NARRATIVES 
 
 t— — — — 
 
 CRIMINAL TRIALS IN SCOTLAND. 
 
 JOHN HILL BURTON, 
 
 AUTHOR OF "THE LIFE OF DAVID HUME," " THE LIVES OF SIMON LORD 
 LOVAT, AND DUNCAN FORBES OF CULLODEN," &C. 
 
 IN TWO VOLUMES. 
 
 VOL II. 
 
 LONDON : 
 CHAPMAN AND HALL, 193, PICCADILLY. 
 
 1852.
 
 CRIMINAL TRIALS IN SCOTLAND. 
 
 TRIALS FOR POISONING. 
 
 M. Dumas makes his Count of Monte Christo 
 comment sarcastically on the vulgar criminal poi- 
 soner, who, with the marks of excitement visible 
 on his countenance, goes to the nearest chemist to 
 buy arsenic for destroying imaginary rats, mixes in 
 the victim's food enough of the poison to slay a 
 host, and is at once betrayed by the burning spasms, 
 and the perceptible metallic earth profusely dis- 
 tributed through the unfinished food and the con- 
 tents of the stomach. 
 
 One of the most observable things in the 
 history of crime is the slowness with which it 
 adopts, when it adopts at all, the aids of advancing 
 science. While the efforts that do good to man- 
 kind are ever triumphing in new lights, wicked- 
 ness lurks in old barbaric darkness. It is surely 
 
 VOL. II. B
 
 2 TRIALS FOR POISONING. 
 
 one of the most cheering tokens of a superior wis- 
 dom in the guidance of the universe, that science 
 can control its powers for good ends, and that 
 the intellectual capacities of men are the servants 
 and not the masters of the moral. All our great 
 discoveries, from printing down to the electric tele- 
 graph, have aided in the detection rather than the 
 accomplishment of crime, and every new surrender 
 of physical difficulties to scientific skill, gives the 
 supporters of order and morality new checks on 
 licentiousness and vice. 
 
 Yet well-meaning people, who have seen with 
 admiring joy the order and beauty of creation in 
 inanimate objects, have been loth to follow it into 
 these deeper and more sublime recesses. Thus 
 pious heads have vibrated at every invention or 
 discovery increasing the command of man over the 
 physical world, as if it also increased the command 
 of evil over good. At one time it appears that 
 crime is to flee before justice on the wings of steam 
 — at another it is proclaimed that forgery and 
 fraudulent imitation of every kind can be pursued 
 on a bountiful scale without the possibility of detec- 
 tion — and many a time the revelations of the chemist 
 fraudulent imitation of every kind can be pursued 
 on a bountiful scale without the possibility of detec- 
 tion — and many a time the revelations of the chemist
 
 TRIALS FOE POISONING. 3 
 
 This world would be, indeed, a darker abiding 
 place than it is, if every scientific discovery were 
 only to strengthen the destructive powers of a race 
 of Brinvilliers and Borgias. Science, when it 
 rises in the midst of a state of society where the 
 other elements of civilisation keep pace with its 
 progress, rarely lends itself to crime ; and in the 
 midst of its brightest achievements we generally 
 find the darker crimes perpetrated with the narrow 
 knowledge, and the clumsy materials that have 
 been inherited from distant ages of ignorance and 
 ruffianism.* 
 
 It is gratifying to curiosity, as it is important in 
 experimental ethics, to examine individual instances 
 in sufficiently extensive groups, that we may see 
 whether any such general view is founded on truth. 
 With this object, the more prominent cases of 
 poisoning which have occurred in Scotland are 
 now brought in their main features rapidly before 
 the reader, and it is believed that he will not find 
 them give countenance to the view that the skill of * 
 the poisoner increases in the same ratio as that of 
 the scientific benefactor of his species. 
 
 * It is curious, that in the only great crime lately known to 
 be committed by a man of noted scientific attainments, the 
 murder of Dr. Parkman by Professor Webster, the chemical 
 adept, instead of drawing on the resources of his science, per- 
 petrated his crime with the rude brutality of a savage. 
 
 b2
 
 4 TRIALS FOR POISONING. 
 
 In the earlier trials, witchcraft and poisoning are 
 mixed together. The sages of the law took their 
 rules rather from classical poetry than from any 
 knowledge which their meagre scientific acquire- 
 ments placed at their command. The agencies 
 which, without external violence, extinguished life, 
 could not be separated from those which were be- 
 lieved by the ignorant to accomplish in the same 
 inscrutable manner the traditionary exploits which 
 we now treat as supernatural. Thus the poisoner 
 was the direct representative of the Roman veneficus, 
 whose philtres are equally efficacious in extinguishing 
 life, in raising the spectres of the departed, in trans- 
 forming men into brutes, and in absorbing the agri- 
 cultural riches of a neighbour's field. 
 
 " Has herbas, atq: haec Ponto mihi lecta venena 
 Ipse dedit Mceris: nascuntur plurima Ponto. 
 His ego s£epe lupum fieri et se condere sylvis 
 Moerin, sa?pe animas imis excire sepulchris, 
 Atque satas alio vidi traducere messes." 
 
 One of the earliest cases of this character — that 
 of the Lady Glammis — is extremely tantalising, 
 from its imperfect details, and the glimpses they 
 afford into a mysterious and inexplicable history. 
 She was subjected to the revolting punishment 
 of being publicly burned at the stake for attempts 
 against the life of Kins- James V. At an earlier 
 period we find traces of an attempt to bring her to
 
 TRIALS FOR POISONING. 5 
 
 trial for the "intoxication of her husband" — a 
 charge which, according to the modern meaning of 
 words, and without further explanation, would 
 only seem criminal in the eyes of a jury of total 
 abstainers. But a darker colouring is given to the 
 affair by other documents, which refer to her having 
 put him to death through the same means (per in- 
 toxicationem);* and the accusation, doubtless, re- 
 ferred to the use of philtres, poisonous drugs, or in- 
 cantations. She was never brought to trial for this 
 offence; and the form in which the few faint allu- 
 sions to it are recorded is very singular. It is in 
 the levying of penalties on persons who had failed 
 to come forward as jurymen on her trial. They 
 were men of standing and substance, and their 
 evasion of the trial, when coupled with what after- 
 wards occurred, would seem to point a{ the monarch's 
 determination to sacrifice this lady having been 
 baffled by a desire among her fellow-subjects to pro- 
 tect her from the royal vengeance. These proceedings 
 occurred in the year 1532. It was in 1537 that she 
 was charged with the more formidable offence of an 
 attempt on the life of the king. The chronicles of 
 the day allude to the means by which she was to 
 
 * Pitcairn's Trials, i., 158, 189. The same expression is used 
 in some subsequent trials for poisoning, so briefly reported as 
 to afford no materials for special notice.
 
 6 TKIALS FOR POISONING. 
 
 perpetrate the murder — sometimes as witchcraft 
 — sometimes as poison. The criminal charge against 
 her, which is recorded in the briefest possible form, 
 is simply that she had " conspired and imagined the 
 destruction of the most noble person of our most 
 serene lord the king by poison." But, coupled with 
 this, there is another charge which is supposed to 
 reveal the secret of her fate; it is for giving aid 
 and succour to Archibald Earl of Angus and his 
 brother, George Douglas, in their rebellion. The 
 Lady Glammis was a sister of Angus, and appears 
 to have inherited the high spirit of her race. The 
 house ofJDouglas, after its most desperate wrestle 
 with the power of the crown, had fallen, to all ap- 
 pearance irretrievably. There was little generosity 
 or even compassion in those days for humbled 
 enemies; and the slightest footing left to the sub- 
 dued foe might only give him the means of future 
 vengeance. When it was a merit in the court 
 menials to refuse a cup of water to the fallen chief, 
 he was, however, tended with bountiful affection 
 by his sister, the Lady Glammis. This is believed 
 to be the secret of her tragic fate, and of the narrow 
 information on the specific acts of which she was 
 charged* Sir Thomas Clifford, the English am- 
 
 * That the criminal prosecution of Lady Glammis was only 
 part of a general project for crushing the house of Douglas, has
 
 TRIALS FOR POISONING. 7 
 
 bassador, in a letter in which he strangely misspells 
 the title of the great earl, says: " The Lady Glam- 
 mis, sister to th' Earle of Anguysh, was brint in 
 Edinburgh for treason laid to her charge against the 
 king's person — as I can perceive without any sub- 
 stantial ground or proof of matter."* 
 
 Some historians speak in a tone almost chivalrous 
 of the fate of this unfortunate lady. The historian 
 of the family of Drummond says: "She was ac- 
 cused by suspected witnesses, if not false, that she 
 and her son and some others had gone about to 
 take away King James the Fifth his life by witch- 
 craft. Whereupon she was burnt upon the Castle- 
 hill of Edinburgh with great commiseration of the 
 people, in regard of her noble blood and singular 
 beauty, she being in the prime of her age, and 
 
 been inferred from the contemporary condemnation and execu- 
 tion of the Master of Forbes, who was married to a sister of 
 Douglas and the Lady Glammis, on charges equally mysterious 
 and unsatisfactory, and similarly doubted by contemporary 
 historians. He was charged with two separate offences — a 
 design to shoot the king with a culverin as he passed through 
 Aberdeen to hold a justice air, and an attempt to destroy or 
 betray part of the Scottish army assembled at Jedburgh — a 
 charge which the record of the indictment leaves in a very 
 ambiguous state. The suspicious features in the affair were, 
 that save from the fact of the master being executed for their 
 perpetration, the historians of the period had no information of 
 treasons either in the north or south; and that the chief 
 informer was banished from the country. 
 * Pitcairn, i., 198.
 
 8 TRIALS FOR POISONING. 
 
 suffering with a masculine courage — all men con- 
 ceiving that the king's hatred to her brothers had 
 brought her to that end."* Similar and more full 
 are the notices of old Hume of Godscroft, whose 
 history of the house of Douglas was penned with 
 the devotion of a family bard or Celtic senachie : 
 
 " The king's anger still continued against them in 
 such sort, that nine years after, in 1537, he was 
 contented that Jane Douglas, Lady Glammis, who 
 was Angus's sister, should be accused by false 
 witnesses, condemned, and execute. The point of 
 her accusation was, that she and her husband, 
 Archibald Campbell then, and her son, and an old 
 priest, had gone about to make away the king by 
 witchcraft. Their servants were tried and racked, 
 but confessed nothing. Her accuser, John Lvon, a 
 servant of her first husband, when he saw how they 
 were liked to be used, and that the house of Glam- 
 mis would be ruined, repenting of what he had 
 done, confessed to the king that he had wronged 
 them — but it did no good." 
 
 The author of a large clumsy folio volume, called 
 the History of Scotland, by David Scott, of the 
 Inner Temple — a work generally voted by the few 
 who have turned over its pages as rather unreadable 
 — tells us that Lady Glammis " was the most cele- 
 
 * Pitcairn, I*, p. 194.
 
 TRIALS FOR POISONING. 9 
 
 brated beauty in the nation. She was of a middle 
 stature, not too fat; her face of an oval form with 
 full eyes; her complexion extremely fair and beau- 
 tiful, with a majestic mien;" and as Mr. Scott is 
 bent on making her a heroine of the Scuderi school, 
 he enumerates some further qualities of the kind 
 commonly called perfections, and gives her speech as 
 delivered at the bar of the court by which she was 
 condemned, with many other particular events for 
 which he had no authority. 
 
 It must be mentioned as in some measure weigh- 
 ing against the theory of the Lady Glammis being 
 fictitously accused, that a certain Alexander Makke, 
 or Mack, was tried for having prepared and sold 
 the poison. His punishment was a curious one: 
 to have his ears cut off, and to be banished to the 
 county of Aberdeen; there to remain for the re- 
 mainder of his life, which was to be forfeited if he 
 entered any other part of Scotland.* 
 
 One miidit be inclined to ask what crime the 
 inhabitants of the northern county had committed 
 that they should be judicially burdened with a con- 
 cocter of poisons. The punishment, however, might 
 
 * Et erit bannitus extra omnes partes Scotia; proeter vice- 
 comitatum de Aberdene ; et ibidem inanebit omnibus diebus 
 vita? sua;; et quod exibit dictum vicecomitatum sub pena 
 mortis. — Pitcairn, i., 203.
 
 10 TRIALS FOR POISONING. 
 
 be considered lenient; a statute of the reign of James 
 II. emphatically provided that any person importing 
 poison, " through the whilk any Christian man or 
 woman may take bodily harm," " shall tyne and 
 forfeit to the king, life, lands, and goods." This 
 law induces Sir George Mackenzie seriously to con- 
 sider whether poison destined for a Jew or Pagan, 
 or for an excommunicated person, comes within the 
 act* 
 
 After some uninteresting and briefly recorded 
 cases, the next remarkable trial for poisoning is that 
 of another titled woman — the Lady Fowlis — who 
 was indicted on the 22nd July, 1590, for witchcraft, 
 incantation, sorcery, and poisoning. The accusa- 
 tions against her, if true, are a history of terrible 
 criminality and superstition. She was the second wife 
 of the Lord Fowlis, and one of the victims against 
 whom she directed her machinations was his eldest 
 
 * It is an indication of the mysterious importance attached 
 to everything connected with the operation of poison, while so 
 slight a scientific control could be exercised over its influence, 
 that in 1601, an important trial before the High Court of Jus- 
 ticiary, in which the king took a personal interest, related to 
 no more formidable achievement than the slaughter of a couple 
 of fowls. Thomas Bellie, burgess of Brechin, and his son, were 
 accused of " having and keeping of poison, mixing the same 
 with daich or dough, and casting down thereof in Janet Clerk's 
 yard, in Brechin, for the destruction of fowls; by the which 
 poison they destroyed to the said Janet two hens." The ac- 
 cused were banished from the kingdom for life.
 
 TRIALS TOR POISONING. 1 1 
 
 son by his former marriage, and the heir to the family 
 estate. The other object of her murderous attempts 
 was Marjery Campbell, the wife of her brother Ross 
 of Balnagowan. Her object in this instance was, it 
 appears, to bring about a marriage between her 
 brother and her step-daughter, the sister of the other 
 victim; but the ultimate effects which she had in 
 view are far from being distinct. 
 
 The lady's chief familiar and agent in this diabo- 
 lical business was a certain Marjory McAllester, 
 alias Loskie Loncart, denounced in the indict- 
 ment as "a notorious witch." A portion of their 
 operations, which they seem to have carried on 
 with a perseverance worthy of a better and more 
 productive cause, was the making of " pictures" or 
 images of their victims in clay and butter. Loskie 
 Loncart was the artist on the occasion, and it would 
 be interesting could we know how far the accom- 
 plishments which gave her a reputation for super- 
 natural powers extended to the fine arts. The lady 
 and her colleague occupied themselves in discharging 
 elf arrows, or the little flint arrow-heads, which 
 have been dug up in numbers throughout Scotland, 
 at these figures.* One instance is mentioned where 
 the Lady Fowlis stood by when Loskie Loncart 
 
 * A notice of these elf arrows will be found in the witchcraft 
 trials in this collection, vol. i., p. 282.
 
 12 TRIALS FOR POISONING. 
 
 discharged the elf arrow eight times at the picture, 
 flagrantly missing it at every shot. They had pro- 
 vided, it appears, " three-quarters of fine linen cloth 
 for the pictures, if they had been hit by the elf 
 arrow-head, and the linen to be bound about the 
 said pictures, and the pictures so have been eirded 
 (or earthed) under the brigend of the stank of 
 Fowlis;" a species of shrouding and burial which 
 was to follow the symbolical extermination.* 
 
 The charges of preparing and administering 
 poison, mixed up with these attempts to wield the 
 powers of darkness, are numerous and rather con- 
 fused. The lady is said to have made a stoup full 
 of poisoned new ale in the barn of Drymmen, 
 assisted by Loskie Loncart, who appears to have 
 been prepared to undertake anything that had 
 malice and wickedness for its end, whether by 
 natural or supernatural means — and another familiar 
 named Christian Ross. The poison, says the in- 
 dictment, " was kept in the kiln of the said town of 
 
 * This method of symbolical destruction of life or corporal 
 functions is very ancient. Ovid says : 
 
 " Simulacraque cerea figit 
 
 Et miserum tenues in jecur urget acus." 
 And again : 
 
 " Nura mea Thessalico languent devota veneno 
 Corpora? Num misero carmen et herba nocent? 
 Sagave Phcenicea defixit nomina cera 
 Et medium tenues in jecur egit acus."
 
 TRIALS FOR POISONING. 13 
 
 Drymmen for the space of three nights, and the 
 said Christian Ross, Loskie Loncart, and thou, 
 convened the third day again thereafter in the said 
 kiln, where thou commanded Loskie Loncart to 
 make a pig* full of ranker poison that would de- 
 stroy shortly the foresaid persons — at whose com- 
 mand the said Lcskie Loncart made the said poison 
 and put it in a pig and sent it to thee." 
 
 Then comes another charge, attended by curious 
 incidents : " Also thou art accused for assisting and 
 wiving council in company with the said Christian 
 Ross and Loskie Loncart, in sending of a pig of poison 
 with the nurse to Angus Leith's house, where the 
 young Laird of Fowlis was for the time, of deliberate 
 mind to have poisoned him therewith — whilk thou 
 had in keeping, and the said nurse bringing the said 
 pig from thee, it fell in the way under silence of 
 night, and broke the pig, and she tasting the same, 
 immediately after departed (that is, died) of the 
 said poison — and the same was devised for poison- 
 ing of the young Laird of Fowlis, which the said 
 Christian confessed judicially, being accused as said 
 is, and was convicted of the same. And for the 
 more witnessing the place where the said pig broke, 
 the grass that grew upon the same was so high by 
 the nature of other grass, that neither cow, ox, nor 
 * Pig, an earthenware vessel.
 
 14 TRIALS FOR POISONING. 
 
 sheep ever previt thereof yet — whilk is manifest and 
 notorious to the whole country of Ross, whilk thou 
 can nought deny." 
 
 The staple excuse of poisoning rats seems to have 
 been well known even at that early day. " Thou 
 art accused," says another branch of the indictment, 
 " of giving of eight shillings money to William 
 McGillivirie-dam to pass to Elgin, for buying 
 rattoun poison — who wared [disbursed] thereof but 
 sixteen pennies; and brayed the said poison, and 
 put it in ane piece leather, and delivered it to thee 
 in June, seventy-seven years within the stank of 
 Fowlis — Catharine Ross, daughter to Sir David 
 Ross, of Balnagowan, being in council thereof — 
 and to the more verification thou delivered to him 
 with the said eight shillings, four ells linen cloth 
 for his labours; whilk he confessed, being accused 
 judicially, and was convict by an assize, and burnt 
 for the same, as the haill country knows." 
 
 It is impossible to convey to the reader a notion 
 of the preposterous quaintness of such charges, with- 
 out quoting the terms of the documents in which 
 they are set forth; and their peculiar character is 
 necessarily in a great measure sacrificed by the 
 modernising of the spelling. Besides the several 
 familiars who have been already mentioned, the lady 
 dealt with the Egyptians or Gipsies, ever possessed
 
 TRIALS FOR POISONING. 15 
 
 of a dark reputation as accomplished poisoners. 
 Other accomplices were, like the man with the long 
 quaint name who bought the rat-poison, convicted 
 and burned. The lady herself was, however, ac- 
 quitted; and, from the long series of years covered 
 by the numerous charges against her, it would seem 
 that there must have been difficulty in bringing to 
 trial one who had so large a circle of influential 
 relations. 
 
 The mysterious charge against the master of 
 Orkney, for attempts on the life of his brother, the 
 earl, is another amalgamation of witchcraft and 
 poisoning. It is referred to in the chapter on 
 witchcraft trials as one of the unhappy examples of 
 confession under torture. As in Lady Fowlis's case, 
 the subordinate instruments were executed, after 
 being duly tortured ; the master was acquitted, and 
 the denials, which were of no avail to them, appear 
 to have operated strongly in his vindication. The 
 indictment is extremely vague — apparently it had 
 been made so intentionally, to give room for ac- 
 quittal. 
 
 In a case of mixed poisoning and witchcraft which 
 occurred in 1607, no moral distinction appears to 
 have been made between the administration of po- 
 tions destined to kill and potions destined to cure. 
 The adoption of means held to involve unlawful
 
 16 TRIALS FOR POISONING. 
 
 and supernatural agency, was held to be the moral 
 offence, not affected by the ultimate temporal result. 
 Thus Bartie Paterson, tasker in Newbottle, is ac- 
 cused " of the crime of sorcery and witchcraft, in 
 abusing of the people with charms and divers sorts 
 of inchantments, and ministering, under the form of 
 medicine, of poisonable drinks; and of art and part 
 of the murder of John Miller, in Ford Mill, about 
 Martinmas last, and of um while Elizabeth Robertson, 
 by the said poisonable drinks. For curing of James 
 Brown, in Turny dykes, of an unknown disease, by 
 ministering to him of drinks, rubbing him with 
 salves made of divers green herbs, and causing him 
 to pass home to his own house, and at his own bed- 
 side to sit down on his knees three several nights, and 
 every night, thrice nine times, to ask his health of 
 all living wights above and under the earth, in the 
 name of Jesus. And thereafter ordained the said 
 James to take nine pickles of wheat, nine pickles of 
 salt, and nine pieces of rowen tree, and to wear 
 them continually upon him for his health, commit- 
 ting thereby manifest sorcery and witchcraft. Item, 
 for abusing the people with a certain water, brought 
 by him forth of the loch called the Dhu Loch, be- 
 side Drumlanrig, and curing of his own bairn with 
 the said loch water, by washing of the said bairn 
 at every neuk (corner) thereof thrice; and casting
 
 TRIALS FOR POISONING. 17 
 
 in of the bairn's sark in the said loch, and leaving 
 of the sark behind him, affirming that if any should 
 come forth of the loch at that time, the patient 
 would convalesce, and if nathing appeared to him, 
 the patient would die;"* and so on in the same 
 strain. 
 
 If Bartie Paterson performed these operations at 
 the present day, the humblest peasantry of Drum- 
 lanrig would think him as innocent as he was pre- 
 posterous. But what makes such a charge typical 
 of ignorance frightful and chaotic among the peo- 
 ple, whose most learned men entertained such 
 charges, is the entire overlooking of the ultimate 
 object and its effects, good or bad, on human beings. 
 The murder of John Miller and Elizabeth Robert- 
 son with poisonable drinks, seems to have been put 
 in the same category of crime as the curing James 
 Brown of an unknown disease, and the attempt by 
 the wizard to restore his own child's health with 
 the waters of the Dhu Loch. Paterson was sen- 
 tenced to be " worried," or strangled, at a stake, and 
 burned. 
 
 The next case is an instance of unquestionable 
 crime perpetrated by several members of a very 
 worshipful family, for the basest motives. In 1613, 
 
 * Pitcairn, ii., 535. 
 VOL. II. C
 
 18 TEIALS FOR POISONING. 
 
 Robert Erskine and his three sisters, Helen, Isobel, 
 and Agnes, were brought to trial for the murder 
 of their nephew, the young Laird of Dun. This 
 miserable family were the direct descendants and 
 representatives of that John Erskine of Dun, one 
 of the leaders of the Reformation, whose zeal, piety, 
 and private worth, acquired for him a veneration 
 not far behind that paid to Knox and Wishart. He 
 died at a good old age, twenty-two years before 
 these sad events, but his descendants seem not to 
 have been men of long life, for it would appear 
 that the two generations of them intervened be- 
 tween the patriarch and the murderers. The 
 attempt was made against two boys, the Laird of 
 Dun and his brother, for the end of the principal 
 perpetrator would not have been served by the 
 death of one. His sisters, the aunts of the two 
 children, seem to have urged him on with a vehe- 
 mence not less horrible, that they had not ap- 
 parently the same mercenary motive. The ladies 
 were charged with " having proponed to one David 
 Blewhouse that if he would undertake to get a 
 witch, that by some sinistrous means would under- 
 take to take away the lives of the said two boys 
 that were betwixt the said Robert and the living of 
 Dun, that the said David should receive for his
 
 TRIALS FOR POISONING. 19 
 
 reward a possession for his lifetime on the lands 
 of Dun, and five hundred merks of silver."* 
 
 Blewhouse, however, was not induced to serve 
 their purpose. It is then stated that the ladies 
 crossed the Cairn of Mont — a pass of the Grampians 
 near which the upper portion of Angus touches 
 the Highlands — and having entered the wilder 
 country to the north, forgathered at the Muir-ale- 
 house with one suited for their purpose — a certain 
 Janet Irving, " a witch and abuser of the people." 
 From her they received the poisonous herbs; and it 
 is stated that, on seeing them, Robert Erskine hav- 
 ing doubts of their sufficiency for their murderous 
 purpose, crossed the Mont himself, and held a con- 
 sultation with the sorceress. The herbs were steeped 
 for a long time in ale. Robert, it seems, still had 
 doubts of their efficacy, and questioned whether the 
 mixture had not better be thrown away. But the 
 sisters thought it would be a pity not to give it a 
 trial, and so setting off to Montrose, they managed 
 to get the boys to partake of the liquid. The 
 clumsiness of such an act, in which two boys were 
 to partake of a nauseous drink, which was imme- 
 diately to produce sickness and destroy life, is one 
 of the most singular features of the affair — but it 
 was not always considered fatal to the criminal in 
 * Pitcaim, iii., 262. 
 
 C 2
 
 20 TRIALS FOR POISONING. 
 
 that age for his crime to be suspected or known — 
 punishment was by no means a necessary sequence. 
 The children are described as being speedily seized 
 with spasms and violent vomiting. The eldest 
 turned black and dwined away, " in great dolour 
 and pain," and before his death, said in his agony, 
 " Wo is me that I ever had right of succession to 
 any lands or living; for if I had been born some 
 poor cotter's son, I had nought been so demeaned 
 — nor such wicked practices had been plotted 
 against me for my lands." One is reminded of 
 Prince Arthur speaking to Hubert, "Is it my 
 fault that I was Jeffrey's son." 
 
 Since the accession of James to the throne of 
 England, the law had become somewhat stronger 
 than of old, and these conspirators were convicted 
 and executed, with the exception of one of the 
 ladies, who, being " more penitent and less guilty" 
 than the other two, was banished. 
 
 Before passing from these grotesque scenes, in 
 which the supernatural was so rife an agent, to the 
 vulgar poisonings of the present day, one or two 
 peculiar cases require attention. 
 
 The nearest instance in Scotland to the deliberate 
 and leisurely poisonings of the French romances, 
 will probably be found in the trial of George Clerk 
 and John Ramsay for the murder of John Ander-
 
 TRIALS FOR POISONING. 21 
 
 son in 1676. A disease then raged in Edinburgh, 
 bearing a close resemblance to the Asiatic cholera 
 in its general features. Like the pestilence of later 
 times, it lay under the suspicion of being contagious,. 
 and those who were smitten were presently deserted 
 by all whose affection was not stronger than their 
 fear. It was the isolation likely to surround an old 
 bachelor, when reported to be smitten with the 
 prevalent epidemic, that tempted the accused to 
 commit their offence. The perpetrators were An- 
 derson's servants, and the only persons who lived in 
 his house. He appears to have been a person of 
 eccentric and rather dissipated habits, for it was 
 said that the murderers imagined their evil deed 
 from a practice which they had fallen into of 
 drugging their master's liquor, that, like the Spartan 
 slaves, he might furnish sport to them. 
 
 The accused obtained the aid of an apothecary's 
 assistant, who furnished them with drugs capable of 
 producing the usual symptoms of the prevailing 
 epidemic. Anderson consulted a medical man, to 
 whom the case presented nothing but what was too 
 common. He prescribed for his patient, and, as if 
 it had been an instance of the disease brought on 
 by no artificial means, the medicines had the usual 
 miti^atino; effect. The contest between the two 
 antagonist drugs going against the conspirators,
 
 22 TRIALS FOR POISONING. 
 
 they settled the question in their own favour for 
 the time, by the application of opiates. They then 
 got possession of the house keys, which Anderson 
 seems to have at other times safely guarded; and, 
 rifling his chests, robbed him of a large gold chain 
 and many other precious articles. 
 
 They appear to have compounded with their 
 consciences, not directly to poison the old man, but 
 to inflict him with disease, and take precautions 
 against his recovery. He seemed likely, however, 
 to escape; his friends visited him, and his spirits 
 rose. In a short time he would discover the knavery 
 that had been practised on him, and it was necessary 
 that the conspirators should adopt energetic mea- 
 sures. They had recourse to their friend, the 
 apothecary's assistant; and this time it was a direct 
 application for poison. He too, however, had a 
 conscience, and he would not furnish them with 
 immediate poison, but would give them drugs, the 
 judicious use of which would deprive the victim of 
 life within a month ; he recommended them to avoid 
 poison, as the body would swell and betray the foul 
 play. The drug which he furnished, called powder 
 of jalap, appears to have been more rapidly efficacious 
 than it had been intended to be. Anderson was 
 getting so well, that on Saturday night his medical 
 attendant said he would consider it unnecessary to
 
 TRIALS FOR POISONING. 23 
 
 visit him on Sunday. The old man rose on 
 Sunday " more like himself," to use a national ex- 
 pression, than he had been for some time. Probably 
 these alarming symptoms of restoration were a spur 
 to the conspirators to hasten their work, for they 
 dosed his medicine so effectually, that he died on 
 Monday morning at ten o'clock. While he lay in 
 bis agony they rilled his remaining repositories, 
 which seem to have contained a considerable sum of 
 money; and it was not till he was too near the jaws 
 of death to make any revelation that they called in 
 the neighbours. The conspirators were convicted 
 and hanged, and the apothecary's assistant, wlio 
 served their guilty purpose, was banished for 
 life* 
 
 Yet this treacherous crime is far outstripped in 
 deep guilt by the tissue of atrocities with which 
 Nichol Mushet was charged in 1720. The reader 
 will probably be familiar with the name, from the 
 mysterious allusions to it in "The Heart of Mid- 
 lothian," and particularly from the wild scenes 
 which take place round the cairn, raised to mark 
 the concluding tragedy of a series of horrors so 
 revolting in their nature as to forbid their being 
 fully narrated. Mushet sold to his fellow-criminal, 
 Campbell, the honour of his wife, agreeing to use 
 all his endeavours to make the bargain good. Find- 
 ing their treacherous attempts baffled, they resolved,
 
 24 TEIALS FOR POISONING. 
 
 rather in revenge, it would seem, than in fulfilment 
 of their purpose, to blast her character. Accordingly, 
 they drugged the poor victim with opium, and 
 caused a scene to be enacted and witnessed that 
 cannot be described. Mushet raised an action of 
 divorce against his wife; but his solicitor, hinting 
 that the grounds on which it rested were suspicious, 
 and might lead to an awkward exposure, he en- 
 deavoured to strengthen his case by the testimony 
 of false witnesses. The conspirators failing in this pro- 
 ject, as well as in a succession of schemes for secretly 
 poisoning the woman or knocking her on the head, 
 devised a plan of strangely complicated villany, for 
 producing murder through means substantially na- 
 tural and incidental. They persuaded a physician 
 that it was necessary to submit their victim to a mer- 
 curial salivation, and they recommended him to ad- 
 minister the empyric powerfully, as she was a person 
 of singularly strong constitution. To make the 
 prescriptions efficacious as a poison, we are told in 
 the indictment, that " when the said Margaret was 
 under this course, which lasted about a month, he 
 (Campbell), or at least the said Nichol and their ac- 
 complices, did from time to time drink brandy or 
 other strong liquors with the said Margaret, plainly 
 in order to destroy her."* Of such a circuitous 
 mode of poisoning it would be difficult to convince a 
 * Maclaunn's Arguments and Decisions, p. 740.
 
 TRIALS FOR POISONING. 25 
 
 jury, especially when, as in this instance, the murder 
 is not accomplished, and the victim lives. The 
 husband, however, settled all difficulties by cutting 
 her throat, so as nearly to sever the head from the 
 body, at the lonely spot still known as Mushet's 
 Cairn. 
 
 In the year 1765, the public feeling throughout 
 Scotland was disturbed by a tragedy which, in its 
 general features, closely resembled the French case 
 of Madame Lafarge. The crime, as we shall see, 
 was of the same character. The early rumours of 
 the Scottish case called forth pamphlets and other 
 symptoms of excitement, which bore fully as great 
 a proportion to the torrent of public declamation 
 which bore Marie Lafarge to the bar, as the excita- 
 bility of the Scottish people bears to that of the 
 French. The cases were similar, too, in the prin- 
 ciples of deliberate judicial proof being lost in the 
 general indignation and vituperation. 
 
 In a secluded mountain region among the braes 
 of Angus, called Glen Isla, there lived a middle- 
 aged gentleman, Thomas Ogelvie, the proprietor of 
 a small estate, who suffered much from bad health. 
 He formed a matrimonial alliance which created con- 
 siderable astonishment among the friends of both the 
 parties. His wife, Catherine Nairn, was young — 
 not quite nineteen years of age. She held, as the
 
 26 TRIALS FOR POISONING. 
 
 daughter of a house of considerable local distinction,* 
 a far higher social rank than Ogelvie, whose 
 position, though he was a landed proprietor, was 
 but that of the yeoman. She was gay to volatility, 
 as her subsequent conduct, apart from the question 
 of her criminality, abundantly showed. Such was 
 she who chose, without compulsion or the pressure 
 
 * It may be worth mentioning, that the present is not the only 
 charge of poisoning which appears to have been connected with 
 this family. In a series of documents in the Advocates' Library, 
 there is a " Copy of the process and of the witnesses' deposi- 
 tions, taken before the sheriff of Edinburgh, in a precognition, 
 Captain Nairn against Mrs. Spence." The name of the estate, 
 to which it is not necessary to draw attention, shows that the 
 captain was a relation of Catherine Nairn or Ogelvie. The 
 charge is, that Mrs. Spence connived with his wife to poison 
 him, and it is made in very odd terms : " She hath engaged or 
 promised, by poison or other ways, to take away my life, and 
 therefore I crave warrant for apprehending and imprisoning 
 her, in orde*r to be tried for the above riot." The examination 
 is a strange tissue of incoherencies. A witness had overheard 
 the wife and the accomplice in conversation, saying that the 
 captain was not worthy to live — that there were some oils pre- 
 pared for him, and that, if the lady would give " a ninepence 
 more, she would let her see the virtue of these oils, which would 
 cut off Captain Nairn." The witness says that Mrs. Spence was 
 one day much fatigued, " having been in the fields seeking for 
 roots, whereof she took one out of her pocket, which looked 
 like a crumindish or hemloc root." She sat on Heriot's bridge 
 concocting her poisons, not venturing to do so in a house. 
 Among the other heterogeneous contents of these papers, we 
 find the intended victim coming among the plotters in masque- 
 rade, as " a Flemish captain," and there hearing his wife called 
 " a dear angel of light," and himself " a murdering ruffian 
 rascal, who was guilty of all kinds of sin, and was not worthy 
 to live."
 
 TRIALS FOR POISONING. 27 
 
 of circumstances, to devote herself to the com- 
 panionship and care of an invalid well advanced in 
 life, and living in the solitudes of Glen Isla. 
 
 The bride had scarcely taken up her abode in her 
 new home, when a brother of her husband, many 
 years younger, a military officer, returned from 
 India, and joined their circle at Eastmiln. What- 
 ever influence this event produced must have worked 
 very rapidly, for the marriage took place in the 
 month of January, and the old man was dead on the 
 6 th of June in the same year. 
 
 The young officer and his sister-in-law were 
 charged with, and whether justly or not, were con- 
 victed of a criminal intrigue with each other. The 
 evidence of neutral and fair persons showed a 
 degree of indecent familiarity between them, such 
 as people in the same rank, at the present day, would 
 deem incomprehensible, since it is the very last 
 course of conduct which a couple entertaining 
 criminal intentions would so flagrantly show. The 
 position of the principal witness, however, who bore 
 actual testimony to the criminality, seems to show 
 that, among certain circles of the Scottish country 
 gentry of that day, there was as much vice as we 
 know that there was coarseness and indecency.* This 
 
 * There arc people old enough to remember a strange coarse- 
 ness of conversation and manners pervading the Scottish gentry. 
 The indulgence in this humour in mixed society came in later 
 times to be a sort of privilege of rank and birth — the courtesies
 
 28 TRIALS FOR POISONING. . . 
 
 witness, named Anne Clark, was a relative of the 
 Eastmiln family. She was received into the house- 
 hold after the marriage as a sort of humble depend- 
 ent. But the accused offered to prove that she 
 had previously resided in a brothel in Edinburgh, 
 and had been the mistress of Eastmiln's younger 
 brother. 
 
 Some letters by Catherine Nairn to her alleged 
 paramour were produced in evidence of the in- 
 trigue. They were not very conclusive, but a 
 specimen of them may be considered curious : 
 
 " Dear Captain, 
 
 " I was sorrie I missed you this day. I 
 sat at the water-side a long time this fornoon. I 
 thought you would have corned up here ; if you had 
 as much mind of me as I have of you, you would 
 have corned up, tho' you had but stayed out by, 
 as there is no use of that — there is more rooms in 
 the house than one. God knows the heart that I 
 have this day, and instead of being better it's worse, 
 and not in my power to help it. You are not 
 minding the thing that I said to you or you went 
 out here, and what I wrote for. Meat I have not 
 tasted since yesterday dinner, nor won't or you 
 come here; though I should never eat any, it lies at 
 
 and elegances of life required only to be resorted to by those 
 whose position was questionable. Something of the same kind 
 has been noticed in anti-revolutionary France.
 
 TRIALS FOR POISONING. 29 
 
 your door. Your brother would give anything you 
 would come — for God's sake, come." 
 
 In another letter she says, " As for that you write 
 me about anybody clattering any noncens, you need 
 not be afraid of that about anything, for I am de- 
 termined not to mind anything." And in a third, 
 speaking of some express to be sent to Edinburgh, 
 she says, " Till you heare the consequences thereof, 
 I think you better not trust any writer, which you 
 shall hear the moment the express comes back. As 
 I see you mean nothing but what is genteel, you 
 may expect nothing else at my hand." If the letters 
 be literatim preserved in the printed copies of the 
 trial, they show more command over spelling and 
 grammar than was common to the female gentry of 
 the period. 
 
 Whether justly or not, the laird's jealousy was 
 roused, and he refused to permit his brother to be 
 any longer a sojourner in his house. He was over- 
 heard reproaching his wife, and using an expression 
 not very explicit, " that she and the lieutenant were 
 as common as the bell that rings on Sabbath." The 
 account he gave of the matter to a friend was, 
 " that he had forbid his brother, the captain, the 
 house, on account of suspicions ; and he said that 
 his wife was too much taken up in doing things for 
 his brother, the captain, and not for himself; and
 
 30 TRIALS FOE POISONING. 
 
 that, at the same time, he mentioned some differ- 
 ences he had with his brother concerning money- 
 matters." The wife expressed fierce indignation at 
 the dismissal of the brother-in-law, but it might 
 have been called up as readily by the . scandalous 
 suspicions which it excited as by the loss of her 
 paramour. Some of the witnesses said she openly 
 threatened that her husband should have a dose, 
 and her mother-in-law — a very aged woman — said 
 she believed Catherine would stick at nothing, and 
 warned the husband of his danger. 
 
 In this state of matters, one morning, after having 
 had some tea, the laird was suddenly seized with 
 spasms and other evil symptoms, which accumulated 
 until he was released from his agony by death, in a 
 few hours. He exclaimed about sensations of burn- 
 ing and thirst — drank much water, and vomited 
 painfully. He " complained of a burning at his 
 heart, as he called it; and complained bitterly of 
 pains in the brauns of his legs, and said they would 
 rend ; and desired the witness to bind them up for 
 him, which the witness (Anne Clark) accordingly 
 did. That there was a severe heaving at his breast 
 and strong caw, and he cried, to keep open the 
 windows to give him breath. That he was con- 
 stantly in motion, moving his head, his legs, and 
 his arms. That she observed in the afternoon he
 
 TKIALS FOR POISONING. 31 
 
 did not speak plain, which she supposed was owing 
 to his tongue having swelled — but she did not see 
 his tongue. That about an hour, or an hour and a 
 half before his death, he had an intermission of the 
 vomiting ; but that, at length, he was again attacked 
 with a most severe press of vomiting, after which 
 he fell back upon the witness, who was sitting be- 
 hind him in the bed supporting him, and expired." 
 
 That he had been poisoned by his wife, was 
 a conclusion immediately adopted by those con- 
 nexions who were not her friends. That we may 
 judge in a general way how far the evidence was 
 conclusive, let us follow the circumstances attested 
 by the witnesses from the beginning. 
 
 James Carnegie, a surgeon in Brechin, remem- 
 bered to have received an invitation from Lieutenant 
 Ogelvie, with whom he was acquainted, to meet 
 him at a tavern. This was on some day near the 
 end of May — it was on the 23 rd of May that the . 
 lieutenant was forbidden his brother's house, and on 
 the 6th of June that the death took place. The 
 surgeon found Ogelvie engaged with two friends — 
 Lieutenant Campbell of his own regiment, and Mr. 
 Dickson. He took the surgeon aside, " and told 
 him that he was troubled with gripes, and wanted 
 to buy some laudanum from him, and at the same
 
 32 TRIALS FOR POISONING. 
 
 time told him he wanted to buy some arsenic, in 
 order to destroy some dogs which spoiled the game." 
 The surgeon was not sure if he could supply the 
 articles wanted — he would see when he returned to 
 his surgery. When he did so, " he found he had 
 some of both, and put up a small phial-glass of 
 laudanum, and betwixt half an ounce and an ounce 
 of arsenic, both which he delivered next day to the 
 lieutenant, after the witness had dined with him 
 and Lieutenant Campbell next day in Smith's. 
 That Lieutenant Ogelvie took him into another 
 room away from Lieutenant Campbell, when he 
 was to receive the laudanum and the arsenic, and 
 then the witness delivered them to him. That 
 the price of both was a shilling. That the arsenic 
 was pulverised, and Lieutenant Ogelvie having 
 asked how to prepare it, the witness gave him 
 directions. He had sold of the same arsenic for- 
 merly to people for poisoning of rats, and heard 
 that it had the desired effect. He has been accus- 
 tomed, when he sold arsenic, to take receipts from 
 low people who bought it, but never from gentle- 
 men; and as the witness knew Lieutenant Ogelvie, 
 and had a good opinion of him, he did not ask a 
 receipt from him, although, when the lieutenant 
 spoke about it first, the witness said to him, ' We
 
 TRIALS FOR POISONING. 33 
 
 used to take a receipt for arsenic;'* that the lieu- 
 tenant answered, ' See first if you have it,' adding 
 at the same time, ' very good.' ' It might be in- 
 ferred from this, that he hinted to the lieutenant 
 his desire to possess an acknowledgment for the 
 arsenic, but did not press his request on a gentleman 
 and an acquaintance. The report of this surgeon's 
 further examination is curious, since it shows how 
 extremely uncertain and empirical any decision on 
 the use of poison must have been at that time. He 
 said he " got his arsenic from a druggist in Dundee 
 — but how long ago he cannot say, there being a 
 small demand for arsenic at any time." When the 
 surgeon was cross-questioned by Mr. Crosby — the 
 prototype of Scott's Pleydell — he said he wrapt the 
 arsenic up in the form of a pennyworth of snuff, 
 but " he cannot take upon him to say, from looking 
 at arsenic, whether it be arsenic or not — nor can he 
 say from the taste, for he never tasted it; but that 
 he bought this as arsenic — had the name marked 
 upon it, upon the package — and heard from those 
 he sold it to that it had killed rats." 
 
 One of the chief circumstances bearing against 
 Lieutenant Ogelvie, was his uneasiness about this 
 
 * This precaution, which the Brechin .apothecary appears to 
 have adopted in theory rather than in practice, is substantially 
 that which has been adopted by the legislature. 
 
 VOL. II. D
 
 34 TRIALS FOR POISONING. 
 
 purchase. It is pretty well known that, in Scotland, 
 the most powerful instrument for detecting crime 
 is the declaration of the accused, solemnly recorded 
 before a magistrate, immediately after his appre- 
 hension, and retained, that at the trial it may be 
 compared with the evidence of the witnesses, and 
 the whole history of the transactions as they are 
 one by one developed. The declaration of a guilty 
 man is almost sure to betray him by palpable incon- 
 sistencies ; and knowing offenders deem it their 
 wisest policy to close their lips — a policy accom- 
 panied by the minor inconvenience of substituting 
 a general suspicion for specific evidence of guilt. 
 But it is sometimes supposed that the inferences 
 from the declaration and the evidence, as compared 
 together, are too strictly interpreted, and that the 
 accused is held as concealing or denying the circum- 
 stances of the crime, when he is only keeping out of 
 view unfortunate appearances which he fears may be 
 against him. A believer in Lieutenant Ogelvie's in- 
 nocence would put such an interpretation on his 
 statement, in his declaration, " that within these two 
 weeks he was at the town of Brechin, and in company 
 with James Carnegie, surgeon of that place, but that 
 he received from him no laudanum, or any other 
 medicine whatever." No allusion is made to the 
 arsenic. When Ogelvie was apprehended, a certain
 
 TRIALS FOR POISONING. 35 
 
 Patrick Dickson was employed by him to go to the 
 surgeon, " and talk to him that he might not be im- 
 posed on by anybody." He " went and conversed 
 with Mr. Carnegie, who informed him that Jie had 
 sold the prisoner some laudanum and some arsenic, 
 for both which he received a shilling; and the wit- 
 ness returned to Forfar, and communicated to the pri- 
 soner what Mr. Carnegie had said — upon which 
 the prisoner seemed to be under some concern, and 
 seemed desirous to speak with Mr. Carnegie, with- 
 out either confessing or denying that he had bought 
 the arsenic, for he had only acknowledged buying 
 the laudanum on the Saturday before." And now 
 he was anxious to have an alteration made on his 
 declaration ; but this could not be — he misrht make 
 additions, but for what was recorded litera scripta 
 manet. 
 
 Such being the state of the case as to the pur- 
 chase of the poison, let us see how its destination 
 and use are supposed to be traced. 
 
 A certain Andrew Stewart, a village tradesman, 
 had casually mentioned to the lieutenant that he 
 had occasion to visit Eastmiln on the folio win f 
 day. He stated, that "before he went off, Lieu- 
 tenant Ogelvie delivered to the witness a small 
 phial-glass, containing something liquid, which he 
 said was laudanum ; and also a small paper packet, 
 
 d2
 
 36 TEIALS FOR POISONING. 
 
 which he said contained salts; and that the morn- 
 ing of the day preceding, the witness saw the lieu- 
 tenant working among some salts — at least, which 
 appeared to the witness to be salts — which were in 
 a chest belonging to the lieutenant. That the phial- 
 glass was round, and knows that there was another 
 phial-glass in his own house, which was square. 
 That he is positive, as he has already deposed, that 
 one phial-glass was delivered to him by the lieu- 
 tenant, and cannot say with certainty that two 
 might not have been delivered to him by the lieu- 
 tenant, but rather thinks he got only one ; and that, 
 at the time when the above particulars were de- 
 livered to him, the lieutenant desired him to deliver 
 them privately into Mrs. Ogelvie's own hand. That 
 he did not see the packet made up, nor did he open 
 it to see what it contained. That in the foresaid 
 packet there was a letter directed for Mrs. Ogelvie, 
 of Eastmiln, which letter was sealed both with 
 wax and a wafer; and that round the packet there 
 was a loose paper of directions in what manner the 
 laudanum was to be used. That when he came to 
 Eastmiln, on the Wednesday afternoon, he was car- 
 ried into a room where old Lady Eastmiln* was ; 
 
 * It was the practice in Scotland to call the laird simply by 
 the name of his estate, e. g. Eastmiln, and as it was necessary 
 to distinguish the wife from the husband, gallantry awarded to 
 the former the flattering prefix of " lady." So would the hum-
 
 TRIALS FOR POISONING. 37 
 
 and that, within a short time thereafter, Mrs. Ogelvie, 
 the prisoner, and Miss Clark, came into the room. 
 That, at the desire of Mrs. Ogelvie, he followed her 
 into the Easter room, where Mrs. Ogelvie having 
 asked him if he had brought any word to her from 
 the lieutenant, he delivered to her the several par- 
 ticulars above mentioned, which the witness saw 
 her immediately put into a drawer in the room. 
 That he did not see her read the letter at that time, 
 but that she put the whole together into the drawer. 
 That soon thereafter Miss Clark asked the witness 
 what he had brought with him from the lieutenant 
 to Mrs. Ogelvie, or if he had brought anything 
 with him? He at first said he had brought nothing, 
 but upon Miss Clark's pressing him with great 
 earnestness, he at last informed her of the particu- 
 lars he had brought. That, upon this, Miss Clark 
 said that she was afraid Mrs. Ogelvie might poison 
 her husband. That thereafter Miss Clark, in pre- 
 sence of the witness and the old lady, desired East- 
 miln not to take anything out of his wife's hand 
 except at the table; to which he answered that he 
 would not. That the old lady joined with Miss 
 Clark in desiring Eastmiln to take nothing out of 
 his wife's hand, but that the witness was at that 
 
 ble helpmate of the owner of a couple of hundred acres of hog 
 and stone he denominated.
 
