderdale. He was held to have exaggerated in his reports the forces of the spirit of revolt; but Tweeddale, Sir Robert Murray, and Kincardine found when in power that matters were really much more serious than they had supposed. In the disturbed districts--mainly the old Strathclyde and Pictish Galloway--the conformist ministers were perpetually threatened, insulted, and robbed.
According to a sympathetic historian, "on the day when Charles should abolish bishops and permit free General Assemblies, the western Whigs would become his law-abiding subjects; but till that day they would be irreconcilable." But a Government is not always well advised in yielding to violence. Moreover, when Government had deserted its clergy, and had granted free General Assemblies, the two Covenants would re-arise, and the pretensions of the clergy to dominate the State would be revived. Lauderdale drifted into a policy of alternate "Indulgences" or tolerations, and of repression, which had the desired effect, at the maximum of cost to justice and decency. Before England drove James II. from the throne, but a small remnant of fanatics were in active resistance, and the Covenants had ceased to be dangerous.