 38 TRIALS FOR POISONING. 
 
 time very muck displeased with both, as he then 
 had no suspicion that Mrs. Ogelvie had any design 
 against the life of her husband." 
 
 The account which the female prisoner gave of 
 the matter in her declaration had a simple and 
 satisfactory complexion: — " That Andrew Stewart, 
 besides the letter, brought her two doses of salts, 
 and a small phial-glass with a little laudanum ; and 
 that the letter was but a quarter of a sheet of paper, 
 containing, mostly, directions about the salts, and 
 how much of the laudanum to take; but whether 
 the letter was open or sealed she does not remember. 
 That before Patrick Ogelvie left his brother's house, 
 she asked him, any time he was in Alyth, to buy 
 for her and send to Eastmiln two doses of salts and 
 a little laudanum, as she slept very ill." If there 
 was any truth in this account, it was certainly more 
 like the transaction of a homely brother and sister- 
 in-law, than of criminal paramours. 
 
 The Miss Clark, whose suspicions were awakened, 
 is the same of whom some account is already given. 
 One of the strange mysteries of the case is, that 
 this woman appears to have made up her mind, even 
 before the arrival of Stewart and his package, that 
 Mrs. Ogelvie was determined to poison her husband. 
 She vented her suspicions to Stewart and to the old 
 lady, and according to her own account, she set off
 
 TRIALS TOR POISONING. 39 
 
 to consult the parish clergyman in the emergency, 
 but did not succeed in rinding him. Having now 
 seen the evidence that the poison reached Eastmiln, 
 let us see what light is thrown on the method in 
 which it was used. 
 
 On the day when the package had arrived, there 
 had been high words between Eastmiln and his wife, 
 and their subject was an extremely awkward one. 
 She was occupied in making cambric ruffles for the 
 lieutenant. She let it be understood that the 
 material had been left behind by the dismissed 
 brother-in-law; but a chapman or pedlar had just 
 been dunning the laird himself for payment of an 
 account for it, and thus it appeared that Catherine 
 was incurring debts in her husband's name to deco- 
 rate her paramour. The laird went forth sulky, 
 spent the day with his tenants on the other side of 
 the hill, and, returning in the evening in no better 
 humour, went to bed without supping. 
 
 Next morning, breakfast was ready " between 
 eight and nine — a little sooner than ordinary." 
 This was to accommodate Mr. Stewart, who stayed 
 all night, and desired to depart early in the day. Mr. 
 Stewart saw Catherine Nairn pour out a bowl of 
 tea, and walk from the room with it, saying, that 
 she was to give it to her husband, who was in bed. 
 As she went up-stairs with the bowl, a servant had
 
 40 TRIALS FOR POISONING. 
 
 occasion to follow her. According to the evidence 
 as reported, " she followed her mistress up-stairs, 
 wanting some beef out of the beef-stand, and saw 
 her go into a closet adjoining her master's room. 
 That the witness followed her into the closet, de- 
 manding the beef; but that her mistress bade her 
 go down stairs, as she was not ready yet — and 
 she was always wanting something ; and that Mrs. 
 Ogelvie appeared to be in a passion at her. That 
 her master was at that time in bed, and that when 
 the witness was in the closet, she saw Mrs. Ogelvie 
 stirring about the tea, with her face to the door ; 
 but that she did not see her mistress, when in the 
 closet, put anything into the tea." 
 
 Soon afterwards, the rest of the family sitting at 
 breakfast, Mrs. Ogelvie made the remark that the 
 laird and Elizabeth Sturrock was well off, having 
 got the first of the tea. Anne Clark states that she 
 was startled and alarmed by this announcement, 
 and she appears to have expected what followed. 
 Elizabeth Sturrock stated that Catherine Nairn 
 came to her, and saying the laird had got his 
 breakfast, desired that she would say she had got 
 breakfast too, though she had not. The laird had 
 gone out to the stable, and he was seen immediately 
 afterwards, by Stewart, approaching the house under 
 palpable symptoms of internal agony. His wife was
 
 TRIALS FOR POISONING. 41 
 
 the first who announced at the breakfast-table that 
 the laird was very ill. According to Anne Clark, 
 she spoke with levity, and, seeing her weeping, 
 said, " Are you daft?" Then followed the poor 
 man's agony and death, as it has been already de- 
 scribed. He did not, however, depart without 
 leaving on the evidence the impression of what oc- 
 curred to himself. A servant brought him some 
 water in the same bowl from which he had drunk 
 the tea; but he bade it be carried out of sight, 
 exclaiming, " Damn that bowl, for I have got my 
 death in it already." He said, in the hearing of 
 another servant, that " he was poisoned — and that 
 woman had done it." A neighbour called during 
 his agony, and asking him what he believed to ail 
 him, was answered, "I am gone, James, with no 
 less than rank poison." 
 
 No surgeon saw him before he expired. There 
 was much confused testimony, as there generally is 
 on such occasions, as to what the several persons 
 present proposed, or hinted about medical advice. 
 As to that Catherine herself, it was stated by 
 Stewart that " he proposed to Mrs. Ogelvie that a 
 surgeon should be called to his assistance, to which 
 she would not agree, stating that he would be 
 better;" and, upon the witness renewing this pro- 
 posal, she stated that she would not for any money
 
 42 TEIALS FOR POISONING. 
 
 that a surgeon should be called, as the consequence 
 of this would be to give her a bad name from what 
 Miss Clark had said of her. She at length, how- 
 ever, consented to a messenger being sent , to a 
 neighbouring surgeon ; but he arrived too late. 
 There was little adduced in exculpation to meet this 
 evidence, such as it was. It was proved that the 
 deceased was often subject to bad health; and he 
 had, on an occasion recently before his death, com- 
 plained of internal pain, and had gone to a neigh- 
 bour to get heated chaff applied to the pit of the 
 stomach for its relief. 
 
 Let us now see what occurred after the death. 
 According to Anne Clark, whose evidence is always 
 suspicious, Lieutenant Ogelvie, when charged with 
 sending the poison to Mrs. Ogelvie, observed hastily, 
 ' ' that he did not think she could have had the heart 
 to use it ;" but Stewart stated that, on his advising him 
 to make his escape, the lieutenant said, " that God 
 and his own conscience knew that he was innocent." 
 The surgeon who had been sent for — but who did 
 not arrive until two hours after the death — in his 
 evidence, said, that immediately on his arrival 
 " he was carried up by a servant to Mrs. Ogelvie's, 
 the prisoner's, room, where she was sitting; and she 
 appeared to be in great grief and concern for her 
 husband's death, and desired the witness, that what-
 
 TRIALS FOR POISONING. 43 
 
 ever lie might think he discovered to be the cause 
 of her husband's death, that he would conceal it 
 from the world. There was nobody else present 
 with the witness and the prisoner at that time. 
 Upon going to the room where the corpse lay, and 
 afterwards going out of the house, he met with Mr. 
 Ogelvie, the prisoner, who went up with him to the 
 room where the corpse lay, and appeared to be in 
 great grief and concern for his brother." When 
 the opening of the body was subsequently spoken 
 of, neither of the prisoners seemed to oppose 
 it. The youngest brother of the deceased laird, 
 Alexander Ogelvie, gave orders for stopping the 
 funeral until the body was medically inspected; 
 and the servant, Elizabeth Sturrock, who told this 
 to Mrs. Ogelvie, declared that she showed great 
 agitation, " weeping and crying, and wringing 
 her hands and tearing herself." The servant, 
 who, it will be remembered, is the same who 
 was said by the prisoner to have taken tea at the 
 same time as her husband, made this further state- 
 ment: 
 
 " After Mrs. Ogelvie heard the sheriff of Forfar 
 was coming to examine them at Eastmiln, Mrs. 
 Ogelvie desired the witness to say to the sheriff that 
 the witness had seen Mrs. Ogelvie mix up the bowl 
 of tea which she, Mrs. Ogelvie, had given her hus- 
 band the morning of the day on which he died :
 
 44 TRIALS FOR POISONING. 
 
 and that the witness had drunk some of it before 
 Eastmiln tasted it; and that she likewise drank off 
 what Eastmiln left of it. She likewise particularly 
 desired the witness to say that the witness was in 
 the closet with her, Mrs. Ogelvie, when she mixed 
 up the bowl of tea; and that she, Mrs. Ogelvie, 
 gave her husband some short-bread with it ; that 
 Mrs. Ogelvie told the witness, that if the witness 
 would say as thus directed, she would stand by the 
 witness that no harm should happen to her ; that 
 the witness should go with her wherever she went, 
 and that while she, Mrs. Ogelvie, had a halfpenny 
 she should have half of it. That Mrs. Ogelvie 
 spoke to the witness in this manner several times; 
 that Lieutenant Ogelvie was present upon these oc- 
 casions, heard what Mrs. Ogelvie desired the witness 
 to say, and he himself desired the witness to say as 
 Mrs. Ogelvie directed her." 
 
 The unhappy woman's judicial declaration cor- 
 responded with this story. She stated that she had 
 taken the tea straight from the parlour to her hus- 
 band's bedroom, and that Elizabeth Sturrock drank 
 from the bowl the remainder of the tea which Ogel- 
 vie had left. The nature of a judicial declaration 
 has been already mentioned, and the policy often 
 adopted, of a prisoner refusing to answer, has been 
 alluded to. Mrs. Ogelvie, after having emitted a 
 brief declaration, consistent with itself, but not, as
 
 TRIALS FOR POISONING. 45 
 
 we have seen, consistent with the evidence of the 
 witnesses, being asked if there was anything in 
 the declaration which she desired to correct or alter, 
 "she refused to answer this or any other question 
 put to her, being so advised by her friends and 
 counsel." Accordingly, the questions follow in a 
 string, without answers, thus : 
 
 " In what drawer, and in what room of the house, 
 did she put the medicines and letter which Avere 
 delivered to her by Andrew Stewart, the day be- 
 fore her husband's death? 
 
 "Did she read the letter? What were the con- 
 tents? Has she the letter? or how has she disposed 
 of it? 
 
 " By whose advice did she order the above medi- 
 cines to be sent to her? 
 
 " What was her ailment? Did she mention such 
 ailment to any in the family?" &c. 
 
 She obeyed the injunction of neutrality so strictly, 
 that she not only remained dumb, but would not 
 sign, after the usual form, her refusal to answer the 
 questions. The lieutenant, after having committed 
 himself in his first declaration, followed the same 
 negative advice in all but its last and gratuitously 
 pertinacious feature, declining to answer questions 
 on a second examination, but readily adhibiting his 
 signature to the refusal.
 
 46 TEIALS FOR POISONING. 
 
 The only element that remains is the highly im- 
 portant one of the symptoms and morbid appearances 
 of the body, and the extent to which they received 
 a satisfactory investigation. The medical man who 
 was called in, and came too late to minister to the' 
 sufferer, appears to have taken no notice of any 
 morbid characteristics, though he was in the room 
 with the body. He was required, some time after- 
 wards — it is carelessly called five or six days — along 
 with other medical men, to inspect the body. " He 
 observed the nails and a part of the breast disco- 
 loured, and liis tongue swelled beyond its natural 
 size, and cleaving to the roof of his mouth." He 
 and another surgeon spoke of these symptoms as 
 indicative of poison, but they spoke vaguely, as men 
 who drew their conclusion, not from specific symp- 
 toms, but the general aspect of the whole affair. 
 The scientific witness who gave the fullest account 
 of the state of the body, was Doctor John Ogelvie, 
 physician in Forfar. He said : 
 
 " That upon his arrival, Alexander Ogelvie, the 
 defunct's brother, desired the deponent to go and 
 inspect the corpse, which were* then lying in an 
 outhouse; that he found the corpse in its grave- 
 
 * There are two words which it is an inveterate practice in 
 Scotland to treat as plural — corpse and broth, or soup. The 
 Scotticism, however, does not pervade, as will be seen, the Avhole 
 of Mr. Ogelvie's deposition.
 
 TRIALS FOR POISONING. 47 
 
 clothes and in a coffin; and, having inspected the 
 body, he observed that the face, the arms, and seve- 
 ral other parts of the body, were black and livid, and 
 that the nails were remarkably black ; and as to the 
 •tongue, it was locked fast by the jaws, so that he 
 could only observe a small part of it which projected 
 beyond the teeth, which part, being the top of the 
 tongue, he observed to be white and rough, and of 
 a very unusual appearance. That the breast was 
 white, and the lips pretty much of a natural colour. 
 That from the appearance above described he could 
 draw no conclusion as to the cause of the defunct's 
 death, as almost all these appearances might have 
 arisen from the putrid state the body was then in; 
 and that the only thing that appeared extraordinary 
 to him was the appearance of the tongue above de- 
 scribed. That he had some inclinations to have 
 opened the body; and if the two surgeons who he 
 had heard had left Eastmiln that morning had 
 been there, he believes he might have done so ; but 
 as they were gone, and the witness, in his own opi- 
 nion, thought the body too much putrified to be 
 opened with safety to the operator; and as he was 
 likewise of opinion, that in such a state of putrefac- 
 tion no certain si^ns could have been discovered of 
 the cause of the death by opening the body, the wit- 
 ness declined to do it."
 
 48 TRIALS FOR POISONING. 
 
 Probably be was rigbt in believing tbat tbe 
 scientific acquirements of tbe Forfarshire practi- 
 tioners of tbat age migbt bave failed to ascertain 
 tbe presence of arsenic, evidently pointed at by the 
 whole tenor of the proceedings as the cause of* 
 death. But any one acquainted with the rigid 
 method of conducting such inquiries at the present 
 day, cannot fail to observe how lamentably this in- 
 quiry is deficient in the main element of evidence 
 as to poisoning — the existence in the body either of 
 the poisonous deposit, or of symptoms that put be- 
 yond a doubt that it has been there — in short, the 
 evidence that death was brought about by poison. 
 Nay, a slight enlargement of the evidence in this 
 case only served to attenuate it. An Edinburgh 
 physician was adduced, who had witnessed an un- 
 doubted case of death from swallowing arsenic, and 
 he gave an account of the vital symptoms of the 
 case, which coincided with the account of Ogelvie's 
 death, stating at the same time that " he could dis- 
 cover nothing externally upon the body different 
 from the appearances after a natural death." 
 
 In the case of Madame Lafarge, the French jurists 
 were much blamed by our own, because there was 
 no security that the parts analysed for the discovery 
 of poison had been duly protected from the pos- 
 sibility of being tampered with, by being imme-
 
 TRIALS FOR POISONING. 49 
 
 diately sealed up under official inspection, and 
 opened for the experimenters by persons who could 
 pronounce the seals unviolated. There was thus 
 a gap in the chain of evidence connecting the 
 existence of the poison with the body. But in the 
 case of the Ogelvies there was no evidence even of 
 the existence of the poison. Not only was it not 
 proved that poison existed or had existed in the 
 body, but it was never proved that any poison, other 
 than a little laudanum, which was not the kind 
 pointed at, had ever entered the man's house. In 
 all charges of this nature the main substantial fact, 
 to which all others are secondary, is, that the death 
 has been caused by poison. It is not necessary that 
 its presence should be actually detected — it may be 
 shown that it has existed though it exist no longer, 
 and it may be proved, by immediate examination 
 of the remaining contents of a drinking-vessel, or 
 otherwise, that poison was actually consumed by the 
 deceased. Having separately and as an indepen- 
 dent fact proved the death by poison, we have a 
 safe position whence, from the conduct and motives 
 of parties, we may alight on those who have com- 
 mitted the crime. 
 
 In this instance, however, the process was the re- 
 verse. It was inferred from the conduct of the wife 
 and the brother that they intended to administer 
 
 VOL. II. E
 
 50 TRIALS FOR POISONING. 
 
 poison, and the circumstances of the death were found 
 to adjust themselves with the anticipated conclusion. 
 Certainly, at the present day, no bench would charge 
 a jury to convict on such a proof. The jury, by a 
 majority, according to Scottish practice, found both 
 the prisoners guilty. If this case, the particulars 
 of which have been so fully preserved on account 
 of the contemporary local interest which it created, 
 stands as a reproach on the jurisprudential science 
 of Scotland in the eighteenth century, a com- 
 panion may be found to it in the trial of Captain 
 Donellan, in England, who fifteen years later was 
 convicted of poisoning Sir Theodosius Boughton, 
 on evidence which had a like flagrant defect.* 
 
 If we had these defective proceedings arraigned 
 before one who had lived through them into the 
 stricter practice of the present day, and was effec- 
 tively conversant with both, we would probably 
 find him justifying and lauding the one, without 
 
 * Some English contemporary critics, however, made severe 
 remarks on the case of the Ogelvies. In the Gentleman's 
 Magazine, vol. xxxv., p. 524, there is a string of paragraphs, 
 each beginning, "It is strange that," and enumerating the 
 anomalies of the case — particularly the publicity of the indecent 
 familiarity in winch, if the witnesses were to be believed, the 
 prisoners had indulged. This has been already alluded to. A 
 document, professing to be the opinion of English counsel con- 
 demnatory of the proceedings, was published in some of the 
 Edinburgh newspapers — their editors were brought before the 
 Court of Justiciary and censured.
 
 TRIALS FOR POISONING. 51 
 
 utterly condemning the other. He would, perhaps, 
 congratulate us on those vast accomplishments of 
 natural science which have placed the means of ac- 
 curate judgment in our hands, while palliating the 
 imperfect operations of those who, in the necessity 
 of their position, were bound to come to practical 
 conclusions. It would be said that murder must 
 not walk about triumphant because justice cannot 
 take a perfect aim — the bolt must be hurled though 
 it possibly may hit the wrong mark. And this is 
 but a further illustration of the view already sug- 
 gested, that in the progress of science the bene- 
 ficent and protecting influences far outstrip the de- 
 ceptive and the destructive. While the poisoner is 
 ignorant and clumsy as ever, the detecter is lord of 
 scientific light. 
 
 The male convict was condemned to death and 
 executed — the female was still destined to make 
 some sensation in the world. The accounts of the 
 day say that Ogelvie behaved at his execution 
 " with decency and resignation," until after he was 
 turned off, when a horrid incident occurred — the 
 noose slipped, and he fell to the ground. Half 
 strangled, wounded, and probably little conscious of 
 his position, he struggled with the men who dragged 
 him up the ladder. His dying speech, while it does 
 not seem to have been devised as a pleading for 
 
 E 2
 
 52 TRIALS FOR POISONING. 
 
 mercy, has not the brazen effrontery of the hardy 
 criminal seeking to stultify his judges. He main- 
 tained his innocence, saying he desired to employ 
 the few hours he had to live in the way most 
 conducive to his eternal happiness; he continued, 
 " And though my years be few, and my sins many, 
 yet I hope, through God's grace and the inter- 
 position of my blessed Redeemer, that the gates of 
 heaven will not be shut upon me, in whatever view 
 I, as a criminal, may be looked upon by the gene- 
 rality of mankind. And I hope those who best 
 know me will do me justice when I am gone. As 
 to the crime I am accused of, the trial itself will 
 show the propensity of the witnesses, where civility 
 and, possibly, folly are explained into actual guilt, 
 and which, possibly, had the greater effect in making 
 them believed ; and of both crimes, for which I am 
 now doomed to suffer, I declare my innocence, and 
 that no persuasion could ever have made me con- 
 descend to them." 
 
 The female prisoner pleaded pregnancy in arrest 
 of judgment, and for some time distracted the Court 
 of Justiciary by inquiries of a most perplexing cha- 
 racter. From the rank and influence of her con- 
 nexions, there was a general popular belief that she 
 would not be punished. So far as the trial went, 
 it was seen that she was abandoned as a victim.
 
 TRIALS FOR POISONING. 53 
 
 The current against her could not be met. It was 
 observed, and maintained by her counsel, that the 
 jury had grown indecently impatient, and would 
 not listen to the evidence in exculpation. It was 
 afterwards suspected, not without some reason, that 
 her friends had made up their minds to reserve any 
 effort for her protection to a totally different arena 
 from the Court of Justiciary. The Edinburgh pri- 
 son — the famed Heart of Midlothian — was at that 
 time renowned for nothing more than its singular 
 unretentiveness, especially in the case of prisoners 
 with powerful connexions. Accordingly, it would 
 not have been with much astonishment that, on the 
 16th of March, 1766, the citizens of Edinburgh 
 learned that the interesting convict had made her 
 escape the day before, — had it not been that nine 
 days previously she was delivered of a girl. The 
 Court of Justiciary were to have met on the 17th, 
 for the purpose of passing on her sentence of death. 
 It is stated, in the Gentleman's Magazine for April, 
 that " she was indulged on account of her weak- 
 ness with the quiet and privacy which the nature 
 of her illness required. She desired, however, that 
 her room door might be left open for the benefit 
 of the air, and being left alone for the night, she 
 took occasion to dress herself in man's apparel, and 
 walking out into the court, and mixing with the
 
 54 TRIALS FOR POISONING. 
 
 strangers who were going out, passed unnoticed by 
 the keepers." Her absence was not discovered, or at 
 least avowedly made known, until two o'clock next 
 day, and that being Sunday, would afford abundant 
 excuse for a lax pursuit. On Monday the magis- 
 trates of Edinburgh offered a reward of 100Z. for 
 her apprehension, proclaiming their reasons for sus- 
 pecting that she had started in a post-chaise, on 
 Saturday night, by Berwick to England, u and had 
 on when she went away an officer's habit and a hat 
 slouched in the cocks, with a cockade in it. She is 
 about twenty-two years of age, middle-sized, and 
 strong made — has a high nose, black eyebrows, 
 and of a pale complexion." A proclamation, subse- 
 quently issued by the secretary of state, offering a 
 further reward of 100L, sets forth that — 
 
 " A search was immediately made through the 
 city, and a messenger despatched to endeavour to 
 trace, and, if possible, overtake her on the London 
 road. But all the intelligence he could get was, 
 that a young gentleman, very thin and sickly, muf- 
 fled up in a great coat, and attended by a servant, 
 had passed through Hadington on Saturday, at 
 midnight, and had pushed on with four horses, day 
 and night, from stage to stage, towards London."* 
 
 In the Gentleman's Magazine for April, it is said, 
 
 * Scott's May, 1766, pp. 165-6.
 
 TRIALS FOK POISONING. 55 
 
 " she seems to have been well seconded, for certain 
 information was received at Mr. Fielding's office 
 that she was at Dover on the Wednesday following, 
 in the dress of an officer, endeavouring to procure 
 a passage for France, which probably she has since 
 obtained." And in the ensuing month's publica- 
 tion it is said, that " Mrs. Ogelvie, not having an 
 opportunity to set off for France, returned from 
 Dover to London, took a hackney coach at Billings- 
 gate, got on board a Gravesend boat with a gentle- 
 man to accompany her, agreed with a tilt-boat 
 there to take them over to France for eight guineas, 
 and a guinea a day for waiting for them four days, 
 in order to brino; them back— which tilt-boat landed 
 them at Calais, but is since returned without them." 
 The agreement for waiting and bringing them back 
 was of course intended to lull suspicion in the boat- 
 man. 
 
 The subsequent history of this heroine of a tragic 
 romance is entirely traditionary. It is said that she 
 made a distinguished marriage abroad, and lived a 
 happy and contented life. But this is a kind of 
 tradition common to great criminals who have 
 escaped. Even that monster, the Abbe de Ganges, 
 who aided his brother in the murder of his wife, by a 
 series of unmatched cruelties, was traditionally said
 
 56 TRIALS FOR POISONING. 
 
 to have afterwards acquired a lovely and devoted 
 wife of high race. 
 
 Instances might be mentioned of a scepticism on 
 the part of juries, in charges of poisoning, as remark- 
 able as their readiness to be convinced in the in- 
 stance of the Ogelvies. In 1795, Anne Inglis was 
 tried for the murder of Patrick Pirie, in the parish 
 of Alva, in Banffshire. Pirie had given her reason 
 to presume that she would become his wife, but the 
 swain proved false, and paid his addresses in another 
 quarter. Anne Inglis was the servant of Pirie, but 
 this did not render their union an improbable event, 
 as both belonged to the crofter or small farmer class. 
 On hearing of the intended wedding, she had been 
 heard to say that " there would be a burial before 
 there was a bridal." One day, after having taken a 
 draught of ale from the hand of Anne Inglis, Pirie 
 was immediately seized with violent vomiting, and 
 acute burning pains. He lingered in agony for nine 
 days, and as death approached, spoke of the draught 
 he had received as the cause of his death. The 
 body was opened, but no poison was found. There 
 was much inflammation, and the inner coat of the 
 stomach was corroded. The medical men had been 
 asked, apparently when they were conducting the 
 inquiry, whether these appearances might have
 
 TRIALS FOR POISONING. 57 
 
 been caused by any destructive agent not percep- 
 tible, and they stated that it might have been 
 caused by sulphate of copper, or blue vitriol, the 
 traces of which might have been removed by the 
 medicines which the man had imbibed. Dove- 
 tailing accurately with this view, on searching a 
 chest belonging to Anne Inglis, a paper parcel con- 
 taining sulphate of copper was found. Anne stated 
 that she used it as a remedy for toothache, but it 
 did not appear that she was suffering from that 
 disorder. Some one had seen her with tea-cups in 
 her possession, the edges of which were smeared 
 with a bluish powder, and she desired that nothing 
 might be said about it.* We have only the leading 
 outline of the evidence on this trial. It would 
 indicate a proof far more conclusive than that on 
 which the Ogelvies were convicted, yet Anne Inglis 
 was acquitted. 
 
 About thirty years afterwards, there occurred at 
 the same circuit a trial, the result of which had a 
 tendency, for a brief period, to shake the public con- 
 fidence in the capacity of juries to deal with the 
 niceties of poison-evidence. John Lovie, a farmer 
 near Fraserburgh, was tried for the murder of 
 Margaret Mackessar, his servant, by poison. Mar- 
 garet was pregnant, and it was not disputed that 
 * The Black Calendar of Aberdeen, p. 176.
 
 58 TRIALS FOR POISONING. 
 
 the paternity of her offspring was correctly attributed 
 to Lovie. He had in vain attempted some of those 
 means of tampering with the existence of the un- 
 born, which seem, by a wise provision for the 
 preservation of the race, to be only effective when 
 they expose the life of the mother to eminent peril. 
 His efforts in this direction were, however, of the 
 clumsiest kind, and were only sufficient to subject 
 the poor woman to gastric derangements. At 
 length she was seized with all the horrible symptoms 
 which indicate the operation of arsenic, and died 
 in a few hours. A large quantity of arsenic was 
 found in the stomach and intestines. 
 
 The circumstances which connected Lovie with 
 the administering of the poison were these. He 
 had got into the practice of talking with a farm- 
 labourer, whom he employed, on the subject of 
 poisons, as they worked together. He was in the 
 habit of asking what would produce this and that 
 effect — how much jalap would be a medicinal dose, 
 and how much more would kill ; what amount of 
 laudanum would occasion only sleep, and what 
 would produce death. His questions showed a 
 mind as stupidly ignorant as it was depraved and 
 cruel. One of the questions especially noticeable 
 was about the name of " a white kind of poisonous 
 stuff " — to which his companion answered, that he
 
 TRIALS FOE POISONING. 59 
 
 supposed lie meant arsenic. He had one day, in a 
 druggist's shop in the neighbouring town of Fraser- 
 burgh, bought an ounce of jalap. He remarked 
 that it was " a good dose." The youth who sold it 
 to him asked if it was " for a beast or for a body;" 
 and being told it was for a human being, he said it 
 would be enough to kill one. Lovie then said he 
 would divide it in two. Continuing the conversa 
 tion, he asked what " was best for rats," and was 
 told arsenic. Was there anything else? Yes — nux 
 vomica ; but it was not quite so effective. 
 
 Lovie returned to the same shop a few days 
 afterwards, and said he must have the arsenic, as he 
 was much troubled with rats. It was about five 
 days after this that Margaret Mackessar, after 
 having done her morning work in her usual health, 
 was attacked with the fatal symptoms, immediately 
 after taking breakfast. Lovie was in the fields 
 at work. The farm-servant was told by Lovie's 
 mother of the attack, and when he mentioned it to 
 Lovie, the man observed that he reddened — a 
 trifling matter in comparison with the other evi- 
 dence. There was some conversation equally im- 
 material, in which Lovie, who had been at home, 
 and had heard the sounds of her agony, though he 
 had not seen her, remarked, that if she did not soon 
 recover she would not be " lang to the fore," or long
 
 60 TEIALS FOR POISONING. 
 
 in existence. A far more telling circumstance was, 
 that the poor woman's mother passed him, in the 
 course of his work, three times within speaking 
 distance, but he neither told her of her daughter's 
 state, nor would he permit the servant to tell her. 
 No medical man was sent for until the last struggle 
 approached, and he did not arrive until after death. 
 The friends and neighbours talked of opening the 
 woman's body, but Lovie artfully persuaded her 
 immediate relations to object to a measure which, in 
 the state in which she had been, would tend to 
 blast her character. 
 
 The body was buried, and, doubtless, Lovie now 
 breathed freely, but not for a long time. The sus- 
 picious character of the affair had spread so far that 
 a judicial investigation was necessary; and the grave 
 had scarcely closed when the rumour passed that it 
 was to be re-opened. His uneasiness was very per- 
 ceptible. In his deep ignorance he knew nothing 
 of the scientific objects of the disinterment, and 
 asked if the body would be found swollen if the 
 woman had died of poison. As has been already ex- 
 plained, the stomach and intestines were saturated 
 with arsenic. To account for poison having been 
 in the house, Lovie said that he had procured some 
 stuff to rub into his cattle, and thathavingused.it in 
 a saucer, he threw the portion which remained in the
 
 TRIALS FOR POISONING. 61 
 
 saucer on a certain dunghill. The dunghill was 
 analysed, but the presence of arsenic, or any other 
 peculiar chemical substance, could not be detected ; 
 and it was pretty well proved that the cattle had 
 no disease requiring such a remedy. 
 
 A more conclusive case has seldom been presented 
 to a jury, but the public were startled by a verdict 
 of " not proven."* This was less surprising to 
 persons present during the trial, than to those who 
 merely read the evidence. Mr. Cockburn made at 
 that trial one of his greatest efforts of persuasive 
 oratory, and delivered an oration which, in seduc- 
 tiveness to such a tribunal as he addressed, has pro- 
 bably never been excelled. It is the established rule, 
 right or wrong, that so long as he uses no trickery in 
 the development of the evidence, the prisoner's 
 counsel may treat — nay, is bound to treat — that 
 evidence in any manner which he thinks will afford 
 the accused the best chance of escape. Mr. Cock- 
 burn did not, in this case, trespass a shadow beyond 
 
 * This middle finding is peculiar to Scotland. Some have 
 held it to be a valuable institution, as leaving a stigma of sus- 
 picion where there is not sufficient evidence to convict — a stigma 
 which never leaves its object if he is guilty, and is easily remov- 
 able if any event should occur enabling him to explain suspicious 
 facts and make his innocence apparent. On the other hand, this 
 form has been objected to as & too accessible resting-place for 
 jurors unwilling to incur the responsibility of finding guilty, and 
 unable to reconcile their consciences to a finding of not guilty.
 
 62 TRIALS FOR POISONING. 
 
 the established rule. He saw that he had to deal 
 with a stupid jury, and with consummate skill he 
 lowered the tone of his persuasions to hit their 
 stupid minds. He made them view the whole 
 arrangement of circumstances connecting the ad- 
 ministration of the poison with Lovie, as a flimsy 
 fabric of legal ingenuity, artificially constructed to 
 make up for what was absolutely necessary before a 
 man could be convicted and executed for such a 
 crime — that he should be seen to have given the 
 woman that which caused her death. 
 
 It was remarked, with concern, that an acquittal 
 in almost similar circumstances had occurred but a 
 few months before, in the same year (1827). The 
 antecedents were alike, down even to the tampering 
 with the existence of an unborn babe; but the 
 enemy was not the seducer himself, but his mother. 
 The arsenic was purchased with the same declared 
 object — the slaughter of rats. The damnatory evi- 
 dence was, however, slightly shaken by two elements 
 — the one that rats had been known in the premises, 
 the other that the victim was subject to low spirits 
 on account of her degraded condition, and spoke of 
 suicide. 
 
 Such acquittals seemed dangerously to adjust 
 themselves to the peculiar notions which the un- 
 cultivated mind forms of poisoniug. It seems to
 
 TRIALS FOR POISONING. 63 
 
 them a mode of murder — if its operation really be 
 counted murder in their eyes — divested of many 
 of the terrors, natural or supernatural, which hover 
 over bloodshed. Poisoners of the uneducated class 
 have been observed to evince mild and temperate 
 characters, little given to acts of violence, ferocity, 
 or cruelty in other and more tangible shapes. They 
 preserve a stolid calmness after the deed, undisturbed 
 by those external reflections of a guilty conscience, 
 which, in dreams or fancied apparitions, haunt him 
 who has recollections of the death-struggle, the 
 gaping wound, and the tell-tale stains of blood.* 
 What the perpetrator does in poisoning is a simple, 
 calm, and serene act of seeming innocence; what 
 follows seems the working of nature, and is but a 
 fac-simile of many common forms in which she 
 divorces the spirit from the clay. In the eyes of rude, 
 uncultivated minds, these external differences cover 
 nearly all the space that they are capable of seeing 
 between guilt and innocence. 
 
 The recklessness often shown by the uneducated 
 poisoner implies a corresponding consciousness of 
 security, as if the danger of detection were as limited 
 as his own sense of guilt. In the case of Hay, tried at 
 the Western Circuit in 1780, where the antecedents 
 
 * As, for instance, that wholesale German poisoner, the Frau 
 Zwanziger, whose adventures are related by Feuerbach.
 
 \ 
 
 64 TRIALS FOR POISONING. 
 
 were like those of Lovie's case, it was proved that he 
 had gone to the house of his victim, and cast arsenic 
 into the meal which was in preparation for the family, 
 and into the store from which future meals were to 
 be supplied. The mother of the family died next 
 morning, her husband a few days afterwards, and 
 the intended victim escaped. The deed was no 
 longer veiled in the darkness of unscientific days, 
 for the poison was discovered by the illustrious 
 chemist, Black.* 
 
 * A little incident of this case is curious itself, though dis- 
 connected with the present subject. In Lockhart's Life of 
 Scott, there is a well-known anecdote, attributed to Lord Brax- 
 field, one of the Scottish judges. There was a certain laird 
 among the judge's friends, with whom he used to engage in pro- 
 tracted and hard-fought games at chess. That laird having been 
 tried and convicted for forgery, Braxfield, after condemning him 
 to death, added, " And now, Donald, I think I have check -mated 
 you at last." The late venerable Lord Justice General, Mr. Hope, 
 who possessed in an eminent degree the quality of standing by his 
 friends, published a letter in Blackwood's Magazine, for Novem- 
 ber, 1844, saying, " More unfeeling and brutal conduct it is 
 hardly possible to imagine. The moment I heard the story, I 
 contradicted it, as, from my personal knowledge of Lord Brax- 
 field, I knew it could not be true. Lord Braxfield was certainly 
 not a polished man in his manners, and now-a-days especially 
 would be thought a coarse man. But he was a kind-hearted 
 man, and a warm and steady friend, intimately acquainted with 
 all my family, and much esteemed by them all. I was under 
 great obligations to him for the countenance he showed me 
 when I came to the bar just sixty years ago, and therefore I 
 was resolved to probe the matter to the bottom." The result of 
 the investigation was, that Lord Braxfield had not presided at 
 any trial for forgery except one at Stirling," and then the culprit,
 
 TRIALS FOE POISONING. 65 
 
 One of the very small number of executions 
 which, within the past fifteen years, have occurred 
 in Edinburgh, was that of a woman who had 
 poisoned her husband. The cause of the death was 
 abundantly evident, and as to its connecting links 
 with the accused, it appeared that, after one of their 
 numerous brawls, she rushed forth, her face swollen 
 and blackened with recent blows, and bought the 
 arsenic that was to avenge them. In explaining 
 her object to the dispensing chemist, she gave the 
 usual story of the house being infested with rats — 
 and to such a pitch of audacity had they gone, that 
 in their gambols they tossed down a lump of wood 
 
 instead of being a friend, or even a common acquaintance of 
 Lord Braxfield, was a miserable shopkeeper in the town of 
 Falkirk, whose very name it is hardly possible he could ever 
 have heard till he read it in the indictment. Therefore I think 
 I have effectually cleared his character from the ineffable in- 
 famy of such brutality." There may be possibly an opinion 
 that this great judge's character has more serious stains to be 
 cleared away than a savage joke. The present writer, however, 
 has reason to believe that the expression about check-mating, 
 on which the anecdote was founded, was used by Lord Karnes 
 at the trial of I lay. When the scientific analysis of the poison 
 came out in confirmation of the previous unscientific evidence, 
 his lordship said, " That's check-mate ;" and if he meant it to 
 be jocular, he is supposed to have had in view his contests 
 with the prisoner's counsel. The author received this account 
 from the son of a person who was officially present at the 
 trial; and looking at dates and names in contemporary publica- 
 tions, he found them to correspond so completely with the 
 story as orally delivered, that there was no reason to doubt its 
 accuracy in this little detail. 
 VOL. II. F
 
 66 TRIALS FOR POISONING. 
 
 from the roof, which had hit her on the head and 
 blackened her eye, — she was determined to kill the 
 rat who had done that. The woman's face had, 
 throughout the trial, a character of hard and 
 stupid obduracy. Its strong impassiveness was for 
 once unbent at this part of the evidence, and the 
 lips dissolved into a grim smile, as if the arid in- 
 tellect within had some slight appreciation of a 
 joke. 
 
 An instance of the strange recklessness of com- 
 mon poisoners occurred in 1829, when John Stew- 
 art and Catherine "Wright were convicted of mur- 
 der and robbery committed in a Clyde steam-boat. 
 In the public cabin they had drugged a passenger 
 with laudanum dropped in the liquor they enticed 
 him to drink, and they picked his pockets when he 
 was insensible or dead. Stewart seemed to consider 
 this an ingenious device which nobody would ever 
 detect, and among the companions who might con- 
 sider it a fair enough speculation, he talked of it 
 openly by a technical term of his own invention as 
 " giving the doctor." It would be difficult to 
 imagine circumstances better calculated for im- 
 minent detection than those in which this murder 
 was perpetrated. The public were alarmed by the 
 crime being repeated nearly in the same form four 
 years afterwards in a public-house in Glasgow, by
 
 TRIALS FOR POISONING. 67 
 
 a man named Byres and his wife. When the fatal 
 consequences became apparent, the witnesses remem- 
 bered that they had seen a dark substance at the 
 bottom of the glass into which the prisoner's wife 
 had poured the porter of which the victim drank. 
 It is from instances such as these, that well-meaning 
 people dread an exterminating series of murders 
 from the invention of chloroform and other anaes- 
 thetics — but while they are in the hands of such 
 clumsy operators, the number of executions will be 
 a palpable measure of the corresponding injury and 
 danger to society. 
 
 Among the natural concomitants of these pecu- 
 liarities which we have seen attending poison mur- 
 ders is this, that the crime, unlike others of equally 
 deep atrocity, sometimes breaks out in pastoral or 
 other primitive rural districts, where, without any 
 previous contaminating influence, the iniquity rises 
 suddenly up like some great tropical plant in the 
 midst of innocence and simplicity.* Some of the 
 
 * The author of an article on chemistry in. the Edinburgh 
 Eeview for July, 1851, says, in reference to the." measure then 
 before parliament on the sale of arsenic : " The introduction of 
 a bill by Lord Carlisle for this purpose, and its subsequent 
 passage in the present session of parliament, has recalled to 
 our mind a state of things which existed in Normandy L a few 
 years ago, the cause and cure for which may suggest the adop- 
 tion of other measures of prevention among ourselves also, in 
 addition to the legislative measures already passed into a law 
 
 F2
 
 68 TRIALS FOR POISONING. 
 
 instances which have been already mentioned were 
 of this character, leaving behind them the stains 
 of the blackest crime in the midst of habits and 
 ideas not contaminated by even the secondary 
 offences of more densely peopled and advanced 
 districts. 
 
 In Normandy, it had long been the practice, as it still is in 
 some of our southerly English counties, to use white arsenic 
 for the steeping of seed-corn, with a view to the destruction of 
 insects and fungi — as the midge, smut, rust, &c. — by which 
 grain crops are frequently very much injured. This abundance 
 of arsenic among the people, and their familiarity with its use, 
 brought every season before the courts, from the rural districts, 
 a yearly crop of poison cases, in which arsenic had been em- 
 ployed for the destruction of human life. "With a view to 
 provide a remedy, it was at first remitted to the Departmental 
 Society of Agriculture, to inquire whether this use of arsenic 
 was indispensable, and whether in the chauhge du ble other 
 substances of a less dangerous character might not replace it 
 both effectually and economically. The experiments made by 
 direction of the society enabled them to report that arsenic 
 might be dispensed with, and that less deadly substances were 
 as cheap and efficacious. A law was passed in consequence, 
 forbidding the use of arsenic in the preparation (pickling) of 
 seed-corn, and the annual group of poisoning trials disappeared. 
 If, as we believe, it is chiefly in those parts of England where 
 arsenic has been so employed for agricultural purposes, that our 
 home poisonings with it have also been most frequent, the 
 abandonment or prohibition of it in the farm might not only 
 remove in some cases the means and direct temptation to 
 crime, but might in others take away also a source of evil 
 suggestions which afterwards lead to the purchase of poison 
 for otherwise unthought-of ends. 
 
 ' How oft the sight of means to do ill deeds 
 Makes ill deeds done !' "
 
 TRIALS FOR POISONING. 69 
 
 But more remarkable in this view than any of 
 the instances already mentioned, was a tragedy that 
 occurred in 1821, in the secluded parish of the 
 Keiff, in Aberdeenshire. There lived in a neigh- 
 bouring parish a certain George Thorn, a substantial 
 small farmer of undoubted respectability, who had 
 passed beyond his sixtieth year with an unblemished 
 reputation. His wife, whose name was Mitchell, 
 had two brothers and two sisters residing at the 
 farm of Burnside. Her family had succeeded to 
 some property by the death of a relation. It had been 
 divided among them, and Mrs. Thorn had received 
 her fifth share ; but her husband cast avaricious 
 eyes on the other four. As the simplest means of 
 acquiring them, he resolved to poison the whole 
 family, and the operation seems to have occurred to 
 him as a clever and original idea, which no one else 
 would be likely to alight upon, and which did not 
 involve the slightest risk of discovery. 
 
 Accordingly, one day he paid them a visit. It 
 was unexpected — for he seems not to have been a 
 man of social disposition — and he had not gone 
 near his connexions since he had married their 
 sister, though he was a frequent visitor before 
 that event. He was hospitably received, and all 
 supped together heartily and in sound health. 
 Before going to rest, he expressed a desire — for
 
 70 TRIALS FOR POISONING. 
 
 which there was no accounting — to sleep in the 
 kitchen. As it seems, however, to have been much 
 opposed, he gave it up. He slept as he had usually 
 done when visiting the Mitchells of old, but he rose 
 at an early hour in the morning — it was Sunday — 
 saying that he wished to get clear through that part 
 of the country before the people were on their way 
 to church. 
 
 Very early in the morning, one of the brothers, 
 who slept in the kitchen, heard some person in 
 motion there. He slept in one of the beds shut 
 close in with wooden doors, which the peasantry of 
 the north of Scotland consider the perfection of 
 warmth and comfort. He was too lazy to open the 
 doors to see who the intruder might be, but satisfied 
 himself that he was occupied close to the press. 
 Thom was, at that time, mixing a quantity of 
 arsenic with the salt, preserved in a box for general 
 family use. One of the sisters proceeding to her 
 household duties, entered the kitchen before he had 
 left it, but after he had finished his work. She ob- 
 served that he was shaking out of his pocket some 
 crumbs of bread and cheese, which were covered 
 with a white powder. 
 
 Thom set off, and at the first stage eat a hearty- 
 breakfast. He seems afterwards to have thought, 
 that such an indication of health might be con-
 
 TEIALS FOE, POISONING. 71 
 
 sidered inconsistent with the state of matters he had 
 left behind him ; and he said to a person he met ere 
 he reached his home, that he must have taken some- 
 thing that disagreed with him; if he had not ob- 
 tained relief by putting a feather down his throat, 
 and producing the effect of an emetic by the titra- 
 tion, he verily believed he would have died. 
 
 The breakfast at Burnside was made of milk por- 
 ridge. James Mitchell, one of the brothers, took 
 little of it, feeling that it had " a sweet, sicken- 
 ing taste." The other brother and the sisters eat 
 heartily, without observing any peculiarity in their 
 food. We quote from an accurate abridgment of 
 the evidence: "Before James got himself dressed 
 he fell sick, and continued to get worse. He, how- 
 ever, set out for church, but on the way felt so ill, 
 that he stopped awhile on the road to consider 
 whether or not he should go in. When in the 
 church, he felt himself ' turning blind.' After 
 having eat at the Lord's table,* he came out of the 
 church, and found, in the churchyard, his brother 
 William, who said that he was very sick. William 
 then went into the church and James returned 
 home, having vomited severely by the way. When 
 
 * The table at which the elements are dispensed is so called 
 in Scotland — it was the Sacrament Sunday, or half-yearly 
 periodical time for Communion.
 
 72 TRIALS FOR POISONING. 
 
 he reached the house, he felt all the lower parts of 
 his body burning within; he now found that both 
 his sisters were unwell, and had been vomiting. 
 William now came back from the church and com- 
 plained of great pain — there was a swelling in his 
 breast rising to his throat, and his eyes were affected. 
 Helen Mitchell stated that, on the Monday, she 
 scarcely felt the ground below her, her feet being 
 benumbed; she had a burning pain at her heart, 
 with a great thirst : her left eye also was painful in 
 the eyelid ; and in this state she remained the whole 
 week, and had not, at the time of the trial, re- 
 covered the full use of her limbs. Mary Mitchell 
 stated that she had no feeling in her legs from her 
 knees to her feet. On the third day, James Mit- 
 chell lost the faculty of his left arm, and felt his 
 feet powerless. William Mitchell, who, as has been 
 seen, had eat heartily of the potage, continued to 
 grow worse and worse; and his eyes, which on the 
 Sunday were painfully affected, almost lost their 
 sight, the white of them becoming red. He en- 
 tirely lost the power of his arms, and died on the 
 Sunday following." James Mitchell, who slept with 
 him, described his death in a very simple and 
 affecting manner: "He rose to look for a drink, 
 returned to his bed, but did not speak to witness; 
 lay down on his bed ; stretched himself and gave a
 
 TRIALS FOR POISONING. 73 
 
 terrible groan, then lay quiet. Witness jogged 
 him, but he did not speak; again jogged him, but 
 received no answer: he then put his arm over him 
 and found him in a cold, deep sweat. Witness 
 then rose and went to his sisters, and told them that 
 he thought ' William was gaen to wear awa out 
 
 O CD 
 
 amo them.' [Here the witness was much affected, 
 and shed tears.] All of them came to the bed; 
 he could not speak, but he was] not quite dead ; he 
 was moving, but that was all, and he died immedi- 
 ately after."* 
 
 This was the only immediate victim of Thorn's 
 comprehensive scheme — the other brother and the 
 two sisters lived, with shattered constitutions, to 
 give testimony at the trial. They early suspected 
 the foul play of which they had been the victims; 
 but for the respectability of their family, they de- 
 sired the matter to be hushed up. When, how- 
 ever, Thorn and his wife came to the funeral — the 
 former in brazen effrontery, the latter in uncon- 
 scious innocence — manifestations of feeling could not 
 be avoided. The neighbours had said they would 
 not attend the funeral if Thom were there. He had 
 not been invited, and when he appeared, was desired 
 to depart. One of the sisters bade Mrs. Thom look 
 at the body; she did so, but her husband would not 
 
 * Black Calendar of Aberdeen, p. 225.
 
 74 TRIALS FOR POISONING. 
 
 accompany her. His wife very unconsciously said 
 to him, " Nelly says my brother was poisoned." He 
 remarked, that it was possible — he might have got 
 it from toads or pud docks (frogs) in the burn. 
 
 Thom remained stolidly indifferent during the 
 trial, and when a verdict of guilty was brought in, 
 he brushed his hat with his hand like one who was 
 at ease in his mind, and said to some counsel near 
 him, " Gentlemen, I am as innocent as any of you 
 sitting there." He maintained this form until the 
 hope of pardon was past. He then, according to 
 the practice of a large class of criminals, became 
 pious, after a confident fashion, as one secure that the 
 dregs of life, spent in hypocritical professions, would 
 outweigh in his favour the life-long adaptation of 
 his corrupted heart to the perpetration of the darkest 
 villany. That his professions were self-deceptive, 
 was shown by a little incident. Under the shadow 
 of his religious exercises, he slipped a note into the 
 hand of a son by his first marriage, beefo-mec to be 
 furnished with poison, that he might pass to the 
 great account with an additional crime on his soul. 
 
 He made a confession which showed that, though 
 substantially correct, there had been one false ele- 
 ment in the conclusion derived from the evidence. 
 It was believed that he had mixed the poison with 
 the meal — in reality, he had put it in the salt. He
 
 TRIALS FOR POISONING. 75 
 
 seemed to have thought that it would thus operate 
 in doses so small, and therefore so gradually, that 
 its deadly progress might seem the effect of natural 
 disease. He said, what is in conformity with the 
 remarks already made, that after depositing the 
 poison, he scarcely felt that he had committed any 
 crime. It required the panoply of justice, and the 
 prospect of the gibbet, to arouse his dormant, moral 
 perceptions to a sense that, in the simple act of de- 
 positing that white powder, he had actually broken 
 " into the bloody house of life," and outraged the 
 most supreme law of God and man. 
 
 One fortunate feature to be remembered in con- 
 sidering poison as an instrument of death is, that 
 it is not the ready weapon of the irascible pas- 
 sions; it is the means of deliberate, if not calm assas- 
 sination. It is not always at hand, and the most reck- 
 less will use some caution, productive of delay and 
 possible penitence, in procuring it. Even after the 
 snare is set, the intending murderer may repent and 
 avert the calamity. A remarkable case, however, 
 occurred of the momentary and impulsive use of one 
 of the corrosive poisons ; and, — as it has often been 
 seen in momentary crimes, which leave no track of 
 perpetration, — the murderer was more likely to have 
 escaped detection than if the deed had been cau- 
 tiously planned.
 
 76 TRIALS FOR POISONING. 
 
 In 1830, there lived, in Aberdeen, a butcher 
 and his wife named Humphrey. They were in- 
 temperate, keeping low company, and ever quarrel- 
 ling. They used to recriminate murderous intentions 
 against each other, as people of their rank, when 
 quarrelsome and dissipated, often do. The man 
 used to say to his wife that she would some day 
 face Marshall-street for him — the gibbet stood oppo- 
 site to Marshall-street — and the prophecy fell true. 
 Once, when in her fury, she brandished a razor — he 
 bared his neck and said, " There, do it now, for you 
 will do it some time." One evening, Humphrey 
 returning home in a sullen, drunken fit, took um- 
 brage at some visitors in the house, and kicked and 
 struck his wife. She was heard to say, " Lord God ! 
 if anybody would give him poison, and keep my 
 hand clear of it." He was on that night especially 
 unreasonable and capricious, demanding, after mid- 
 night, a supper of beefsteak to be brought to his 
 bed, to which he had staggered. He fell asleep 
 before the dish was ready. It was his custom, like 
 most drunken slumberers, to sleep with his mouth 
 open. His wife, smarting with pain and fury, 
 seeing him lie thus, filled a wine-glass from a phial 
 of sulphuric acid which stood near, and poured it 
 down his throat. 
 
 The tortured man raised a frightful hubbub. He
 
 TRIALS FOR POISONING. 77 
 
 lived next day in great agony, and was visited by 
 the neighbours. He said, " Oh ! woman, woman, 
 you have tried to do this often, and you have done 
 it now." Such exclamations would have passed 
 among the ordinary recriminations of this ill-condi- 
 tioned -couple, and the form of the man's death 
 would not have been considered remarkable in an 
 inveterate dram-drinker, but an incident, extremely 
 trifling, at once pointed to the nature of the crime. 
 A neighbour woman sat with her child on her knee 
 in an adjoining room, by a table on which stood 
 some empty drinking glasses. The child was play- 
 ing with them, when suddenly it uttered a scream, 
 and flung down a glass which it had just put to its 
 mouth. The mother put her tongue to the glass 
 and tasted the burning acid. 
 
 Such incidents are called the dispensations of 
 Providence for the discovery of murder. It is no 
 irreverence to hold rather that a foreseeing Provi- 
 dence has made men for their self-protection acutely 
 sensitive in noticing the minutest trifles where the 
 life of a fellow-being is concerned. The incident, 
 which would have been a trifle instantly forgotten 
 had, there not been death in the house, swelled into 
 ominous and portentous importance. A phial, in 
 which there had been a considerable quantity of 
 sulphuric acid, was found nearly empty. To com-
 
 78 TBIALS FOE, POISONING. 
 
 plete the circle of evidence, the vest of a gown, 
 worn by the murderess, was found concealed. It was 
 speckled with the corrosions of the acid which the 
 poor man had instantaneously spurted out ere she 
 had ceased bending over him. There were like cor- 
 rosive marks on the bed-clothes around. . "■ I dis- 
 covered," said Professor Trail, in his Medical Juris- 
 prudence, " six- tenths of a grain of per-sulphuric 
 acid in two small spots on a blanket, seven weeks 
 after the crime." The woman was convicted and 
 executed.
 
 SPECTRAL AND DREAM TESTIMONY. 
 
 It Is often remarked how very rarely narratives 
 of supernatural events find their way into the pro- 
 ceedings of courts of justice, when it is remembered 
 how large an amount of belief they still receive even 
 among the educated classes. There is something 
 uncongenial with the supernatural in such an ordeal. 
 The delicate texture of its credibility shrinks from 
 the broad light of open inquiry, and from the 
 rough handling of men who are unscrupulously 
 determined to get at the truth. The best ghost 
 story that has got credence during the last ten years 
 — and we are better at that work as at all others 
 than our ancestors — would not stand the ordeal of 
 a jury trial.* 
 
 * Surely among the strangest grounds of action, if it be not 
 altogether a fictitious case, is that which forms the foundation 
 of the tenth declamation, attributed to Quinctilian. A mother
 
 80 SPECTRAL AND DREAM TESTIMONY. 
 
 It is true enough, that when certain superstitions 
 were universal or supreme, the courts of justice 
 were the chosen arena where they were developed 
 in their most hideous and cruel shape. But when 
 light has visited a people, it is concentrated in these 
 tribunals. They will not give themselves to the 
 powers of darkness where other and better powers 
 reign. Rife as a superstition may be among the 
 people, or even in a class of scientific heretics 
 among the educated, the courts of justice — at least 
 open public courts like ours — draw their lights 
 from still higher intellectual sources, and refuse to 
 be tainted by it. Thus the quackeries which, from 
 time to time, sweep society and are forgotten till the 
 antiquaries excavate them, pass and leave the ad- 
 ministration of justice untainted, however much 
 they may have had their influence on society or 
 
 mourning for the death of her son is visited by him in her 
 dreams, and is comforted. " Nee jam nisi cum luce certa, 
 fugatisque sideribus, invitus ille vanescebat ex oculis, multum 
 resistens, ssepe respiciens, et qui se promitteret etiam proxima 
 nocte venturum. Jam moerori locus non erat — mulier filiuru 
 nocte videbat, die sperabat." She communicated the happy 
 news to her husband. But he rather dreaded than courted 
 such a visit, for he had ill used the youth in life. Accordingly 
 he applied to the magi to perform incantations on the tomb 
 which would prevent the spirit from leaving the urn of ashes. 
 The visits ceased, and the mother prosecuted her husband. 
 It is observable, that throughout Quinctilian's writings there 
 are frequent morbid traces of the effect of his own domestic 
 bereavements.
 
 SPECTRAL AND DREAM TESTIMONY. 8 1 
 
 science, and even on religion. Thus in a county 
 where quack doctors make their thousands a year, a 
 jury of tradesmen will bring in a verdict against the 
 universal vegetable medicine. No one has yet been 
 convicted on the evidence of clairvoyants who have 
 seen the picking of pockets through mobs, or the 
 forcing of notes through closed shutters, though 
 
 CD CD cd O 
 
 there could not be a more natural or fitting appli- 
 cation of their art. There was more than a jest in 
 the proposal that Madame Tussaud should bring 
 an action for one shilling sterling against the clair- 
 voyant who professed to have seen her wax-works, to 
 try the question whether he had seen them, yea or 
 nay? Could such a question be for some serious 
 patrimonial object actually referred to a jury, the 
 sifting it would receive would be of a totally different 
 kind from that which satisfies the jury of male and 
 female sages in a drawing-room. 
 
 The clarifying advantage of such an ordeal is 
 in the distinctness with which different things are 
 ascertained separately and without reference to each 
 other. All our tales of the marvellous are con- 
 veyed to us complete. Some dreamer has dreamt 
 a dream, and, lo! it has proved true, prefiguring 
 some important event. It would never have been 
 heard of but for the fulfilment. It has been well 
 remarked, that as each human being dreams some 
 
 YQL. II. G
 
 82 SPECTRAL AND DREAM TESTIMONY. 
 
 365 times a year, and generally about things in which 
 he is immediately engaged — the dream taking the 
 direction of some probable conclusion — it is not 
 wonderful that there should be many coincidences 
 between dreams and realities. The dreams veritably 
 fulfilled in this manner would make no inconsider- 
 able number when they are taken by themselves, 
 and the unfulfilled remain unrecorded, so that the 
 numbers cannot be compared with each other. 
 
 But there is a further misleading tendency in the 
 propensity which so many of us have, even if we 
 do not believe in the marvellous ourselves, to be 
 the vehicles through which it is conveyed to other 
 people. A marvellous coincidence is like a piece 
 of wonderful news, a valuable conversational com- 
 modity, which the owner does not wish to cheapen 
 by understating. Sometimes the narrator entertains 
 a lurking belief which he is reluctant to allow; he is 
 anxious to find some excuse for enjoying the excite- 
 ment of believing; and he will give his faith to a 
 supernatural event on far less evidence than he would 
 require to prove some every- day matter which it is 
 his interest to deny. 
 
 Generally you are told, at the commencement 
 of the narrative, that the narrator has not in his 
 constitution a particle of credulity — only, so and so 
 happened. Perhaps some ope dreamed that he saw
 
 SPECTRAL AND DREAM TESTIMONY. 83 
 
 a dear and distant relation laid in a shroud. He 
 remembers the exact time, and finds by his letters, 
 received months afterwards, that at the very same 
 moment that relation died. Some friend drew the 
 curtains of his bed at night, all ghastly and point- 
 ing to an open wound ; at that same moment it is 
 subsequently ascertained that he committed suicide. 
 The narrator draws no inference. These are facts, 
 and he expects to be believed when he tells them, 
 make of them what you will. 
 
 It is ungracious to say that you would have liked 
 some evidence that the dreamer's vision was recorded 
 and published before the realisation is known. We 
 never hear of people waiting for the fulfilment of 
 a dream, or the accomplishment of visionary vati- 
 cinations. The omen and the fulfilment arc always 
 conjoined. The sort of evidence in which they are 
 so connected would not satisfy a court of justice. It 
 would rend them in twain, and demand a rigid proof 
 of each, looking hither and thither at the pre- 
 cedents and coincidents of the whole affair. Thus, 
 to take an instance lately talked of in society, — 
 we are told of a breakfast-party being plunged 
 in solemn gloom by a lady who complains that 
 her sleep has been disturbed by a pestilent drummer 
 rub-a-dubbin"; round the house all ni^ht. She 
 sees, from the sinister expression on every coun- 
 
 G2
 
 84 SPECTRAL AND DREAM TESTIMONY. 
 
 tenance, that she has said something she ought not 
 to have said, but what it may be she cannot divine. 
 Questions are asked when an opportunity comes, 
 and it is put to the poor lady, " was she really igno- 
 rant of the sad legend of that ancient house, that 
 just before a death in it a drummer is always heard 
 parading the castle during the night?" A short 
 time elapses, when the lord of the castle receives a 
 notice of the death of a beloved member of his 
 family. 
 
 It is useless to contradict or doubt such a story. 
 But were there a judicial examination, there would 
 be some other matters requiring settlement. Every 
 instance of a death preceded by the drumming 
 would of course be investigated. But further — evi- 
 dence would be desired, not only that the drummer 
 was spoken of immediately after the death occurred, 
 but it would be necessary to show, on full and satis • 
 factory evidence, that the fact of the drumming was 
 known and spoken of before the death occurred. It 
 might possibly be found, that sometimes it only oc- 
 curred to some one after the death to remember that 
 he had heard of the drumming, and counsel would 
 know how to deal with questionable testimony like 
 that. Finally, a return would be demanded of all 
 occasions on which any one spoke of having heard 
 the drummer, without a death following the rumour.
 
 SPECTRAL AND DREAM TESTIMONY. 85 
 
 Possibly, too, learned gentlemen might think it as 
 well to extend their inquiries into the habits of 
 the neighbourhood, and would doubtless feel much 
 interest in the history and habits of the members 
 of musical associations and amateur bands. 
 
 Supernatural agencies will seldom condescend to 
 be exposed to so rough and vulgar an ordeal. They 
 prefer the pure, high-minded faith which is superior 
 to such paltry realism. Thus, it must be confessed 
 that the occasions on which such interesting matters 
 find their way into the records of our courts, in later 
 times at least, are extremely rare. This rarity may 
 give them value. In any sense, whether that of the 
 vulgar plodder, who is looking about for miserable 
 facts, or in that of the loftier aspirant after the infi- 
 nite, who demands the unlimited command over 
 your reason, and will not condescend to prove any- 
 thing, a collection of them would be valuable, and 
 the meagre contribution which our Scottish records 
 supply to it, is given in the following pages. 
 
 On the 3rd of June, 1754, Duncan Terig, alias 
 Clerk, and Alexander Bain Macdonald, were tried 
 at Edinburgh for the murder of Serjeant Arthur 
 Davies, in the year 1749.* Davies was an English- 
 man, and was employed in the unpopular and un- 
 safe duty of enforcing the Disarming Act in the 
 
 * The trial was edited, in a thin quarto volume for the use of 
 the Bannatyne Club, by Sir Walter Scott, in 1831.
 
 86 SPECTRAL AND DREAM TESTIMONY. 
 
 Highlands. He was stationed at the fortified bar- 
 rack of Dubrach, near Braemar, with four men 
 under his command. A post more wild and iso- 
 lated, at a period when the passes of the Grampians 
 were as little known in the Lowlands as those 
 of Afghanistan, cannot easily be conceived. It 
 was only by descending the river Dee, where 
 there was then no road, that communication could 
 be had with the rest of the world, without crossing 
 great ridges of mountain. Though the springs 
 that feed the Spey bubble up close to those which 
 swell the Dee, they approach each other between 
 three and four thousand feet above the level of the 
 sea ; and it is by crossing the great rocks, with their 
 precipices and snow-fields, from which the accumu- 
 lating rivulets fall down on either side in mighty 
 torrents, that the adventurer can pass from the 
 strath of the Dee to that of the Spey. On the 
 other side is the great basin washed by the Tay 
 and its tributaries, reached by the scarcely less wild 
 pass of Glentilt, or by that which, further eastward, 
 passes to the Isla, by the Spital of Glenshee. The 
 name given to this lonely pass, which was the scene 
 of the murder, is derived from its having once been 
 the site of a station of the magnificent Knights 
 Hospitallers. If these mountain passes sometimes 
 perplex and frighten the tourist of the present day, 
 they must have been still more formidable to Ser-
 
 SPECTRAL AND DREAM TESTIMONY. 87 
 
 geant Davies, who found the whole district covered 
 with that forest of gigantic pine-trees, of which a 
 scattered remnant only stands to attest its ancient 
 sylvan grandeur. Over this perilous ground the 
 Englishman, little accustomed to such scenes in 
 early life, had to pursue his dangerous duty. The 
 small parties scattered here and there, throughout 
 the disaffected districts, had no inconsiderable re- 
 semblance to the present Irish police, isolated in 
 small bodies, and often separated by great mountain 
 ranges from each other. In both instances, small 
 knots of men have kept their position and inspired 
 a wholesome awe over tracts inhabited by a hostile 
 population, and have exemplified the power of 
 system and discipline over chaotic numbers. 
 
 But the habits of Serjeant Davies seduced him 
 into additional, and, as his friends often warned 
 him, inexcusable risks. He was a sportsman — a 
 being then almost peculiar to England. The High- 
 lander stalked a deer or killed a salmon when he 
 wanted food, or joined in some great driving of the 
 tinchel, with festivity and vast assemblage; but the 
 patient exercise of solitary sport in the forest or the 
 stream was a propensity with which he could not 
 sympathise ; and Davies, sometimes setting out 
 alone on such pursuits, or straying to a distance 
 from his party, became a marked man.
 
 88 SPECTRAL AND DREAM TESTIMONY. 
 
 He was repeatedly warned of his danger; but he 
 appears to have been a man of unsuspicious, hardy, 
 self-relying character. Steady, sober, and well- 
 regulated, he seems to have acquired an amount 
 of movable wealth rather remarkable as the pos- 
 session of a non-commissioned officer. He had 
 fifteen guineas and a half in gold, which he carried 
 about in a green silk purse. He had a silver watch 
 and two gold rings, one of them having the letters 
 " D. H." engraved within, and this posie: 
 
 " When this you see, 
 Remember me." 
 
 He had large silver buckles on his shoes, a pair of 
 knee buckles, twenty-four silver buttons, with silver 
 lace and a button on his hat. To those who think 
 of the condition of the non-commissioned officer at 
 the present day, this wealth seems almost as marvel- 
 lous as it must have appeared to the half-naked 
 Highlanders of Dubrach. He was fond of display- 
 ing his wealth, even when any onlookers it might at- 
 tract could only be of a suspicious or dangerous kind. 
 " He made no secret," said his widow, " of his hav- 
 ing the gold above-mentioned; but, upon the many 
 different occasions he had to pay and receive money, 
 he used to take out his purse and show the gold; 
 and that even when he was playing with children, 
 he would frequently take out his purse and rattle it
 
 SPECTRAL AND DREAM TESTIMONY. 89 
 
 for their diversion, from which it was generally 
 known to all the neighbourhood that the sergeant 
 was worth money, and carried it about him." He 
 used to say, when taxed with the imprudence of 
 wandering about alone in a hostile country with so 
 much superfluous wealth on his person, that with 
 his weapons and ammunition he feared no man. In 
 fact, he courted his doom. There is not a less 
 predatory race in any country than the Highlanders 
 of the present day ; but, in the time of the disarm- 
 ing, robbery was their profession, and the plunder 
 of the enemy and Saxon a confirmed national 
 principle. 
 
 There was another small party at Glenshee, and 
 it was the practice for the two to meet at a spot half- 
 way between their stations, at stated intervals, to 
 make mutual arrangements for the service they were 
 employed in. On the 28th of September, 1749, 
 the party from Dubrach proceeded to the spot, and 
 returned without their sergeant, stating that they 
 had not seen him — that they believed he was pur- 
 suing his sport, and that they had heard him fire a 
 shot. He reached the place of meeting alone, after 
 his own men had left it, and he found there the 
 Glenshee party, whose sergeant took an opportunity 
 of admonishing him on his rashness. " He thought 
 it was very unreasonable in him to venture upon
 
 90 SPECTRAL AND DREAM TESTIMONY. 
 
 the hill by himself; as for his part, he was not 
 without fear even when he had his party of four 
 men along with him." The sergeant never appeared 
 again alive among his friends; and the poor widow, 
 in her testimony, said : 
 
 " From the second day after the sergeant and party 
 went from Dubrach as aforesaid, when the witness 
 found he did not return, she did believe, and does 
 believe at this day, that he was murdered ; for that 
 he and she lived together in as great amity and love as 
 any couple could do that ever were married, and that 
 he never was in use to stay away a night from her; 
 and that it was not possible he could be under any 
 temptation to desert, as he was much esteemed and 
 beloved by all his officers, and had good reason to 
 believe he would be promoted to the rank of ser- 
 geant-major on the first vacancy." 
 
 Nearly a year had elapsed after the sergeant was 
 thus missed, when a certain Donald Farquharson, 
 in Glenshee, was told that his neighbour, Alexander 
 Macpherson, " alias Macgillas," had been making 
 repeated and very anxious inquiries after him, and 
 had left a message beseeching him to call at his 
 father's shieling. Farquharson did so; and the 
 communication then made to him had better be 
 given in the words in which his testimony is re- 
 corded :
 
 SPECTRAL AND DREAM TESTIMONY. 91 
 
 " Macpherson told liim that he was greatly 
 troubled with an apparition — the ghost of the de- 
 ceased Sergeant Davies — who insisted that he should 
 bury his bones ; and that, he having declined to bury 
 them, the ghost insisted that he should apply to the 
 witness, saying that he was sure Donald Farquhar- 
 son would help to bury his bones. That the witness 
 could not believe that he had seen such an appari- 
 tion; upon which Macpherson desired him to go 
 along with him, and he would show him the bones, 
 and the place where he had found them. That the 
 witness went along with him, which he did the 
 rather that he thought it might possibly be true, 
 and if it was, he did not know but the apparition 
 might trouble himself." 
 
 He at last agreed, however, to accompany Mac- 
 pherson to the spot. It was a deserted peat moss, 
 about half a mile from the path which had been 
 used by the patrolling parties. The witness thus 
 described what he found : 
 
 " The spot where the body was lying had the 
 surface of the ground entire, and no peats had been 
 casten there : that the flesh had been mostly con- 
 sumed from the bones, and the head separated from 
 the body, and the hair lying by itself, separated from 
 the head — that the hair was of the same colour with 
 the sergeant's hair, a mouse colour. That they also
 
 92 SPECTKAL AND DREAM TESTIMONY. 
 
 found some blue cloth, all torn in rags, some of it 
 under the body, and some of it lying by the body ; 
 and it appeared to the witness to be of the same 
 kind of cloth with that of the blue coat which the 
 sergeant commonly wore when he went a-shooting; 
 that the bones were not all lying together, but were 
 scattered asunder, particularly some of the joints of 
 his arms and one of his legs ; and that some of them 
 were scattered at the distance of several yards. That 
 Macpherson told him, that when he first found the 
 bones, which w T as about eight days before, that they 
 were lying further off, under a bank, and he drew 
 them out with his staff." 
 
 Macpherson corroborated the story of the ghostly 
 visitant, but in a manner which will be afterwards 
 commented on. He said that Farquharson doubted 
 his information about the body lying on the hill, 
 until Macpherson told him that he had been visited 
 by a spectre, as of a man clad in blue, which turned 
 out to be the ghost of Sergeant Davies. It is surely 
 uncommon to mistake a disembodied spirit for a 
 neighbour and friend in the flesh, and only to be 
 convinced of the error by specific information 
 afforded by the ghost. Such, however, was the 
 position in which this witness stated that he found 
 himself. The vision said to him, "lam Sergeant 
 Davies." The narrative continues thus:
 
 SPECTRAL AND DREAM TESTIMONY. 93 
 
 " Before he told him so, the witness had taken the 
 said vision, at first appearance, to be a real living- 
 man, a brother of Donald Farquharson's. That the 
 witness rose from his bed and followed him to the 
 door, and then it was, as has been told, that he 
 said he was Sergeant Davies, who had been killed on 
 the hill of Christie about near a year before, and 
 desired the witness to go to the place he pointed at, 
 where he would find his bones, and that he might 
 go to Donald Farquharson, and take his assistance 
 to the burying of him. That upon his giving 
 Donald Farquharson this information, Donald went 
 along with him, and finding the bones as he in- 
 formed Donald, and having then buried them with 
 the help of a spade which he had alongst with him. 
 And for putting what is above deposed upon out 
 of doubt, depones that the above vision was the 
 occasion of his going by himself to see the dead 
 body, and which he did before he either spoke 
 to John Growar, Daldownie, or any other body. 
 And further depones, that while he was in bed 
 another night, after he had first seen the body by 
 himself, but had not buried it, the vision again 
 appeared, naked, and minded him to bury the body; 
 and after that he spoke to the other folks above- 
 mentioned, and at last complied and buried the 
 bones above-mentioned. That upon the vision's
 
 94 SPECTRAL AND DREAM TESTIMONY. 
 
 first appearance to trie witness in his bed, and after 
 going out of the door, and being told by it he was 
 Sergeant Davies, the witness asked him who it was 
 that had murdered him, to which it made this 
 answer, that if the witness had not asked him, he 
 might have told him ; but as he had asked him, he 
 said he either could not, or would not, but which 
 of the two expressions the witness cannot say; but 
 at the second time the vision made its appearance 
 to him, the witness renewed the same question, and 
 then the vision answered that it was tire two men 
 now in the panel that had murdered him ; and 
 being further interrogated in what manner, the 
 vision disappeared from him first and last? Depones, 
 that after the short interviews above-mentioned, the 
 vision at both times disappeared, and vanished out of 
 his sight in the twinkling of an eye ; and that in de- 
 scribing the panels, by the vision above-mentioned, 
 as his murderers, Iris words were e Duncan Clerk 
 and Alexander M 'Donald.' Depones that the con- 
 versation betwixt the witness and the vision was in 
 the Irish language." 
 
 Sir "Walter Scott was able to preserve, tradi- 
 tionally, an incident of the effect of the ghost story, 
 which the record does not convey. M'Pherson 
 was asked by Mr. M'Intosh, the counsel for the 
 prisoners, what language the ghost spoke. The
 
 SPECTRAL AND DREAM TESTIMONY. 95 
 
 witness said it was as good Gaelic as ever he heard 
 in Lochaber. " Pretty well," answered Mr.M'Intosh, 
 " for the ghost of an English sergeant." Sir Walter 
 justly remarks that "this was no sound jest, for 
 there was nothing more ridiculous in a ghost speak- 
 ing a language which he did not understand when 
 in the body, than there was in his appearing at all." 
 It is in such matters, of course, as in St. Denis's 
 journey with his head, le premier pas qui coute. 
 
 The whole affair of the ghost, however, so dis- 
 organised the intellectual digestion of a jury of 
 David Hume's fellow-citizens, that they rejected 
 the accompanying mass of sound substantial testi- 
 mony, and acquitted the accused in the face of very 
 strong evidence. The whole neighbourhood knew 
 from the beginning who had been the murderers. 
 Clerk and M'Donald became suddenly rich — at least 
 in comparison with their preceding poverty — and 
 a damsel to whom Clerk was subsequently married, 
 was in possession of some rings, and other valuable 
 trinkets, which had, beyond a doubt, belonged to 
 the sergeant. In bickerings and disputes with their 
 neighbours, the murder was frequently " cast up " 
 to them. The witness M'Pherson was on the hill 
 with Clerk, when they saw a young cow. " Shoot it," 
 said Clerk. The witness refused, adding, " That it 
 was such thoughts as these were in his head when
 
 96 SPECTRAL AND DREAM TESTIMONY. 
 
 he murdered Sergeant Davies, upon which some 
 angry expressions happened between Duncan and 
 the witness; but when the witness insisted upon it 
 that he could not deny the murder, Duncan fell 
 calm, and desired the witness to say nothing of that 
 matter, and that he would be a brother to him, and 
 give him everything he stood in need of, and par- 
 ticularly would help him to stock a farm when he 
 took one." On another occasion, when reproached 
 with the deed, he said, " What can you say of an 
 unfortunate man?" meaning how can you be so 
 heartless as to trouble one about an affair which may 
 get him into difficulty. But there was distinct 
 evidence by an eye-witness. One Angus Cameron, 
 who, having gone to reside in the distant district of 
 Ranoch, could speak freely, said: 
 
 " That about an hour and a half before sunset, 
 on the 28th of September, he being on the hill of 
 Galcharn, on the side thereof, saw a man in a blue 
 coat, with a gun in his hand, with a hat which had 
 a white edging about it, he knows not whether it 
 was silver or not; and saw other two men, one of 
 whom was the panel, Duncan Clerk, coming up the 
 hill towards the first-mentioned man, who was dis- 
 tant from him, the witness, about a gunshot, upon 
 or near the top of a hill opposite to him, the name 
 of which he does not know, he being a stranger in
 
 SPECTRAL AND DREAM TESTIMONY. 97 
 
 that country. * * * That he saw Duncan Clerk 
 and his companion, whom he did not nor does not 
 know, meet with the man clad in blue, as aforesaid; 
 and after they had stood for some time together, he 
 saw Duncan Clerk strike at the man in blue, as he 
 thought with his naked hand only, upon the breast; 
 but upon the stroke he heard the man struck cry 
 out, and clap his hand upon the place struck, turn 
 about, and go oiF. That the panel Duncan Clerk 
 and the other man stood still for a little, and then 
 followed after the man in blue, and he saw him, the 
 said Duncan and the other man, each of whom had 
 a gun, fire at the man in blue. That the two shots 
 were very near one another, and immediately upon 
 them the man in blue fell." He then explained the 
 circumstances under which he had been in hidinsr 
 on the hill, and the rifling of the body. 
 
 In a historical point of view the evidence is con- 
 firmed by a statement of Sir Walter Scott, that both 
 the counsel and agent for the prisoners were con- 
 vinced of their guilt. 
 
 The story of the ghost is easily accounted for. 
 The finders of the bones had made up their minds 
 to give their testimony so that the murderers should 
 be brought to justice. For such an unneighbourly 
 and unclannish action they must have some rational 
 excuse. Love of justice, a respect for the laws, 
 
 VOL. II. H
 
 98 SPECTPAL AND DREAM TESTIMONY. 
 
 would be received with just scorn as a paltry subter- 
 fuge — the desire of vengeance would be rational, 
 but would not look well. The summons of a rest- 
 less ghost would afford a just and appreciable mo- 
 tive, founded on rationality and good sense; and 
 accordingly this plan was adopted for the justifica- 
 tion of the informer in the eyes of the country. 
 
 But it does not appear that Macpherson intended 
 to give the Court of Justiciary the benefit of this 
 story. He had there mentioned the discovery of the 
 sergeant's remains as a simple fact, without any 
 allusion to the ghost. It was alluded to, however, 
 by the preceding witness, Farquharson. It appears 
 to have been from this hint that Macpherson was 
 questioned on the point, and he required to stand by 
 the story, or retract the vindication of his unhand- 
 some conduct. His evidence commences in these 
 downright terms: " In summer, one thousand seven 
 hundred and fifty, he found, lying in a moss-bank, on 
 the hill of Christie, a human body — at least, the bones 
 of a human body — of which the flesh was mostly con- 
 sumed; and he believed it to be the body of Ser- 
 geant Davies, because it was reported in the country 
 that he had been murdered on that hill the year 
 before. That when he first found this body, there 
 was a bit of blue cloth upon it, pretty entire, which 
 he took to be what is called English cloth," &c.
 
 SPECTRAL AND DREAM TESTIMONY. 99 
 
 The continuation of Macpherson's evidence suf- 
 ficiently lays bare his motives for getting up the 
 ghost story. " For some days lie was in doubt what 
 to do, but meeting with John Growar in the moss, 
 lie told John what he had found, and John bade 
 him tell nothing of it, otherwise lie would complain 
 of the witness to John Shaw of Daldownie; upon 
 which the witness resolved to prevent Growar's 
 complaint, and go and tell Daldownie of it himself; 
 and which, having accordingly done, Daldownie de- 
 sired him to conceal the matter, and go and bury 
 the body privately, as it would not be carried to a 
 kirk unkent, and that the same might hurt the 
 country, being under the suspicion of being a rebel 
 country." The eye-witness of the deed said, that 
 when he spoke of it to the neighbours, they " ad- 
 vised him to say nothing of it, as it might get ill- 
 will to himself, and bring trouble on the country." 
 Finally, the gliost-seer was in the employment of 
 Clerk, one of tlie accused ; and his testimony, with- 
 out some overwhelming motive, would have been 
 deemed a deed of double baseness. 
 
 Sir Walter Scott, in his curious introduction to 
 this trial, is at a loss to find any other analogous in- 
 stances of spectral evidence reported in the proceed- 
 ings of criminal trials. He mentions the case of 
 Auguier, in the causes ctllbres. This man was 
 
 h2
 
 100 SPECTRAL AND DREAM TESTIMONY. 
 
 prosecuted for repayment of a loan of 20,000 francs 
 to Mirabel, who had no better means of stating 
 how he got possession of so much money, than that 
 a ghost introduced him to a hidden treasure. The 
 proceedings were ingeniously quashed, on the ground 
 that the treasure, if genuine, would have been the 
 property of the crown. With a more vague refer- 
 ence, Sir Walter says: 
 
 " It is a popular story, that an evidence for the 
 crown began to tell the substance of an alleged 
 conversation with the ghost of a murdered man, in 
 which he laid his death to the accused person at the 
 bar. ' Stop,' said the judge, with becoming gravity ; 
 ' this will not do. The evidence of the ghost is 
 excellent. None can speak with a clearer cause of 
 knowledge to nnvthinir Avhich befel him during 
 life. But he must be sworn in usual form. Call 
 the ghost in open court, and, if he appears, the jury 
 and I will give all weight to his evidence ; but in 
 case he does not come forward, he cannot be heard, 
 as now proposed, through the medium of a third 
 party.' " 
 
 Sir Walter also alludes, incidentally and briefly, 
 to the only known record of a criminal trial in 
 England, where the proceedings of a ghost come 
 under consideration, if such a term can apply where 
 the supernatural visitor received no more official
 
 SPECTKAL AND DEE AM TESTIMONY. 101 
 
 notice than a contemptuous allusion from the bench. 
 It occurred in the case of the trials of Harrison and 
 Cole, in 1692.* A certain Dr. Clench, a respect- 
 able medical man in London, had excited the in- 
 dignation of some people by his cautious dealings 
 about a loan transaction, and a security for his 
 money over house property. He was sitting, one 
 evening, by the fire in his nightgown and slippers, 
 when a hackney coachman came hastily to tell him 
 that he had two gentlemen in his coach below, who 
 desired the doctor's assistance to visit a patient in 
 imminent danger. The doctor entered the coach. 
 The coachman was ordered about in various direc- 
 tions, and sent on one message after another. At 
 one place he was sent for an individual named 
 Hunt, a surgeon, and came back saying he could 
 not find him. The criminals had not made up 
 their mind to play their final trick, or could not 
 safely accomplish it ; otherwise he would not 
 have found them. They next drove to Leadenhall- 
 market, when they gave the coachman 3s. 63., and 
 bade him buy a couple of fowls from a stall kept by 
 one Hunt. The coachman made fruitless inquiries 
 after Hunt, but could find no such person's stall. 
 He bought the fowls, however, and returned. 
 "When lie looked into the coach, he saw only one 
 * State Trials, xii., 834.
 
 102 SPECTEAL AND DREAM TESTIMONY. 
 
 man there, prostrate, with his head on the cushion. 
 The coachman cried out, "Hollo, master!" and 
 shook him, believing him to be drunk ; but he 
 found him, at last, to be dead. He had been choked 
 by pressure on the windpipe, as the indictment 
 expresses it, " with a pocket-handerchief, with a coal 
 being put in the same, of the value of twopence, 
 about the neck of him the said Andrew Clench." 
 
 One of the murderers — Harrison — was identified 
 in a curious manner. A lady, who had seen the 
 coach stop near Dr. Clench's door, and the driver 
 sent on his mission, took it in her head that the 
 fare would make off — " I think they call it bilking," 
 said the counsel for the prosecution ; and, being 
 curious to see such an operation, she watched the 
 men narrowly, and, by the aid of one of the few 
 street lamps of that day, became acquainted with 
 Harrison's features. 
 
 The other man could not be found ; but a Mrs. 
 Milward lodged an incoherent-looking information 
 against a man named Cole, on the ground that 
 her deceased husband had confessed to her, on his 
 death-bed, that he and Cole had committed the 
 murder. At his trial, she could offer nothing but 
 such hear-say evidence ; and the following fragment 
 of her examination contains the slight and fugitive 
 reference made to the ghost:
 
 SPECTRAL AND DREAM TESTIMONY. 103 
 
 " Justice Dolben — Was there no quarrel between 
 Cole and you about your goods ? 
 
 " Mrs. Milward — No, my lord. I had no quarrel 
 with him. 
 
 "Justice Dolben — Because you did not do it 
 sooner, have you not been troubled with your 
 husband's ghost ? Tell the jury the story ; we 
 have heard on't ; but I am afraid they will laugh at 
 you. 
 
 " Mrs. Milward — That was very true, my lord. 
 
 " Justice Dolben — Well, if you have any thing- 
 else to say that is material, speak ; otherwise, my 
 brother and I are of opinion, that what you have 
 already offered is no evidence." 
 
 The invitation to Mrs. Milward to tell the ghost- 
 story, was made in banter, and she had no oppor- 
 tunity of getting it out. Cole was acquitted. 
 
 In Mr. Montgomery Martin's work on the " Bri- 
 tish Colonies,"* there is an anecdote which it 
 is, certainly, a little startling to find gravely told 
 in a statistical work passing through the British 
 press in the latter half of the nineteenth century. 
 It is offered as an instance of the " keen sight and 
 sense possessed by the Australian savages." A 
 respectable settler had disappeared from his farm 
 near the Great Western road to Bathurst. When 
 
 * Div., v., 5.
 
 104 SPECTRAL AND DREAM TESTIMONY. 
 
 his absence was made matter of inquiry, his overseer, 
 a convict on ticket of leave, circulated a report 
 that his master had gone to England, leaving him 
 in charge of the settlement. This created some 
 surprise; but, after the lapse of a few weeks, the 
 matter was forgotten, and the convict went on with 
 his duties unquestioned. But behold what happened 
 to. disturb their routine: 
 
 " One Saturday night, a neighbouring settler, 
 returning from market with his horse and cart, on 
 coming to the paling which separated the missing 
 farmer's land from the high road, thought he saw 
 the very man sitting on the rail or fence. Instantly 
 stopping, he hailed his long-absent neighbour, in- 
 quired where he had been, and when he had re- 
 turned home. Receiving no answer, he dismounted 
 from the cart, and went towards the fence; upon 
 which his neighbour, as he plainly appeared to be, 
 quitted the fence, and crossed the field towards a 
 pond in the direction of the house which he was 
 supposed to have deserted." 
 
 The farmer called for his friend next morning. 
 He found that he had not returned; and when he 
 told his story of the night, the overseer laughed at 
 him ; said the man he thought he saw must be by 
 that time near the const of England, and hinted 
 that the worthy farmer had certainly been overtaken
 
 SPECTRAL AND DREAM TESTIMONY. 105 
 
 by spirits of another and more vulgar kind. The 
 farmer, however, was dissatisfied. He thought there 
 were symptoms of foul play, and he laid the matter 
 before a neighbouring justice of peace. Some of 
 the mounted police were sent to make inquiries, 
 and they were accompanied by a native black con- 
 stable, as being a person more competent than 
 European policemen to deal with such questions. 
 The native was taken to the paling where the absent 
 farmer had been seen. 
 
 " The spot was pointed out to the black, with- 
 out showing him the direction which the lost person 
 apparently took after quitting the fence. On close 
 inspection, a part of the upper rail was observed to 
 be discoloured. It was scraped with a knife by the 
 black, who smelt and tasted it. Immediately after, 
 he crossed the fence, and took a straight direction 
 for the pond near the cottage. On its surface was 
 a scum, which he took up with a leaf, and after 
 tasting and smelling it, declared it to be ' white, 
 mans fat? Several times, somewhat after the 
 manner of a bloodhound, he coursed round the lake. 
 At last he darted into the neighbouring thicket, 
 and halted at a place strewed over with loose and 
 decayed brushwood. On removing this, he thrust 
 down the ramrod of his musket into the earth, 
 smelt at it, and then desired the spectators to dig
 
 106 SPECTEAL AND DEEAM TESTIMONY. 
 
 there. Instantly spades were brought from trie 
 cottage ; the remains of the settler were found and 
 recognised: the skull was fractured, and the body 
 presented every indication of having been some 
 time immersed in water. The overseer was com- 
 mitted to gaol, and tried for murder. 
 
 " The foreo-oino- circumstantial evidence formed 
 the main proofs. He was found guilty, sentenced 
 to death, and proceeded to the scaffold protesting 
 his innocence. Here, however, his hardihood for- 
 sook him ; he acknowledged the murder of his late 
 master, declaring that he came behind him when 
 he was crossing the identical rail on which the 
 farmer fancied he saw the deceased, and with one 
 blow on the head killed him, dragged the body to 
 the pond and threw it in, but after some days took 
 it out again and buried it where it was found." 
 
 Mr. Martin says, in concluding his narrative: 
 " The first indication to the farmer of the spot on 
 which the murder was committed, is to me the most 
 singular interposition of Providence that ever came 
 within the limit of my own immediate observation.'' 
 He states that the accuracy of his narrative will 
 be attested " by Saxe Bannister, then his Majesty's 
 attorney-general for the colony, and by other 
 gentlemen." It 'is a prevailing feature, however, 
 of such narratives, that they are always associated
 
 SPECTRAL AND DREAM TESTIMONY. 107 
 
 with remote times or places; that they shun assizes, 
 or the Central Criminal Court, where they would 
 receive a close and full examination ; and we have 
 nothing for it but to believe everything, or doubt 
 the word of very respectable gentlemen. 
 
 The law courts of the United States of America 
 would not be expected to prove a suitable atmo- 
 sphere for a disembodied spirit. If the report of a 
 case, however, which was decided in Maryland, in 
 1799, be not a hoax,* testimony as to the appear- 
 ance of an actual ghost was there given, and 
 solemnly received. The case is that of " James, 
 Fanny, and Thomas Harris, devisees of Thomas 
 Harris, versus Mary Harris, administratrix of 
 James Harris." It is unnecessary to enter into the 
 technicalities and merits of the case, further than to 
 say that the deceased Thomas Harris left a brother 
 and natural children. He made a settlement, in- 
 tending to leave his whole property to these children. 
 It was found, however, that it was only effectual 
 in bequeathing to them his movable or personal 
 estate, and that his brother remained the heir of 
 some landed property possessed by the deceased. 
 This brother, after showing an intention to take 
 
 * It was printed in a periodical work called the Opera Glass, 
 in 1827, and thence transferred to "Notices respecting the 
 Bannatyne Club," privately printed in 1836, p. 191.
 
 108 SPECTRAL AND DREAM TESTIMONY. 
 
 advantage of his position, changed his mind, and 
 before his death sold the estate, intending to give 
 the proceeds to the children. This change was be- 
 lieved to be occasioned by the appearance of his 
 brother's ghost to a common friend; and the mani- 
 festation of the ghost was part of the evidence that 
 James Harris, before his decease, had destined the 
 fund for his brother's children. 
 
 The person who saw the ghost was named Briggs, 
 — a man of good repute and undoubted courage, 
 who had been a soldier in the revolutionary war. 
 
 " He was riding near the place where Thomas 
 Harris were buried, on a horse formerly belonging 
 to Thomas Harris. After crossing a small branch, 
 his horse began to walk on very fast; it was be- 
 tween the hours of ei^ht and nine o'clock in the 
 morning; he was alone — it was a clear day; he 
 entered a lane adjoining to the field where Thomas 
 Harris was buried; his horse suddenly wheeled in 
 a panel of the fence, looked over the fence into the 
 field where Thomas Harris was buried, towards the 
 graveyard, and neighed very loud. Witness then saw 
 Thomas Harris coming towards him, in the same ap- 
 parel as he had last seen him in his lifetime. He had 
 on a sky-blue coat; but before he came to the fence 
 he varied to the right, and vanished. His horse imme- 
 diately took the road. Thomas Harris came within
 
 SrECTRAL AND DREAM TESTIMONY. 109 
 
 two yards of the fence to him ; he did not see his 
 features, nor speak to him. He was acquainted with 
 Thomas Harris when a boy, and there had always 
 been a great intimacy between them. He thinks the 
 horse knew Thomas Harris, because of his neigh- 
 ing, pricking up his ears, and looking over the fence. 
 About the first of June following, he was ploughing 
 in his own field, about three miles from where 
 Thomas Harris was buried, about dusk. Thomas 
 Harris came alongside of him, and walked with him 
 about 200 yards ; he was dressed as when first seen." 
 
 It is clear that the ghost, which appeared in a 
 sky-blue coat, must have had a very bad taste, and 
 a miserable appreciation of the picturesque and ap- 
 propriate. It is evident, too, that Thomas Harris 
 must have been a formidable bore when he was in 
 the flesh, for his ghost becomes eminently tiresome, 
 and it would be cruelty to inflict on the reader 
 an account of his pertinacious reappearances. One 
 of them shows, too, that he must have been a man 
 of bad temper and quarrelsome habits, insomuch as 
 to forget his true functions as a spirit, and summon 
 the arm of the flesh to his aid. 
 
 " Sometime after," continues Mr. Briggs, " when 
 in bed, and a great fire light in the room, he saw a 
 shadow on the wall; at the same time he felt a <?reat 
 weight upon him. Some time after, when in bed
 
 110 SPECTRAL AND DREAM TESTIMONY. 
 
 and asleep, he felt a stroke between his eyes, which 
 blackened them both. His wife was in bed with 
 him, and two young men were in the room. The 
 blow awakened him, and all in the room were 
 asleep. Is certain no person in the room struck 
 him. The blow swelled his nose." 
 
 These visitations were repeated to James Harris, 
 and produced on liim the influence already alluded 
 to. The ghost, like Banquo's, was visible to one 
 person only, though many were present at its visi- 
 tations, when Briggs was seen in earnest conversa- 
 tion with some person or persons, not only un- 
 known, but unseen. This case would, perhaps, not 
 be considered an uncommon one, were it not thus 
 solemnly dealt with in a court of justice. Briggs had 
 been present at the death of Thomas Harris, and 
 was haunted long afterwards by his dying groan. 
 This, along with his spectral guest, " preyed upon 
 his mind so as'to affect his health." He had, in fact, 
 become a proper subject for optical delusions. 
 
 It is difficult to detect, in the Scottish criminal 
 records, any trace of prophetic dreams, the second- 
 sight, or the other superstitions which were rife in 
 Scotland, and might be deemed peculiarly valuable 
 as instruments for the revelation of crime. Their 
 absence must be attributed to that reluctance which 
 the spiritual world has ever shown to appear before
 
 SPECTRAL AND DREAM TESTIMONY. Ill 
 
 a jury; but, making all allowances, it is wonderful 
 that the traces of any allusion to them should be so 
 faint and scanty as they are. Such revelations as 
 those published by Fraser Martin and Aubrey 
 would be extremely useful in the detection of 
 crime.* But we do not find in evidence such 
 forewarnings as accompany the uncouth names of 
 Evander Macmhaoldonich, or Donald Macinstalker, 
 who, in anticipation of a domestic tragedy, " was 
 frequently alarming the people of the family, that 
 murder or manslaughter was soon to happen therein." 
 It is indeed unfortunate, that when any of these 
 instances are so specific that one could trace them 
 into the criminal records, they are still always re- 
 ferred to distant places. Thus " Mr. Rory Macleod, 
 son to the deceased Mr. Norman Macleod, some- 
 time minister of Kilmuir," when he gives such an in- 
 stance of the second-sight as must have necessarily 
 connected itself with judicial proceedings, carries it 
 across the Atlantic, though, in other instances of 
 second-sight, his own family is fertile enough. He 
 tells us how, in the year 1745, Jonathan Easton, of 
 Newport, in Rhode Island, left his housekeeper in 
 charge of a store of rum. There was an Indian girl 
 
 * See a Treatise on the Second- Sight, Dreams, and Appari- 
 tions, with several instances sufficiently attested, and an Ap- 
 pendix, &c. Edinburgh, 1763.
 
 112 SPECTKAL AND DREAM TESTIMONY. 
 
 who wanted some of the liquor, and, being refused, 
 she murdered the housekeeper, and threw her into 
 a draw-well. After his return home, " as Mr. 
 Easton was in bed, he saw an apparition, between 
 sleep and awake, informing him the Indian girl 
 had murdered his servant, and thrown her into the 
 draw-well, of which he at lirst did not take notice ; 
 but the scene being thrice repeated, he considered 
 there might be something in it ; whereupon he 
 called one of the town council, and both going to 
 the well, found the body of the girl, and thereupon 
 seized the Indian maid, who immediately confessed 
 the murder, for which she was executed."* 
 
 Among the multitudinous superstitious stories 
 which the historian Wodrow preserved in his private 
 memorandum-book, there are some which, if they 
 were seriously believed, should have found their 
 way into the records of the Court of Justiciary.! 
 
 * Treatise on the Second-Sight, p. 90. 
 
 t Most of "Wodrow's supernatural events, like the miracles 
 in the Vita? Sanctorum, are friendly to his own Church, and 
 very destructive to its opponents. Some of the incidents are 
 extremely picturesque. The following account of the fate of an 
 apostate, might be supposed to have suggested the story of Alp, 
 in Byron's Siege of Corinth, had there been any probability 
 of the poet having read the cramp MS., in which alone it was to 
 he found: " It's said, that some days before his death, as he was 
 walking in the links, about the twilight, at a pretty distance 
 from the town, he espyed, as it wer, a woman all in white, 
 standing not farr from him, who immediately disappeared ; and
 
 SPECTRAL AND DREAM TESTIMONY. 113 
 
 For instance, there is tlie following account of 
 the foreshadowing of a murder. The seer is sup- 
 posed to be enjoying the hospitalities of a country 
 mansion : 
 
 " At supper time, there being some other stranger 
 at table, the gentleman of the house entertained 
 him very kindly. They were all very cheery, till, 
 in a little time, that gentleman who was the guest 
 began to be very pensive, which was observed in 
 his countenance, and by his silence ; so that the 
 whole company turned all upon him, and challenged 
 him why he was turned so grave and sullen, being 
 so good company before? He answered, nothing 
 ailed him, and bc<?an to force himself to a feigned 
 cheerfulness, but found, at last, it would not do. 
 So, rising from the table, and touching another 
 stranger gentleman in the company, in order to 
 speak with him aside, they went both to the door, 
 and he addresses him thus: 'Oh, sir, I cannot 
 conceal any longer the reason of my present dis- 
 composure, which is this. I see a dirk sticking in 
 
 he, coming up presently to the place, saw nae person there, 
 though the links he very plain : only, casting his eye on the 
 place where slice stood, he saw tuo words drawn, or written, as 
 it had heen with a staff, upon the sand, ' sentenced and con- 
 demned !' Upon which he came home pensive and melancholy, 
 and in a litle sickens, and dyes. What to make of this, or 
 what truth is in it, I cannot tell ; only, I had it from a minister, 
 who lives nigh to Montrose." — Wodrow's Analecta, i., 101-102. 
 
 VOL. II. I
 
 114 SPECTRAL AND DREAM TESTIMONY. 
 
 the breast of this gentleman of this house, and I am 
 persuaded he will be murdered ane way or other 
 this night, except means be taken to prevent it.' "* 
 
 All necessary precautions were taken to avoid the 
 catastrophe ; but the man was foredoomed. His 
 fate made him step out of his house in the middle of 
 the night, and a tinker, or gipsy, who owed him 
 an old grudge, and had long lain in wait for his 
 life, stabbed him. 
 
 Though such things were believed by learned 
 divines, and the community in general, the author 
 only remembers one instance in which a prophetic 
 dream appears in connection with a criminal trial ; 
 and that occurred so lately as the year 1831. In 
 that year, a young Highlander was tried and 
 executed for the robbery and murder of a pedlar, 
 in the wilds of Assynt, in Ross-shire. A certain 
 Kenneth Fraser, a village tailor, pointed out the 
 place where the plunder was hidden, and stoutly 
 maintained that it had been revealed to him in a 
 dream. Like that of Sergeant Davies, the revela- 
 tion was in Gaelic — a favourite language in the 
 spiritual world. The testimony is given thus: " I 
 was atliome when I had the dream, in the month 
 of February. It was % said to me in my sleep, by a 
 voice like a man's, that the pack was lying in such 
 * Analecta, i., 100.
 
 SPECTRAL AND DREAM TESTIMONY. 115 
 
 a place. I got a sight of the place, just as if I had 
 been awake. I never saw the place before. The 
 voice said, in Gaelic: ' The pack of the merchant 
 is lying in a cairn of stones, in a hole near their 
 house.' The voice did not name the Macleods ; but 
 he got a sight of the ground, fronting the south, 
 with the sun shining on it, and a burn running 
 beneath Macleod's house."* 
 
 The jury did not, in this case, reject satisfactory 
 evidence of the crime because it was mixed up with 
 this silly story. The clergyman of the parish 
 thought fit to "improve" the whole story into a 
 "voice from the borders of eternity," in which, not 
 content with a solemn commentary on the tailor's 
 dream, he adds to the marvellous history, by relating 
 an equally prophetic one which visited the murderer. 
 When in custody for his crime, he dreamed that he 
 was in a strange burial-ground, where he saw his 
 father digging a grave, with a coffin beside it. The 
 father bade him lie down in it ; but, appearing to 
 take compassion on him, released him, saying: 
 " Well, Hugh, go for this time, until about a year 
 after this; but in much about a year, remember 
 your coffin will meet you." The account we have 
 of the fulfilment is this: " Macleod imagined that 
 this dream foretold his acquittal at the circuit at 
 
 * Aberdeen Magazine, ii., 94. 
 i 2
 
 116 SPECTRAL AND DREAM TESTIMONY. 
 
 Inverness, and he left Dornoch in high expectations. 
 Strange to say, at that circuit his trial was post- 
 poned, for want of a sufficient number of jurors ; 
 and when the next circuit came, it was again ad- 
 journed, for want of a material witness, and a whole 
 twelvemonth and some days elapsed before he was 
 condemned to death."* 
 
 * Black Calendar of Aberdeen, p. 61. Some other incidents 
 of this curious trial have been noticed in an interesting article 
 in the Quarterly Review for July, 1851. •
 
 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST THE ROMAN 
 CATHOLICS. 
 
 For reasons which it is unnecessary to examine 
 on this occasion, the establishment of the Reforma- 
 tion in Scotland was an extremely rapid operation. 
 On the morning of the 23rd of August, 1560, the 
 Romish hierarchy was nominally in full existence ; 
 ere eve, it had become penal to perform its rites. 
 In a convention, or parliament assembled without 
 royal authority, the act, establishing the reformed 
 polity, was passed as a trophy of victory over the 
 beaten cause of the Catholics, and their head, the 
 Queen-mother, Mary of Guise. It was provided 
 by that act, " That no manner of person or persons 
 say mass, nor yet hear mass, nor be present thereat, 
 under pain of confiscation of all their goods, move- 
 able and immoveable, and punishing of their bodies 
 at the discretion of the magistrate within whose
 
 118 PKOCEEDINGS AGAINST 
 
 jurisdiction such persons happen to be apprehended, 
 for the first fault ; banishment furth of the realm 
 for the second fault; and justifying to the death for 
 the third fault." . The adhesion of the clergy was 
 rapidly transferred to the new order; and a scholar 
 of local celebrity, Ninean Winzet, who stuck to the 
 old faith, and held a stout controversy with Knox, 
 said he marvelled within himself how Christian 
 men, who had been for so many years teaching 
 and preaching what they professed to hold as the 
 truth, " in one month's space, or thereby, should 
 be changed so proudly in so many high matters ;" 
 and informs us that " at Pasche, and certain Sun- 
 days after, they teached with great appearing zeal, 
 and ministered the sacraments unto us in the Catho- 
 lic manner ; and by Whit-Sunday they change their 
 standard to our plain contrare."* 
 
 * Winzet's Buik of Fourscoire Questionis, touching Doctrine, 
 Ordour, and Maneris. It is not easy to modernize Winzet's 
 quaint old vernacular, as may be inferred from the following 
 passage, in which he charges Knox with modern affectations and 
 innovations in style. " Gif ze throw curiositie of novationis, hes 
 forzet our auld plane Scottis, quhilk zour mother lerit zou, in 
 tymes cuming I sail wryte to you my mynd in latin, for I am 
 nocht acquyntit with zour southeroun." Knox's own style is 
 certainly more readable; and thus it would seem that, like 
 Luther, he was entitled to the merit of having reformed the 
 language as well as the faith of his country. 
 
 Winzet himself was a suiferer from the Keformation. but not 
 in a sufficiently conspicuous or tragic manner to demand special 
 notice. He was deprived by the Keformers of his office of
 
 THE ROMAN CATHOLICS. 119 
 
 It has been frequently remarked, that the early- 
 acts of the Scottish parliament were seldom en- 
 forced in all their severity. They are not to be 
 confounded with the English statutes, which the 
 common-law judges were held bound to put in 
 force, without question, as a subordinate officer 
 obeys the orders of his military commander. These 
 Scottish acts were passed in a much less solemn 
 and formal manner, and are often to be held rather 
 as a cry of triumph by a victorious party, than a law 
 which is to be enforced. Thus, the statute-book, 
 with its punishment of death for repeated celebra- 
 tion of the mass, exhibits an intolerance which the 
 criminal records do not second, save in one re- 
 markable instance. 
 
 The earliest trial for an offence against the Refor- 
 mation, appears to be that of Master William Bal- 
 four, indwcller in Leith, indicted on the 24th of 
 
 Master of the Grammar School of Linlithgow, or, as he ex- 
 presses it, " I, for denying only to subscriue yair phantasie and 
 factioun of faith, wes expcllit and schott out of yat my Kyndly 
 town, and fra my tender frendis yair." He prepared for publi- 
 cation a tract, called " The last blast of the trompet of Godis 
 worde aganis the usurpit auctoritie of Johne Knox," which of 
 course would not be allowed publicity in a country where Knox 
 was supreme. While it was at press, the copies were seized, 
 and the printer was fined and imprisoned. Five leaves of the 
 book, still extant in the library of the University of Edinburgh, 
 are a valuable relic. There is a learned Memoir of Winzet in 
 Irving's Lives of Scottish Writers, i., 98.
 
 120 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST 
 
 December, 1561, for rioting to restore the Popish 
 religion. In this, and other trials which follow it, 
 the difficulty of making poor Queen Mary prose- 
 cute her subjects for following her own religion, 
 was ingeniously obviated. It was set forth, as her 
 majesty's pleasure, that nothing should be done to 
 disturb the religion which was found publicly and 
 universally established on her arrival in her king- 
 dom. One of the charges against Balfour was for 
 making- " a wadset with the Laird of Waters" 
 that the Reformed religion would be utterly abo- 
 lished in two years. A wadset is an old form of 
 mortgage on land, and it appears, in this case, to 
 have been the instrument of a sort of bet. There 
 was a more serious charge, that " he, accompanied 
 by certain wicked persons, sowers of discord, and 
 raisers of tumult, on set purpose came to the parish 
 kirk of Edinburgh, called St. Giles's kirk, where 
 John Carnys was examining the common people 
 of the burgh before the last communion ministrate 
 therein, according to the order taken and ap- 
 pointed by the minister, elders, and deacons of the 
 said kirk. And the said John being demanding of a 
 poor woman "if she had any hope of salvation by 
 her own good works," the said Master William, in 
 despiteful manner and with thrawen countenance — 
 having nothing to do at that time in the said kirk
 
 THE ROMAN CATHOLICS. 121 
 
 but to trouble the said examination — said to the said 
 John these words: " Thou demands of that woman 
 the thing whilk thou, nor non of thy opinion, allows 
 nor keeps;" and after gentle admonition made to 
 him by the said John, he said to him also these 
 words: "Thou art ane very knave, and thy doc- 
 trine is very false, as all your doctrine and teaching 
 is;" and therewith laid his hand upon his weapon, 
 provoking battle, doing therethrough that was in 
 him to have raised tumult amon^ the inhabitants of 
 this burgh."*' The punishment awarded against 
 this zealous and too keen disputant is not men- 
 tioned. 
 
 On the 19th of May, 1563, a large number of 
 persons were brought to trial for a violent attempt 
 to restore Popery in Ayrshire and the adjacent 
 western counties. It was said that they came to 
 certain parish churches to aid the celebration of the 
 abolished superstition, to the number of two hun- 
 dred persons, with jacks, spears, guns, and other 
 weapons. The punishment was not so flagrantly 
 severe as that usually inflicted by a victorious bel- 
 ligerent party. It was levelled only against the 
 leaders, and consisted in imprisonment during 
 pleasure. 
 
 Along with the rioters, some ecclesiastics, with 
 * Pitcairn, i., 417.
 
 122 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST 
 
 the Archbishop of St. Andrew's at their head, 
 were tried. They " came to will," as it is termed, 
 confessed to acts which made them amenable to the 
 law, and negotiated a sort of compromise, finding 
 security to enter themselves in ward. This was 
 something like the French practice of banishing to 
 an estate, province, or particular dwelling-place. 
 On the whole, whatever the letter of the law might 
 say, the treatment of the beaten by the victorious 
 party was characterised by good-nature. It must 
 be remembered, however, that the queen of the realm, 
 so far as she was permitted, adopted the rites of the 
 worship which had so suddenly become criminal, 
 and that the preponderance of Protestantism was 
 more apparent than real. The lords of the con- 
 gregation — especially those who had possessed them- 
 selves of great landed estates from the temporali- 
 ties of the Church — were ill at ease, and ever under 
 an apprehension that the balance might turn 
 against them. 
 
 Though the punishments were lenient, however, 
 this trial is remarkable, from its showing how 
 quickly the Roman Catholic priesthood were driven 
 to and adopted the humblest spots for the celebra- 
 tion of their worship, when they could no longer 
 command the cathedral or the abbey church. The 
 party, with the archbishop at their head, were
 
 THE ROMAN CATHOLICS. 123 
 
 charged with having performed clerical functions 
 in Paisley, where the remains of the magnificent 
 and highly-decorated abbey church attest the for- 
 mer splendour of the haughty Clunecensian monks. 
 There they " openly, publicly, and plainly, took 
 auricular confession of the said persons, in the said 
 kirk-toun, kirk-yard, chambers, barns, middens, 
 and killogies [kilns] thereof ; and therethrow 
 making alteration and innovation in the state of 
 religion, whilk our sovereign lady found publicly 
 standing, and professed at her majesty's arrival 
 within this realm foresaid, ministering and abusing 
 irreverently and indecently the sacraments of holy 
 kirk, namely the sacraments of the body and blood 
 of our Lord Jesus, otherwise and after another 
 order nor the public and general order of this 
 realm."* 
 
 The archbishop engaged in this affair was John 
 Hamilton, a natural son of the Earl of Arran, 
 whose history cuts no mean figure in the politics of 
 that wild age. The Protestant party owed him 
 little gratitude, for he had been instrumental in the 
 death of the protomartyr, Robert Mill, and was 
 said to have provided the rope with which he was 
 bound to the stake — a contribution which no more 
 fitting hand would make. His biographers mention 
 * Pitcairn, i., 427.
 
 124 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST 
 
 his imprisonment in Edinburgh Castle for his offence 
 against the Reformation statutes, and his release 
 at the earnest intercession of Queen Mary. His 
 memory was afterwards suspiciously connected, with 
 the great tragedy which darkens the history of his 
 unhappy sovereign. He was specially invested with 
 the consistorial authority, over marriages and other 
 kindred matters, which had been removed from the 
 clergy ; and it has been shown by historical critics 
 that this was done to enable him to dissolve the 
 marriage of the notorious Bothwell, in order that 
 Queen Mary might be allied to her husband's 
 murderer. In the course of the conflicts which 
 followed, the archbishop was caught at the capture 
 of Dumbarton Castle. Several accusations were 
 brought against him, and among them was a con- 
 nivance at the murder of Darnley. How far it 
 was true that his severance of Bothwell's marriage 
 tie was the completion of a transaction begun in 
 the death of his rival, the world had. no opportu- 
 nity of ascertaining. It was found unnecessary to 
 go into the charges, or take the trouble of proving 
 his guilt; for there stood, against him an attain- 
 der by parliament, which, passed in a moment of 
 party triumph and hot excitement, condemned him 
 to death, after the manner of parliament, without 
 evidence. On this authority he was hanged, amidst
 
 THE ROMAN CATHOLICS. 125 
 
 the exultation and ribaldry of those who hated him, 
 his party, and his religion.* The punishment in- 
 flicted on Hamilton for the exercise of his religious 
 rites, was, as we have seen, a slight one. But, in 
 estimating the usage which the followers of the old 
 faith received at the hands of their Protestant op- 
 ponents, we are warned by such events as this 
 execution not to forget that there were so many 
 other means of striking the supporters of Catholic- 
 ism and the queen, that it was unnecessary to enter 
 on tedious inquiries about religion, faith, and 
 rituals. 
 
 It scarcely comes within the scope of this account, 
 which refers to criminal proceedings for the exercise 
 of the Roman Catholic religion, to enter on the 
 conflicts with the Catholic lords in the reign of 
 King James ; but though the discussion has much 
 more of a political than a religious character, the 
 tenor of the proceedings against the Roman Catholics 
 will be better understood by a personal reference to 
 them. While the denunciatory statute, and several 
 others following it from time to time, Avere in force, 
 and the legislature acknowledged none but Pro- 
 
 * He is said to have been hanged, not on the gibbet, but on 
 a tree, whereon one of his scholarly enemies wrote: 
 
 " Vive diu, felix arbor, semperque vireto 
 Frondibus, ut nobis talia poma feras."
 
 126 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST 
 
 testants in the land, many of the great territorial 
 lords, who were nearly absolute on their own estate?, 
 retained their adherence to the ancient worship, and 
 encouraged and protected their followers who kept in 
 the same faith. The Earl of Huntly, who exercised 
 an authority almost regal over territories, highland 
 and lowland, in the north, was at the head of the 
 body who were called the Catholic Lords. 
 
 At the juncture of the Spanish armada, the 
 knowledge that there existed such a formidable 
 body, and certain occasional glimpses obtained into 
 mysterious correspondence and combinations with 
 which they were associated, were very alarming to 
 England and to the Scottish Protestants. But, in 
 that moment of intense anxiety and excitement, the 
 most formidable consideration of all was, that the 
 king might be inclined to their side, and that of the 
 cruel Spaniards. The balance turned in favour of 
 Elizabeth, England, and Protestantism ; but it is im- 
 possible to read the annals, and especially the letters 
 and state papers of the period, without noticing how 
 sensibly it wavered. It is at such a juncture, when 
 all kinds of horrors were within the expectation 
 of the Protestants, that one can most readily excuse 
 any outbreak of bigoted ferocity against the abettors 
 of the cruel King of Spain ; but, in reality, it was a 
 time when the Catholics were treated with com-
 
 THE ROMAN CATHOLICS. 127 
 
 parative leniency — for they had become powerful, 
 having in a great measure gathered up their strength 
 after the prostration accompanying the Reformation 
 victory of 1560. In the end, however, it was 
 necessary for the king to take a side. He marched 
 northwards, and overthrew the Catholic lords in 
 battle. There was an outcry among the more violent 
 Presbyterians to put the idolaters to death ; but, 
 though few political executions of that day would 
 have been better justified, a more lenient course was 
 pursued. The Presbyterian clergy charged the 
 king with a countenancing of Popery, and they 
 were not far wrong; for we now know that he was 
 determined, if possible, not to break entirely with 
 the Roman Catholic party, and lose their aid, should 
 it be necessary, in lifting him on the throne of 
 England. 
 
 In the year 1592, some secret information led to 
 a search after a person named Ker, who was sup- 
 posed to be attempting to leave Scotland by the 
 west coast, with important documents in his posses- 
 sion. The minister of Paisley, accompanied by an 
 armed force, was so successful as to apprehend him 
 in one of the Cumbray Isles, in the Frith of Clyde. 
 A set of mysterious slips of paper were found in 
 his possession, which are known in history by the 
 name of " The Spanish Blanks." They were tech-
 
 128 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST 
 
 nically described as " aught blanks in paper: twa 
 thereof subscribed by the said Earl of Angus 
 allenarly; other twa by the said Earl of Huntly 
 allenarly; and other two by the said three Earls 
 and Laird of Auchindoun — all sent to Spain. 
 Whilks blanks has no designation on the back, nor 
 declaration of the causes for which they were sent — 
 but blank and white paper, on both the sides ex- 
 cept the said subscriptions." The following is a 
 specimen of these brief mysterious documents: 
 
 " De Tostre Majestie tres humble 
 et tres obesant serviteur 
 
 Guillame conipte de Anguss." 
 
 Some of the astute statesmen of the day tested the 
 paper with chemical preparations, under the suppo- 
 sition that they would divulge some inscription 
 penned with sympathetic ink — but without success. 
 Ker was put to the torture, and from his confession, 
 and some more explicit documents which were inter- 
 cepted, a conclusion was adopted that the blanks 
 were to be filled up with offers of aid and allegiance 
 to the King of Spain, should he land with a force 
 in Scotland. Among the more distinct letters which 
 were disclosed, some contained overtures to the 
 King of Spain and the Prince of Parma. Neither 
 the originals nor authenticated copies of these docu- 
 ments are known to be extant, and they are to be
 
 the roman catholics. 129 
 
 seen only through the questionable medium of a 
 translation published in Scotland at the time* 
 Among these, a long confidential communication to 
 the Duke of Parma, by an agent bearing the high 
 historic name of Robert Bruce, was calculated to 
 raise much alarm and indignation. The writer says, 
 with a sort of sordid earnestness: "As for me, albeit 
 I speak not willingly to the disadvantage of any 
 whatsomever — chiefly of them whom I have recom- 
 mended, as I did the said Thomas Tyrie to the 
 said Don Bernardino — yet I will prefer the love of 
 the truth to men, and would not, in concealing 
 thereof, bring prejudice to the public weal, nor 
 the fidelity that one oweth to others, — and especially 
 to that we owe all to the King of Spain and your 
 highness, to whom I am presently servant particu- 
 larly addicted, by the obligation of five hundred 
 crowns of fee, and forty for monthly entertainment, 
 whilk it has pleased your highness to give me ; 
 by reason whereof I am the more bound to give your 
 honour most humble thanks, and to endeavour 
 myself to deserve, by most humble and faithful 
 services, as well the said entertainment as the re- 
 compense it has pleased your highness to promise 
 me of your grace and favour." 
 
 He gave — or rather, it should be said, he was 
 
 * Reprinted. — Pitcairn, i., 317. 
 VOL. II. K
 
 130 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST 
 
 represented as giving — the following somewhat 
 alarming, and, to the other side, aggravating ac- 
 count of the policy of his order : 
 
 "It is no small marvel, considering the means 
 the heretics has to harm us, and their worldly wit 
 so far passing ours, and their evil-will and intention 
 against us, that we subsist. Truly, we cannot but 
 attribute the effect thereof to God, who then, when 
 the certain news of the returning of the army of 
 Spain, by the back of Ireland, were dispersed 
 through this country, and the heretics of the faction 
 of England triumphant, and the constancy in the 
 outward profession of the Earl of Huntly and 
 others was brangled, caused the Earl of An<rus to 
 die, who was chief of the English faction ; and the 
 self-same time suscitate some dissension among the 
 heretics, by reason of some offices that some pre- 
 tended to usurp above others at court; and, by the 
 instant prayers and holy persuasions of two fathers 
 — Jesuits — converted to our holy faith two heretic 
 earls, of the first of authority and power among 
 them ; the one whereof is called the Earl of Errol, 
 constable of Scotland, converted by Father Edmond 
 Hay ; the other, called the Earl of Crauford, con- 
 verted by the said father, William Crichton. They 
 are both able and wise young lords, and most 
 desirous to advance the Catholic faith and your
 
 THE EOMAN CATHOLICS. 131 
 
 enterprises in this isle, whilk they are deliberate 
 to testify to his majesty Catholic and your high- 
 ness by their own letters — whilk, by the grace 
 of God, I shall send by the first commodity. In 
 the mean time they have required me to make 
 you offer of their most humble and most affec- 
 tionate service, promising to follow whatsomever 
 the said Jesuits and I shall think good to be done 
 for the conservation of the Catholics, and to dis- 
 pose and facilitate the execution of your enterprises 
 here, whilk they may do more easily nor they 
 that are known to be Catholics — whose actions 
 are ever suspicious to the heretics for their religion, 
 whereof these two earls have not yet made outward 
 profession ; but in that, as in the rest, they submit 
 themselves to our will, and to that we find most 
 expedient. The said fathers of that company makes 
 great fruit in Scotland ; and so soon as ane lord or 
 other person of importance is converted by them, 
 they dispose and incline in the very mean time their 
 affection to the service of the King of Spain and 
 your highness, as a thing inseparably conjoined 
 with the advancement of the true religion in this 
 country." 
 
 The punishments which followed the exposure of 
 the Spanish blanks were not deemed sufficient by 
 the Presbyterian clergy, then triumphant and strong. 
 
 k2
 
 132 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST 
 
 They demanded of the king thatPopery should be 
 exterminated ; and as he did not comply with their 
 desire, they preached and prayed against him very 
 vehemently; among other things, beseeching that 
 " by some sanctified plagues he might be turned 
 again to God." The modern Solomon had, indeed, 
 at that time plagues enough. That turbulent and 
 riotous nobleman, Bothwell, sometimes taking part 
 with the Presbyterians, and sometimes with the 
 Catholics, would startle the poor king of a night by 
 battering with a huge hammer at the palace-door, 
 or would be found with his sword drawn actually 
 behind the hangings in the royal bedroom. The 
 Presbyterians were abusing and threatening the 
 monarch on the one side ; the Roman Catholics, on 
 the other, were in arms, and laying plots with 
 foreign powers. Frightened by the vehemence of 
 the Edinburgh preachers, and mistaking, in his 
 terror, the character of some little acts of turbulence 
 which had no actual reference to himself, he fled out 
 of the city, and spoke of creating a capital elsewhere. 
 Nor would he return, till the fear of losing the ever- 
 desired privilege of being the home of the court, 
 made the substantial citizens of Edinburgh implore 
 him to relent, after having in some degree mollified 
 the fierceness of the divines who had driven him 
 forth. A curious and mysterious little historical 
 episode, intimately connected with the conduct and
 
 THE EOMAN CATHOLICS. 133 
 
 the trials of the Catholics, now occurred. James, 
 in returning to his capital, somewhat humbled the 
 Presbyterians, and created a reaction against the 
 act for establishing the Presbyterian polity, which 
 he and his courtiers had, a year or two before, not 
 in very good faith, sanctioned. In fact, he was 
 taking gradual steps for the restoration of Episco- 
 pacy, and the Presbyterians knew it. The Earls of 
 Huntly, Angus, and Errol, who had been so deep 
 in the Popish conspiracies, had not been pardoned, 
 though they were unpunished. They desired a 
 reconciliation with the king — that is, they desired 
 to be relieved from apprehension ; and with an air 
 of surpassing candour, they proffered their willing- 
 ness to be converted to the Protestant faith, by any 
 Presbyterian divine who should be successful in 
 establishing the truth 'of his own faith and the 
 falsity of theirs. Of the theological arguments by 
 which they were vanquished no account seems to be 
 preserved ; but there is extant a short and impatient 
 letter by James, telling them that they must turn 
 Protestants, and turn at once. " I must love," he 
 says, " myself and my own estate better than all the 
 world. And think not that I will suffer any pro- 
 fessing a contrary religion to dwell in this land."* 
 At last the Popish lords announced that they 
 * Inserted in Tytler's Hist., ix., 232.
 
 134 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST 
 
 were converted, and a great ceremony inaugurated 
 their solemn renunciation of idolatry and adoption 
 of the tenets of the Reformation, in the old church 
 of St. Nicholas, in Aberdeen. The ceremony was 
 seen by a Mr. P. Mollison, who writes a shghtly 
 sarcastic account of it to his " loving gossip," Mr. 
 R. Paip. He describes the earls all " set in the 
 marriage-desk before the pulpit," and a vast throng 
 of persons present, while they listen to a long ser- 
 mon. " The sermon being concluded, the earls 
 rises forth of their desk, comes in before the pulpit, 
 makes an open confession of their defection and 
 apostacy, affirms the religion presently confessed to 
 be the only true religion, renounces all Papacy, &c, 
 &c, and, of new, swears never to decline again, but 
 to defend the same to their life's end." The day of 
 the ceremony was one of fasting and humiliation ; 
 the day following, when they were new men, was 
 ushered in by more pleasurable auspices. 
 
 " The Cross of this burgh was solemnly hanging 
 with tapestries ; ane little house beside the same, 
 covered suchlike with tapestry, whereon the musi- 
 cians were placed — fourscore of the young men of 
 the town in their best habiliments, with their hack- 
 buts ; the magistrates and council by themselves; 
 six persons, maskers; a table covered, at the Cross, 
 whereon were surfitfits, comfits, and other confec-
 
 THE EOMAN CATHOLICS. 135 
 
 tions, with a great number of glasses; wine in great 
 abundance ; the earls' pacification and peace by 
 sound of trumpet, and by Gilbert Guthrie, March- 
 mont-herald, proclaimed. The two earls sat at the 
 Cross in chairs, with his majesty's commissioner 
 and the ministry. The wand of peace delivered 
 to them by Patrick Murray; he receives them in 
 his majesty's name. Next, the ministry embraces 
 them; and next, the provost, bailies, and magis- 
 trates. Hackbuts' sounds, that day nor dur ( ?) could 
 not be heard ; wine drunken in abundance ; glasses 
 broken ; surfitfits casten abroad on the causeway — 
 gather whoso pleases."* 
 
 There is something in the character of the whole 
 transaction which stamps it as a solemn mockery. 
 It may easily be seen, from the tone of the Presby- 
 terian writers of that period, that they were not 
 satisfied with the sincerity of the homage paid to 
 their system; and, not without considerable reason, 
 they set down the conversion of the Popish lords as 
 a step in the scheme, afterwards accomplished, of 
 restoring Episcopacy. James did not care to drive 
 the Catholics to desperation, for even yet he knew 
 not but he might throw himself, some day, into 
 their hands. On the other hand, when the Presby- 
 terians demanded some sacrifice, he would have 
 * Analecta Scotica, p. 301.
 
 136 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST 
 
 very readily, but for this reason, have handed over 
 the Catholics to their uncovenanted mercies. Hence 
 the strange tortuosity of his councils at this time. 
 
 He was not a man of any very positive clerical 
 belief himself. He might have belonged to any 
 one of the three Churches that suited him best. 
 There were two classes, however, whom he cordially 
 hated — the ultra-Presbyterians, who used to abuse 
 him in their sermons, and get the better of him in 
 dispute, and the Jesuits, and other high Catholics, 
 who maintained the authority of the Pope over 
 temporal monarchs.* He could not endure these 
 
 * Of the former he said, giving advice to his son in the 
 Basilikon Doron, " I protest before the great God (and, since 
 I am here upon my testament, it is no place for me to lie in), 
 that ye shall never find with any Highland or Border thieves 
 greater ingratitude, or more lies and vile perjuries, than with 
 these fanatic spirits; and suffer not the principals of them to 
 brook your land, if ye like to keep at rest, except ye would 
 keep them for trying of your patience, as Socrates did an evil 
 wife." In his first speech to the English parliament he said of 
 the Catholics, " I must directly say and affirm that, as long as 
 they maintain one spiritual point of their doctrine, and another 
 of their practice, they are no way sufferable to remain in the 
 kingdom. The point of doctrine is that arrogant and ambitious 
 supremacy of their head, the Pope, whereby he not only claims 
 to be spiritual head of all Christians, but also to have an imperial 
 civil power over all kings and emperors, dethroning and dis- 
 crowning princes with his foot as pleaseth him, and dispensing 
 and disposing of all kingdoms and empires at his appetite. The 
 other point which they observe in continual practice is the assas- 
 sinations and murders of kings ; thinking it no sin, but rather 
 a matter of salvation to do all actions of rebellion and hostility
 
 THE ROMAN CATHOLICS. 137 
 
 horrible doctrines of spiritual supremacy, whether 
 in Papist or Puritan. Against the former he could 
 protect himself, for the law was against them; yet 
 while he would fain have had it also against the 
 latter, for the reason already alluded to, it was not 
 his policy to drive even the Catholics to extremities, 
 and render them desperate. 
 
 Indeed, his Presbyterian clerical tormentors made 
 allusions to secret negotiations and encouragements 
 offered to foreign Papal courts, which occasionally 
 made the king wince. They had good ground, as 
 we can now see, for their suspicions, and he for his 
 alarm. There is no doubt that he had secret 
 negotiators dispersed throughout the Catholic courts, 
 to sound their inclinations towards his claims, if 
 they were not authorised to make stipulations for 
 securing their concurrence with his accession to the 
 throne of England. The Cardinal D'Osat, in a letter 
 to M. Villeroy, alludes to a Scottish agent at Rome — 
 an allusion which Win wood, in his Memorials, notices 
 in connexion with the intrigues in Spain of a Scot- 
 tish Jesuit named Ogelvie — the same, it is said, 
 
 against their natural sovereign lord, if he be once cursed, his 
 subjects discharged of their fidelity, and his kingdom given 
 over a prey by that three-crowned monarch, or rather monster, 
 their head."— Kennet, ii., 07 1. It will be observed, that when 
 he made these truculent remarks, he was safe on the English 
 throne.
 
 138 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST 
 
 who afterwards suffered death for his opinions. 
 Ogelvie, whose offers probably went far beyond his 
 commission, if he had any specific commission at 
 all, proposed in the monarch's name, " in the first 
 place to reconcile himself and his kingdom to the 
 See Apostolic, and to give his holiness satisfaction 
 in these particulars, and to concur in the extirpation 
 of all heresies in the kingdoms of Scotland, England, 
 and Ireland." But a priest named Cecil, who was 
 in the confidence of the English Catholics, appears 
 to have convinced the court of the insincerity of 
 Ogelvie's proffers. 
 
 Some original papers in the Advocates' Library 
 introduce us to the more serious operations of the 
 Semple family three years afterwards, in the year 
 1599. The Lord Semple had lived so long abroad, 
 that he seems in a great measure to have forgotten 
 his own language, and says, in a letter to the king, 
 that his cousin the colonel is surprised that in so 
 " vechti" a matter as " zour magesti's titill to ye 
 crime of Inoland," his majesty " nader gef " him 
 " comissiun nor varrand in na sort;" and he con- 
 tinues to say, u aluayis he has gotin satisfaxsiuh 
 to zour magesti, and yat sua sekretlie as na man 
 hir knauis of it, safen ane of ye cunsall quha is his 
 grit frind." He urges the king to send him a 
 more specific commission, as the English Catholics
 
 THE ROMAN CATHOLICS. 139 
 
 are counteracting his efforts, and concludes by 
 saying, "I am assurit gef zour magesti fallu out 
 yis mater, zour magesti vill get asistense of ye 
 King of Spane, beth of muni and armis." 
 
 In the same collection of papers, there is an un- 
 dated commission, with corresponding instructions 
 to Semple, signed by the king, and a congratulatory 
 letter to Philip III. on his accession. These docu- 
 ments relate to trade reciprocities and general amity ; 
 but there is a little important clause in the com- 
 mission, empowering Semple to treat of castera prout 
 ei a nobis in mandatis crcdita sunt. These vague 
 and unsatisfactory papers, however, neither satisfied 
 the ambassador nor the grave Spaniards. Semple 
 writes back, that he was received with great dis- 
 tinction, on account of the commission ; but that all 
 his honours dropped away when the commission 
 was translated and its vagueness understood.* It 
 is from the choice of his instruments that the subtle 
 designs of James can be best understood. Colonel 
 Semple was the negotiator sent by the Duke of 
 Parma to Scotland, to procure support for the in- 
 vasion of the Armada, and he transacted the foreign 
 department of the conspiracy of the Spanish 
 blanks.t 
 
 * The Balfour MSS.— Advocates' Library. 
 
 t Perhaps this is the same nubilis Scotus cognvmento Sinplius
 
 140 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST 
 
 These exposures lead to the suspicion that an act 
 of severity by James, towards a statesman who had 
 compromised him with the Catholic party, was also 
 an act of gross treachery. In the celebrated dis- 
 pute with Belarmine, the accomplished disputant 
 referred to the spirit of mildness and conciliation 
 with which his kingly opponent had treated the 
 court of Rome when he desired a favour — namely, 
 that of a cardinal's cap for one of his subjects. 
 James denied the imputation; but the document 
 was extant, and it bore date at the time when it 
 was known that he felt most nervous about his 
 succession to the English throne, and was, under 
 the influence of his fears, least scrupulous in his 
 proffers to the Catholics. 
 
 James maintained that the signature had been 
 procured from him surreptitiously; and Hamilton 
 Lord Balmerinoch, the secretary of state, was tried 
 on a charge of treason for having obtained and sent 
 it. In his indictment, he is said to have laid his 
 plan: " First, that it should be shifted in among 
 divers other letters to be signed; secondly, that the 
 same, with the rest, should be presented to his 
 majesty at some time of his going out hastily to 
 the hunting, so as being on the sudden surprised, 
 
 who, according to Strada (Dec. ii., Lib. v.), betrayed Liere to 
 the Duke of Parma in 1582.
 
 THE ROMAN CATHOLICS. 14 1 
 
 lie should have no leisure to observe and peruse the 
 letters; and thirdly, that such words of title and 
 style as are usually given to the Pope, should be 
 forborne to be set down in it, lest perhaps his 
 majesty's eye lighting upon any of them while he 
 Avere signing, he might thereby take occasion to 
 observe that letter, and so discover your fraud."* 
 The case was made a great deal too strong ; for it 
 was laid down that Balmerinoch had repeatedly 
 pressed on the king the granting of this letter, 
 and had as often been defeated by his majesty's 
 impregnable virtue. This was not a likely intro- 
 duction to such a sleight-of-hand fraud, since it was 
 calculated to put the king on his guard. Balmerinoch, 
 however, confessed the full charge. His admission 
 is maintained to have been bought by a promise of 
 his life and estates. The former he retained, but with 
 the sword han^ino- over his head; the latter were 
 forfeited, and the wily old statesman retired a 
 beggar to the dreary mountains, to wail about the 
 folly of those who put their trust in princes. He 
 left a confidential document, asserting that the king 
 knew perfectly well what he was signing, although 
 it was understood between them that his royal 
 attention was not to be especially fixed on it ; and 
 it seems very probable that this is the truth. 
 * Pitcairn, ii., 570.
 
 142 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST 
 
 Once firmly seated on the throne of England, 
 James felt himself more free to strike the propa- 
 gators of the offensive doctrines against kingly 
 power; and the gunpowder- plot at once brought 
 his previously lukewarm enmity to a crisis, and 
 strengthened his arm. From time to time we find 
 the statutory punishment of death denounced, and 
 some secondary punishment executed, both against 
 the priests who administered the mass and the 
 persons who were present at the administration. 
 Thus, in 1607, William Macmurdoch is put on 
 trial for saying mass in the Marquis of Huntly's 
 castle of Strathbogie, in the Lady Sutherland's 
 mansion of Dunrobin, and in various other abodes 
 of great territorial families. The king writes on 
 this occasion a letter to the judges, intimating that 
 "no doubt he will be found culpable on his own 
 confession," as if the matter had been pre-arranged; 
 and desiring that his sentence should be ' c ap- 
 pointing him to be tane to the market-cross of 
 Edinburgh, being clad in his mass clothes, in the 
 same form that he was taken ; and after he has been 
 presented to the view of the whole people, he then 
 be stripped of all his mass clothes, and the same, 
 with all his other Popish baggage that was appre- 
 hended with him, to be presently passed into the 
 fire then ready, for the purpose to be consumed and
 
 THE SOMAN CATHOLICS. 143 
 
 burnt to ashes; and therewith that he be adjudged 
 to be banished forth of all our dominions during 
 his natural life, under the pain of death in case of 
 his return back to any part of the same."* 
 
 It is not until the year 1615 that we find a 
 victim actually put to death for his Popish opinions; 
 and it is said, not without some grounds of truth, 
 that whatever sacrifices of life there may have been 
 among the political partisans of Catholicism, this 
 is the only instance in which Protestantism in 
 Scotland has drawn blood for mere belief. On the 
 28th of February, 1615, John Ogeivie was tried 
 at Glasgow for " treason, declining the king's au- 
 thority, alleging the supremacy of the Pope, hear- 
 ing and saying mass," &c. The proceedings against 
 this poor man were borrowed from the formulary of 
 the Inquisition. He was not put on trial for any 
 act which he had committed, but, being a person 
 whose opinions were suspected, every effort was 
 made to commit him to the assertion of punishable 
 opinions, or else to the abjuration of his faith. 
 In the preliminary inquiry he exhibited "nothing 
 but a pertinacious refusal to answer in points 
 most reasonable ;" whence it was resolved to try 
 the efficacy of torture. " And here it being re- 
 membered, that in the trial of some criminal per- 
 Pitcairn, ii., 531.
 
 144 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST 
 
 sons it was found that nothing helped more to find 
 out the truth of the faults wherewith they were 
 charged than the withholding of their natural 
 rest, it was advised that he should be kept without 
 sleep for some nights, which was accordingly done; 
 and during which time it was perceived that he 
 remitted much of his former obstinacy." 
 
 If what his assailants desired was an open defi- 
 ance, and a cool expression of contumelious scorn 
 for their opinions, they must have been satisfied by 
 his conduct at his trial. Being asked what he said 
 to the charge against him as treason, he answered, 
 " I deny any point laid against me to be treason; for 
 if it were treason, it would be treason in all places, 
 and in all kingdoms ; but that is known not to be 
 so. As for your acts of parliament, they are made 
 by a number of partial men, the best of the land 
 not agreeing with them, and of matters not subject '.. 
 to their forum or judicatory, for which I will not 
 give a rotten fig." 
 
 On the king's prerogative he said, " I know no 
 other authority he hath but that which he received 
 from his predecessors, who acknowledged the Pope 
 of Rome his jurisdiction. If the king will be to 
 me as his predecessors were to mine, 1 will obey 
 and acknowledge him for my king; but if he do 
 otherwise, and play the runagate from God, as he
 
 THE ROMAN CATHOLICS. 145 
 
 and you all do — I will not acknowledge him more 
 than this old hat." 
 
 This was distinct enough, nor did the perverse 
 priest moderate the boldness of his tongue when 
 further pressed ; in fact, he had made up his mind 
 to martyrdom, and was resolved, in parting with his 
 life, to sell it as dearly as possible, in the enunciation 
 of bold and offensive doctrines. He could even 
 take an arrow from the ultra-Presbyterian quiver, 
 and when required to be still more explicit on the 
 royal prerogative, said, " For the declining of the 
 king's authority, I will do it still in matters of 
 religion, for with such matters he hath nothing to 
 do ; — neither have I done anything but that which 
 the ministers did at Dundee ; they would not ac- 
 knowledge his majesty's authority in spiritual 
 matters, more than I. And the best ministers of 
 the land are still of that mind — and if they are 
 wise, will continue so." When driven to the ex- 
 treme question, whether the Pope could depose the 
 king; and whether, if he were deposed, it would be 
 lawful to put him to death? he said that these 
 points had not been fixed as articles of faith by any 
 council, but whatever articles of faith might be 
 declared by council, on these points, he would lay 
 down his life for them ; and he went on to maintain, 
 " That if the king offended against the Catholic 
 
 VOL. II. L
 
 146 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST 
 
 Church, the Pope might punish him as well as a 
 shepherd, or the poorest fellow in the country, — 
 that in abrogating the Pope's authority, the estates 
 of parliament had gone beyond their limits, — and 
 that the king in usurping the Pope's right, had 
 lost his own." 
 
 He was no less incorrigible in vindicating his 
 acts as a missionary, than in asserting his opinions. 
 When questioned on this matter, he answered: " I 
 came by commandment, and if I were even now 
 furth of the kingdom, I should return ; neither do I 
 repent anything, but that I have not been so busy 
 as I should in what ye call perverting. I hope to 
 come to Glasgow again, and do more good in it. If 
 all the hairs in mine head were priests, they should 
 all come into the kingdom." 
 
 " The further he proceeded in speaking," says 
 the account of the trial, " his speeches still grew 
 to be more intolerable ;" so the discussion was 
 concluded, and the real business carried through. 
 Ogelvie was convicted, and condemned to be hanged 
 and quartered. After some words of courtesy to 
 his judges, he cried, "God have mercy on me! if 
 there be here any hidden Catholics let them pray 
 for me — but the prairs of heretics I will not 
 have." His execution appears to have taken place 
 within a few hours after his trial; and much indig-
 
 THE ROMAN CATHOLICS. 147 
 
 nation was expressed against the scandalous conduct 
 of a man named Abercrombie, shrewdly suspected 
 to be also a Popish priest, who offered him some 
 words of consolation and encouragement on the 
 scaffold.* Several persons were convicted of having 
 visited Ogelvie, or of having afforded him nutri- 
 ment and protection. They were all condemned 
 to be hanged, but their punishment was commuted 
 to perpetual banishment. 
 
 This act of severity was not so fortunate as to 
 secure that favour from the Presbyterians which 
 the king seems to have expected for it. It was 
 not done by themselves, but by that Episcopal 
 hierarchy which James had raised up, and which 
 they disliked little less cordially than Popery itself ; 
 and it was done as if vauntingly to show that 
 Episcopacy could deal with Popery as boldly and 
 effectively as Presbyterianism — that the bishops 
 could hang a Papist as heartily as the presbytery. 
 It met with more carps and sneers than cordial ap- 
 plause from the Presbyterian historians ; and Calder- 
 wood bluntly says: " Some interpreted this execu- 
 tion to have proceeded, rather of a care to bless the 
 king's government than of any sincere hatred of the 
 
 * True Relation of the Proceedings against John Ogelvie, 
 &c. Pitcairn, iii., pp. 335, 369. 
 
 L 2
 
 148 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST 
 
 Popish religion. Some deemed that it was done to 
 be a terror to the sincerer sort of the ministry, not 
 to decline the king's authority in any cause whatso- 
 ever. He was the first priest, or Jesuit, that Avas 
 executed since the bastard Bishop of St. Andrew's 
 was hanged." 
 
 Among the priests themselves, such an event, if 
 it frightened some, would arouse new heroic ener- 
 gies in others. The profession was elevated by 
 the dignity of danger and martyrdom. The traf- 
 ficking priest, the Jesuit missionary, no longer 
 humbly skulking from the village stocks, or the 
 Tolbooth, looked death in the face, and felt his mis- 
 sion ennobled by the desperate alternatives which 
 the powers of evil prompted wicked men to take 
 for his extirpation. The cause became higher 
 and holier in his eyes. Its influence was reflected 
 on the votaries of the condemned faith, who clung 
 the closer round those who braved these dangers 
 for their eternal welfare, and offered a submis- 
 sive reverence to the candidates for the crown of 
 martyrdom, which a Church trusting to less lofty 
 aspirations could not have elicited. There are 
 grounds for believing that, for many years after the 
 Ogelvie tragedy, a considerable number of friars 
 and priests lurked through Scotland, gliding hither 
 and thither as their services were needed, and
 
 THE ROMAN CATHOLICS. 149 
 
 trusting their safety to the untiring zeal, the discre- 
 tion, and the impregnable secrecy of a devoted 
 flock. Generally, they were men of high courage 
 and self-devotion, for no others could undertake a 
 function of which all the temporal inducements lay 
 in the danger. They were scholars; men of the 
 world, who could go through its business, and even 
 participate in its pleasures, without betraying the 
 priest even to vigilant and suspicious eyes ; and, 
 finally, they were trained to arms, and could defend 
 themselves in case of need. 
 
 One of these protean priests, named Gilbert 
 Blackhal, left behind him a detailed account of his 
 services and adventures. It may or may not be 
 perfectly accurate — one is apt to suspect the clerk 
 militant of slightly overcolouring some of his war- 
 like achievements: but it tells truth, at all events, as 
 a memoir characteristic of the times, and it serves 
 this purpose all the better that it was not prepared 
 for publication, but designed as a narrative of facts, 
 to bring them home to the knowledge of certain 
 persons interested in them. Father Blackhal's object 
 was to make known the full extent of his services to 
 " three noble ladies'" connected with the family of 
 Errol.* The father was a mortified and disap- 
 
 * A Brieffe Narration of the services to three noble ladyes, 
 by Gilbert Blakhal, Priest of the Scots Mission in France, in
 
 150 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST 
 
 pointed man, who had to reiterate his faithful ser- 
 vices to haughty and ungrateful females. 
 
 Many of Blackhal's adventures relate to his wild 
 journeys over mountain regions to visit his far-scat- 
 tered flock. Separating them from each other were 
 " the Cuishney hills, as wild a part as is in all Scot- 
 land, which I have crossed many times at midnight 
 all alone, when I could not see whether I was in 
 the way or out of it, but trusted my horse, who 
 never failed or fainted in the way." Once, in one 
 of the great speats or floods caused by the melting 
 of the snow in spring, he was swept, while endea- 
 vouring to cross a flooded brook, into the river 
 Hay. After despairing of his life, a fortunate effort 
 , of his horse brought both to the shore ; but a priest 
 at that time had peculiar impedimenta, which ren- 
 dered such adventures more disagreeable than they 
 were to other people. " "When we were both at 
 land," he says, " I did perceive my saddle, with a 
 
 the Low Countries, and in Scotland, 1631-1649. This is one of 
 the valuable series of historical documents printed for the 
 Spalding Club, which have been frequently cited in these 
 pages. It has been learnedly and accurately edited for the use 
 of the members, by the secretary, Mr. Stuart. The MS. was 
 furnished by the Roman Catholic bishop, Kyle. It is believed 
 that many interesting and valuable documents, illustrative of 
 Scottish history, are in the hands of Roman Catholic ecclesi- 
 astics ; and it were to be desired that the tone in which they 
 and their Church are historically spoken of, were in such good 
 taste as to induce them to offer a freer use of their stores.
 
 THE ROMAN CATHOLICS. 151 
 
 great valise tied to it, going down towards the 
 river. I did go in again, and draw it to the land. 
 Then I see my hat and a little valise of red Spanish 
 leather, wherein was my mass vestments, swimming- 
 down the river. I returned in once again to the 
 head and brought them out, thinking with myself 
 that the people and ministers would persuade them- 
 selves, finding these vestments, that some priest had 
 been drowned in that river, and rejoice thereat." 
 
 After this lucky escape, he says: "In the midst 
 of lent I did go to Aboyne, and when my lady did 
 see me she did make the sign of the cross upon 
 herself, thinking me a spirit — we call it in Scot- 
 land a wraith. For she was persuaded that I was 
 drowned, and was very content that the news of 
 my death was false. She made me stay there until 
 Easter, where I made exhortations every Sunday, 
 Tuesday, and Friday, upon the passion of our 
 Saviour, which did please her and her domestics, 
 especially her master-cook, Alexander Lamb, who 
 thereafter abjured his heresy before me, and died 
 two years thereafter a devout Catholic." It is 
 possible that the father benefited much in temporal 
 matters by bringing this lamb into the fold, for he 
 speaks with all admiration and gratitude of the 
 lordly way in which he was fed, above the feeding 
 of the priests in the houses of greater and richer
 
 152 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST 
 
 ladies, such as the Marchioness of Huntly and the 
 Lady Moray. " She had a more noble and generous 
 heart than any of them, and keeped a good house ; 
 and gave power to her priest to send his man to the 
 kitchen and choose upon the spit what piece or 
 pieces he should think would please his master best ; 
 and that piece or pieces were sent to his chamber to 
 him when they were roasted — oftentimes before my 
 lady did dine or sup, which priests could not do in - 
 the houses of these other ladies, nor in any other 
 house in all Scotland — nor England neither, I be- 
 lieve ; for in great houses, if the priests eat in their 
 private chambers, they must stay till the lady send 
 them from the table upon trenchers such pieces as 
 she pleaseth." 
 
 This Lady Aboyne — one of three whom the 
 father served with so much zeal — was the widow of 
 that young Lord Aboyne who was slain in the 
 Frendraught tragedy.* Her dowry house was 
 close on the borders of the Highlands, and if it 
 might afford thus a place of refuge, which gave a 
 member of the hunted classes — such as Blackhal 
 was — a ready means of retreat, it was extremely 
 open to the depredation of the mountaineers. The 
 great Catholic families had still a wide influence 
 in that district — an influence not entirely broken 
 * See toI. i., p. 213.
 
 THE ROMAN CATHOLICS. 153 
 
 before Cromwell's government. In his journeys in 
 the southern counties it was certain destruction to 
 the priest to be recognised by any portion of the 
 miscellaneous people. His predecessor sought the 
 same obscurity and seclusion at Aboyne, but he, by 
 his own account, adopted boldly a new policy — thus : 
 
 " Thenceforth I did go publicly to the table, 
 and walked abroad publicly, and the people were 
 no more curious to see the priest, as they were when 
 he keeped himself closed up in his chamber, which 
 I could not endure. For one of the people did tell 
 another which was the priest's chamber, and if he 
 opened but his window they did run to get a sight 
 of him, as of a monstrous thing. They did so to 
 me at the beginning, but I did very soon remede 
 their curiosity, showing myself to them more than 
 they desired ; for there was no man in the parish 
 better known than I, nor better loved by the best 
 sort, notwithstanding the opposition of our religion 
 — except one gentlewoman, called Janet Forbes, 
 ■wife to George Dorwart, who said to my own man 
 that she hoped to wash her hand in my heart's 
 blood." 
 
 The high influence wliich the priest exercised 
 over the lonely widow and her establishment, show 
 how futile were all fulminations and penalties to 
 destroy this willing obedience — how much they
 
 154 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST 
 
 often served to strengthen the homage of a proud 
 humility. Blackhal says that the lady described 
 him as holding three functions — he was her priest 
 and confessor ; her chamberlain ; and the captain 
 of her castle. And he details services which show 
 that he well deserved all the three. The father, be- 
 ginning with the statement that he is not " a man 
 of intrigue, who loves to meddle in any one's affairs, 
 especially unrequired," narrates the summary man- 
 ner in which he superseded the constituted authori- 
 ties of the household. The butler he found " spent 
 what he pleased in the pantry, which was open to 
 all that would keep him company till midnight." 
 " It was right under my chamber," he says, " and 
 I did hear them both day and night there." 
 
 The way in which this worthy balanced his 
 accounts was the simplest possible. " He never 
 can nor did make other compt but simply — all 
 is spended;" and his example was followed by all 
 others who made disbursements for the widowed 
 Lady of Aboyne, until Father Blackhal took the 
 whole into his own management. " The only 
 remede is, said I, to send them all away and make 
 a new household, as they do in France with incorri- 
 gible servants." The priest must have felt his posi- 
 tion strong indeed within his own circle, whatever 
 might be his perils from without, when he could
 
 THE ROMAN CATHOLICS. 155 
 
 thus exercise the high hand, and accomplish what 
 many an undoubted lord of a household tries in vain. 
 
 The father's services as captain of the castle were 
 no less comprehensive and effective. " When I did 
 enter in her service," he says, "there were only 
 two pistolets in all the house, and they belonged to 
 Alexander Davidson — a man who keeped ever a 
 pair of pistolets, but never in all his life did fire 
 one ; so that they served to him only for parade, as 
 he avouched to me." Under the energetic measures 
 of the warlike priest, this innocent brace of pistols 
 was superseded by " eight double muskets, with 
 ball and powder and match conform, and as many 
 light guns with snap works; with a long fowling 
 gun and a very wide carbine, capable of nine or ten 
 pistol-balls at a charge, which I used to hang at my 
 shoulder when I rode through the country. So 
 we had eighteen pieces of firework, forby four pis- 
 tolets that I had, and two that Alexander Davidson 
 had — in all, four-and-twenty — and an hundred 
 pounds of powder." 
 
 It appears that there was speedy occasion for 
 all these warlike preparations. The disputes of the 
 Covenant took the restraints of the law off the High- 
 land freebooters, who plundered Cavalier and Cove- 
 nanter with perfect theological impartiality. They 
 came down in force more than once on the house of
 
 156 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST 
 
 the Lady Aboyne, though her connexion with the 
 head of one of their great clans ought, by rievers' 
 law, to have kept her exempt from their assaults. 
 It would make too tedious a narrative to tell how 
 they were outgeneralled by the fighting priest ; 
 how he marshalled his small garrison, so as, in out- 
 ward appearance, to double its size ; and how, not 
 contented with defeating an attempt to take his 
 little fortalice by assault, he fell by surprise upon 
 the enemy's camp, taking every one of them pri- 
 soners, though they were four times as numerous as 
 the garrison. 
 
 On his proper function of priest the father is, of 
 course, less communicative. The lady made pilgri- 
 mages " to our Lady of Grace in Murrayland. It 
 had been of old a very devout place, and many pil- 
 grimages had been made to it from all parts of the 
 north of Scotland ; but then there was nothing- 
 standing of it but some broken walls which the 
 minister made throw down within the chapel to 
 hinder the people to pray there ; a great devotion 
 to their holy covenant, rebellious both to God and 
 their king. She used to make the pilgrimage every 
 year so long as she had health to do it, a matter 
 of thirty miles from her own house, whereof she 
 made two of them a-foot and barefooted next to the 
 chapel."
 
 THE ROMAN CATHOLICS. 157 
 
 As lie is rendering to the daughter an account of 
 his unrequited services to the house of Aboyne, lie 
 thinks fit thus to remind her of her mother's last 
 moments, and of his own sufferings and services 
 thereanent : " I am persuaded you have not for- 
 gotten, madam (for you wanted not two months of 
 thirteen years when she died), how careful I was 
 both of her body and soul in her sickness ; how I 
 watched at her bedside until two hours after mid- 
 night, and when she sleeped I retired to my cham- 
 ber, where I weeped longer time than I sleeped ; 
 and how soon I awaked returned again to comfort 
 her, although mine own heart was very comfortless 
 — yea, more than I did show, fearing to discomfort 
 her. She confessed and received the blessed sacra- 
 ment every week in her sickness, preparing herself 
 for her happy end ; and at the end of every con- 
 fession, before she would rise from her weak knees, 
 she said, her hands joined, ' Now, father, I recom- 
 mend to you my fatherless child going now to be 
 motherless. I pray you continue to her the charity 
 you have practised upon me since ever I was so 
 happy as to have you with me. I know that she 
 will be put to heretics to pervert her ; and there- 
 lore do not abandon her among their hands, but 
 visit her, and comfort her, and keep her in the
 
 158 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST 
 
 Catholic religion, and save her soul for God's sake 
 if you can.' " 
 
 Along with the history of his power and influ- 
 ence within the circle of his followers, Blackhal 
 affords many stirring incidents of peril and escape 
 in other parts of the country. His account of 
 " What did befall me at the Muir of Rhynie, going 
 to visit Mademoiselle Gordon," would make excel- 
 lent raw material for a scene in an historical novel. 
 His extreme bravery saved the father's life on this, 
 as on many other occasions. Arriving at a lonely 
 hostelry at night, he found it filled with a body of 
 Covenanters, or rather of supporters of the Covenant 
 party, drinking and eating Findon haddocks — a dish 
 which still retains a portion of its local renown. 
 This was awkward company for a priest in those 
 days of contest and suspicion, when every individual 
 traveller scrutinised every other to find out whether 
 he was a friend or an enemy. He was at once 
 received by a pertinacious captain, who put to him 
 the blunt question, " Who are you, sir?" which 
 " did heat his blood." 
 
 " And as I thought he spoke disdainfully to me, 
 I answered in that same tone, saying ' That is a 
 question indeed, sir, to have been asked at my foot- 
 man, if you had seen him coming in to you.' He
 
 THE ROMAN CATHOLICS. 159 
 
 said it was a civil demand, and I said it might pass 
 for such to a valet, but not to a gentleman. He 
 said it was civil, and I said it was not." The 
 priest and his companion found refuge in another 
 apartment, but the pertinacious captain followed 
 them. " I made him welcome, and praid him to 
 drink with us, which he would not do, but said, ' I 
 pray you, sir, tell me what you are ?' And I an- 
 swered him, saying, ' Sir, if you would have had 
 but a little patience until I had been set down 
 among you, and my heart warmed with a cup as 
 yours hath been, and then asked me through kind- 
 ness who I was, I would at the very first word have 
 told you ; but you did begin in a disdainful way to 
 question me, as if I had been some country fellow ; 
 and that manner of proceeding did at the very first 
 heat my blood, and obliged me to refuse to satisfy 
 your demand.' " 
 
 From some of the inexplicable social revolutions 
 which arise in the relative position of men who are 
 imbibing potent liquors, the captain and the priest 
 came to be very friendly, and to exchange compli- 
 ments and courtesies. The captain praised his new 
 companion's courage and magnanimity in standing 
 to his resolution, though he was but one to twenty. 
 But he still stuck to his point, and as before he 
 had peremptorily and fiercely, now soothingly and
 
 160 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST 
 
 politely he desired to know who and what his new 
 friend was. Blackhal evaded this with an inge- 
 nuity worthy of the famed casuistic capacities of 
 the great society to which he belonged. He ex- 
 plained that, having once refused to give an expla- 
 nation on account of the manner of asking, if he 
 now satisfied their curiosity his compliance might 
 be attributed to fear. He prayed of the captain not 
 to press upon his honour by urging such a request; 
 when they next met he would be as explicit as they 
 could desire. 
 
 As the night wore on and the liquor flowed, the 
 friendship of the captain for his new acquaintance 
 grew ever warmer. " And," says the father, " when I 
 did go to my horse, the captain and the minister and 
 all the soldiers embraced me, and the captain must 
 needs help me to tie my valise unto my saddle, 
 and hold my stirrup ; but I would not suffer him 
 to do the last, although I could not get him hin- 
 dered from the first, and I had much ado to hinder 
 him from the last." His reflection on his escape is: 
 " My resolution was, all the time that I was in 
 Scotland, to defend myself as long as I could stand, 
 and in mine own defence die rather by the hands 
 of gentlemen than of the hangman — but my day 
 was not yet come to die at that occasion." 
 
 He run scarcely less risk one day approaching
 
 THE ROMAN CATHOLICS. 161 
 
 Stirling, when it was in the hands of the Cove- 
 nanters. It was Sunday — the churches were about 
 to disperse, and he found that the road by which 
 he was to pass the Forth led straight into the town. 
 To return might have been more dangerous thai: 
 to advance, as implying fear and tempting pursuit ; 
 but his usual ingenuity and good-fortune did not 
 desert him. Meeting two fair ladies, he told a 
 tale how urgent and pressing matters called him on 
 a journey, which would be utterly defeated by the 
 delay that would be caused if he had to produce 
 his credentials in the town, and stand an examina- 
 tion. " They were two very handsome gentle- 
 women, and very civil." Taking compassion on 
 the perplexed traveller, they opened a gate out- 
 side the town wall, and conducted him through a 
 " lodging," which " pertained surely to some per- 
 son of quality, for it was very fair, a great court 
 buildcd on three quarters, and a baluster of iron on 
 the side towards the garden, which had a fair and 
 large parterre." Thus he reached the bridge with- 
 out passing through the town, and cantering up the 
 hill, says, " I thanked God with all my heart and 
 soul, who had so mercifully provided to deliver me 
 out of the danger that threatened me." But his 
 most formidable risk was incurred in obeying the 
 injunctions of his departed patroness, and convey- 
 VOL. II. M
 
 162 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST 
 
 ing her daughter secretly abroad, to remove her 
 from the influence of heresy. This act, in itself, 
 was a capital crime ; and lurking, as he had to do, 
 for some time in Aberdeen, then in possession of 
 the Covenanters, bargaining with skippers, and in- 
 terrupted by winds and tides, his escape can only 
 be accounted for by a secret antipathy to the Cove- 
 nant — if there were no direct sympathy with him- 
 self, in persons by whom his real character and 
 objects must have been at least suspected. 
 
 The other and brilliant side of this picture of 
 priestly life is the influence and respect which the 
 Scottish ecclesiastic commanded in foreign courts. If 
 we may draw a general inference from his narrative, 
 which, whether specifically true or not, must have 
 been life-like — the refugee nobility of Scotland ap- 
 pear to have had scarcely any influence in the 
 Catholic courts, save through their spiritual guides. 
 The rough habits and scanty education of the 
 Scottish gentry exiled by the Reformation, — de- 
 lects which the new generation at home were fast 
 remedying, — seem to have made them mere clowns 
 at court, whose position, like that of an American or 
 New Zealand chief in our own day, required to be 
 attested by some civilised authority. The priests, 
 on the other hand, were learned and accomplished, 
 and systematically trained in diplomatic etiquette. 
 Blackhal obtained easy access to the persons of
 
 THE ROMAN CATHOLICS. 163 
 
 princes, and placed his Scottish wards in their 
 hands. One was received as a -protegee of the Infanta 
 of Spain, the arch-duchess, daughter of Philip II., 
 and became one of her legatees. By personal applica- 
 tion to Anne of Austria, he obtained for the daughter 
 of the Lady Aboyne the promise of a canonry, should 
 she herself accept of it; which was not quite clear, 
 as, when she was to be sent to a monastery, to 
 acquire the French language and the preparatory 
 discipline, she answered, bluntly, "That she would 
 be content to go to a monastery for some time, but 
 that she would not be a relimeuse." One of the 
 father's chief and most amusing perplexities, indeed, 
 was in the conduct of his protegees after he had 
 accomplished all for them. The patrician dam- 
 sels, barbarous and uneducated, yet haughty withal, 
 could not understand the greatness of the people 
 they were among, or brook the patient ceremony 
 of the courtiers, and the strict adjustment of eti- 
 quettes and ranks. " I have seen," says the dis- 
 tressed confessor, " my Lady of Brienne sit in her 
 own carosse without her gate upon the street, 
 fretting a whole quarter of an hour waiting for 
 Mademoiselle de Gordon, sending and sending over 
 and over again for her to go to the mass; and — 
 which did highly displease me — when she was at the 
 carosse, step in it, not opening her mouth to make 
 
 m2
 
 164 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST 
 
 any excuse for making the lady stay for her, no 
 more than if she had been mistress of the carosse, 
 and the lady but only her servant." And he makes 
 a reflection thus: "Whether that proceeded from 
 pride, thinking that and much more due unto her, 
 or from inadvertence, not reflecting upon their 
 civilities, which is called a kind of brutality, I 
 know not — God knoweth." 
 
 In a sketch of the criminal proceedings against 
 the Popish priests, it appeared to the author not 
 inappropriate to take advantage of the insight thus 
 curiously afforded by Father Blackhal, into the 
 actual life and habits of the persons against whom 
 the penal statutes and the proceedings of the courts 
 were mainly levelled. It is only when such a nar- 
 rative is privately penned by a garrulous person, 
 unconscious of possible publicity, and thinking only 
 of the individual people he is addressing, that we 
 have much chance of seeing the curtain withdrawn 
 from a system necessarily worked 'with so much cau- 
 tion, and ever courting secrecy. There are other 
 contemporary accounts of the proceedings of the 
 Scottish priests in the seventeenth century, but, ad- 
 dressed in public self-glory to the Catholic Church 
 .abroad, they are not to be believed, and are full 
 of palpable extravagancies and falsities. The ad- 
 ventures of George Leslie of Monymusk, a Capu-
 
 THE ROMAN CATHOLICS. 165 
 
 chin friar called Father Archangel, have appeared 
 in various forms. A simple Memoir by Rinuc- 
 cini, Archbishop of Fermo, went through several 
 editions. It was dramatised at Rome, and the 
 inhabitants of the remote village of Monymusk 
 are called up as Lurcanio, a Calvinist clergyman, 
 Forcina his servant, and Theophilus, an old Aber- 
 deenshire cottager, while Beelzibub is represented 
 in the form of Calvin. One of Archangel's feats is 
 the conversion of 4000 citizens of Monymusk to the 
 true faith at one sitting. 
 
 Lord Hailes, whose works convey an impression 
 of saturnine gravity scarcely expressive of his cha- 
 racter, appears to have been fascinated by the ex- 
 travagancies of the Scottish Capuchin, and a string 
 of extracts from the adventurous narratives have 
 their innate extravagance rather exaggerated than 
 modified by the systematic manner in which the 
 sententious annalist strung them together.* 
 
 If we were to enumerate the minor proceedings 
 against the Roman Catholics in Scotland in the 
 seventeenth century, they would be chiefly culled 
 from the records of tl;e church courts. It is of 
 course natural to find that, when general assemblies 
 began to be held, they issued many enactments 
 
 * They are to be found in the Appendix to the last edition of 
 the Annals of Scotland.
 
 166 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST 
 
 against Popery. The church courts enforced them 
 by censures mounting through various grades up 
 to excommunication, which, before the year 1690, 
 involved civil, penalties and disabilities. Of the 
 nature of such proceedings in the ecclesiastical 
 courts, some notice has been taken in the account 
 of the burning of Frendraught.* 
 
 In the great conflict of the civil wars, the Roman 
 Catholics are almost lost to sight, the two main 
 parties, Episcopal and Presbyterian, filling the his- 
 torical canvas. During the Protectorate, persecu- 
 tion of every kind was restrained. In the reign of 
 Charles II. it took, as we shall find, a decidedly 
 different direction ; and in that of his. brother, the 
 prospects of Catholicism were becoming so triumph- 
 ant, that certain supple politicians prematurely 
 adopted it, and were mobbed and maltreated in the 
 streets of Edinburgh. 
 
 Of a string of acts against " the growth of 
 Popery," the ruling statute for many years was 
 that passed in 1701, by King William's parlia- 
 ment. To counteract the malice and subtlety 
 whereby " the Jesuits, and seminary and mass 
 priests, and trafficking Papists" disguised them- 
 selves, a formula or test was enacted, which might 
 be put to any one who was " held and repute" 
 * See vol. i., p. 228.
 
 THE ROMAN CATHOLICS. 167 
 
 within the category; and if he refused " to purge 
 himself," as the statute says, by taking the test, he 
 was liable to the penalties of the act. These were 
 banishment for life, followed by the infliction of 
 death if the banished person returned. The same 
 punishment was applicable to any one discovered 
 " in any meeting where there is either altar, mass- 
 book, or vestments, or Popish images, or other 
 Popish trinkets or instruments of superstition." 
 There are lengthy provisions for preventing, as in 
 England or Ireland, Papists from acquiring or suc- 
 ceeding to landed property; the acceptance or re- 
 fusal of the formula or test being the criterion of 
 Popery. 
 
 The persecution under this act was scarcely hot 
 enough to be interesting. For some time the 
 Established Church, in its pursuit of Episcopacy, 
 seems to have almost overlooked Popery, which 
 existed mainly in a few great houses, where its 
 observances were conducted with extreme caution. 
 In the year 1722, a party of soldiers entered the 
 house of the Dowager-Duchess of Gordon, and 
 there seized a priest, who, according to the charge 
 against him, was preparing to celebrate mass, and 
 who would not take the formula. He was liberated 
 on bail, and, forfeiting his recognisances, was out- 
 lawed.* 
 
 * Arnott's Criminal Trials, p. 378.
 
 168 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST 
 
 The chief strongholds of the old religion, and the 
 most dangerous, from the seldom-failing presence of 
 Jacobitism as its concomitant, were north of the 
 Grampians. At Aberdeen, a priest named Grant was 
 subjected to banishment under the penal act in 1750, 
 and another, named Gordon, was similarly punished 
 in the year 1751.* The latest case of punishment 
 under the act is supposed to have occurred in 
 1759, when Neil M'Fie was banished by the circuit 
 court of Inverness, for being " held and repute a 
 Popish priest."! Later instances might be adduced 
 of punishment for exercising the Roman Catholic 
 religion in England. 
 
 In 1778, when the measure for mitigating 
 
 the English penal laws was brought on, a series 
 
 of riots occurred in Scotland, which, though they 
 
 were deemed formidable in themselves, were yet 
 
 but the faint foreshadowings of the hurricane 
 
 which swept London. There was no ostensible 
 
 Catholic place of worship in the country ; but a 
 
 house in one of the wynds of Edinburgh, where 
 
 the offensive rites were said to be performed in 
 
 an upper chamber, was destroyed, along with the 
 
 private dwellings of some men either suspected of 
 
 popery or convicted of toleration. The house of 
 
 Robertson the historian only escaped by being 
 
 well protected ; the magistrates of Edinburgh, who 
 
 * Black Calendar of Aberdeen, p. 26. f ^'. P- -1-
 
 THE ROMAN CATHOLICS. 169 
 
 otherwise culpably neglected their duty, thought it 
 would be too preposterous a scandal to let the head 
 of the Presbyterian establishment be sacrificed in a 
 No-Popery outbreak. 
 
 At the same time, a resolute and systematic op- 
 position to any relaxation of the penal laws was 
 carried on throughout the country; almost every 
 two or three men who could put themselves into a 
 corporate shape, uniting as petitioners against the 
 measure. In 1780 was published an octavo volume, 
 called " Scotland's Opposition to the Popish Bill." 
 It is more fully described as "a collection of all the 
 declarations and resolutions published by the differ- 
 ent counties, cities, towns, parishes, incorporations, 
 and societies throughout Scotland, against a pro- 
 posed repeal of the statutes enacted, and for ever 
 ratified, by the Revolution and union parliament, for 
 preventing the growth of Popery." People who are 
 frightened by slight and occasional relapses of po- 
 lemical wrath, as if bigotry were something pre- 
 viously unknown in human nature, and each mani- 
 festation of it an alarming malady of the present 
 age, — will see in such a tidemark how far we have 
 made steady progress towards toleration. The fits 
 of zeal come at intervals like waves, but each falls 
 short of that which preceded it. 
 
 " Scotland's Opposition" contains many hundreds
 
 170 PliOCEEDINGS AGAINST 
 
 of flaming protests, addresses, and petitions. The 
 smallest and most obscure sects are not the least 
 vehement, and the members of the " Berean chapel, 
 Carrubbers-close," express themselves as " filled with 
 just indignation and horror at the alarming growth 
 and encouragement, especially in these lands of 
 late, given to the most accursed, bloody, blas- 
 phemous, devilish religion of the Pope and the Pre- 
 tender — a religion consisting of a conspiracy of lies 
 and fables against the Lord Jesus Christ him- 
 self, and of deadly intent and malignity against 
 all his sincere worshippers in every corner of the 
 earth."* 
 
 Yet the judicatories of the Establishment gave, in 
 some instances, no faint echo to such blasts of the 
 trumpet. Take, for instance, the protest of the kirk 
 session of Auchtermuchty, which, being concise and 
 symmetrical in its structure, may be taken as a type 
 of the others: 
 
 Auchtermuchty, Jan. 19, 1779. 
 
 " The kirk session of this parish, having convened, 
 and the meeting being constitute by prayer, took 
 into consideration a report that the penal laws now 
 subsisting against Popery were soon to be abro- 
 gated ; and being aware of the insidious nature of 
 that religion, its secular magnificence and pomp, its 
 * Scotland's Opposition, p. 122.
 
 THE ROMAN CATHOLICS. 171 
 
 earthly original and rise, its unsupportable pride 
 and insatiable avarice, its notorious encroachments 
 on the civil power, its carnal, and often hellish 
 policy, and its detestable bloodthirstiness and 
 cruelty, — after considering these characters of the 
 Papal empire, and being justly alarmed lest the 
 young and unthinking in Scotland should be se- 
 duced by the indefatigable zeal of sly Jesuitical 
 priests and missionaries, determined vigorously to 
 oppose such an illegal, ill-timed scheme by every 
 constitutional measure in their power."* 
 
 A large number of these documents, not less 
 fierce, but more verbose and less consistent than 
 this specimen, commence the denunciations with a 
 declaration that the subscribers " abhor all persecu- 
 tion for conscience' sake." A remarkable feature in 
 the whole collection is the uniform excellence of 
 the composition, and the accurate use of technical 
 phraseology. Thus the " friendly society of journey- 
 men weavers in Potterrow," the " society of cobblers 
 in Edinburgh," the "ploughmen in Musselburgh 
 and Fisherrow," and " the freemen discharged sol- 
 diers of Glasgow," handle all the polemical and 
 constitutional weapons of rhetoric as learnedly and 
 boldly as the provincial synod's " town councils" and 
 county gentlemen. Those who are acquainted with 
 * Scotland's Opposition, p. 82.
 
 172 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST, ETC. 
 
 the tactics of national polemical demonstrations, 
 will know the reason of this uniform adaptation to 
 a leading tone. 
 
 This might be called the expiring outbreak of 
 anything justly to be called national fanaticism — 
 whatever may have followed it, comes under the 
 milder category of zeal. The penal laws lasted two 
 years longer in Scotland than in England, but in 
 1793 an act of toleration was passed, appointing an 
 oath of adherence to be taken by Roman Catholics, 
 and a system for registering those who came under 
 the act. The subsequent extension of freedom by 
 the Catholic Emancipation Act is a matter of con- 
 temporary history, on which it is needless to enter — 
 the scope of these pages is exhausted at the point 
 where the profession of Catholicism ceases to be a 
 statutory crime.
 
 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST THE COVENANTERS. 
 
 The historian of " the sufferings of the Church 
 of Scotland, from the Restoration to the Revolu- 
 tion," filled two dense folio volumes with the 
 materials which he had collected on the subject, 
 and they overflowed into some ancillary works of 
 biography and general gossip. There is no inten- 
 tion on the present occasion to offer any full account, 
 however much abbreviated, of so large and teeming 
 a subject. It is intended only, without entering 
 into the history of the period or the many con- 
 flicts, local or general, by which the country was 
 disturbed, to stand, as it were, in the supreme 
 courts of judicature in Edinburgh, and observe any 
 very noticeable peculiarities which the contest there 
 assumed. 
 
 The Restoration commenced with judicial pro-
 
 174 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST 
 
 ceedings which too accurately foreshadowed what 
 was to follow. The English indemnity, ill kept even 
 in its letter, could not be held to extend to Scotland; 
 and men who had been embittered by adversity, and 
 were swollen with the uncharitable pride of political 
 triumph, had too many opportunities for crushing 
 their enemies. The first and most illustrious victim 
 was Argyle. That he should be selected, if there 
 were to be victims, was not wonderful. His head 
 was the natural reprisal for that of Montrose. 
 Though he had professed friendship for monarchy, 
 had not been an ostensible adherent of Crom- 
 well, and materially aided the Restoration, yet in 
 the height of his career he had been the great 
 leader of that cause before which Charles I. had 
 fallen, and the sanctity of the monarchical system had 
 been desecrated. Beyond this, however, there was 
 another and more dangerous element in his position 
 — he possessed vast estates which ought to go into 
 the hands of loyal men. 
 
 His trial was by parliamentary attainder — a me- 
 thod of arraignment in which it is not necessary 
 to follow any fixed law. The records of the pro- 
 ceedings would be doubtless interesting, but they 
 have been destroyed. A curious incident of the 
 trial, noticed by Burnet, has created much dis- 
 cussion. Monk, "by an inexcusable baseness," as
 
 THE COVENANTERS. 175 
 
 the historian calls it, searched among his private 
 papers, and found letters which were used to incul- 
 pate the accused. The evidence was finished ere 
 they reached Edinburgh, and the debate on its 
 tenor had begun. But Burnet says, " It was a mad 
 roaring time, full of extravagance ; and no wonder 
 it was so, when the men of affairs were almost per- 
 petually drunk." Forms were not permitted to 
 interfere with the objects of those in power, and 
 these letters were read, and allowed their due 
 weight. This statement has been often contradicted, 
 as a malicious fiction of Burnet, to bring discredit 
 on the memory of the great king-restorer; but it 
 has been proved by the professional notes of Sir 
 George Mackenzie.* 
 
 The execution of Argyle, had it even been fol- 
 lowed by other purely political acts of vengeance, 
 might have had less effect upon the minds of the 
 people had he not been accompanied by other vic- 
 tims, whose fate pierced deeper towards the heart of 
 
 * Speaking of the risks attending the use of documents as 
 conclusive against those whose signature they bear, Sir George 
 says, " And yet the Marquess of Argyle was convict of treason 
 upon letters written to him by General Monk ; these letters 
 being only subscribed by him, and not autograph, and the sub- 
 scription having been proved per comparationem literarum, which 
 were very hard in other cases, seeing comparatio literarum is but 
 a presumption, and men's hands are ofttimes easily imitated, 
 and one man's write will differ from itself at several occasions." 
 —Laws and Customs of Scotland, p. 524.
 
 176 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST 
 
 the Presbyterian party. The great statesman fell in 
 the political contest like the warrior in battle; but 
 to sacrifice a popular clergyman, was a sort of ag- 
 gression on peaceful society beyond the legitimate 
 operations of war. There was another victim, too, 
 whose political conduct — though he had been a 
 hard worker in politics — Avas believed not to be his 
 crime, and whose death left the unfortunate impres- 
 sion that he was slain because he was too sincerely 
 and devoutly religious for wicked men to permit 
 him to live. This was Archibald Johnston of War- 
 riston, one of the most remarkable and strangely- 
 contrasted characters of that restless age. He was, 
 from the beginning, the legal adviser of the Cove- 
 nanters, and many of the documents with which 
 they baffled or bearded Charles I. and his ad- 
 visers were drawn by his dexterous pen. Burnet, 
 who was his nephew, gives many anecdotes of his 
 perseverance and sagacity. Among these, he men- 
 tions a curious and rather incredible intrigue for 
 the ruin of the covenanting party, before the treaty 
 of Ripon. Lord Saville recommended the cove- 
 nanting army to reject any offers of a treaty by the 
 king, and march straight into England, where they 
 would be joined by the leaders of the parliamentary 
 party. The signed assurance of this recommenda- 
 tion by many of the leaders of the parliamentary
 
 THE COVENANTERS. 177 
 
 party was sent to Scotland, inclosed in a hollow 
 cane carried by a pedlar. This curious document 
 was placed in Warriston's hands, but he believed 
 it to be a forgery. " The king," says Burnet, 
 " pressed my uncle to deliver him the letter, who 
 excused himself upon his oath ; and, not knowing 
 what use might be made of it, he cut out every 
 subscription, and sent it to the person for whom it 
 was forged. The imitation was so exact, that everv 
 one, when he saw his hand simply by itself, acknow- 
 ledged that he could not have denied it." 
 
 In the treacherous calm which followed the treaty 
 of Ripon, Warriston basked in the royal sunshine, 
 and was loaded with honours and emoluments, 
 political and professional. He was one of those 
 who, in that age, so strangely mixed up with the 
 highest religious fanaticism, worldly objects pursued 
 with worldly sagacity. When the Covenant was 
 adopted, and he and its other supporters had the 
 vessel of the state entirely in their hands, the reign 
 of the Deity on earth was fulfilled, by his servants 
 being raised to power and dignity, and they had 
 but to go manfully on performing his work, and 
 steadfastly and relentlessly crushing all opposition, 
 whether in thought or deed. But a stronger spirit 
 of the same kind had been raised up in Oliver 
 Cromwell, who also had his view of the holy work 
 
 VOL. II. N
 
 178 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST 
 
 to be performed, and of his own peculiar fitness for 
 it. Warriston met him at Dunbar. The lawyer 
 was one of the unprofessional advisers, or rather 
 leaders, of the army, who, trusting in the possession 
 of a power above that of earthly generals, made old 
 Leslie commit his fatal blunder, and drew from 
 Cromwell the exclamation that the Lord had de- 
 livered them into his hands. The practical sagacity 
 which had beaten Charles I. in council, was no 
 match for Cromwell in the field. 
 
 A man of Warriston's character was now sore 
 tried between his religious impulses and his prac- 
 tical character. The Covenant no longer carried all 
 before it, and those who relied on the arm of the 
 flesh would require to side either with the new 
 monarch, Charles II., who was accepted as king in 
 Scotland, or with the more triumphant party of 
 Cromwell. A considerable body of the Presby- 
 terians drew aside under the name of Remonstrants, 
 who would take neither side, or touch the unclean 
 thing in co-operating eithe'r with malignants or 
 sectaries. Among the multitude of documents by 
 Warriston and his friends, preserved by the zealous 
 Wodrow,* there is one in which the covenanting 
 laAvyer appears to have put a case to himself in his 
 dilemma, starting thus : 
 
 * In the Advocates' Library.
 
 THE COVENANTERS. 179 
 
 " When God's covenanted people entrusts God's 
 covenanted interest to the power of God's anti- 
 covenanted enemies, though upon pretence to fight 
 against ane other anti-covenanted enemy — whether 
 a conscientious Covenanter can lawfully concur with 
 such a party in such a cause, or may lawfully ab- 
 stain, and rather give testimony by suffering against 
 both parties and causes as sinful and prejudicial to 
 God's honour and interest ?" 
 
 While the Remonstrants, however, had taken up 
 the decided position of enmity to both the temporal 
 parties, Warriston trimmed, or took credit for doing 
 so. In the parliament or committee of estates of 
 1650, all present were called upon " to give their 
 declaration, on their honour and truth, that they 
 were neither contrivers, carriers on, or voters to 
 the western remonstrance, which was done, all dis- 
 claiming it. Warriston did grant that he did see 
 it, was at the voting of it, but refused to give his 
 vote therein. He denied that he was accessory to 
 the contrivinc; of it at first."* Yet his concurrence 
 with the Remonstrants, and his subsequent adherence 
 to Cromwell, formed the grounds of accusation 
 against him. 
 
 This last act of backsliding does not seem to have 
 occurred until the lapse of several years, in which 
 * Balfour's Hist. Works, iv., 169. 
 N 2
 
 180 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST 
 
 the busy politician must have grown sick in idle- 
 ness, close beside the field which the Protectorate 
 government opened for the exertion of energetic 
 spirits. He had a mission to perform to the go- 
 vernment in 1657, and Cromwell, finding him a 
 man after his own heart, and exactly of that clear, 
 energetic, determined character which he desired in 
 his helpers, laid all proper snares for his seduction. 
 He accepted of the offers — was named a commis- 
 sioner for the administration of justice in Scotland, 
 and had a seat as Lord Warriston in Cromwell's 
 House of Peers. 
 
 This defection, as it made him doubly hateful in 
 the pure royalist party, was sorely mourned over by 
 the equally distinct covenanting party. Wodrow, 
 in his private note-book, records that Warriston 
 " used to say, before he would submit to the Eng- 
 lish, he would take his wife and ten children and 
 beg. However, he was prevailed with to go to 
 London, and there fell. He had a numerous 
 family, and the public was much in his debt, and 
 there was no other way to get his debts paid but 
 by taking a place ; and so, with reluctancy, he took 
 a place under Cromwell. Mr. James Guthrie and 
 he were never very intimate after he complied with 
 the English. Before that, they were continually 
 almost writing one another; and Warriston used to
 
 THE COVENANTERS. 181 
 
 write strange letters to Mr. Guthrie. He spoke of 
 strange motions in his body before manifestations, 
 which he used to term ' the sign of his coming in 
 my flesh.' "* 
 
 These notices may seem alien to the matter of 
 his trial and condemnation ; but, in reality, it was 
 not for any specific offence that he was condemned, 
 but for being the person of the character and history 
 which these notices develop. To these we may 
 add the following, from the gossiping note-book of 
 "Wodrow, as curious indications of a mind mixing 
 up religion with a relish of the pursuits of this 
 world. It was told by one " who was his acquaint- 
 ance, though but young." " He was with him at 
 hawking many times, and has known him, when 
 the hawks were gone off, sit down at the back of a 
 hill to pray. He used to come down in the season 
 of lavrocking [lark snaring], very early, to Crau- 
 fordlaw, and call out him and his brethren, then 
 youths : and when nets and all were ready against 
 break of day, he would have said, ' Lads, now is all 
 cords, &c, ready?' When they said ' Yes,' he 
 would have said, ' Then go away and sain your- 
 | selves,'! an( l tnc y behoved to go, and then to their 
 
 * Analecta, ii., 159. 
 
 f Sanctify yourselves, or pray.
 
 182 TROCEEDINGS AGAINST 
 
 sport."* Wodrow mentions an instance where 
 Warriston prayed for fourteen hours, and another 
 where, in the abstraction of his mind during devo- 
 tion, his wife, exhausted, fell in a swoon beside 
 him, " and continued some time in it, and the 
 servants, observing, lifted her up and put her in bed 
 — all this was done beside him, and he knew no- 
 thing of it till all was over and duty ended."f 
 
 The proceedings against him were carried on in 
 his absence. As they -were held in parliament, 
 where the rules, binding on the courts of law, were 
 not acknowledged, this was not so remarkable a 
 feature as we shall find that it afterwards became 
 when it was extended to the Court of Justiciary. 
 The same course, indeed, had been followed by 
 Warriston himself, and his fellows, in the condem- 
 nation of Montrose. For the like reason of the all- 
 potency of parliament to condemn whomsoever it 
 held in hostility, the accusation was brief and im- 
 perfectly explicit. He was charged with adopting 
 the manifesto of the remonstrant party, called " the 
 causes of God's wrath;" with holding appointments 
 " under the hand and seal of the bloody usurper, 
 
 * Analecta ii., 159. The context of this anecdote is a little 
 confused, and it might possibly apply to the Rev. James 
 Guthrie, who is mentioned further on. 
 
 t Analecta, p. 135.
 
 THE COVENANTERS. 183 
 
 Oliver Cromwell," and " sitting and acting in the 
 years 1657, 1658, and 1659, upon ane call from the 
 murderer and usurper, or his son, as one of the peers 
 of England in a pretended House of Lords newly set 
 up by the usurper, and by his sitting and acting as 
 president of a pretended committee of safety set up 
 by the murderers and usurpers."* 
 
 Warriston was condemned to death on May 15 th, 
 1661. On the first indications of proscription he 
 fled abroad, and skulked hither and thither in 
 Germany and the Low Countries. At length it 
 was rumoured that he had passed into France. A 
 professional spy, a countryman of his own, known 
 by the apt nickname of Crooked Murray, was em- 
 ployed to unearth him. The spy was fortunate 
 enough to fall on the track of his wife, and by 
 skilfully dogging her steps, came on the hiding-place 
 of the proscribed statesman. The despotic govern- 
 ment of France readily gave up a refugee of this 
 class — he was taken to the Tower and sent to Scot- 
 land for execution, in 1663. There was a perti- 
 nacity and long-sustained malice in this act of 
 political vengeance, which deepened the original 
 darkness of its hue. 
 
 Old age, or hardship, or some other calamity, had 
 * Scots Acts, vii., Appendix, p. 70.
 
 184 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST 
 
 strangely broken down the once strong spirit of the 
 veteran statesman. Burnet says, that a physician 
 employed to attend him had weakened his system 
 by deleterious drugs and excessive bleeding. How- 
 ever it occurred, it is certain that his spirit was 
 broken; he made sport to the Philistines, and ap- 
 peared an abject, fawning creature to those who 
 had quaked before the bold and dexterous leader. 
 An uncharitable but not mendacious observer thus 
 painted the closing scenes: 
 
 " Being brought into the council-house of Edin- 
 burgh, where the chancellor and others waited to 
 examine him, he fell upon his face roaring, and 
 with tears entreated they would pity a poor creature 
 who had forgot all that was in the Bible. This 
 moved all the spectators with a deep melancholy; 
 and the chancellor, reflecting on the man's former 
 esteem, and the great share he had in all the late 
 revolutions, could not deny some tears to the 
 frailty of silly mankind. * * * 
 
 " At his execution he showed more composure 
 than formerly, which his friends ascribed to God's 
 miraculous kindness for him; but others thought 
 that he had only formerly put on this disguise of 
 madness to escape death in it, and that, finding the 
 mask useless, he had returned not to his wit, which
 
 THE COVENANTERS. 185 
 
 he had lost, but from his madness, which he had 
 counterfeited."* 
 
 The other sacrifice to the happy Restoration was 
 of a nature still more likely to show the people of 
 Scotland that the new government was not only 
 going to take vengeance on its enemies, but to op- 
 press all those whose opinions it disliked. This was 
 the Rev. James Guthrie, a man of good birth, edu- 
 cation, and talent. " Mr. Guthrie," says Wodrow, 
 " was at first of the Episcopal way, and so far en- 
 gaged in it that he courted one of the bishop's 
 daughters. I have not heard the particular way 
 how he was brought off from that way. "f But the 
 historian of the sufferings afterwards discovered 
 that he had been directed into the right path by 
 the ministrations of precious Mr. Samuel Ruther- 
 ford. 
 
 Burnet's character of Guthrie is pithy and brief. 
 " He was a resolute and stiff man;" and Mackenzie, 
 in his sometimes expressively circuitous manner, 
 says, (i It was to be regretted that a more tractable 
 and quiet person had not the keeping of his great 
 parts and carriage, for he was both the secretary 
 and champion of his party." The very terms of 
 the accusation against him seem the reflection of 
 
 • Sir George Mackenzie — Memoirs of the Affairs of Scot- 
 land, p. 134. t Analecta, iii., 158.
 
 186 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST 
 
 his restless spirit, importing not so much a specific 
 charge of criminality as the possession and employ- 
 ment of faculties which made their owner a nuisance 
 to such a monarch as King Charles. It was set 
 forth that he did " contrive, complot, counsel, con- 
 sult, draw up, frame, invent, spread abroad or 
 disperse, speak, preach, disclaim or utter divers 
 and sundry vile seditious and treasonable remon- 
 strances, declarations, petitions, instructions, letters, 
 speeches, preachings, declamations, and other ex- 
 pressions tending to the vilifying and contemning, 
 slander and reproach of his majesty, his progenitors, 
 his person, majesty, dignity, authority, prerogative 
 royal, and government." 
 
 One may almost read, in his rigid pale face, his 
 thin resolute lips, and small, deep-set, glittering eyes, 
 one of those entirely self-satisfied bigots, whose path 
 before them is the clear and simple one of doing 
 God's work on earth, according to their notion of 
 what it is, and allowing no feelings of respect for 
 other opinions, and no regard for charity, the public 
 safety, or self-preservation, to interfere with the per- 
 formance of their holy functions. With Guthrie 
 the Covenant was a truth, all else a lie that must 
 be put down and trodden under foot into the mire, 
 whether it arose in the person of a malignant 
 monarch or a sectarian lord-protector. With such a
 
 THE COVENANTEES. 187 
 
 character it was the nature of Cromwell to deal. 
 The protector would have outdone him in religious 
 zeal of his own kind, would have claimed to himself 
 the prerogative of representing the Deity with a de- 
 gree of fervour and resoluteness that would have far 
 outblazed the fervency even of the fiery divine ; and 
 all the time would have held the vehement Presby- 
 terian's hand from doing mischief, with a gentle but 
 firm grasp. To put such a man ignominiously to 
 death like the "mere Irish," who fell upon the 
 bloody sod like savages, without a testimony in any 
 intelligible tongue, would never have entered the 
 dreams of the sagest of usurpers. 
 
 In truth, Cromwell's dealing with the Scottish 
 clergy was one of his master-strokes of policy. In- 
 dividually, and in their smaller ecclesiastical corpo- 
 rations, he did not restrain them. They might rage 
 against each other, or against papists, prelatists, and 
 sectaries as they willed. They were divided into 
 two parties, at least; and these two, fighting local 
 battles, in which the one was victorious here, the 
 other there, frittered away the general strength of 
 the body. One only restraint he laid on them ; 
 he would not permit them to meet in any general as- 
 sembly where pitched battles might be fought, and 
 the victorious party represent the aggregate strength 
 of the whole body. He extinguished the assembly,
 
 188 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST 
 
 without bustle or conflict. When the reverend 
 gentlemen, full of debate, were proceeding one 
 morning to their usual place of conflict, they found 
 the doors guarded by troopers, and the whole revo- 
 lution was accomplished. The Whig government 
 of George II., nearly a century afterwards, adopted 
 the same policy with the English Church ; and 
 there are not wanting politicians who attribute to 
 the virtual extinction of the convocation the preser- 
 vation of the great institution which it represented, 
 
 In professing to descend to particulars, the articles 
 of accusation against Guthrie charged him with 
 drawing the Remonstrance, and composing the 
 pamphlet called " The causes of God's wrath." 
 The former is characteristically set forth thus : 
 
 " You did compile and draw up a paper, 
 commonly called the ' Remonstrance,' and pre- 
 sented or caused present the same to his majesty's 
 committee of estates at Perth, upon the 22nd of 
 October, wherein most treasonably you utter and 
 belch forth a great many damnable and execrable 
 leasings, slanders, and reproaches against his 
 majesty's dearest father, of eternal memory, and 
 others his majesty's noble progenitors, their per- 
 sons, majesty, dignity, authority, and government ; 
 and also you not only disclaim his majesty's autho- 
 rity over you, and disown him in the exercise of
 
 THE COVENANTERS. 189 
 
 his royal power and government, in the right 
 whereof his majesty and his predecessors were 
 invested by God, and in possession by a series of 
 one hundred and eight progenitors,* but also most 
 treasonably reproach others, his majesty's good sub- 
 jects, for doing the same ; and most impiously held 
 forth, that the main and great cause of the suf- 
 ferings of his majesty's people under the tyranny 
 and oppression of the bloody usurper, is the owning 
 of his majesty's interest in this his ancient king- 
 dom, and the purpose of restoring his majesty to 
 his throne and government of his kingdom of Eng- 
 land, from which most wretchedly and godlessly 
 you aver that his majesty was most justly removed ; 
 wherein also are many more bitter and ignominious 
 reflections, seditions, treacherous and treasonable 
 expressions, tending to the contempt and disdain, 
 slander and reproach of his majesty, his progenitors, 
 in person, majesty, dignity, authority, and govern- 
 ment." 
 
 Guthrie was a great meddler in those little per- 
 
 * This number is exaggerated to the extent of more than 
 doubling what authentic history indicates ; but it is in accord- 
 ance with the old fabulous historians, whose catalogue of kings 
 it was a matter of state policy to support untouched. When the 
 English antiquary, Bishop Lloyd, docked the list, Sir George 
 Mackenzie told him, that had he been a Scotsman, he would 
 have instituted criminal proceedings against him as prosecutor 
 for the crown.
 
 190 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST 
 
 sonal collusions with Charles II., which made him 
 pronounce Presbyterianism no religion for a gentle- 
 man. The dissipated prince, who was seeking a 
 throne by the same kind of disagreeable compliance 
 which our secondary dramatists represent as the 
 marital path to fortune, had to endure long exhor- 
 tations, chiefly directed against his own sins and 
 those of his father. He had to accept that Cove- 
 nant which did not correspond with his belief, 
 and, far worse, was eminently revolting to his 
 taste ; and he had to join the obdurate clergy in a 
 penitential day of fasting for his sins as an anti- 
 Covenanter. If he chucked under the chin the 
 pretty prim daughter of any of the covenanting 
 worthies while the procession issued from the long 
 dreary Church service, there must be a special 
 rebuke thereanent. All these things his soul 
 abhorred, and afterwards, when catching butterflies 
 with Mrs. Nell, or feeding his ducks in the park, 
 leaning on the shoulder of gorgeous Louise de 
 Tremouille, the recollection of his sojourn among 
 the Covenanters in Perthshire probably crossed his 
 mind like a dreary dream. 
 
 All these humiliations Guthrie would inflict 
 with grim satisfaction. It was said, too, that by 
 his indulgence in ecclesiastical fulminations, he 
 had made one unrelenting enemy. The profligate
 
 THE COVENANTERS. 191 
 
 statesman, Middleton, had mixed himself up with 
 the plan of aiding the royal cause by an army of 
 Highlanders — malignants, if not Papists, every one 
 of them. The commission of the general assembly 
 passed an act of excommunication against him. It 
 remained only that it should be solemnly thundered 
 from the pulpit, and this congenial task was assigned 
 to Guthrie. Before he went to church, a young 
 nobleman called on the divine with a letter so 
 urgent as to demand attention even on the Sabbath. 
 It was a desire that the denunciation of excommu- 
 nication might be postponed, and it was said to 
 come from a person of authority — according to some 
 accounts, from Charles himself. The divine re- 
 ceived the letter drily — declined to enter on the 
 subject until the service was over — and desired the 
 messenger to accompany him to church. When 
 there, to his horror, he heard the sentence fulmi- 
 nated with all its concomitant denunciations. It 
 would be delivered with eminent satisfaction, and 
 there was something in the circumstances that 
 would gratify the kind of austere jocularity in 
 which Guthrie and his brethren sometimes in- 
 dulged. But it was generally believed that this 
 practical sally cost him his life. 
 
 At his trial, Guthrie defended himself gallantly. 
 Burnet follows up the character of the " resolute
 
 192 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST 
 
 and stiff" man by saying, that " when his lawyers 
 offered him legal defences he would not be advised 
 by them, but resolved to take his own way. He 
 confessed and justified all that he had done, as 
 agreeing to the principles and practices of the 
 kirk." He was sentenced to be hanged at the 
 cross, his head to be placed over the west bow, and 
 " that presently his arms be delated out of the 
 book of heraldry, and torn in pieces by the lion- 
 herald at the market-cross of Edinburgh, and there 
 to be left torn and renversed."* This chivalrous 
 penalty might seem inapplicable to a covenanting 
 divine, but Guthrie belonged to one of those families 
 of the moderate Scottish gentry which boast of a 
 fabulous antiquity, and Wodrow speaks of him 
 sealing letters with his coat armorial, and making 
 apt allusions to it just before his death. 
 
 The same affectionate pen has drawn the deport- 
 ment and conduct of the condemned man in warm 
 colours. The account may be found in the history 
 of the sufferings, but in a more fresh and unpre- 
 meditated shape in his note-book ; and it will not 
 be surprising if, in quoting a sentence or two, the 
 original version not intended for publication be pre- 
 ferred. 
 
 * For all the proceedings against Guthrie, see Scots Acts, 
 vii., Appendix, pp. 34-74.
 
 THE COVENANTEES. 193 
 
 "When he was put out, and his judges debating 
 about his sentence, while he was among the crowd 
 of macers, soldiers, and others of that kidney, who 
 were cursing and swearing about him, he declared 
 to my author's informer, he had never nearer com- 
 munion with God, or sweeter raptures upon his spirit, 
 than at that very time when he knew they were 
 debating where to place his head and the quarters of 
 his body. My author's informer tells him, that his 
 countenance seemed shining when he came out after 
 the sentence, and he was in the greatest composure 
 and sedateness that could be. 
 
 "It is said, and he told it himself, that after he 
 had taken the covenant, when he came out to the 
 street — I think it was St. Andrew's — he met the 
 hangman in his robe. It stunned him a little, and 
 he began to think upon the providence, and came 
 to this resolve with himself : ' This I have been 
 about may be my death ; but though it should be 
 so, I resolve to stand by it.' 
 
 " When Mr. Guthrie was in prison, I remember 
 to have heard my father tell, he (then a student) got 
 in to him, and he spoke a little to him and said, 
 'There is a dark cloud coming on, and the Lord is 
 about to sweep this land with the besom of destruc- 
 tion ; but, Jacob, be not discouraged from following 
 your books : you may live to see the cloud over, and 
 
 VOL. II. O
 
 194 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST 
 
 be afterwards useful;' and indeed he was so — sig- 
 nally. 
 
 " Upon Monday, when the Marquis of Argyle 
 came out of his room to go to the scaffold, he called at 
 Mr. Guthrie's room to hid him farewell. Mr. Guthrie 
 came near him, and when he took him by the hand, 
 he said, ' My lord, God has been with you; He is 
 with you, and God will be with your lordship; and 
 such is my love to your lordship, that were I not 
 under a sentence, I could die this day for your lord- 
 ship ;' and then they embraced one another and 
 parted — shortly to meet in a better place."* 
 
 In another part of this zealous collector's note- 
 book occurs this picturesque incident, which carries 
 one back to the Bollandists, and their lives of the 
 early saints: 
 
 " When he mounted the scaffold and had prayed 
 a little time, he went up two or three steps of the 
 ladder — because of the weakness of his head he was 
 unable to go any further or higher ; and being well 
 enough seen and heard, he delivered his speech to 
 the people, which was with such a heavenly air and 
 majesty appearing in his countenance, which did 
 shine as if he had been half in heaven already, as 
 some (my father) then present thought ; which left 
 such impressions on them, that they thought they 
 
 * Analecta, ii., 138.
 
 THE COVENANTERS. 195 
 
 never saw more of God at the most solemn com- 
 munion they ever were at. 
 
 " When he went further up the ladder, and the 
 executioner was ready to do his office, his last words, 
 which he uttered with a cheerful countenance and 
 elevated voice, were those of the prophet Habbakuk : 
 ' Art thou not from everlasting, O Lord my God, my 
 holy one ? I shall not die, but live.' After he was 
 taken down, his head was severed from his body with 
 an axe. It was observed that there was a vast effusion 
 of blood that flowed from his body, which was pre- 
 sently put into a coffin and carried to the old kirk 
 aisle, where it was dressed by a number of ladies of 
 good quality. Some of them took their napkins and 
 dipped them in the blood ; and when Sir Archibald 
 Primrose, the register, challenged one of them, Mrs. 
 Janet Erskine (married after to Sir Thomas Burnet, 
 doctor of medicine), for so doing, saying, ' It was a 
 piece of the superstition and idolatry of the Romish 
 Church to preserve the relics of the saints,' it was 
 answered — They intended not to abuse it into super- 
 stition and idolatry, but to hold up the bloody napkin 
 to heaven in their addresses, that the Lord might 
 remember the innocent blood that was spilt. In 
 the time that the body was a-dressing, there came in 
 a pleasant young gentleman, and poured out a bottle 
 of rich ointment on the body, which filled the whole 
 
 02
 
 196 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST 
 
 church with a noble perfume. One of the ladies 
 says, ' God bless you, sir, for this labour of love 
 which you have shown to the slain body of a servant 
 of Jesus Christ.' He, without speaking to any, 
 giving them a bow, removed, not loving to be dis- 
 covered."* 
 
 It would not do to leave this tragic incident, and 
 its influence on parties and religious opinion in Scot- 
 land, without recording the terrible omen which, in 
 the belief of the Presbyterians even of later times, 
 haunted the statesman who had put the martyr to 
 death, attaching itself to the symbol of his pomp and 
 Power. 
 
 " It was very confidently asserted at this time, 
 that some weeks after Mr. Guthrie's head had been 
 set up in the Nether Bow-port, in Edinburgh, the 
 commissioner's coach coming down that way, several 
 drops of blood fell from the head upon the coach, 
 which all their art and diligence could not wipe off. 
 I have it very confidently affirmed, that physicians 
 were called and inquired if any natural cause could 
 be assigned for the blood dropping so long after the 
 head was put up, and especially for its not washing- 
 out of the leather, and they could give none. This 
 odd incident beginning to be talked of, and all other 
 methods being tried, at length the leather was re- 
 * Analecta, i., 108.
 
 THE COVENANTEES. 197 
 
 moved, and a new cover put on. This was much 
 sooner done than the wiping off the guilt of this 
 great and good man's blood from the shedders of it 
 and this poor nation."* 
 
 So dawned the happy Restoration on the Presby- 
 terians of Scotland. 
 
 These condemnations, so immediate on the acces- 
 sion of Charles II., have been dwelt on at some 
 length, because they are the key-note of all that fol- 
 lowed. They offered a bloody defiance to an enthu- 
 siastic party, and it was accepted. In subsequent 
 times, when the Covenanters were turbulent, unrea- 
 sonable, and, where they had the opportunity, 
 tyrannical, all arose out of the thoughtless tyranny 
 that accompanied the Restoration. Had he not been 
 thus made a martyr, Guthrie would afterwards have 
 passed among the Presbyterians themselves for a pig- 
 headed zealot, who could see nothing in a rational 
 and common-sense light. He and the historian 
 who dwells so fondly on his memory, could not 
 have endured eacli other had they been contempo- 
 raries ; for Wodrow, though an admirer of zeal, was 
 moderate, prudent, and, as the extreme party deemed, 
 " sinfully complying" in practice. Between him 
 and such as Guthrie, in church courts, there would 
 have been ceaseless bickering, and they would have 
 
 * History of the Sufferings, b. i., ch. ii.
 
 198 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST 
 
 probably insinuated charges of infidelity against 
 each other — a not uncommon resource of angry 
 theologians. 
 
 In fact, whether from the effect of Cromwell's 
 rule, or from other causes, the majority of the Pres- 
 byterians were at the time of the Restoration far 
 from being violent zealots. Many of their clergy 
 were good, easy men, content to do their pastoral 
 work in peace, who would not have looked with 
 any abstract horror on the prospect of being deans 
 and bishops. Ten years of the suppression of pole- 
 mical violence had made the fanatical remonstrant 
 party a small, almost obsolete body of men, not 
 attacked, but little noticed, of whom their more 
 sensible brethren were reflecting that it was well 
 they were so few, — and if let alone they would doubt- 
 less gradually die out. They might have been what 
 their representatives, the Cameronians, became in 
 the eighteenth century — a sect which, by the way. 
 has still, though the fact is not generally known — 
 an attenuated existence in Scotland. The same 
 tiredness of political convulsions that made politi- 
 cians desire the quiet of the Restoration, would have 
 made the general body of the clergy content to 
 subscribe to articles of peace in religion. Had it 
 not been for the long array of persecutions which 
 the execution of Warriston and Guthrie began,
 
 THE COVENANTEES. 1 99 
 
 it is no extravagant supposition that Scotland might 
 have gradually slid into a moderate hierarchy, 
 such as Knox and his friends had laid down, and 
 that the country might have been remarkable for 
 religious peace and toleration. When Sharpe was 
 sent to London as the representative of the Presby- 
 terians, it would have astonished no one had he 
 given up some points, and agreed to a moderate 
 episcopacy. What subjected him to the charge of 
 foul perfidy was, that while professing extravagant 
 covenanting zeal, he made his arrangements for 
 returning to his Presbyterian constituents as their 
 archbishop. It was this flagrant act, not his mere 
 partiality for episcopacy, that created an enmity 
 between him and his old friends, increasing so 
 fervidly, that at last they sought each other's lives 
 — and took them. 
 
 The lukewarmness of his brethren was spoken of 
 in Guthrie's dying address. " Many of the Lord's 
 people," he said, " do sadly oomplain of the fainting 
 and silence of many watchmen, and it concerneth 
 them to consider what God calleth for at their 
 hands in such a day; silence now in a watchman, 
 when he is so much called to speak, and give his 
 testimony upon the peril of his life, is doubtless a 
 great sin. The Lord open the mouths of his 
 servants to speak with all boldness, that covenant-
 
 200 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST 
 
 breaking may be discovered and reproved, and that 
 the kingdom of Jesus Christ may not be supplanted, 
 nor the souls of his people destroyed without a wit- 
 ness ! I have but a few more words to add. All 
 that are profane amongst you, I exhort them to 
 repentance, for the day of the Lord's vengeance 
 hasteneth and is near ; but there is yet a door of 
 mercy open to you, if ye will not despise the day of 
 salvation. All that are maligners and reproachers, 
 and persecutors of godliness and of such as live 
 godly, take heed what ye do : it will be hard for 
 you to kick against the pricks. You make your- 
 selves the butt of the Lord's fury, and his flaming 
 indignation, if you do not cease from and repent of 
 all your hard speeches and ungodly deeds. All that 
 are natural, and indifferent, and lukewarm professors, 
 be zealous and repent, lest the Lord spue you out of 
 his mouth. You that lament after the Lord, and 
 mourn for all the abominations that are done in this 
 city and in the land, and take pleasure in the stones 
 and dust of Sion, cast not away your confidence, but 
 be comforted and encouraged in the Lord. He will 
 appear to you in joy. God hath not cast away his 
 people nor work in Britain and Ireland. I hope it 
 shall once more revive by the power of his spirit, 
 and take root downward, and bear fruit upward, and 
 of this I am now confident. There is yet a holy seed
 
 THE COVENANTERS. 201 
 
 and precious remnant, whom God will preserve and 
 bring forth ; but how long or dark our night may 
 be I do not know — the Lord shorten it for the sake 
 of his chosen." 
 
 Such a testimony, sealed as it was, could not fail 
 to draw the forces off on either side, expanding 
 the precious remnant, by driving either into its 
 ranks or those of the enemy, all who heretofore 
 had been " indifferent and lukewarm professors." 
 And such a result could not have been more aptly 
 driven on than by the measures of that reckless 
 government. In fact, the statesmen of the Restora- 
 tion — if the name of statesmen can properly be 
 applied to them — were no more guided by. thought 
 and policy, than Masaniello and his followers, or 
 any French revolutionists, who, collectively or in- 
 dividually, have lost head, and have ridden recklessly 
 on the wings of prosperity, blindly forgetful of the 
 future. They were mad with the excitement of 
 sudden and unexpected success. They were drunk, 
 not merely with political excitement, but, if we may 
 believe the statement of Burnet already alluded to, 
 they worked in council and parliament under the 
 actual intoxication of strong drink. Some of their 
 most important proceedings bear yet a hue of tipsy 
 recklessness. To save all debates and difficulties, 
 an act was passed for annulling everything that 
 had taken place in the Scottish parliament since
 
 202 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST 
 
 1648. This was found so easy and pleasant a way 
 of getting rid of all discussion, that by a wide step 
 further, an "act rescissory," as it was termed, was 
 passed, clearing away all that had been done in 
 legislature since the disputes between Charles I. and 
 his Scottish subjects began. Thus, at one sweep, 
 the statute-book was cleared of everything back to 
 the year 1633. In the general ruin were swept 
 away, not only the offensive acts for the furtherance 
 of the Covenant, but everything that had been done 
 to facilitate the administration of justice and the 
 internal organisation of the country for nearly thirty 
 years. The wheat was torn up with the tares ; 
 but this gave little concern to such reckless men as 
 Middleton and Lauderdale. Out of very necessity, 
 they were obliged afterwards, from year to year, to 
 restore morsels of the system they had so reck- 
 lessly thrown away. But the trouble and torment, 
 with the many other inconveniences of a separate 
 discussion on each of the acts which they wished to 
 get rid of, were spared. The idea looks very like 
 a tipsy inspiration. Of the rapidity with which it 
 was carried through, there is evidence extant in the 
 following letter, by Middleton, to the lord clerk 
 register, with whom lay the function of preparing 
 the acts of parliament, and who could do much to 
 facilitate or interrupt any project for rapid or 
 fraudulent legislation :
 
 THE COVENANTERS. 203 
 
 " Edinburgh, March 27, 1661. 
 
 " My Lord, — The act that is now before you is 
 of the greatest consequence imaginable, and is like 
 to meet with many difficulties if not speedily gone 
 about. Petitions are preparing, and if the thing 
 were done it would dash all these bustling oppo- 
 sitions. My lord, your eminent services done to 
 his majesty in this parliament cannot but be re- 
 membered to your honour and advantage. I am 
 so much concerned, because of the great help and 
 assistance I have had from you, that I cannot, with- 
 out injustice and ingratitude, be wanting in a just 
 resentment.* 
 
 " Now, I am more concerned in this than I was 
 ever in a particular. The speedy doing is the 
 thing I propose, as the great advantage, if it be 
 possible to prepare it to be presented to-morrow, by 
 ten o'clock in the forenoon, to the articles, that it 
 may be brought into the parliament to-morrow, in 
 the afternoon. The reason of this haste shall be 
 made known to you at the meeting, by, 
 
 " My lord, 
 " Your most affectionate servant, 
 
 " MlDDLETON."f 
 
 * Meaning reciprocation. 
 
 t Baillie's Letters and Journals, iii., 586.
 
 204 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST 
 
 It would be an intrusion on the province of 
 history, and would lead to fuller details than can 
 find room in these volumes, to take more than an 
 outline glance of the steps for the establishment of 
 an Episcopal hierarchy which followed this act. 
 The act rescissory reconciled the conscience of the 
 king and of his agents to the engagement to pre- 
 serve the system of church government as by law 
 established. Since the acts establishing Presby- 
 terianism had been swept away, the system by 
 law established was Episcopacy. Had matters 
 rested here, and had moderate people found an ex- 
 cuse in gentle and insidious measures for lapsing 
 into compliance, the bloody history of the perse- 
 cutions would not have remained to be written. In 
 connexion, however, with the execution of Argyle, 
 Warriston, and Guthrie, with the impeachment of 
 that bright and vehement light of the Church, 
 Samuel Rutherford, who died before proceedings 
 could be followed up against him, and with minor 
 punishments inflicted on people of smaller note, 
 the following state of matters requires to be kept 
 distinctly in view. 
 
 The remnant of the old covenanting party were 
 intolerant of everything that diverged from their 
 standards by a shade of difference. Their opposi- 
 tion was a war of extermination; they were pre-
 
 THE COVENANTERS. 205 
 
 pared to go to the death, not only for the peaceful 
 
 exercise of their own religion, but for the right of 
 
 compelling entire submission to their own church 
 
 government, — which was Christ's form of church 
 
 government, and therefore the true one, wherefrom 
 
 all divergence was a sin that should be punished. 
 
 Even Principal Bailey — a man of high scholarship 
 
 and accomplishments, a graceful courtier, a skilful 
 
 diplomatist, versed in all those ways of the world 
 
 which rub off the harsh excrescences of the rural 
 
 polemic mind — wrote distinctly and conclusively 
 
 against the great sin of toleration, and held it the 
 
 mission of his own Church to abolish prelacy and 
 
 sectarianism in England or wherever else they found 
 
 it, and establish and enforce the true religion. A 
 
 coarser follower, the author of " A Brief Account 
 
 of the Sufferings of the Church of Scotland," 
 
 characterised the Episcopal clergy generally as 
 
 " Godless miscreants of the true Egyptian brood; 
 
 infamous parricides; infamous varlets; the devil's 
 
 instruments ; savage beasts in human shape ; a 
 
 graceless untoward generation of prelatists, who use 
 
 nothing but hectoring for reason, and cursing for 
 
 argument; ungodly Episcopal brutes; the generation 
 
 of vipers," &c. The remnant so inspired was not 
 
 prepared to submit in any shape to the government 
 
 of an uncovenanted king. It denied the right of
 
 206 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST 
 
 Charles to reign, and denied the legality of every 
 act of whatever character which the government 
 attempted to perform. 
 
 What should have been the fitting treatment of 
 such men it might be hard to say. But the scandal 
 of the government at this time, was its treatment of 
 those who had no sympathy with them. There was 
 a determination to abandon all moderation and tole- 
 rance, and to compel people at once and unre- 
 servedly to adopt every point of Episcopalianism, 
 or go over to the violent Covenanters. It was not 
 merely that the moderate party were outraged by 
 the immediate legislative establishment of Episco- 
 pacy, but that, by a pertinacious and pestilent in- 
 quisitorial system, every one was driven into a 
 corner as it were, and compelled to give in his 
 adhesion to the new order of things spiritual and 
 temporal. No man was permitted to be silent and 
 let matters take their course. Each one was re- 
 quired to make his testimony. A more diabolically 
 perverse plan could not have been adopted for 
 driving moderate men into the camp of the intole- 
 rant Covenanters ; and so it worked. 
 
 Thus, among the earliest requisitions, men who 
 had perhaps subscribed the Covenant, and rather 
 wished to forget it, or who had a leaning to the 
 Presbyterian worship, but no decided objection to
 
 THE COVENANTERS. 207 
 
 an infusion of ceremony in its plain ritual, or of 
 hierarchy in its institutions, were required by act of 
 parliament to take the following declaration : 
 
 " I do sincerely affirm and declare, that I judge 
 it unlawful to subjects, upon pretext of reforma- 
 tion or any other pretext whatsoever, to enter into 
 leagues and covenants, or to take up arms against 
 the king or those commissioned by him; and that 
 all those gatherings, convocations, petitions, pro- 
 testations, and erecting or keeping of council-tables, 
 that were used in the beginning, and for the carry- 
 ing out of the late troubles, were unlawful and se- 
 ditious ; and particularly, that those oaths, whereof 
 the one was commonly called the ' national covenant' 
 (as it was sworn and explained in the year 1638, 
 and thereafter), and the other entitled ' a solemn 
 league and covenant,' were and are in themselves 
 unlawful oaths, and were taken by and imposed 
 upon the subjects of this kingdom against the fun- 
 damental laws and liberties of the same; and that 
 there lyeth no obligation upon me or any of the 
 subjects, from the said oaths, or either of them, to 
 endeavour any change or alteration of the govern- 
 ment, either in Church or State, as it is now esta- 
 blished by the laws of the kingdom." 
 
 A man of high spirit, though but moderately 
 attached to the Covenant, would repudiate such a
 
 208 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST 
 
 servile test, and was driven from point to point 
 until he drew the sword. For those even who 
 complied, other and more stringent tests were in 
 preparation. It is perhaps the most offensive fea- 
 ture of the system, that compliance was not always 
 desirable. A herd of hungry placemen and partisans' 
 lay waiting for fines and forfeitures, and were deter- 
 mined by some means or other to have them. 
 
 An act was passed, requiring from all the clergy 
 compliance with Episcopal collation, and the other 
 arrangements of the new hierarchy ; and at the 
 same time, according to the policy which stopped 
 every outlet by which conscience or fanaticism 
 might escape, laws were made against private 
 assemblages for worship, which now become stig- 
 matised as conventicles. The slightest infusion of 
 political prudence would have at least suggested 
 that the former act should be but gradually en- 
 forced, so that the state, with its great powers, 
 should close with individuals, and fight the clergy 
 in detail. Such a policy, however, did not suit the 
 reckless statesman of the time. An act of council 
 was passed at Glasgow, for immediately testing the 
 clergy in these terms: 
 
 " Several ministers have not only contravened 
 the foresaid acts of parliament, but, in manifest 
 contempt of his majesty's royal authority — albeit,
 
 THE COVENANTERS. 209 
 
 they have justly forfeited their rights to the bene- 
 fices, modified stipends, and others, continue to 
 exercise their function of the ministry at their 
 respective churches as of before; therefore, they 
 prohibit and discharge all ministers who have con- 
 travened the foresaid act of parliament, concerning 
 the benefices and stipends, to exercise any part of 
 the function of the ministry at their respective 
 churches in time coming, which are herebv declared 
 to be vacant ; and that none of their parishioners, 
 who are liable in any part of their stipends, make 
 payment to them of this instant crop, and year of 
 God, 1662, or in time coming, as having no right 
 thereunto; and that they do not acknowledge them 
 for their lawful pastor in repairing to their sermons, 
 under the pain of being punished as frequenters of 
 private conventicles and meetings. And command 
 and charge the said ministers to remove themselves 
 and their families out of their parishes betwixt and 
 the first day of November, next to come, and not 
 to reside within the bounds of their respective 
 presbyteries." 
 
 It was a peculiarity of this act of council, that it 
 was passed at Glasgow, where Middlcton was en- 
 joying the hospitality of the Archbishop of the West. 
 In this, and other features, it had an unpremedi- 
 tated, undigested aspect. Wodrow tells us, that 
 
 VOL. II. P
 
 210 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST 
 
 the council assembled in the College Hall, and werc- 
 called by the citizens " The Drunken Meeting;" 
 and Kirkton, a contemporary annalist, who was 
 probably his authority, says: "The report was, 
 being convened at Glasgow, there was never a man 
 among them but he was drunk at the time, except 
 only Lee. But when they were set, the commis- 
 sioner propounds the case on the bishop's overture, 
 which all approve except the Lord Lee. He told 
 them they would all be mistaken. That proclama- 
 tion would only lay the country desolate, and in- 
 crease the hatred to bishops, and confusion among 
 the people ; and that they would find the young 
 ministers would suffer more than loss of stipend, 
 before they would acknowledge bishops ; and both 
 sides pawned the reputation of their judgment upon 
 the success of the proclamation."* 
 
 The effect of enforcing the proclamation was at 
 once visible. Three hundred and fifty clergymen 
 resigned their temporalities, and came forth from 
 the fleshpots of Egypt to feed their hungering 
 flocks with true spiritual manna. But they were 
 not allowed that outlet which the permission to 
 secede and form a voluntary unendowed communion 
 infers. Their ministrations, in any shape were ren- 
 dered illegal; and thus, as it afterwards was exempli- 
 fied in the priests of La Vendee, a band of spiritual 
 
 * Kirkton — Secret and True History, p. 150.
 
 THE COVENANTERS. 211 
 
 combatants was set in array — a holy army of 
 martyrs, whose grand duty in life, to be pursued 
 through all perils and privations unto death itself, 
 was to band and discipline the popular mind against 
 the profligate and tyrannical government. Then 
 came the conventicles, and the armed dispersals 
 and conflicts, with which most readers of history 
 are familiar. 
 
 One thing yet, however, was wanting to drive 
 every one without exception either into prelacy or 
 rebellion. The parish church might be conspicuous 
 and accessible ; but the persecuted remnant could 
 seek for their place of devotion the recesses of those 
 mountain-ranges from which few parts of Scotland 
 are far distant. To pursue them in these retreats 
 was a difficult task, never entirely successful. To 
 solve this difficulty, and draw them off from con- 
 venticles, it was resolved that the people should be 
 compelled to attend the Established Church. An 
 act was passed " against separation and disobedience 
 to the ecclesiastical authority," popularly named 
 " the bishops' drag-net." It levied penalties, accord- 
 ing to a scale of rank, on all who should " ordinarily 
 and wilfully withdraw and absent themselves from 
 the ordinary meetings in their own parish church 
 for divine worship on the Lord's-day." Subse- 
 quently, as the covenanting, like every other reli- 
 
 p2
 
 212 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST 
 
 gious enthusiasm, found its warmest supporters in 
 the female sex, the husbands of women who attended 
 conventicles were made penally liable for their 
 conduct. 
 
 In 1664 was appointed that form of tribunal 
 which is ever a name of dread to the lovers of free- 
 dom civil and religious — an ecclesiastical commission. 
 It was established, avowedly, because the High Court 
 of Parliament, the Court of Justiciary, the Privy 
 Council, and the local courts, were insufficient to 
 deal with the vast amount of judicial business 
 created by the ceaseless imprisonments and other 
 penalties. The terms of the commission inform the 
 reader of the character of its proceedings, as well as 
 if he perused a specific account of them. For the 
 sake of form and appearance, it will be seen that it 
 is first levelled against Roman Catholics. Wodrow 
 generally characterises this feature in the procla- 
 mations and other documents as a very laudable one, 
 but complains that it was never enforced; — so did 
 the lamenter over the persecutions of his brethren 
 lament that other people were not persecuted. The 
 commission were authorised — 
 
 " To summon and call before them, at whatsoever 
 place and time they shall appoint, all Popish traf- 
 fickers, intercommuners with, and resetters of, 
 Jesuits and seminary priests; all who say or hear 
 
 o 

 
 THE COVENANTERS. 213 
 
 mass; all obstinate contemners of the discipline of 
 the Church, or for that cause suspended, deprived, 
 or excommunicated ; all keepers of conventicles ; all 
 ministers, who, contrary to the laws and acts of 
 parliament or council, remain or intrude them- 
 selves on the function of the ministry in these 
 parishes and bounds inhibited by these acts ; all 
 such who preach in private houses or elsewhere, 
 without license from the bishop of the diocese; all 
 such persons who keep meetings at fasts, and the 
 administration of the sacrament of the Lord's 
 Supper, which are not approven by authority; all 
 who speak, preach, write, or print to the scandal, 
 reproach, or detriment of the estate or government 
 of the Church or kingdom as now established; all 
 who contemn, molest, or injure the ministers who 
 are obedient to the laws; all who do not orderly 
 attend divine worship, administration of the word, 
 and sacraments performed in their respective parish 
 churches by ministers legally settled for taking care 
 of these parishes in which those persons are inhabi- 
 tants; all such who, without any lawful calling, as 
 busy-bodies, go about houses and places for corrupt- 
 ing and disafiecting people from their allegiance, 
 respect, and obedience to the laws; and, in gene- 
 ral, without prejudice to the particulars above-men- 
 tioned, all who express their disaffection to his ma-
 
 214 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST 
 
 jesty's authority, by contravening acts of parlia- 
 ment or council in relation to Church affairs." 
 
 The social torture created throughout the country 
 by this accumulated and complex system of judicial 
 machinery, led to the well-known rising in the 
 West, which was put down in the field of Pentland 
 by the grim old bearded fanatic of royalty, Dalyell 
 of Binns. The originators of the insurrection were 
 mere peasants, trusting, like the followers of Joan of 
 Arc, in the guidance of an inspiration that was to 
 lead them to success. Believing that they wielded 
 no mere earthly sword, they advanced on Edin- 
 burgh with all the confidence with which the 
 warrior priest, Arnaud, led the Waldenses across 
 the Alps to their valleys in Piedmont, but with 
 very different success. 
 
 In the trials which followed, there were some 
 noticeable features. Thus, on the 5th of December, 
 1664, it was ingeniously pleaded for some of the 
 captives on trial before the Court of Justiciary, that 
 ; ' being in arms when taken, and being modelled 
 into an army, and having obtained quarter from the 
 king's general, they ought to be judged by the law 
 of nations observed in war, by which it is evident 
 that those who get quarter are safe."* 
 
 To this it was answered by the crown, that the 
 
 * Abridgment of Records of Justiciary, MS., Ad. Lib.
 
 THE COVENANTEES. 215 
 
 terms of surrender only saved them from immediate 
 slaughter on the spot; and that the law of nations, in 
 which belligerent parties respected certain general 
 restraints in dealing with each other, does not apply 
 to rebels taken in arms. 
 
 There is no doubt that such a principle is abso- 
 lutely necessary for the support of any established 
 government, good or bad. There may be many 
 reasons for being merciful to armed opponents; and 
 in great civil conflicts, such as those of the Roses, or 
 of the Royalist and Parliamentary party in the 
 seventeenth century, it may be right that the 
 parties should agree to cede to each other the privi- 
 leges and courtesies of national enemies. But a 
 system which spares all insurgents on their submis- 
 sion, would be an encouragement to continuous tur- 
 bulence wherever slight chances of success opened, 
 and would sacrifice more lives than it would save. 
 He who draws the sword against a settled govern- 
 ment, must make up his mind to pay in his own 
 person the highest penalty of defeat. 
 
 Another remarkable feature of the judicial pro- 
 ceedings which followed this rising, was the trial of 
 several men who could not be apprehended and 
 produced at the bar. Parliament, as we have 
 already seen, had done thus to Johnston of War- 
 riston ; but parliament was in use to claim a 
 general omnipotence, and the power of redressing
 
 216 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST 
 
 any evil in any manner it might deem fit. It is an 
 old sound rule of the tribunals of free and civilised 
 countries, that people cannot be accused and con- 
 victed in their absence. There can be no security 
 for the justice of a judgment given otherwise than 
 face to face with the accused. In his absence, his 
 judges are spared that check on gross injustice 
 which is supplied by his presence, however much 
 he may be bullied and browbeaten. Had the con- 
 fronting been often dispensed with, it would have 
 become the practice, in tyrannical and profligate 
 times, for all state offenders to be thus accused and 
 condemned in their absence, the judgment giving 
 the public executioner a right to slay the convict 
 wherever he might be found. 
 
 Even if there were no chance of such profligate 
 and revengeful acts, it is a sound policy that a 
 court of law should not be permitted to condemn 
 any but those it can lay hands on. If the ministers 
 of justice are not strong enough to apprehend, thev 
 should not be permitted to condemn. Sentences of 
 death against persons out of their reach are not the 
 firm administration of justice, but impotent denun- 
 ciations of violence, sure to create, instead of over- 
 coming, turbulence. This view is followed in inter- 
 national law, which acknowledges no blockade by a 
 belligerent power, unless it commands a sufficient 
 armament to enforce the cordon.
 
 THE COVENANTERS. 217 
 
 So strictly had the presence of the accused been 
 established by the constitution of Scotland as in- 
 dispensable, that, adhering to the letter of the law, 
 when forfeitures were passed on dead traitors, the 
 accused was represented in a manner with which 
 modern judges would be inclined to dispense. At 
 the forfeiture of Logan of Restalrig, charged as an 
 accomplice in the Gowrie conspiracy, his bones were 
 deposited at the bar, that justice might be done on 
 them. But in these proceedings against the dead, 
 those who were really affected by them were heard. 
 The actual sufferers were the kindred and repre- 
 sentatives whose estates were forfeited. They might 
 appear before the court, and defend their interest ; 
 but living persons, brought under judgment in their 
 absence, could make no defence — they could only 
 plead to the charge by appearing at the bar. True, 
 they were conscious of guilt — the reason of their 
 flight and concealment — but this did not render less 
 flagitious the departure from one of those stern 
 rules of justice, which, founded on no reciprocity 
 with the accused, are the property of the public at 
 large. 
 
 The court of session was consulted when this flagrant 
 departure from sound judicial practice was adopted. 
 The criminal judges were in perfectly safe hands; 
 their friends of the civil court were quite prepared
 
 218 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST 
 
 to countenance the novelty, and give it the weight of 
 their name. The concurrence practically illustrated 
 that reading of the text — " in multitude of coun- 
 sellors there is safety," which holds the safety to be 
 all to the counsellors, whose personal responsibility 
 is lessened by the increase of their numbers. It 
 stands, by the way, to the credit of Sir George 
 Mackenzie, the lord-advocate who earned the unen- 
 viable title of " the bloody Mackenzie," that he de- 
 clined, in his work on the criminal law, to give his 
 sanction to these judgments in absence. " It hath 
 been often found," he says, "that men have been 
 absent rather out of fear of a prevailing faction or 
 corrupt witnesses, or by inadvertence, or not being 
 truly cited, or by being violently detained, than 
 out of a consciousness of guilt ; yet, since so 
 judicious a person proposed this overture, and 
 since council session and parliament have fortified it 
 by their authority, I submit my judgment to their 
 determinations.' '* 
 
 These trials became, at the same time, loathfully 
 conspicuous by the profuse use of torture. It was 
 not introduced, unfortunately, for the first time. We 
 have seen too much of it in the Witchcraft cases, 
 when, being supposed to be exercised on people 
 scarcely human in their constitution, it moved little 
 
 * Laws and Customs in Matters Criminal, p. 59 .
 
 THE COVENANTERS. 219 
 
 more compassion, in any ordinary breasts, than 
 inflictions on mere animal beings. But now were 
 men subjected to the torture for expressing what 
 the sympathising multitude counted the glorious 
 truths of the Gospel. Among the first of the series, it 
 was given forth that HughMackail, a young visionary 
 enthusiast, but well connected and highly educated, 
 and the brother of the first Scottish scientific man 
 of his time, had borne the torture with a holy rap- 
 ture, and had welcomed death with such exclama- 
 tions of ecstatic delight, as the people could find no 
 parallel for out of Holy Writ. Nor while the enthu- 
 siasts canonised him, could rational friends of civil 
 and religious liberty forget that ' he suffered rather 
 for a zealous sermon, than for any violent or crimi- 
 nal acts. 
 
 The ample histories of the period must be referred 
 to for the harassing system of military quarterings 
 and exactions of fines practised throughout the 
 country, and for the strangely savage device of 
 bringing down the host of Highland freebooters to 
 exercise their plundering functions on the offend- 
 ing districts. The harassing proceedings against 
 persons intercommuned, or held criminally excom- 
 municated, so that to have intercourse with them 
 or afford them the charities of life was penal, are 
 matters of a technically legal character, yet they
 
 220 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST 
 
 hardly come within the scope of these pages, which 
 find more matter legitimately their own than they 
 can well contain. Nor can that curious device by 
 which the government " took out lawburrows," 
 or swore the peace against the inhabitants of whole 
 districts, receive the explanation which its strange 
 nature might well deserve. 
 
 We may, perhaps, find the story of the times 
 most expressively told by passing over a few years, 
 and finding in the criminal trials marks of the 
 influence which the persecution had exercised on 
 the national character. Most conspicuous of all 
 these effects is the ferocious, murderous enmity 
 excited against the persecutors, and concentrating 
 its violence on the apostate Sharpe. 
 
 It was in July, 1668, that a nearly successful 
 attempt was made to assassinate the primate. He 
 was stepping into his coach on the high street of 
 Edinburgh, in bright daylight, when a man, muffled 
 in a cloak, stepped up and discharged a pistol. He 
 missed the archbishop, but a bullet shattered the 
 arm of the Bishop of Orkney. The man walked 
 deliberately away along the street, untouched — a 
 remarkable testimony to the execration in which 
 Sharpe was held. His narrow escape roused some 
 feeling of sympathy towards the prelate, whose own 
 relentlessness had isolated him, and Burnet says, he
 
 THE COVENANTERS. 221 
 
 " thought it decent to go and congratulate on this 
 occasion." The historian says: " He was much 
 touched with it, and put on a show of devotion 
 upon it. He said, with a very serious look, ' My 
 times are wholly in thy hands, O thou God of my 
 life.' This was the single expression, savouring of 
 piety, that ever fell from him in all the conversation 
 between him and me." The isolated man seems to 
 have been conscious that even the minions of the 
 law could not be counted on for very fervent aid in 
 the pursuit of this dreadful enemy; and he seems, 
 with a self-relying firmness which was part of his 
 character, to have taken the matter in his own 
 hands. He had accurately noted, even in the 
 moment of danger and confusion, the assassin's 
 features, and carefully impressed the note on his 
 memory. 
 
 at 
 
 Six years had passed over, when the archbishop's 
 attention was attracted by the features of a man 
 who kept a small shop, or stall, close to the archie- 
 piscopal residence, and seemed to watch the prelate 
 with a sinister eye every time he passed by. The 
 more he examined this man's face, the more clearly 
 did it identify itself with that of the assassin. At 
 length he got his brother, Sir William, and some 
 of his attendants, to seize the man, who was found 
 armed with a brace of pistols, heavily loaded. Now,
 
 222 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST 
 
 it was not the object of the archbishop, or those who 
 felt themselves in like peril, merely to inflict punish- 
 ment in this case, but to find out the real man who 
 held a design against his life. No sufficient testi- 
 mony to the fact could be found ; and unless the 
 prisoner were brought to make a confession, and a 
 true confession showing the whole extent of the 
 prelate's danger — not a mere involuntary admission 
 under torture — the desired object would not be ac- 
 complished. According to contemporary accounts, 
 Sharpe got a friend to negotiate witji the prisoner, 
 engaging for his pardon should he confess, denounce 
 his accomplices, and give full information of the 
 extent of the conspiracy against the archbishop. 
 The man, however, whose name was Mitchell, 
 knowing that he was in treacherous hands, would 
 admit nothing beyond a general accession to the 
 insurrection in the West, unless he had official assur- 
 ance of safety. The council next endeavoured to ex- 
 tract the truth, but, as the clerk of the council, Prim- 
 rose, justly observed, "It would be a strange force 
 of eloquence to persuade a man to confess and be 
 hanged," and the council engaged that his life should 
 be secured. To conduct the negotiation with him ; 
 the lord- chancellor took him apart. In a subsequent 
 narrative of the proceedings, given by Mitchell him- 
 self, he said, " My confession was made upon oath,
 
 THE COVENANTERS. 223 
 
 and promise made to me upon life and safety — and, 
 indeed, the promise made to me by my lord-chan- 
 cellor was in these words : — ' Upon my great oath 
 and reputation, if I be chancellor I shall save your 
 life ; and if ye will not confess, the council will 
 take another way to make it out."* This narrative, 
 whether it be entirely true or not, gives a curious 
 glimpse into the terrible inquisitorial scenes which 
 then passed within the walls of the secret council. 
 By his own account, Mitchell was an obstinate, im- 
 practicable fanatic. The commissioner asking him, 
 " But what ailed you at my Lord St. Andrew's ?" — 
 pointing at him with his finger; he answered, "The 
 grievous oppression and horrid blood shed of my 
 brethren, and the eager pursuit after my own — as it 
 appears this day to your grace and to all his ma- 
 jesty's honourable privy council." He then pro- 
 ceeded to a systematic vindication of his attempt, 
 showing in broad, expressive characters, that utter 
 perversion which the horrors of the times had created 
 of rational notions on social and moral duty — a 
 perversion which, disorganising and displacing all 
 civilised sentiments of charity and citizenship, sub- 
 stituted for them the hatred and pugnacity of the 
 original savage. He considered that he and the 
 archbishop were two enemies, each seeking the 
 * State Trials, vi., 1215.
 
 224 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST 
 
 other's life, and entitled, like hostile soldiers, to lie 
 in ambush for each other, and use every opportunity 
 to slay. He proceeded thus: 
 
 " I, being a soldier, and having laid down arms, 
 but being still up in my own defence, and having no 
 other end nor quarrel with any man but according to 
 my apprehension of him ;" so arguing he shows that 
 his war with Sharpe lay in this, that the archbishop 
 endeavoured to destroy the Covenant, to which he 
 and his brethren were bound by sacred ties; while 
 he, on his part, levied a war of extermination against 
 prelacy; "and I being a declared enemy to him 
 on that account, and he to me in like manner — so I 
 never found myself obliged, either by the law of 
 God or nature, to set a sentry at his door for his 
 safety ; but as he was always to take his advantage, 
 as it appeareth, so, I of him to take any opportunity 
 offered. Moreover, we being in no terms of capitu- 
 lation, but on the contrair, I, by his instigation, 
 being excluded from all grace and favour, thought 
 it my duty to pursue him on all occasions." He 
 then, with perverse ingenuity, alludes to his own 
 seizure, without any warrant, by Sir William Sharpe 
 and the primate's menials, as a perfectly natural 
 act of hostility, and just the counterpart of his own, 
 showing that the two enemies lost no opportunity 
 against each other. " I, not knowing him until five 

 
 THE COVENANTERS. 225 
 
 or six of his brothers and his servants were laying 
 fast hold on me, they being armed of purpose, de- 
 sired I would excuse him, seeing w r hat he had done 
 was on his brother's account ; which excuse I easily 
 admitted^ seeing that he thought himself obliged to 
 do what he did to me, without law or order, in the 
 behalf of his brother; — much more was I obliged to 
 do what I did in the behalf of many brethren whose 
 oppression was so great, and whose blood he caused 
 to be shed with such abundance." 
 
 Mitchell, after having made his confession to the 
 council, was conveyed into the Court of Justiciary 
 for trial. Burnet says, that " the judge, who hated 
 Sharpe, as he went up to the bench passing by 
 the prisoner, said to him, ' Confess nothing, unless 
 you are sure of your limbs as well as your life.' ' 
 Whether from such advice or not, Mitchell refused 
 to repeat his confession in the Court of Justiciary. 
 On this the privy council revoked the assurance of 
 safety. The manner in which this revocation stands 
 recorded on the council-books is important in his- 
 tory, as certain members of the privy council de- 
 nied that any assurance of safety had been granted, 
 and against one of them proceedings were maintained 
 for perjury on the ground of this denial. 
 
 The only minute of the council which bears upon 
 the matter, is dated 12th March, 1674. It first 
 
 VOL. II. Q
 
 226 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST 
 
 states Mitchell's refusal to confess, and then contains 
 the following narrative : 
 
 " But all haveing reteired, apart with one of the 
 said committy he did then confesse upon his knees 
 he was the person— upon assurance geven him by 
 one of the committy as to his lyfe, who had 
 warrand from the lord commissioner and councel to 
 geve the same, — and did, thereafter, freely confess, 
 before all the lords that was upon the said committy, 
 that he shott the said pistoll at the said archbishop; 
 and did subscrybe his confession in presence of the 
 said committie, which is also subscrybed by them. 
 And thereafter, the said Mr. James, in presence of 
 the lord commissioner, his grace, and council, did re- 
 new and adhere to the said confession, both as to his 
 accession to the rebellion, and the attempt foresaid, 
 and acknowledged he made the said attempt because 
 he thought the said archbishop had a hand in 
 troubling and prosecuting those that were in the 
 rebellion."* 
 
 The act of council then mentions the refusal of 
 Mitchell to repeat his confession in the Court of 
 Justiciary, and announces that he must be deemed 
 to have forfeited the benefit of which confession was 
 
 * This, which is taken literatim from the MS. Eecord, agrees 
 entirely in substance with the contemporary accounts, the 
 accuracy of which has been often questioned.
 
 THE COVENANTERS. 227 
 
 a condition, and the law must be free to take its 
 course. 
 
 We resume Mitchell's own account of his treat- 
 ment, and follow him into the Court of Justiciary. 
 He mentions, incidentally, a feature of that tribunal, 
 so odiously recalling the half-fabulous annals of the 
 Vehm-Gericht and the Inquisition, that it is diffi- 
 cult to believe it a true description of a British 
 tribunal. He describes " the lords justiciaries ob- 
 scuring themselves by putting their hands upon 
 their faces, and leaning upon their elbows upon the 
 table." Doubtless, the very event that brought 
 Mitchell before them taught them how expedient 
 it was that the executors of the odious laws that de- 
 solated the country should not be recognisable; but, 
 surely, anything more humiliating to the position of 
 a bench of British judges, than that they shrank from 
 the eye of the accused, could scarcely be recorded. 
 Equally revolting are the allusions to the torture. 
 The ugly instruments stood near at hand, in the 
 court-room. The accused still refusing to confess, 
 the president points to them, and says, u Ye see what 
 is upon the table before ye — I shall see if that can 
 cause ye do it." To which it was answered, "By that 
 torture ye may cause me blaspheme God, as Saul did 
 compel the saints; you may, by that torture, cause 
 me to speak amiss of your lordship — to call myself 
 
 Q2
 
 228 PEOCEEDINGS AGAINST 
 
 a thief, a murderer, a warlock, and what not, and 
 then panel me upon it. But if ye shall, my lords, 
 put me to it, I hereby protest before God and your 
 lordship, that nothing extorted from me by torture 
 shall be made use of against me in judgment, nor 
 have any force against me in law, or any other person 
 whomsoever." He said, according to the odd logic 
 which seems to have governed his actions, that, 
 whatever they fairly proved against him he would 
 not deny; but " ' I am so much a man — yea, and a 
 Scotsman, that I never held myself obliged, either 
 by the law of God or nature, or by the law of 
 nations, to become my own accuser.' Then said 
 my lord depute-treasurer to the preses, ' He hath the 
 devil's logic, and sophisticates like him.' ' They 
 pointed to the boot, saying, " You see what is before 
 you — say either yea or not;" but he remained 
 unconfessed. He went to the torture, quoting 
 Scripture vigorously in support of his tortuous logic, 
 and dividing his discourse into parts of which, as a 
 specimen, we may take the " secondly — my lord- 
 advocate hath been hinting at the sinfulness of 
 lying upon any account. It is answered, my lords, 
 that not only lying is sinful, but also a pernicious 
 speaking of the truth is a horrid sin before God, 
 while it tendeth to the shedding of innocent blood, 
 as witnesseth that of Doeg, Ps. LII. compared with
 
 THE COVENANTERS. 229 
 
 1 Sam. xxii., 29;* but what my lord-advocate 
 hath forged against me is false, so that I am stand- 
 ing upon my former ground, viz., the preservation 
 of my life and the lives of others, so far as it lies in 
 my power, the which I am expressly commanded 
 to do by the Lord of Hosts." The same pertinacious 
 sophistication seems to have been ever at his com- 
 mand, for one of the witnesses at his trial said, that 
 he " inquired at him how he or any man could be 
 accessory to so impious an act as to kill a man in 
 cold blood who had not wronged him; he said it 
 was not in cold blood, for the blood of the saints 
 was reeking at the Cross of Edinburgh." 
 
 Thus was lie depicting, in tempting colours, the 
 value of the history which he defied torture or per- 
 suasion to extract from him. In fact, Sharpe and 
 his fellows were discontented with the brief, simple 
 confession made to the privy council. They be- 
 lieved that Mitchell had a band of fellow-con- 
 spirators, towards whom they desired to find a clue; 
 and such hints only excited their avidity. The 
 torturing extracted nothing of moment, for the 
 victim was released at an early stage of the infliction, 
 by insensibility; long confinement having, by its 
 own peculiar inflictions, greatly reduced the extent 
 of his torturable strength. The expected value of 
 
 * See State Trials, vi., 1229; but this chapter of Samuel has 
 not 29 verses.
 
 230 PKOCEEDINGS AGAINST 
 
 the information to be elicited from him, may account 
 for the long-protracted proceedings. He was appre- 
 hended in 1674; the torture was administered in 
 1677; it was not until the 7th of January, 1678, 
 that, all efforts to extort a satisfactory elucidation 
 being vain, he was finally tried for the offence com- 
 mitted ten years previously. 
 
 The indictment intimates that Mitchell had at 
 one time professed to be a clergyman — he is called 
 " one who professed to be of the reformed religion, 
 and who did profess to be and serve as a chaplain in 
 several families." The indictment, after stating how 
 " God of his goodness having preserved the arch- 
 bishop, whom 3'ou intended to murder, ycu did by 
 the said shot grievously wound the Bishop of Ork- 
 ney, to the great hazard and danger of his life;" — 
 goes on to argue, in a fashion which the Covenanters 
 would probably hold to be a solemn mockery in the 
 abettors of the Duke of York, that the attempted 
 assassination was an imitation of the devices of 
 Popery, and " that it cannot be instanced that any 
 of the Protestant religion was guilty of any attempt 
 upon the ground of religion ; and that the worst of 
 men being ashamed to commit such villanies — for 
 covering of the same and for their security, doth 
 take the opportunity of darkness and solitude, in 
 corners and solitary places. Your malice was so 
 implacable, that you were prodigal of your own life,
 
 THE COVENANTERS. 231 
 
 to be master of the life of the said archbishop ; and 
 in the high street of Edinburgh, and in the daylight 
 and in the face of the sun, and before many wit- 
 nesses near or at a little distance from the said coach, 
 where you could not but expect to be presently 
 seized upon, you did devote yourself and did adven- 
 ture to commit the said most villanous and wicked 
 attempt." 
 
 At this trial occurred a great scandal against the 
 Scottish statesmen of the reign of Charles II. Whe- 
 ther certain corporeal inflictions be just punishment 
 or tyrannical persecution, may be a matter of dispute ; 
 but a lie, told for the purpose of procuring a convic- 
 tion in a court of justice, is denounced by every 
 system professing to be a code of morality. To get 
 a confession and a betrayal of accomplices from 
 Mitchell, had now become hopeless. All that could 
 be accomplished was the conviction of the solitary 
 victim. But if there were any who could identify 
 the man who, in open day, had fired at two prelates 
 in the chief street of the capital, there were none 
 who would do so. The only means, therefore, of 
 convicting Mitchell was by making evidence of bis 
 confession before the privy council. It would be 
 awkward, however, to adduce the condition of 
 safety with which that confession was accompanied. 
 That condition was inserted in the minutes of the
 
 232 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST 
 
 privy council, as they have been quoted above; the 
 minute still bears the mark of dirty fingers, as if 
 Wodrow, and other sympathisers with the suffering 
 remnant, had curiously manipulated and examined 
 it when the transactions of the secret conclave came 
 to light after the Revolution. Mitchell was defended 
 by George Lockhart — a brave, eloquent man, whose 
 knowledge as a lawyer, and formidable capacity in 
 using it, endowed him with the safety of feared and 
 respected power even in those terrible times, and 
 elicited from Sir George Mackenzie, the high Tory 
 and crown lawyer, a few expressive sentences of 
 praise on the democratic supporter of Presbyterian' 
 ism. Lockhart demanded that the minutes of the 
 privy council, as they are quoted above, should be 
 produced in evidence. The demand was overruled. A 
 little document, containing the confession in simple 
 terms, was given in. The statesmen who had re- 
 ceived it attested it as the confession of Mitchell. 
 Each of them was then cross-questioned on the ac- 
 companying condition, and each flatly denied that 
 it had been conceded. 
 
 Thus the Earl of Rothes, the chancellor, being 
 interrogated, "depones that he did not at all give 
 any assurance to the panel for his life; and the 
 panel never sought such assurance from him." 
 Hatton, the next witness, seemed somewhat to have
 
 THE COVENANTERS. 233 
 
 evaded the question : "Depones lie was present when 
 Mr. James Mitchell made that confession, and his 
 lordship first heard him make it verbally, and then 
 he saw him subscribe it also ; and at that time there 
 was nothing spoken of any assurance ; but when the 
 panel was asked by some of the committee upon 
 what account he committed that fact, at first he 
 seemed unwilling to answer, but thereafter said it 
 was because the bishop was an enemy to the good 
 people, or godly people, in the west." The burly 
 and brutal Duke of Lauderdale, less circuitous than 
 his brother, simply stated that " he heard no assur- 
 ance given to him, and did not give him any assur- 
 ance, nor gave commission to any others to give him 
 any assurance." The next witness is " James, 
 Archbishop of St. Andrew's." He alone identified 
 the prisoner. His evidence, recorded with a lum- 
 bering incrustation of titles, was — " Depones, his 
 grace saw him at the council-bar, in presence of his 
 majesty's commissioner and the council, acknow- 
 ledge his confession made before the committee, and 
 heard him adhere thereto and renew the same ; 
 and there was no assurance of life given him, nor 
 any sought for him then. Depones that his grace 
 himself did never give him any assurance, nor give 
 warrant to any others to do it; only he promised, at 
 his first taking, that if he would freely confess the
 
 234 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST 
 
 fault, and express his repentance for the same at 
 that time, without further troubling judicatories 
 therein, his grace would use his best endeavour to 
 favour him." His denial of the promise of safety 
 was adduced against Sharpe by those who murdered 
 him on Magus Moor. Mitchell was convicted, and 
 suffered the usual fate in the Grass-market.* 
 
 This trial was peculiar, from an attempt subse- 
 quently made to arraign one of the statesman-wit- 
 nesses for perjury, on account of his testimony. This 
 somewhat courageous effort was made in parliament 
 by a member, William Noble, of Dunnotter, who 
 brought his charge, in imitation, apparently, of an 
 English impeachment, before the lords of the articles, 
 in 168 1 . He did not require to demand the production 
 of the council-record, having in his possession a letter 
 written by Hatton, in which the assurance of life 
 was distinctly mentioned. The lords of the arti- 
 cles dismissed the arraignment, but the object of the 
 accuser was so far gained, in the discussion of con- 
 duct that could ill stand inquiry. That dishonour 
 which is more fatal to a statesman than profligacy 
 or cruelty, was proclaimed ; and it was remembered 
 and spoken of, even by members of the council, 
 that the lord chancellor had garnished the proposal 
 for sparing Mitchell's life with an indecent joke. 
 
 * 28th July, 1681.
 
 THE COVENANTERS. 235 
 
 The trial of Mitchell shows that the fate of Arch- 
 bishop Sharpe, so well known to all who read the 
 history of the period, was not an incidental outrage, 
 but the realisation of a deep-felt hatred, which had 
 been working its w T ay, for many years, into the 
 habits of a people not naturally bloody or treach- 
 erous. One requires to be in the confidence,, as it 
 were, of the popular mind of the period, through 
 the perusal of letters and private diaries, to form a 
 just conception of the light in which the head of 
 the Church was viewed by the people. It was not 
 merely that he was a selfish, haughty, tyrannical 
 man ; from auch an early estimate he came to be 
 looked on as something superhumanly wicked — a 
 walking embodiment of the great spirit of evil. 
 The people at large, including the Presbyterian 
 clergy, believed in many dark tales of diabolical 
 agency, in which Sharpe was depicted busy with 
 his fellow-demons. A few of these are scattered 
 over Wodrow's note-book. The archbishop is 
 described as one day busy in the privy council, 
 getting up prosecutions against the Pentland rebels. 
 He desires a certain paper, necessary for making out 
 a conclusive case, but he has left it behind him in 
 his cabinet in St. Andrew's. He sends a servant 
 for it, directing him to the particular cell in the 
 cabinet where it is to be found. The man left
 
 236 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST 
 
 Edinburgh at ten o'clock of a summer morning, 
 and was in the archiepiscopal palace about four 
 o'clock in the afternoon. 
 
 " When he opened the closet-door, and looked in, 
 he saw the bishop sitting at a table near the window, as 
 if he had been reading and writing, his black gown 
 and tippet, and his broad hat — just as he had left 
 him at Edinburgh, which did surprise the fellow at 
 first, though he was not much terrified ; for being of 
 a hardy, frolic temper, or a little hollowed, as we 
 call it, he spoke to him merrily, thus : — ' Ho, my 
 lord, well ridden, indeed ! I am sure I left you at 
 Edinburgh, at ten o'clock, and yet you are here 
 before me. I wonder that I saw you not pass by 
 me.' The bishop looked over his shoulder at him, 
 with a sour and frowning countenance, but spoke not 
 a word ; so that the footman runs down stairs, and 
 tells the secretary, or chamberlain, that the bishop 
 was come home. He would not believe him. He 
 averred he saw him in his closet, and that he was 
 very angry; and desired the chamberlain to come 
 up-stairs, and he would see him likewise. So they 
 came both up-stairs ; but before they were fully 
 up, they both saw the bishop, standing upon the 
 stair-head, staring upon them with an angry look, 
 which affrighted them in earnest." 
 
 The vision, however, vanished. The serving-
 
 THE COVENANTERS. 237 
 
 man found the paper, and returning with it to 
 Edinburgh, there saw the bishop, as he had left him, 
 and told the story of the doppel ganger. " Upon 
 which the bishop, by threats and promises, enjoins 
 him secrecy."* There is a mystery and pleasant 
 undefinedness in - this story; another which stands 
 beside it is more distinct. The archbishop is pre- 
 siding at the trial of a witch, and is, as usual, for 
 harsh measures. Janet, the accused, says she is 
 not a friend, but an enemy, of the powers of dark- 
 ness ; and hints that it would be well were others 
 equally hostile to them. Driven at bay, we are 
 told that " she only dropped one word to the bishop. 
 ' My lord,' says she, ' who was you with, in your 
 closet, on Saturday night last, betwixt twelve and 
 one o'clock ?' " Upon which the bishop changed his 
 countenance, and turned black and pale, and then 
 no more was said. When the council rose up, the 
 Duke of Rothes called Janet into a room, and 
 inquired at her privately who that person was 
 who was with the bishop? She refused, at first ; 
 but he promising, upon his word of honour, to war- 
 rant her at all hands, and that she should not be 
 sent to America, she says, " My lord, it was the 
 micklc black devil."f 
 
 After the murder, some trinkets, found on the old 
 
 * Analecta, i., 104. t A)-> 105-
 
 238 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST 
 
 man's person, were deemed to be cabalistic or 
 magical symbols ; and it was beard, with horror, 
 that among them was a bee, enclosed in a box — 
 doubtless, the lost man's familiar spirit. 
 
 The attempts to bring to justice the archbishop's 
 murderers cannot be adduced under the head of 
 " Proceedings against the Covenanters," as persecu- 
 tion on purely religious grounds. But this cluster 
 of events was the climax of the war with the Cove- 
 nanters ; and the very measures which caused and 
 followed it, became inextricably interwoven with the 
 system of religious persecution. This created the 
 black spirit of vengeance which caused the deed, 
 and it tried to avenge it on those who had no fur- 
 ther concern with its perpetrators than the possession 
 of the same religious creed. The unhappy deter- 
 mination to block up every outlet for over-heated 
 opinions or impracticable enthusiasm, was worked 
 out under the shadow of investigations regardino- 
 the murder; and it was not sufficient that one who 
 was an object of suspicion had no apparent or possible 
 concern in it — he must be driven by question after 
 question, until, if he had a particle of spirit or ho- 
 nesty in him, he must say something offensive. It 
 was not enough that he abhorred the murder or the 
 principles which suggested it; he must go further 
 back to the root of evil opinions, and abhor abstract
 
 THE COVENANTERS. 239 
 
 fundamental doctrines of many complex kinds, under 
 pain of being counted something like an accessary 
 to assassination. It may be interesting to notice the 
 shape in which this memorable historical crime is 
 described in the indictment against Hackston of 
 Rathillet. 
 
 " Ye and your accomplices did, upon the 3rd day 
 of May, 1579, cruelly, sacrilegiously, and inhumanly 
 assault the said archbishop, when he was travelling 
 securely in his own coach to St. Andrew's, within 
 two miles of the said city ; and upon Magus Moor did 
 most wickedly and furiously discharge several shots 
 of pistols, carbines, hakbuts, and muskets,upon the 
 said coach, within whilk the said archbishop and 
 his daughter were for the time; and his grace having 
 opened the coach door, and came forth to you, and 
 falling down upon his knees begging mercy or time 
 to recommend his soul to God, and pray for you his 
 murderer — so cruel, inhuman, and sacrilegious were 
 ye, that, without pitying his grey hairs) or the 
 shrieks of his weeping daughter, or respecting his 
 character or office, ye did most furiously and cruelly 
 give the said archbishop many bloody, mortal, and 
 cruel wounds on his head and other places in his 
 body, and left him dead and murdered upon the 
 place in a most cruel and lamentable manner."* 
 
 * State Trials, x., 813.
 
 240 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST 
 
 The paragraphs which follow contain the state- 
 ment of particulars whence guilt of the murder is 
 inferred, and the first items deserve attention, as 
 they are extremely characteristic of the sweeping 
 principle on which the penal laws were then admi- 
 nistered. " And in token of your guilt of the fore- 
 said horrid, impious, and sacrilegious murder, ye 
 did not compear in the town of St. Andrew's, upon 
 the 13th day of the said month of May, 1679, nor 
 in the town of Cupar upon the 16th day of the said 
 month," &c. This formidable inference arose out 
 of a proclamation by the privy council. It spoke 
 of the horrid assassination and parricide, as a deed 
 to " spread horror and amasement in all the hearts of 
 such as believe that there is a God or a Christian 
 religion — a cruelty exceeding the barbarity of 
 pagans and heathens, amongst whom the officers and 
 ministers of religion are reputed to be sacred, and 
 are, by the respect borne to the Deity which they 
 adore, secured against all bloody and execrable 
 attempts." Suggesting means for apprehending the 
 assassins, the proclamation proceeds to state, that " in 
 respect there is a company of vagrant and skulking 
 ruffians, who, to the great contempt of all govern- 
 ment, do ride through this our kingdom, killing 
 our soldiers, deforcing such as put our laws in exe- 
 cution, and committing such horrible murders, who
 
 THE COVENANTERS. 241 
 
 might be easily discovered, if all such amongst whom 
 they converse did, according to their duty, endea- 
 vour to apprehend them or give notice where they 
 haunt or resort."* The proclamation proceeding to 
 notice that several of the assassins were known to 
 belong to the shire of Fife; special days and places 
 are appointed, at which the inhabitants within a 
 certain surrounding area are to assemble, to be ex- 
 amined by the sheriff, " with certification to such 
 of the said tenants, cottars, servants, and others 
 aforesaid as shall be absent, they shall be reputed 
 as accessory to the said crime — and the masters if 
 they produce them not, or if hereafter they shall 
 harbour any who do not compear, they shall be 
 reported favourers of the said assassination." 
 
 A further effort was made, on this exhaustive 
 system, to get at persons who might be implicated 
 in the crime. On a day appointed, all the males 
 upwards of sixteen years old were to be assembled 
 in each presbytery. The clergy were to be present, 
 and mark off all those who were not reputed at- 
 tenders of the Established Church. Each one of 
 these was to be compelled to show, by sufficient 
 testimony, how he was occupied between the hours 
 of ten o'clock in the morning and three in the after- 
 noon on the day of the murder. " That such as 
 
 • State Trials, x., 824. 
 VOL. II. It
 
 242 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST 
 
 cannot prove a good account of themselves in man- 
 ner foresaid, be secured, and their goods seized and 
 secured till the issue of their trial : that such as shall 
 be absent the said day, be holden as probably 
 guilty of the horrid act," &c. 
 
 It is characteristic of the war of utter extermina- 
 tion between the people and the law, that, with all 
 these stringent measures, and while the country 
 swarmed with soldiers, the main perpetrators of the 
 murder were never caught, though their deed was, 
 in the words of the proclamation, rendered remark- 
 able "by the unmasked boldness of such as durst 
 openly, with bare faces, in the midst of our kingdom, 
 at mid-day, assemble themselves together to kill, on 
 our highway, the primate of our kingdom." The 
 assassination was witnessed by several people ; the 
 men engaged in it were well known ; and there 
 was a party of soldiers so near, that they might 
 have seen the horsemen following the lumbering 
 coach, or heard the shots. That, under all these 
 difficulties, the murderers should have escaped, was 
 of course attributed to the special intervention of 
 Providence shielding those who were executing 
 God's righteous judgment upon Judas. Hackston, 
 of Rathillet, was the only man connected with the 
 trial who was seized; and he was a negative ac- 
 complice, looking on apart, half shrouded in his
 
 THE COVENANTERS. 243 
 
 cloak, and stoically contemplating that act of solemn 
 retribution, in which he declined to embrue his own 
 hands, but which he would deem it sacrilegious to 
 interrupt. Sharpe, recognising him as a gentleman 
 of good descent and liberal education, appealed to 
 him for protection ; but the only assurance he re- 
 ceived was, " I will not lay a hand on you." It 
 may be interesting to have the pen-and-ink sketches 
 of the party, given in the evidence against Hackston. 
 He was himself described as " a tall, slender man, 
 black haired and black visaged, who had a brownish 
 grey horse and a velvet cap ; and for arms, a carbine, 
 holster-pistols, and a broadsword." John Balfour, 
 of Kinloch, or Burleigh, was " a laigh (or short), 
 broad man, round, ruddy face, dark brown hair." 
 He was accompanied by his relation, " George 
 Balfour, in Gilston, who is a broad, brownish sett 
 man, black curling hair, lean faced, who had a 
 white horse, and was armed with two side-pistols 
 and a sword." Another of the party, Andrew 
 Gillan, weaver, in Balmerinoch, was characteristi- 
 cally described as "a little, broad, black man, 
 broad, curling, bushy beard, who rode upon a Avhite 
 horse — who had three side-pistols on his right side, 
 and ane sword." This witness drew his sketches 
 with discrimination, whether they were quite ac- 
 curate or not. He next describes the " two Henry- 
 
 r2
 
 244 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST 
 
 sons," who are " young, slender men — both young, 
 fair men; the youngest, fairest and tallest, and the 
 eldest slenderest." These sketches seem embodied 
 types of the characters which the persecution had 
 made of the men of the period: the dark ruffian, 
 who genially took to bloodshed as his natural calling ; 
 and his gentler coadjutor, driven into the com- 
 panionship of evil by his warm sympathies and 
 overwrought enthusiasm. 
 
 The most interesting member of that band, how- 
 ever, if not of the whole Scottish army of martyrs, 
 was Hackston, of Rathillet — a man made for better 
 things than brutal murder or stolid fanaticism. As 
 we sometimes see a fine genius glimmering through 
 the overwhelming down-pressure of degraded habits, 
 and think what it might have been had it not been 
 overwhelmed in the moral ruin — this man, in the 
 fierce fanatic and the abettor of murder, yet affords 
 glimmerings of a character that, in less unhappy 
 days, might have produced the accomplished states- 
 man, the powerful rhetorician, or the brave and 
 honoured military leader. 
 
 The Presbyterian biographers speak of him as 
 having been dissolute in his youth — a gay deceiver, 
 with high qualities of body and mind — with fortune 
 and social position, all turned to evil ends. Their 
 previous immorality does not, certainly, make men
 
 THE COVENANTERS. 245 
 
 less ardent in their new vocation when they become 
 fanatics; but the biographers of those whose sanctity- 
 has assumed the deep and formidable character of 
 Hackston's, are apt to complete the antithesis of the 
 picture, by making out their early immorality to 
 have been on an equally great and sometimes equally 
 dangerous scale — one of the many elements in which 
 the Bollandist Lives of the Saints and the covenant- 
 ing martyrology are very like each other. "While he 
 was in confinement, he wrote a simple and soldier- 
 like account of his flight, his attempt to defend him- 
 self, and his capture — to which it is impossible to 
 refuse a general belief. The party had taken to the 
 wilds, after the affair of Bothwell Bridge, and slept 
 all night on a moor, sending their scouts to endea- 
 vour to ascertain their position. " One day," he says, 
 " after we had gotten some meat, we came to a piece 
 of grass and lay down, and presently we were all 
 alarmed that they were upon us; and so, making 
 ready, we saw them coming fast on — and that about 
 three or four hours in the afternoon : and each one 
 resolving to light, I rode off and found a strength for 
 our advantage, and drew up quickly eight horse on 
 the right hand with R. D., and fifteen on the left 
 hand with me, bcinn; no more: the foot not bein^ 
 forty, and many of them ill armed, in the midst. 
 The enemy advanced fast — about one hundred and
 
 246 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST 
 
 twelve, well armed and horsed — who sending about 
 twenty dragoons on foot to take the wind of us, we 
 sent a party on foot to meet them, and the rest ad- 
 vanced immediately after, when our horse fired, and 
 wounded and killed some, both horse and foot. Our 
 horse advanced to their faces, and we fired on each 
 other. I beim* foremost, and finding the horse be- 
 hind me broken, I then rode in amongst them, and 
 went out at a side without beinj? wounded. I was 
 pursued by several, with whom I fought a good 
 space; but at length I was stricken down, with three 
 on horseback behind me, and receiving three wounds 
 on the head, and falling, submitted to them. They 
 gave us all testimony of brave, resolute men." 
 Dalyel, whose Russian training made him more 
 consistently savage than his coadjutors, threatened, 
 he said, to roast him. 
 
 Even in the formal proceedings of the privy 
 council and Court of Justiciary, the usual terms of 
 righteous abuse, with which all allusion to the ordi- 
 nary uneducated fanatics was decorated, is suppressed 
 or modified towards Hackston, as if in courtesy to 
 his talents and social reputation ; and yet he bearded 
 them in a manner that might have irritated more 
 gentle beings than Rothes and Lauderdale, flinging 
 back in their teeth the accusation of murder — de- 
 nouncing them as the slayers of God's people — the
 
 THE COVENANTERS. 247 
 
 inspired of the devil, and the instruments of his 
 malignity, against whom he, David Hackston, de- 
 nounced the wrath of God. It is curious to see the 
 symptoms of his retaliatory conflict gleaming through 
 the formal minutes of the Justiciary Court. His re- 
 fusal to plead is entered in these terms : " He refused 
 to answer concerning the murder of the late Bishop 
 of St. Andrew's, and says the causes of his decline- 
 ment are, because they have usurped the supremacy 
 of the Church, belonging' alone to Jesus Christ, and 
 have established idolatry, perjury, and other iniqui- 
 ties ; and in prosecuting their design — in confirming 
 themselves in this usurped right — have shed much 
 innocent blood. Therefore the said David, adhering 
 to Christ, his rights, and kingly office over the 
 Church, declines them that are his open enemies and 
 competitors for his crown and power, as competent 
 judges; refuses, as formerly, to sign this his decla- 
 ration, dated from his own mouth, whereupon his 
 majesty's advocate takes instruments and requires 
 the commissioners of justiciary to sign the same."* 
 
 We may imagine how great a torrent of truculent 
 matter was uttered, when so much of it was per- 
 mitted to pass through the formal sluice of the official 
 record. We have many other and more exuberant 
 accounts of this discussion ; — as, for instance, in 
 
 * State Trials, x., S33.
 
 248 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST 
 
 the work called "The Cloud of Witnesses," which 
 says, he " told them they were all bloody murderers, 
 for all the power they had was derived from tyranny ; 
 and that these years bygone, they have not only 
 tyrannised over the Church of God, but have also 
 grinded the faces of the poor, so that oppression, 
 bloodshed, perjury, and many murders, were to be 
 found on their skirts." The Marquis of Montrose, 
 giving testimony before the Justiciary Court as to the 
 admissions made by Hackston to the council, said 
 that he " refused to answer whether the archbishop's 
 murder was a murder, but said to the council that 
 he wished that God, by a stroke of his justice, might 
 decide betwixt the council and him, which of them 
 were the greatest murderers." According to " the tes- 
 timony of that worthy gentleman, David Hackston, 
 of Rathillet," he said, in answer to the same question, 
 that " he thought it no sin to despatch a bloody mon- 
 ster." It is said in the same document, that when 
 the privy council wished to push him further in the 
 personal application of his doctrine, they received 
 an answer which showed that fanaticism had not en- 
 tirely burnt out of him the capacity to come forward 
 like a man of this world. Being asked, " if he were 
 at liberty and had the power to kill any of the 
 king's council, and murder them as he did the 
 Bishoo of St. Andrew's, whether he would do it, 
 
 A. '
 
 THE COVENANTERS. 249 
 
 yea or not?" lie said " that he had no spare time to 
 answer such frivolous and childish questions." 
 
 On the royal authority he was, however, accord- 
 ing to this account, sufficiently explicit. He is 
 asked " what he would declare as to the king's 
 authority;" and says, " that authority that disowns 
 the interest of God, and sets itself in opposition to 
 Jesus Christ, is no more to be owned ; but so it 
 is — the king's authority is now such; therefore 
 it ou^ht not to be owned." One of those men 
 
 O 
 
 whom he hated most of all, the bishops, seems to 
 have borne his rough handling somewhat meekly. 
 " Being interrogated by the Bishop of Edinburgh 
 what he would answer to that article of the confes- 
 sion of faith, that difference of religion doth not 
 make void the magistrate's right and authority, 
 he answered, he would not answer any perjured 
 prelate. The bishop replied, he was in the wrong 
 to him, because he never took the Covenant; 
 therefore he was not perjured and so deserved not 
 that name." 
 
 Hackston, however, was not the man to ward off 
 discussion by a petulant remark, or evade his testi- 
 mony. The question was well put. and might have 
 staggered one less self-assured. But he shattered the 
 difficulty by that strongest of all logic — I am right 
 and my opponent wrong — or as it may be other-
 
 250 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST 
 
 wise expressed, I am the representative of God, and 
 you are the servants of tire devil. When pressed 
 on the conformity of his principles and actions with 
 the Covenant, in its acknowledgment of the autho- 
 rity of the civil magistrate in matters temporal, he 
 said: " That question was answered long ago by 
 the solemn league and Covenant, which binds us 
 only to maintain and defend the king in the defence 
 of the true religion ; but now the king having 
 stated himself an enemy to religion, and all that will 
 live religiously, therefore it is high time to shake 
 off all obligation of allegiance to his authority." 
 
 He told the council that he was prepared to seal 
 his testimony, not only with his blood, but with all 
 the tortures they could imagine. He had the pre- 
 monitions of his fate as he was conveyed to Edin- 
 burgh after his capture, and describes his entry by 
 the foot of the Canongate, where the magistrates 
 were, " setting me on a horse, with my face back- 
 ward, and the other three bound on a goad of iron, 
 and Mr. Cameron's head carried on a halbert before 
 me, and another head in a sack, which I knew not, 
 on a lad's back ; and so we were carried up the 
 street to the parliament, close where I was taken 
 down, and the rest loosed — all was done by the 
 hangman." The martyrologists of the Covenant 
 luxuriate in the horrors of his protracted death.
 
 THE COVENANTEES. 251 
 
 That there should be mercy for such a person, even 
 in a much more humane administration of justice, 
 was out of the question. It was as necessary to 
 slay him, as it is to amputate the fractured and 
 mortifying limb. But, looking back at the be- 
 ginning of these miseries, one can see a time when, 
 if statesmen had not been drunk with success, and 
 reckless of consequences, if they had avoided need- 
 less blood-letting, and set themselves conscientiously 
 to govern the Scottish people according to their 
 nature, the history of the country must have been 
 so different from what it was, that Sharpe, at the 
 time of these tragic events, might have been a 
 powerful and somewhat respected Churchman, not 
 without some shred of Episcopal decoration; while 
 Hackston, of Rathillet, might have been a loyal 
 scholarly gentleman, drinking his reverend friend's 
 health, and making speeches for the preserva- 
 tion of the happy Constitution in Church and 
 State. 
 
 While such were the bloody scenes developed in 
 the temporal part of the contest, as it might be 
 termed, the spiritual leaders of the people were 
 driven, by the diabolical influence of persecution, to 
 enchain them to a fanaticism which grew ever darker 
 as the contest went on. The Covenant, and other 
 early fundamental charters of Presbyterianism, were 
 found insufficient to satisfy the stern demands of these
 
 252 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST 
 
 men; they must have a new testimony, more dis- 
 tinctly marking out the people of God, and de- 
 nouncing the enemy. At the head of this move- 
 ment was Mr. Donald Cargill, one of those 
 whose purposes, like steel hardened in the fierce 
 fire of persecution, were of a relentless firmness, 
 calculated to inspire in their panegyrists of later 
 and gentler times a kind of awe-stricken admira- 
 tion. Wodrow tells us, that for twenty or thirty 
 years before his death, he " was never under 
 doubts as to his interest — and the reason was made 
 known to him in ane extraordinary way." In his 
 youth, we are told that " he was naturally hasty 
 and fiery;" that "he fell into deep exercise," and, 
 beset by doubts and difficulties, attempted to com- 
 mit suicide. Having repeatedly encountered ob- 
 stacles to his intentions, " he takes on a resolution to 
 take a time or place where nothing could stop ; and 
 goes out early one morning, by break of day, to a 
 coal-pit; and when he comes to it, and none at all 
 about, he comes to the brink of it to throw himself 
 in; and just as he is going to jump in, he heard ane 
 audible voice from heaven, ' Son, be of good cheer, 
 thy sins be forgiven thee,' and that stopped him ; and 
 he said to my father, after that he never got leave 
 to doubt of his interest," meaning, of his certain 
 salvation.* When sown in soil of this character, 
 
 * Analecta, i., 69.
 
 THE COVENANTERS. 253 
 
 it might be predicted what crop the dragon's teeth 
 of persecution would hear. 
 
 Cargill was early among the hunted ; but he 
 appears to have been a man of untiring restlessness 
 and agility, who was not to be easily caught. On 
 the 3rd of June, 1680, information was brought 
 to the proper officers that he and a companion 
 named Hall were lurkins; in a small tavern at 
 Queensferry. When an attempt was made to cap- 
 ture them, they offered a stout resistance, and Cargill 
 escaped with many severe wounds, which did not 
 prevent him from preaching a fierce sermon to an 
 excited multitude, among the moors, so soon as the 
 pursuit slackened sufficiently to let him stop and 
 take breath. On the person of Hall there was found 
 a document attributed to Cargill, which became 
 known as the Queensferry Covenant. It does not 
 seem to have been widely dispersed, or to have be- 
 come a bond of union; and wise statesmen would 
 have put it aside and studied it, watching external 
 manifestations of its existence or influence, before 
 taking any public proceedings about it. But this was 
 not the policy of the still reckless men of that age. 
 They seemed to rejoice at the discovery of some- 
 thing so violent and denunciatory, and to indulge 
 in a hope that a large class would be found impli- 
 cated in it, and liable to punishments and for-
 
 254 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST 
 
 feitures. There was a hot pursuit after Cargill and 
 his coadjutor, Cameron — who owes it to that pur- 
 suit, and his apprehension and cruel death, that a 
 small remnant of Cameronians yet rally round his 
 name. But not content with striking at the sources 
 of the manifesto, the crown brought it up against 
 persons charged as adherents of its principles, de- 
 lighted with such an opportunity of proving that 
 the king and the government had a large body of 
 irreconcilable enemies. The document, it is true, 
 was stringent and bitter enough. Like all the co- 
 venanting manifestoes, it had, with a good deal of 
 circumlocution, the stern singleness of purpose per- 
 taining to an infallible announcement of the will of 
 the Deity. One of its articles may be taken as a 
 specimen of its pervading tone : 
 
 " We shall endeavour to our utmost the extir- 
 pation of the kingdom of darkness, and whatsoever 
 is contrair to the kingdom of Christ, and especially 
 idolatry and Popery, in all the articles of it, as we 
 are bound in our national Covenant — and supersti- 
 tion, will-worship, and prelacy with its hierarchy, 
 as we are bound in our solemn league and Covenant; 
 and that we shall, with the same sincerity, en- 
 deavour — God cnving us assistance — the overthrow 
 of that power that hath established that prelacy 
 and erastianism over the Church, and exercises
 
 THE COVENANTERS. 255 
 
 such a lustful and arbitrary tyranny over the sub- 
 jects, seeking again to introduce idolatry and super- 
 stition in these lands, contrary to our Covenants ; 
 and, in a word, that we shall endeavour the extir- 
 pation of all the works of darkness, and the relics of 
 idolatry and superstition — which are both much 
 enlarged in our times — and execute righteous judg- 
 ments impartially, according to the word of God 
 and degree of wickedness, upon the committers of 
 these things — but especially blasphemy, idolatry, 
 atheism, sorcery, perjury, uncleanness, profanation 
 of the Lord's-day, oppression, and malignancy ; 
 that being thus zealous for God, he may delight to 
 dwell amonir us !" 
 
 Those who had the misfortune to differ in opinion 
 with the adherents of such a document, would pro- 
 bably meet with little mercy in the execution by 
 them of righteous judgment, according to God's 
 word and the degree of wickedness. And it must 
 be admitted that, so far as the fabricators of such a 
 declaration were concerned, there has scarcely been 
 a government in any country that would not be in- 
 censed by it. It did not shrink from naming the 
 monarch as the head and source of all the evils. It 
 spoke of the " hand of our kings " being against the 
 purity and power of religion and godliness, and de- 
 generating from virtue into tyranny and rejection
 
 256 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST 
 
 of God's will; " so that it can no longer be called a 
 government, but a lustful rage, exercised with as 
 little right reason, and with more cruelty, than in 
 beasts ; and they themselves can no longer be called 
 governors, but public grassators and public judg- 
 ments, which all men ought as earnestly to labour 
 to be free of, as of sword, famine, or pestilence 
 racing amongst us." 
 
 This was accompanied with another document, 
 bearing a title in which the high and denunciatory 
 assumptions of its adherents chime strangely with 
 the statement of their existing lowliness. It was 
 called " The declaration and testimony of the true 
 Presbyterian, anti-prelatick, and anti-erastian per- 
 secuted party in Scotland." It was, if scarcely so 
 sweepingly self-assured in its claims of infallibility, 
 more personally offensive to the royal brothers even 
 than the Queensferry Covenant. It stated as among 
 the causes of God's controversy against his people, 
 that they had not disowned the king, and men of 
 his practice, iC as enemies to our Lord and his crown, 
 and the true Protestant and Presbyterian interest in 
 these lands, our Lord's espoused bride and Church ;" 
 and the document proceeded very emphatically to 
 make up for such an omission. This paper was 
 solemnly adopted by a few men met together in 
 arms, under the auspices of Cameron, and received,
 
 THE COVENANTERS. 257 
 
 from the place where they met, the name of the 
 " Sanquhar Declaration." 
 
 Soon after the discovery of these documents, in 
 September, 1680, Cargill, who had led a life of 
 hidings and narrow escapes, of fighting and preach- 
 ing, addressed a large assembly in the Torwood. 
 There, choosing for his text, 1 Corinthians, v., 13, 
 — "But them that are without, God judgeth. There- 
 fore put away from among yourselves that wicked 
 person," — he proceeded solemnly to the excommuni- 
 cation of all his enemies, beginning with Charles II., 
 thus: "I, being a minister of Jesus Christ, and 
 having authority and power from Him, do, in His 
 name and in His spirit, excommunicate Charles II., 
 king, &c. ; and that upon the account of these wick- 
 ednesses : for his high mocking of God, in that, 
 after he had acknowledged his own sins, his father's 
 sins, his mother's idolatry, and had solemnly engaged 
 against them in a declaration, &c. ; he hath, notwith- 
 standing of all this, gone on more avowedly in these 
 sins than all that went before him," and so on. After 
 enumerating all his " apostacies and perjuries," he de- 
 scended into the too well-established licentiousness of 
 the king's private life, with more explicit distinctness 
 of phraseology than modern readers arc sometimes 
 accustomed to. Not quite content with thus em- 
 phatically denouncing the real scandals of the palace, 
 
 VOL. II. S
 
 258 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST 
 
 he brought against the royal brothers still blacker 
 charges than history has thought fit to preserve as 
 worthy of credit. 
 
 Cargill proceeded, leisurely denouncing each of 
 his enemies; and there is, with considerable over- 
 colouring, something not far from a true picture in 
 his reasons of denunciation in each instance — as, for 
 example, in that of Lauderdale : 
 
 " Next, I do, by the same authority, &c, excom- 
 municate John, Duke of Lauderdale, for his dread- 
 ful blasphemy — especially that word to the Prelate 
 of St. Andrew's, ' sit thou at my right hand, until I 
 make thine enemies thy footstool;' his atheistical 
 drolling on the Scriptures of God; scoffing at 
 religion and religious persons; his apostacy from 
 the Covenant and Reformation, and his persecuting 
 thereof, after he had been a professor, pleader, and 
 pressor thereof; for his perjury in the business of 
 Mr. James Mitchell :" all followed by an expressive 
 description of his private vices. 
 
 Cargill felt that his proceedings in this matter 
 were not entirely free of technical difficulties. Ex- 
 communication by an authorised judicatory, being a 
 solemn measure, productive to those on whom it is 
 inflicted of awful consequences, ought to be awarded 
 with judicial solemnity, and after such necessary 
 preliminaries as may enable the accused to exculpate
 
 THE COVENANTERS. 259 
 
 himself. It was beyond denial, that this condem- 
 nation of the king savoured of haste, if not of in- 
 justice, as he ought to have had an opportunity of 
 defending himself before the awful tribunal which 
 condemned him. Conscious of such objections, after 
 he had finished the sentence, he pronounced an 
 elaborate vindication of it, commencing thus: " I 
 think, none that acknowledge the word of God, the 
 power deputed to the Church, and the reason and 
 nature of that power, can judge this sentence to be 
 unjust. The pretence of its being informal, with- 
 out warnings, admonitions, &c, is fully answered in 
 that those men have placed themselves above the 
 admonitions of ministers, have repelled all due 
 warnings, and wickedly put to cruel deaths the 
 servants and ministers of Christ who have with 
 freedom and boldness adventured to give them 
 warnings and admonitions, and shut up all access 
 from us that remain to do the like ; and as for proof 
 of the facts I have here charged upon them, it 
 ncedeth none, the deeds being notour and known, 
 and the most of them such as themselves do avow, 
 and, to their shame, boast of. And as the causes are 
 just, and such as for which the ministers of Christ 
 have, in all ages, proceeded to the like sentence ; so, 
 it being now done by a minister of the Gospel, and 
 
 s2
 
 260 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST 
 
 in such a manner as the present circumstances of 
 the Church of Christ, with respect to the present 
 cruel persecutions, will admit, the sentence, like- 
 wise, is undoubtedly just also. And there are 
 no powers on earth — either of kings, princes, 
 magistrates, or ministers of the Gospel — can, 
 without the repentance of the persons openly 
 and legally appearing, reverse these sentences on 
 any such account."* All this may seem so grotesque 
 and preposterous, that some readers will hardly be- 
 lieve that one capable of putting these sentences 
 together, could have done so for any other than 
 some burlesque purpose. But it was sober truth, in 
 so far as earnestness is concerned. No judge pro- 
 nouncing sentence, no great ecclesiastical dignitary 
 performing his official function, could ever be more 
 serious than Cargill; for if he possessed not the au- 
 thority of poor crawling man for what he did, had 
 he not the command of the Lord of Hosts? — was he 
 not also vested with the superhuman power of en- 
 forcing it — without which, that command would 
 not have been given? According to a credible 
 account of these transactions,! he preached on the 
 ensuing Sunday at Fallowhill, in the parish of 
 
 * State Trials, x., 874-6. 
 
 f Crookshank's History of the Church of Scotland, from the
 
 THE COVENANTERS. 261 
 
 Livingstone, and in his sermon said : " I know I 
 am, and will be, condemned by many, for what I 
 have done in excommunicating these wicked men; 
 but, condemn me who will, I know that I am ap- 
 proven of God, and am persuaded that what I 
 have done on earth is ratified in heaven." 
 
 Possibly, a reader of these extravagancies might 
 call to recollection vaticinations of street preachers, 
 passed by him in his homeward journeys from the 
 social board, to which they have a considerable re- 
 semblance. But between the two there is all the 
 difference of the fundamental and the superficial. 
 Wherever people insane, or on the borders of 
 insanity, exist, there are ridiculous exhibitions with 
 solemn names. Those who develop them are a 
 very small number, living in a fantastic world of 
 their own. They scarcely clog the ordinary revolv- 
 ing-wheel of existence — the surrounding world 
 looks at them with grave pity — the passing police- 
 man lets them alone, unless they make an obstruc- 
 tion. But in Cargill's time, long years of ferocious 
 
 Restoration to the Revolution. The historian states, that it is 
 not his province " either to condemn or vindicate" thein ; and 
 then proceeds: "Had not the persons against whom the 
 sentence was pronounced, hcen guilty of all that was laid to 
 their charge? Was not Mr. Cargill an approved minister of 
 the Gospel? Can it he said that kings and princes are not 
 suhject to the censures of the Church?" II., 108.
 
 262 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST 
 
 oppression had driven the madness into the heart 
 of the people. They were not looking at a fantastic 
 farce, but were ready to fight for the arguments 
 addressed to them - by the preacher, who, in his 
 turn, bore a death of protracted torture in justifica- 
 tion of what he said to them. Honest Wodrow 
 found himself somewhat perplexed in dealing with 
 this matter of Cargill. Living under the peaceful 
 supremacy of Presbyterianism after the Revolution, 
 he was not disposed to abandon any of the spiritual 
 prerogatives assumed by the pastors of his own 
 persuasion ; and yet, flourishing under a government 
 which gave him his own way, and being a man 
 of tolerably cautious walk in life, with much theo- 
 retical partiality towards religious martyrs, and 
 much practical reliance on the Duke of Argyle and 
 other powerful statesman of his day, he did not 
 feel himself called on to record his entire approba- 
 tion of Cargill. If, however, the belief that a 
 miracle is done for a human being, be a testimony 
 in favour of his acts, Wodrow has afforded that 
 testimony. He describes the hunted prophet caught 
 at last by a party of soldiers, and brought in great 
 triumph into Glasgow, where multitudes came to 
 gaze on him. Thither, among the rest, came the 
 archbishop's factor, named John Nisbet, " an hater 
 of godlyness and the truly religious, a besotted
 
 THE COVENANTERS. 263 
 
 druncard and mocker at piety." " This profligate 
 wretch," says the historian, " addressed himself to 
 Mr. Cargill in a way of mocking, and said : ' Mr. 
 Donald, will you give us one word more.' " This, it 
 seems, was a sarcastic allusion to an iterative habit of 
 Cargill in his " pathetic, serious way of preaching." 
 Being a hard hit, it behoved to be effectually an- 
 swered by a shaft from Cargill's peculiar quiver ; and 
 so Wodrow solemnly tells us what follows : ' ' Mr. Car- 
 gill looked on him a little with regret and sorrow, 
 and then addressed him thus : ' Mock not, lest your 
 bands be made strong; the day is coming when you 
 shall not have one word to say, though you would.' 
 This came very shortly to pass. Not many days 
 after, the Lord was pleased to lay his hand upon 
 that ill man. At Glasgow, where he lived, he fell 
 suddenly ill, and for three days his tongue swelled ; 
 and though he seemed very earnest to speak, yet he 
 could not command one word, and died in great 
 torment and seeming terror."* 
 
 * History, iii., 279. In Wodrow's Note-Book there are many 
 such anecdotes, in which a sneer on the qualities or capacities 
 of any gifted clergyman, is sure to be followed by a signal judg- 
 ment called down by his denunciations. Wodrow generally ap- 
 pends to these instances, by way of warning, the apposite scrip- 
 tural precept: " Touch not his anointed, and do his prophets no 
 harm."' One of these judgments is peculiarly curious. There was 
 a powerful popular preacher, called David Williamson, on whom 
 was made the song, well known in Scotland, of " Dainty Davie,"
 
 261 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST 
 
 It was not difficult to find sufficient materials for 
 a charge of treason against Cars-ill and his com- 
 panions ; for they had not only issued their formid- 
 able denunciations, but had assisted in several skir- 
 mishes against the royal troops. There is, how- 
 ever, in the indictment, a peculiar and significant 
 feature. The time was seen to be approaching, 
 when those statesmen who were still to bask in 
 the sunshine of royal patronage, must add to their 
 other services that of becoming Roman Catholic. 
 Some supple minds were already practising a little 
 pliancy. Others, of more rugged nature, who had 
 lent themselves cheerfully enough to the forfeitures 
 and persecutions of the fanatics, were bracing 
 themselves against compliance. To show before- 
 hand their determination, it became a favourite 
 
 in commemoration of an act of scandalous gallantry which re- 
 commended him to the sympathising applause of Charles II. " I 
 am -well informed," says Wodrow, " that Mr. David Williamson, 
 when he was, a little after the Revolution, supplying at Aber- 
 deen, was much hated by the Jacobites and Episcopals there, 
 who put all the obloquy and affronts upon him they could. Par- 
 ticularly on Sabbath, when he was going to preach, they hounded 
 out a poor profane man to meet him in the public street, and 
 sing and dance on the Sabbath. "Whether he had a fiddle play- 
 ing, also, I do not mind ; but the tune hejsang, in dancing before 
 him, was ' Dainty Davie.' Mr. Williamson was grieved at the 
 profanation of the Sabbath, and said to somebody with him, 
 'Alas! for that poor man — he is now rejecting the last offer 
 he is ever to have of Christ.' The wretch came not to church, 
 and before night died in a few minutes." — Analecta, iv., 45.
 
 THE COVENANTEES. 265 
 
 practice with them to place the Covenanters and the 
 Jesuits in the same category. So, in the indict- 
 ment it is set forth, " You, the said Mr. Donald 
 Cargill, have drunk in popish and Jesuitical prin- 
 ciples of exaucterating and killing of kings; and to 
 make them the better take with your zealous and 
 ignorant disciples, ye did most treasonably excom- 
 municate your sovereign, &c, and ye have by the con- 
 tagion poisoned and infected many poor and igno- 
 rant people, and has given occasion to popish 
 emissaries to co-operate with you in this detestable 
 and antichristian work."* 
 
 In his examination before the council, Cargill, as 
 might be expected, boldly justified his acts, being 
 restrained only by one consideration — that where 
 they were of a purely spiritual character, such as the 
 excommunication of the king, he felt himself not 
 called on to answer regarding them to a temporal 
 tribunal. " Being interrogate if he thinks the kill- 
 ing the Archbishop of St. Andrew's was a murder, 
 declared that he cannot give his sense thereof; but 
 declares that the Scripture saith, the Lord giving a 
 call to a private man to kill, he might do it lawfully, 
 and instances the case of Phineas and Jael."f 
 
 Cargill was executed, along with several others, 
 and all left behind them solemn testimonies. The 
 
 • State Trials, x., 871. + Ibid., p. 884.
 
 266 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST 
 
 character of these documents may be easily inferred 
 from their antecedents; but they were becoming, if 
 possible, more exclusive and rabidly denunciatory 
 of everything that in the slightest degree diverged 
 from the protesting martyrs' little fagot of opinions. 
 One of them, named William Cuthil, seaman at 
 Borrowstounness, not content with a denunciation 
 of the severities of the time, went back to Crom- 
 well's toleration, as being in point of principle quite 
 as wicked; nay, he seemed to look upon those who 
 endured the existence of toleration, and did not 
 strive against it even unto the death, as persons 
 whose wicked laxness in this matter was the cause 
 of all the evils of the land. So, of twelve solemn 
 testimonies which he bequeathed from the bloody 
 scaffold, one is 
 
 " Against the unfaithfulness, connivance, and 
 compliance of ministers and others, at the wicked- 
 ness perpetrated in the land during the time of 
 Cromwell's usurpation; for, as I am informed, few 
 testified against him for trampling all the interests 
 of Jesus Christ under his feet, in giving a toleration 
 to all sectaries which was to set up their threshold 
 beside Christ's, and their altars beside the Lord's, 
 in a land covenanted to God, never to suffer the 
 like, and lying under the same bonds."* It is, 
 * State Trials, x.,906.
 
 THE COVENANTEES. 267 
 
 perhaps, scarcely possible for unreasonable fana- 
 ticism to go further than this. 
 
 It is hardly within the province of these notices, 
 to give „an account of those trials which were di- 
 rected entirely against political offenders connected 
 with the Ryehouse plot, and the other insurrections 
 of the period. It may be, however, noticed, in 
 passing, as one of the later points of persecution, 
 that profligate statesmen took advantage of the 
 confusions and struggles of the times, to fall upon 
 enemies whom they desired to strike or pillage. 
 The fate of Argyle was a signal and appalling 
 instance of these attempts. He had been restored to 
 a great portion of the family estates — he had become 
 a powerful courtier, holding several high offices. 
 He was sunning himself unconsciously in his pros- 
 perity, when a plot was laid for his ruin. A test 
 was appointed to be taken by men in office, which 
 was of the most contradictory character; since it 
 represented the contending elements, within the 
 government, of those who were determined to stand 
 by Protestanism, and those who were prepared to 
 veer to Popery. Argyle offered an explanation of 
 the principles on which he took this test, and found 
 himself, to his astonishment, a prisoner charged 
 with high treason, on a quaint old act against mis- 
 interpreting the king's statutes. It was not his
 
 268 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST 
 
 life, however, but his estates and offices, that were 
 wanted, as the Duke of York afterwards magna- 
 nimously boasted; and though he was condemned 
 to death, it is difficult to believe that the sentence 
 would have been executed. It served more than 
 one purpose, however. It drove the marquis to 
 rebellion; and when he was apprehended, it ren- 
 dered a trial and conviction for the rebellion un- 
 necessary. 
 
 Against Campbell of Cessnock, who was under- 
 stood to be a loyal man, proceedings were instituted, 
 on the ground of mere casual remarks which he 
 was said to have dropped to certain fugitives from 
 the battle of Bothwell Bridge. If there was truth 
 in a report mentioned by Fountainhall, the motives 
 for this prosecution had not even the respectability 
 of political hatred or religious intolerance, but were 
 of the very basest order; " for it was reported, that 
 Perth and the treasurer-depute, his brother, had 
 assured the king and Duchess of Portsmouth that 
 they had sufficient grounds whereon to forfeit Cess- 
 noch, and that one of her sons by the king was to 
 get the gift of his forfeiture."* A hard forensic 
 battle was fought, to exclude the testimony of two 
 witnesses by whom the accusation was to be proved. 
 Campbell's counsel offered to show that they 
 * Historical Notices, ii., '52 1 .
 
 THE COVENANTERS. 269 
 
 were bribed, and had a concocted tale to support. 
 The objections were not sustained ; but, whether 
 from the revelations made by the counsel, or from 
 some other cause, an occurrence took place which 
 sends one ray of cheerful light into this dark history. 
 It will be safer to take the account of the scene 
 given by Fountainhall, a LiAvyer, who appears to 
 have witnessed it, than that of Wodrow. It is 
 said: 
 
 " This was about eleven o'clock at night ; and 
 when the king's advocate and that party thought 
 all was fixed and sure, the Divine Providence, that 
 overrules all from above, snatched the prey out of 
 their teeth at this time." Then, describing the way 
 in which the witnesses, Ingram and Craufurd, had 
 been trained to their task, he says: " When it came 
 to the finish, by a miraculous consternation, both 
 Ingram and Craufurd did not remember that Cess- 
 nock had used any such expressions to them as were 
 libelled," &c. " Upon this," he continues, " the 
 mobile in the court gave a great shout, at which the 
 king's advocate and justice-general stormed, and 
 said these were very disloyal and indecent excla- 
 mations, the like whereof had never been seen in 
 Scotland, but was Shaftesbury's way in England, in 
 carrying on his business with the ignoramus juries, 
 and to dash, terrify, and confound the king's evi-
 
 270 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST 
 
 dence and witnesses."* Those who had set their 
 hearts on his estates, however, were not to be dis- 
 appointed, and they carried a forfeiture against him 
 in Parliament. 
 
 "While the more remarkable trials of Covenanters 
 are to be found in the comparatively long reign of 
 Charles II., the sword was by no means sheathed at 
 the accession of his brother. Although, in the 
 course of his projects for the accomplishment of 
 ulterior ends, King James had to relax the perse- 
 cuting laws, there is no doubt that he was a dark 
 and obdurate fanatic, who would have made a 
 Donald Cargill had he been driven to the mountains, 
 or a Charles IX. had he reigned in France on St. 
 Bartholomew's eve. During his administration in 
 Scotland, he had instigated many of the harshest 
 measures ; and there are grounds for believing in the 
 truth of that revolting peculiarity attributed to him 
 by Burnet, who says he enjoyed being present at 
 the infliction of torture, and readily superintended 
 the operation when the other members of the privy 
 council sought excuses for retiring. A certain zealous 
 Covenanter, John Shields, wrote a book called 
 " A Hind let Loose; or, an Historical Representa- 
 tion of the Testimonies of the Church of Scotland 
 for the interest of Christ." It was published in the 
 * Historical Notices, ii., 521.
 
 THE COVENANTERS. 271 
 
 year 1687, and therefore must have appeared under 
 the protection of the proclamation of indulgence. 
 On that very document he offers the following com- 
 mentary: "The Duke of York, succeeding in his 
 late proclamation, would make the world believe 
 that it never was his principle, nor will he ever 
 suffer violence to be offered to any man's conscience, 
 nor use force or invincible necessity against any 
 man on account of his persuasion : — smooth words, 
 to cover the mischiefs of his former destructions, and 
 the wickedness of his future designs !" 
 
 And to justify his evil opinion, he thus pithily 
 describes the opening of the new reign : " Imme- 
 diately upon his mounting the throne, the execu- 
 tions and acts prosecuting the persecution of the 
 poor wanderers were more cruel than ever. There 
 were more butchered and slaughtered in the fields, 
 without all shadow of law or trial, or sentence, than 
 in all the former tyrant's reign ; who were murdered 
 without time given to deliberate upon death, or 
 space to conclude their prayers, but either in the 
 instant when they were praying shooting them to 
 death, or surprising them in their caves, and mur- 
 dering them there without any grant of prayer at 
 
 all."* 
 
 * " Hind let Loose," p. 200.
 
 272 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST 
 
 Doubtless, to Shields, the indulgence to prelatists, 
 erastians, and sectaries, was a principle no less un- 
 justifiable and intolerable than the persecution of 
 the chosen people. But if we had not ample con- 
 curring evidence of the persecuting disposition of 
 the author of the proclamations of indulgence, the 
 terms in which these documents were adapted to 
 Scotland contain internal condemnatory evidence, 
 justifying the suspicions of those who took his 
 offers of toleration for a treacherous device. The 
 Declaration of Liberty of Conscience, published in 
 Scotland, bore to be " by our sovereign authority 
 prerogative royal and absolute power, which all our 
 subjects are to observe without reserve ;" and it 
 contained this significant distinction : " We allow 
 and tolerate the moderate Presbyterians to meet in 
 their private houses, and there to hear all such 
 ministers as either have or are willing to accept of 
 our indulgence allenerly, and none other. It is 
 our royal will and pleasure that field-conventicles, 
 and such as preach or exercise at them, or shall 
 anywise assist or connive at them, shall be prose- 
 cuted according to the utmost severity of our laws ;" 
 — a qualification standing in lively contrast to the 
 ample and lauditory concessions made in the same 
 document to the Roman Catholics, who " shall in,
 
 THE COVENANTERS. 273 
 
 all things be as free in all respects as any of our 
 Protestant subjects whatsoever."* 
 
 It was impossible for so diabolical a system to 
 have been in active operation for more than a 
 quarter of a century, without leaving deep marks on 
 the national character. Those who can make them- 
 selves acquainted with men through the medium of 
 books, will see in the history of the troubles how a 
 frank, open, unsuspicious people became leavened 
 with that exclusive, sullen, spiritual self-sufficiency 
 which courted the fierce raillery of Burns, and occa- 
 sionally overshadows the advanced civilisation and 
 improved freedom of the nineteenth century. The 
 sectarianism of Scotland — the peculiar propensity 
 in each person to get within some narrow sheepfold, 
 where, seeking refuge for his own peculiar opinions, 
 he anathematises and excommunicates all the world 
 beyond — was the not unnatural fruit of the long 
 dreary sojourns among misty mountains, and the 
 lurking in caves, where the idola specus were the 
 reflecting man's sole companions.! The habits of 
 
 * Kennet's Hist., iii., 449. 
 
 t A characteristic little anecdote has been told, which may be 
 held to illustrate the spirit of sectarianism carried to its extreme 
 development. At the time when the Secession Church was 
 divided into the Burgher and Anti-Burgher communion, some 
 schoolboys are supposed to have got access to a Burgher meet- 
 ing-house, -where they amused themselves with the game of 
 hide-and-seek in the pews and pulpit. The beadle or officer, 
 dreading possible injury to the property, darts among the un- 
 
 VOL. II. T
 
 274 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST 
 
 thought and feeling so violently engrafted on the 
 moral constitution of a people, are not speedily era- 
 dicated. 
 
 But it was not merely on the religious bearing 
 and belief of the people that the long period ol 
 tyrannous anarchy produced its baneful influence. 
 Besides those who inflicted, and those who resisted 
 for conscience sake, the general confusion and the 
 relaxation of all social influences produced a class 
 who were neither led by religion nor by law, but 
 followed their own profligate will. The law taught 
 them that the Presbyterians and their clergy were 
 criminals; the Covenanters told them that the laws 
 were made by wicked men, who ought to be slain 
 rather than obeyed. The Episcopal clergy, and, 
 still more, those Presbyterians who accepted of the 
 partial indulgence, were thus marked off for the 
 insults and inflictions of a lawless and uneducated 
 rabble. " I have known," says Kirkton, " some 
 profane people, if they had committed an error at 
 night, thought affronting a curate to-morrow a 
 testimony of their repentance."* It is evident, too, 
 from the pages of Wodrow — though more is in- 
 dicated than told — that there was much worldly 
 
 suspicious urchins, and captures a prisoner. While he is de- 
 liberating how to deal with him, a voice comes from a fellow- 
 urchin of the opposite sect, to this effect, " Hit him hard, hit 
 him hard — his father's an Anti-Burgher." 
 * History of the Church of Scotland, p. 163.
 
 THE COVENANTERS. 275 
 
 wickedness among those who professed to be zealous 
 for the Covenant.* If there be truth in the terrible 
 picture which Fletcher of Saltoun gave of the 
 vagrancy and crime in Scotland in the reign of 
 King William, it must be attributed to the same 
 prolific source of social evil.f 
 
 * Take the following instance, which reminds one of Ireland 
 in later times : " Three foot-soldiers, of Captain Maitland's com- 
 pany, had been sent to quarter upon a countryman near 
 Lowdon-hill, because he had not paid the cess. They continued 
 there near ten days. The man in the house being sick, they were 
 not altogether so outrageous as many of their gang used to be. 
 The wife, or woman- servant, had, during that time, threatened 
 them that if they left not the house, they might come to repent 
 it ; but they were not much careful about that, and answered, 
 they came by orders, and behoved either to have their errand 
 or orders to go away. One of the three went down to Xewmills, 
 upon Saturday, and stayed all night; whether he was any way 
 conscious to the design, or only affrighted by the warning, was 
 not known. But upon Sabbath morning, April 20, five horse- 
 men, and about as many foot, came, about two o'clock in the 
 morning, and rudely knocked at the barn-door where the re- 
 maining two soldiers were lying. They taking it to be their 
 comrade come from Newmills, one of them rose in his shirt, 
 and opened the door. He was saluted with reproachful words, 
 ' Come out you damned rogues' and Avas shot through the body, and 
 fell down dead, without speaking one word. The other got up, 
 upon this, to put to the door, and received a shot in the thigh 
 from the same hand. The assassin alighted from his horse, and 
 came in upon the soldier, who grappled a little with him, till 
 another came up and knocked him down. He was perfectly 
 dammished with the stroke ; and when he recovered his senses, 
 he thought it convenient to lie still in the place as dead. The 
 murderers came into the barn, and took away the soldiers' arms 
 and clothes, and in a little went off." — Hist., b. iii., ch. i. 
 
 t He calculates the vagrants — certainly exaggerating — at 
 100,000; and his description of their character, however ap- 
 
 T 2
 
 276 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST 
 
 To the same cause may, in some measure, be at- 
 tributed the development of a political profligacy 
 so eccentric and incomprehensible as to baffle the 
 calculations of the most sagacious statesmen, and dis- 
 tract the theories of historical philosophers. Bodies 
 of men, influenced by irrational prejudices and ob- 
 durate enmities, were turned by designing and pro- 
 fligate leaders into political courses that seemed the 
 most unnatural and improbable ; and such factious 
 phenomena were developed, as that a zealous revo- 
 lutionist, who did not get the place he wanted, 
 might immediately be found at the head of the ultra- 
 Covenanters in a plot to restore the Pretender. 
 
 That incomprehensible, protean political in- 
 triguer, called Ferguson the Plotter, was an im- 
 mediate fruit of the penal laws against the Cove- 
 nanters.* He was one of their clergy, and was 
 
 palling, is supported by indications from other quarters. He 
 calls them " vagabonds, who have lived without any regard or 
 subjection either to the laws of the land, or even those of God and 
 Nature;" and says: " No magistrate could ever discover, or be 
 informed, which way one in a hundred of these wretches died, or 
 that ever they were baptized. Many murders have been disco- 
 vered among them ; and they are not only a most unspeakable 
 oppression to poor tenants — who, if they give not bread, or some 
 kind of provision, to perhaps forty such villains in one day, 
 are sure to be insulted by them, — but they rob many poor people 
 who live in houses distant from any neighbourhood." — Second 
 Discourse on the Affairs of Scotland. 
 
 * The author has had an opportunity of giving, elsewhere, 
 an account of this singular man.
 
 THE COVENANTERS. 277 
 
 indicted along with Spreul, an apothecary, for fight- 
 ing at Bothwell Bridge. Managing in some way to 
 evade the prosecution, he connected himself with 
 the projects for maintaining that Charles II. was 
 privately married to the mother of the Dul* of 
 Monmouth. It was he who cast an apparent stain 
 on the projects of Russell and Sydney, by framing 
 under their shadow the assassination-plot for the 
 murder of the king and the duke. He was Mon- 
 mouth's evil genius, almost dragging him to the 
 fatal field of Sedgemure. He plotted for the Prince 
 of Orange ; and wjien William was on the throne, 
 re-plotted for the Jacobites, in conjunction with his 
 old friends the Covenanters; and he was deeply 
 embarked in the Jacobite intrigues of Queen Anne's 
 reign. Few have, perhaps, so restlessly moved 
 every available engine of political mischief ; but he 
 was, after all, merely the representative of a reckless 
 spirit of political morality, inculcated on its children 
 by a government which, beginning in haughty 
 recklessness, both about the feelings and the wel- 
 fare of the people, became, by an almost insensible 
 transition, their scourge and curse.
 
 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST THE EPISCOPALIANS. 
 
 It will readily be inferred from the tone of the 
 declarations and testimonies of the persecuted Pres- 
 byterians, that when they got the upper hand, 
 Episcopacy would receive scant toleration from 
 them. From the adoption of the Covenant down 
 through the period of the civil wars, the great 
 leaders abjured " a lawless toleration;" and the 
 Scottish commissioners, assembled at London in 
 1645, alarmed by the growth of Independency, 
 emphatically protested thus : 
 
 " We detest and abhor the much- endeavoured 
 toleration. Our bowels are stirred within us, and 
 we could even drown ourselves in tears when we 
 call to mind how long and sharp a travail this king- 
 dom hath been in for many years together to bring 
 forth that blessed fruit of a pure and perfect Refor-
 
 THE EPISCOPALIANS. 279 
 
 mation; and now, at last, after all our pangs, and 
 dolours, and expectations, this real and thorough 
 Reformation is in danger of being strangled in the 
 birth by a lawless toleration that strives to be 
 brought forth before it." 
 
 Even the erudite Principal Baillie, a scholar and 
 a courtier, was equally clear. Among certain posi- 
 tions or first-principles for the guidance of himself 
 and his coadjutors, he sets down the following: 
 
 " That the Covenant of Scotland rejects abso- 
 lutely all kinds of Episcopacy ; that the Covenant 
 of the three kingdoms is expressly for rooting out 
 of all prelacy — not the tyranny alone of that office. 
 That the Royalists would be well content to keep 
 in any imaginable kind of Episcopacy, being as- 
 sured, in their own time, to break in pieces and 
 rend all the caveats we can put on it ; for it's neces- 
 sary to hold to that ground wherein all here does 
 agree, and to which the Royalists themselves are on 
 the point of yielding. That no Episcopacy here is 
 tolerable, as being a mere human invention without 
 the word of God, which, wherever it lodged, has 
 been a very unhappy guest. The total extirpation 
 of it would be applauded and congratulate without 
 any distractions or any reservations, or else nothing 
 would be spoke of that point."* To show how 
 
 * Baillie's Letters and Journals, ii., 253.
 
 280 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST 
 
 long this spirit lingered among the Presbyterian 
 community, we find the associate Presbytery, a 
 body whose present representatives profess high and 
 just notions of religious freedom, in their act renew- 
 ing the solemn league and Covenant in 1743, setting 
 down the following as among the causes of God's 
 wrath towards their country : 
 
 " Our iniquities and backslidings have increased 
 more and more; particularly when, by the treaty 
 of union with England, in the year 1707, we were 
 incorporated with our neighbours of England upon 
 terms opposite to, and inconsistent with, our Cove- 
 nant union with them ; in regard, the maintenance 
 of the hierarchy and ceremonies of the Church 
 of England is made, by the said treaty, a funda- 
 mental and essential article of the union of the two 
 kingdoms; and thus, with our own consent, the 
 antichristian hierarchy, and a superstitious worship 
 in England, have all the security that human laws 
 can give them ; whereby this whole nation hath 
 again, not only given openly up with their solemn 
 Covenant engagements to the Lord, but also in- 
 volved themselves in the guilt of consenting to, 
 and thereby approving of, the antichristian hie- 
 rarchy and superstitious worship in England. 
 
 " Further, a short time after the above incorporat- 
 ing union, particularly in the year 1712, an almost
 
 THE EPISCOPALIANS. 281 
 
 boundless toleration was granted, whereby a door 
 was opened to gross corruption in principle, which 
 always brings along with it looseness in practice; 
 and in consequence of this toleration, the super- 
 stitious and corrupt worship of the Church of Eng- 
 land is set up in all the corners of this land." 
 
 Thus a small sect, severing itself from the Esta- 
 blished Church of Scotland, denounces, among the 
 sins which have caused it to isolate itself in its own 
 purity, not only the toleration of Episcopal worship 
 in Scotland, but the acknowledgment of this anti- 
 christian system in the neighbouring country of 
 England. 
 
 From such a deep-rooted intolerance, spreading 
 over a century, one naturally expects, that after 
 such an event as the Revolution, when the pro- 
 fessors of such opinions have, after a bloody persecu- 
 tion, got the upper hand, there will be a bloody 
 retaliation. Many things, however, concurred to 
 soften the fall of Episcopacy. In the West country, 
 where " the wild Whigs" abounded, the offensive 
 clergy were " rabbled," as it was termed, and 
 driven forth with much indignity, but little abso- 
 lute cruelty. The spirit which the Presbyterian 
 party had called over from Holland was of a kind, 
 not, as they afterwards found, submissively to obey, 
 but calmly and firmly to rule them — to restrain
 
 282 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST 
 
 their domination, and moderate their ardour. 
 Among his early heterogeneous levies, William came 
 in contact with a deputation from the Established 
 Church of Scotland, such as Charles and James had 
 made it; but his discernment showed him, at once, 
 that he and they could have no cause in common. 
 Another deputation of a different kind waited upon 
 him, in the hope that he would aid them in " exter- 
 minating Episcopacy;" but extermination was not 
 a word in his vocabulary, and the zealots returned 
 home much mortified and a little angry. 
 
 The Revolution parliament immediately passed 
 " an act abolishing prelacy," and another "restor- 
 ing the Presbyterian ministers, who were thrust 
 from the churches since the first day of January, 
 1661." These provisions were followed by an act 
 " ratifying the confession of faith, and settling Pres- 
 byterian Church government," which re-appointed 
 the Confession as the fundamental charter of the 
 Established Church of Scotland, and gave authority 
 to the judicatories to " purge" the parish churches 
 and the universities of those who refused to conform 
 with the Presbyterian polity. The hierarchy was 
 thus effectually destroyed, and no one assumed 
 any ecclesiastical superiority over his fellow. The 
 bishops, refusing to conform to the new system, of 
 course lost their temporalities, and found it neces-
 
 THE EPISCOPALIANS. 283 
 
 sary to live in caution and obscurity, adopting 
 their rank only towards their few devoted adhe- 
 rents. Many of the clergy, like their nonjuring 
 brethren in England, and after a principle of reli- 
 gious heroism, which has been from time to time 
 exhibited by the clergy of every branch of the 
 Christian Church, quietly resigned themselves to 
 their lot. They performed their clerical duties for 
 those who required them, and lived thankfully on 
 such bounty as their adherents could afford to offer 
 them. 
 
 In Edinburgh, and probably in other parts of 
 southern Scotland, they gradually opened re- 
 tired, and almost secret places of worship. In 
 other parts of the country, however, particularly 
 in the Northern counties, the change was not so 
 immediate and striking. The bishops with their 
 seats in parliament, and the other Church dignitaries, 
 no longer existed, and the clergy were bound to take 
 the oaths to government, and ostensibly hold by the 
 discipline and polity of the Presbyterian Church. 
 When, however, as sometimes happened, all the 
 clergy and all the laity of a district w T ere disposed 
 to Episcopacy, it was impossible to enforce the new 
 system. There was no bishop with a seat in parlia- 
 ment over them, but the clergy were not less in 
 heart and general practice the same who had be-
 
 284 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST 
 
 longed to the diocese, though their parishes formed 
 parts of a Presbyterian synod and presbytery. It 
 served to render their recusancy less conspicuous, 
 that even when Episcopal the Church of Scotland 
 did not authorise the use of a liturgy, save in that 
 signal and alarming instance where the service-book 
 sent northwards by Laud and Wren produced, as 
 its reactionary fruit, the national Covenant. 
 
 Thus, through a great portion of Scotland north 
 of the Forth and Clyde, the clergy remained 
 immovable and unchanged. In any attempt to 
 force on them the government oaths, there was an 
 awkwardness from this, that the more zealous part 
 of the Presbyterians refused to take them. A still 
 more zealous portion had at once cast off the Esta- 
 blishment as a filthy rag. When they saw that 
 there was actually a government in the land, 
 which, though it professed to leave the Church 
 undisputed master of the spiritual Held, yet kept 
 it within its own bounds, and would not permit it 
 to dictate what these bounds should be, they at 
 once abjured such miserable erastianism. These 
 were the "hill men," as they were termed — the 
 Cameronians and other intense bigots, into whose 
 souls the iron of persecution had entered along with 
 stubborn spiritual pride and intolerance. They had 
 been the real sufferers, and when the crown seemed
 
 THE EPISCOPALIANS. 285 
 
 to be within their grasp, it was the sic vos twn vobis; 
 and careful self-seekers, who had not borne the 
 burden and heat of the day, were set in their place. 
 Exciting themselves to a higher and higher pitch of 
 discontent and unreasonableness, a portion of these 
 intractable fanatics leagued themselves with the 
 Jacobites to overturn the Revolution settlement. 
 Others, a degree less unreasonable, took the bene- 
 fices open to them in the Established Church, but 
 soon began to spurn at the parliamentary imposi- 
 tion of oaths, and in fact formed a large portion of 
 the Church, who would not, it was clear, submit to 
 them. This gave a hold to the remnant of the 
 Episcopal clergy in the North, who were externally 
 precisely in the same position — both were nonju- 
 rants. 
 
 On one occasion, at least, there was an early 
 attempt made by the Episcopalians of the nature of 
 synodical action in competition with the judicatories 
 of the Established Church. A committee had been 
 appointed by the General Assembly to proceed to 
 the North, and enforce adherence to the confession 
 of faith. They met at Aberdeen, the stronghold of 
 Episcopacy. In the year 1694, there was held, in 
 King's College, a meeting " of the ministers of the 
 diocese of Aberdeen, together with delegates from 
 the dioceses of Murray, Ross, Caithness, and Ork-
 
 286 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST 
 
 ney." They appointed some of their members to 
 meet the committee of the assembly, and " present 
 to them some queries or proposals concerted by them 
 at their said meeting, relating to the ecclesiastic au- 
 thority and jurisdiction of the said committee, and 
 to demand answers and resolutions thereunto." The 
 committee of course declined to answer queries which, 
 as they said, " strike at the root of Presbyterian go- 
 vernment, and the present establishment thereof;" 
 and the Episcopal clergy, on their part, find, that 
 "for maintaining the liberties of the national Church, 
 and for many other reasons moving us thereto, 
 which we are resolved in due time to publish to 
 the world, we find ourselves obliged unanimously 
 to testify against the pretended ecclesiastic authority 
 of this committee, and to protest against all their 
 proceedings in the character of an ecclesiastic judi- 
 catory, and to appeal to their Majesties King 
 William and Queen Mary, as supreme judges, 
 under God, within these dominions, and to the 
 next lawfully-constitute and orderly called General 
 Assembly of this national Church."* 
 
 A very wise measure was passed in 1695, mak- 
 ing an inclined plane to let the remaining Episcopal 
 clergy slide into the Presbyterian Establishment. 
 
 * The Queries and Protestation of the Scot6 Episcopal Clergy, 
 &c., by a Layman of the Church of Scotland. London, 1694.
 
 THE EPISCOPALIANS. 287 
 
 Those of them who had retained their benefices, 
 were permitted to remain in them provided they 
 took the oaths. They were not to license or ordain 
 successors, or perform any other tmt strictly pastoral 
 functions. But, on the other hand, they were not 
 bound, unless they thought fit, to become members 
 of the Presbyterian judicatories. Such an act was, 
 no doubt, far more efficacious in dissolving the 
 remains of the old Episcopal Establishment than the 
 penal statutes. Still, a considerable portion of the 
 old body beheld the accession of Queen Anne. 
 
 The privy council of Scotland, in the last few 
 years of its existence, was troubled with applica- 
 tions from the Presbyterian Church courts to expel 
 the " intruders," as the Episcopal remnant were 
 termed ; and the latest of the solemn acts on this 
 point bears date on the 20th March, 1706, and fol- 
 lows, in the minute-book, the appointment of a com- 
 mission to treat of the union. It is levelled against 
 persons having no authority from or within the 
 Church, " but pretending warrant from the late 
 exauctorate bishops." It states, that they get pos- 
 session of the keys of the parish churches, and make 
 use of them for their illegal purpose ; and when pro- 
 ceedings are carried against them in the civil courts, 
 " they do either remove only to the border of the 
 neighbouring parish, and there continue their func-
 
 288 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST 
 
 tions, or boldly proceed as if no sentence had passed 
 on them." The sheriffs of counties are directed to aid 
 in the suppression of these disorders, and especially, 
 where the keys of churches are illegally detained, 
 to cause new ones to be made. The " exauctorate 
 bishops" are, at the same time, "discharged" to 
 grant any warrant or licence, " as they will be re- 
 sponsible upon their highest peril." Many pic- 
 turesque accounts might be given of the resistance 
 of the peasantry, in Episcopalian districts, to the 
 efforts of the ecclesiastical authorities— not always 
 very heartily seconded by the judicial — to enforce 
 the supremacy which the state had conferred on the 
 Presbyterian Church; but they do not properly 
 belong to the present occasion. North of the Gram- 
 pians, there were Episcopalian ministers still hold- 
 ing their benefices at the accession of George I. 
 
 In the southern districts of Scotland, where Pres- 
 by terianism and Revolution sentiments were beyond 
 all question supreme, the nonjurors remained quiet 
 and cautious during the reign of King William. 
 Their entire severance, however, from all concern 
 in the passing interests of the age — their political 
 extinction — taught them to associate all their future 
 plans and hopes with the fall of the Revolution 
 settlement, and the restoration of the Stuart 
 dynasty. Before the end of William's reign, suf-
 
 THE EPISCOPALIANS. 289 
 
 ficient time had elapsed to make this a fixed sen- 
 timent, and Jacobitism was almost a creed of 
 Scottish Episcopacy. This distinctly antagonistic 
 position was somewhat modified by the accession 
 of Queen Anne. The one absorbing sentiment of 
 the queen's narrow intellect was devotion to the 
 Church of England, as the only true Church. 
 Would she not, therefore, surely look with an eye 
 of pity on the impoverished and struggling mem- 
 bers of the same family in the North ? — such were 
 their natural expectations. Then, on the other 
 hand, was she not a Stuart, who deserved their 
 good-will and amity, if she could not command 
 their entire loyalty? 
 
 The epoch seemed propitious to the humbled 
 priesthood, who began gradually to emerge from 
 their hiding-holes into the open day. Their restora- 
 tion to light was accompanied by a new feature. 
 It was deemed well to strengthen all the external 
 marks of alliance with the Church of England, not 
 only for the sake of the protection of that powerful 
 body itself, but to propitiate the queen. Thus the 
 English liturgy was introduced into a few of the 
 churches. Some people received this change as 
 indicative of loyalty, since it was a departure from 
 the ways of the Scottish Jacobite Episcopalian 
 Church, and an adoption of the forms of the loyal 
 VOL. II. U
 
 290 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST 
 
 Church of England. The Presbyterian ministers, 
 however, looked on the new ceremonial with strong 
 disfavour, as a step towards Popish idolatry. They 
 watched the nature of these rites, and observed that 
 the clergy who performed them either omitted 
 praying for the queen, or did so in an equi- 
 vocal and suspicious manner. When the nego- 
 tiations of Hook brought Admiral Forbin to the 
 Frith of Forth, to support the Jacobites, they 
 thought they saw an appearance of extreme exul- 
 tation and insolence in the aspect of the nonjuring 
 clergy. 
 
 Towards the end of February, 1707, the Scottish 
 privy council, drawing towards the conclusion of 
 its existence, received an injunction from White- 
 hall to see to the security of the kingdom, and 
 the preservation of the public peace. The council, 
 in their deliberations, found, that in order to accom- 
 plish this, it was necessary to suppress the public 
 meetings of those who, under pretence of divine 
 worship, invited such ministers to officiate as the 
 law had prohibited — not having qualified them- 
 selves by taking the oaths, praying for the queen, 
 &c. ; and instructions were issued to proceed against 
 offenders. 
 
 Acting under these instructions, the procurator- 
 fiscal of the city of Edinburgh brought a libel, or
 
 THE EPISCOPALIANS. 291 
 
 accusation, against eighteen Episcopal clergymen, 
 who, " shaking off all fear of God, and regard to 
 her majesty's authority and laws, or to the public 
 peace and security of the country," preached pub- 
 licly without praying for her majesty, or taking the 
 oaths, " whereby they manifestly discover their dis- 
 affection to her majesty's government, and do what 
 in them lies by such practices, jn not regarding or 
 observing public fasts and thanksgivings, to keep 
 up a wicked faction against her majesty's govern- 
 ment and the peace and security thereof." When 
 brought before the magistrates on this charge, they 
 started some technical objections to the form of pro- 
 cedure. They then pleaded, that the statute re- 
 quired them to pray for King William and Queen 
 Mary, as king and queen of this realm, "of which 
 act we are libelled as contraveners, because we do 
 not, as is alleged, pray for her Majesty Queen Anne. 
 It is answered — first, that the persons for whom 
 public prayers are ordered by the said act to be 
 made, are dead, and the act must die with them 
 in consequence. Second, it is invidious for our 
 pursuer to bring our prayers into the accusation, 
 seeing he cannot allege against us any words or 
 expressions that bewray contempt of authority or 
 disrespect to their persons. We pray for the whole 
 royal family. We are none of those who despise 
 
 u 2
 
 292 PEOCEEDINGS AGAINST 
 
 dominions, or speak evil of dignities; and, therefore, 
 cannot conceive upon what ground this part of the 
 accusation against us is founded; especially, seeing 
 there is no form of prayer, in relation to this par- 
 ticular, imposed by any law; and where there is no 
 law, there can be no transgression." On the matter 
 of the oath, they pleaded that it was only intended 
 to apply to clergymen, as lucrative public officers, 
 and ought not to include those who enjoyed no 
 benefices. 
 
 The sentence of the magistrates was, that the ac- 
 cused were " to desist from keeping of any meeting- 
 houses within the city of Edinburgh, &c, and from 
 preaching or exercising any part of the ministerial 
 function within the same, in all time coming, under 
 the pain of imprisonment." One of them, having 
 made some remarks construed " to import his great 
 contempt to the queen and her authority," was 
 forthwith imprisoned. This occurred in March; 
 and in June, 1708, the municipal authorities were 
 again roused to action, by being informed that their 
 prohibition was disregarded. In some instances, 
 the city guard were placed at the doors of the places 
 of worship to prohibit entrance; but, partly in 
 meeting-houses, partly in their own dwellings, 
 these nonjuring clergy still performed their func- 
 tions. Unwilling, apparently, to drive matters to
 
 THE EPISCOPALIANS. 293 
 
 extremity, the provost of the town desired to have 
 a meeting with them. They were asked if they 
 would undertake to abandon the performance of 
 their functions, "to which they all unanimously 
 made answer, that it w r as a demand with which 
 they could not comply, and that they would not 
 bind themselves up from doing the duties of their 
 calling in any part of the Christian world." They 
 stated, that they were bound " to obey God rather 
 than man" — probably the very text which the 
 magistrate himself was thinking of when he deter- 
 mined to suppress their prelatic preaching. On the 
 17th of July, a portion of them were committed to 
 prison, there to remain until they should comply 
 with the injunction against them.* It is stated by 
 De Foe, that after the danger from a French in- 
 vasion, united with a Jacobite rising, had passed 
 away, the Presbyterian citizens of Edinburgh were 
 disposed to good-humour; and that those of the im- 
 prisoned Episcopalians who yet held out against 
 compliance, were permitted to leave their prison. 
 A new element, however, was now brought into 
 the dispute. As the union was held to fuse the 
 whole empire together, there was supposed to be 
 
 * A Narrative of the late Treatment of the Episcopal 
 Ministers within the City of Edinburgh, since March last, 1708* 
 London.
 
 294 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST 
 
 nothing to prevent the clergy of the Church of 
 England and Ireland from officiating in Scotland. 
 It appears, that some Episcopalian citizens of Edin- 
 burgh believed that in this manner they might 
 meet all the difficulties of their position. It was 
 said, casually, that as there were some official people 
 connected with the revenue, and other government 
 departments, who had now come from England to 
 reside in Scotland, and it was natural that now 
 many inhabitants of England would come north- 
 ward, while Scotsmen went southward, — it was fair 
 that the English should be permitted to follow their 
 religious observances in peace, under their own 
 clergy. If the English inhabitants of Edinburgh, 
 or any other Scottish town, had liberty to attend a 
 place of worship so ministered to, of course native 
 Scotsmen could do so likewise. Arrangements 
 were accordingly adopted to procure the services of 
 a clergyman from England or Ireland. 
 
 It might naturally be supposed that the introduc- 
 tion of the English liturgy accompanied this pro- 
 ject; but it appears to have been used, occasionally, 
 before the union. It was now, however, that it 
 came chiefly under general notice ; and while the 
 popular passions excited by the union were still alive, 
 the project of introducing an English clergyman, 
 with his English service, was viewed as the com-
 
 THE EPISCOPALIANS. 295 
 
 mcncement of a series of national humiliations, which 
 would end in the subjection of the Scottish people 
 to the English Church and the English laws. Nor 
 did it by any means tend to reconcile them to the 
 innovation, that just as the parliament and privy 
 council — the badges of national independence, had 
 been removed, a set of harpies of revenue-officers, 
 who knew not the national customs, and performed 
 their functions with the insulting rigidity of foreign 
 invaders, had swarmed into Scotland, and were the 
 very individuals for whom the " innovations in wor- 
 ship," as they came to be called, were provided. 
 It seemed as if the prophecy of the fiery Lord Bel- 
 haven, still ringing in their ears — predicting the 
 downfal of all their fondly-cherished institutions, 
 with their " national Church, founded upon a rock, 
 secured by a claim of right, hedged and fenced 
 about by the strictest and pointedest legal sanctions 
 that sovereignty could contrive," — were about to be 
 fulfilled. 
 
 It is probable that a clergyman originally ordained 
 for the English Church, might have for various 
 reasons been reluctant to hold so troublesome an 
 appointment. The person on whom it fell was a 
 certain James Greensliields, who had been or- 
 dained, in 1694, by a Scottish bishop, but who 
 had officiated as a curate in Ireland, and came
 
 296 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST 
 
 from that country accredited by the Archbishop of 
 Dublin. 
 
 The method of proceeding first adopted against 
 Greenshields was certainly one of the oddest ever 
 devised for accomplishing an ecclesiastical victory. 
 The dean of guild being an officer who has authority 
 in questions about the destruction or perversion of 
 edifices, proceedings were raised in his court, pro- 
 fessedly at the instance of the landlord from whom 
 Greenshields had hired his meeting-house. It was 
 set forth, that " the petitioner having set a dwelling- 
 house, in Stewart's-court, to Mr. James Greenshields, 
 preacher of the Gospel, at the agreed rent of six 
 pounds sterling; and true it was, that the said peti- 
 tioner did set the same allenarly for a dwelling-house 
 for the accommodation of the said Mr. Greenshields, 
 and his wife, and seven children, which he, at 
 taking, told he had to possess the same, &c. ; yet 
 notwithstanding whereof, as the petitioner was in- 
 formed, the said Mr. Greenshields has not only, to 
 the petitioner's great hurt and prejudice, inverted 
 the order of his said house, by removing the parti- 
 tions thereof, though fixed both to the top and floor, 
 but also, to the prejudice of the petitioner's other 
 houses, he set up a public meeting in the said house, 
 whereby, and by the down-taking of the partitions, 
 the house itself and hail land was thereby in great
 
 THE EPISCOPALIANS. 297 
 
 danger, and the hail other tenants did threaten to 
 remove, unless the said meeting be shut up." The 
 proceedings further bear, that " the dean of guild 
 and his council having visited the house above 
 mentioned, they found, and hereby find, that the 
 partition being removed, and new seats and a pulpit 
 put up therein, contrary to the agreement with the 
 petitioner, they ordained the seats presently to be 
 removed, and the partitions put up, and the house 
 to be put in the condition it was formerly." 
 
 This impediment was easily overcome, and Mr. 
 Greenshields, with somewhat increasing popularity 
 within his limited circle, procured accommodation 
 elsewhere. There were no means of proceeding against 
 Greenshields under the statutes, for he had qualified, 
 and duly prayed for the queen and the Princess 
 Sophia. Whatever proceedings were directly taken 
 against him, it was found, must be, in the first place, 
 ecclesiastical. By way of initiative, a petition to the 
 commission of the General Assembly was prepared, 
 and in a few hours signed by several hundreds of 
 the citizens. The petitioners said : "To our very 
 great surprise, several of the Episcopal clergy, 
 prompted and instigated thereunto by the Jacobite 
 party, who are equally disaffected to the civil as to 
 the ecclesiastic constitution, have of late not only 
 erected meeting-houses in this city, after the Scots
 
 298 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST 
 
 Episcopal way, but also, in several places here, have 
 set up the English service, which, as it is contrary 
 to our Establishment, and very grievous and offensive 
 to us and all others who are well-affected to her 
 majesty and the present Establishment, so it will 
 prove of fatal and dangerous consequence to the 
 Church, if not speedily remedied." 
 
 The commission of the General Assembly sits for 
 performance of those functions which it is autho- 
 rised to undertake by the Assembly, during the 
 long interval between the annual sessions of that 
 body. The preceding Assembly had, according to 
 uniform practice, left an instruction " that the com- 
 mission, as often as they shall see cause, apply to 
 the government, or any magistrate, for their counte- 
 nancing or concurring with the judicatories of the 
 Church in what the law allows, and for putting in 
 execution of the laws against Popery and profane- 
 ness, and seeking redress of grievances, abuses, and 
 disorders committed contrary to the established 
 doctrine, worship, discipline, and Presbyterian go- 
 vernment of this Church." 
 
 On this instruction, the commission directed the 
 presbytery to proceed against Greenshields. They 
 served an order on him to attend, " to give an ac- 
 count of yourself; you being a stranger here, and 
 presuming, at your own hand, without the autho-
 
 THE EPISCOPALIANS. 299 
 
 rity of any judicatory, to exercise the office of the 
 holy ministry publicly upon the Lord's-day, and 
 convening people to hear you." The manner in 
 which, according to the record of proceedings, he 
 met the charge was, that being a clergyman of the 
 Church of England, he was desirous, as such, to 
 officiate to those of the same persuasion. " And 
 since, by the union of the two kingdoms," he con- 
 tinued, "I do believe that the Episcopal Church of 
 Scotland is now incorporate with the Church of 
 England, and that, though Presbytery is the legal 
 Establishment of North Britain, yet I find that 
 there is no law against those of the. communion of 
 the Church of England to exercise their worship in 
 a private manner, and without intruding into any 
 church or glebe of any minister established by law ; 
 and therefore I do not think myself subject or liable 
 to any censure of any ecclesiastical judicatory in 
 North Britain, but only in so far as to give an ac- 
 count that I am lawfully-ordained minister, and free 
 of any scandal that may incapacitate me for such an 
 undertaking." 
 
 The result was, that the presbytery " do find 
 that the said Mr. Greenshields has, in high con- 
 tempt of this Church Establishment by law, declined 
 their authority ; that he has exercised the ministry
 
 300 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST 
 
 within the bounds of this presbytery, without their 
 allowance, which is an unwarrantable intrusion ; 
 and introduced a form of worship contrary to the 
 purity and uniformity of the worship of this Church, 
 established by law. Wherefore, the presbytery did, 
 and hereby do, unanimously prohibit and discharge 
 the said Mr. Greenshields to exercise any part of 
 the office of the holy ministry within their bounds, 
 and recommend the magistrates of Edinburgh, and 
 other judges competent, to render this sentence 
 effectual." 
 
 The presbytery transmitted their proceedings to 
 the magistrates, who summoned Greenshields before 
 them. They sanctioned the order of the presbytery, 
 and dismissed him with the warning, that if he dis- 
 obeyed it, he would be imprisoned. Afterwards, 
 there was an " application made by the neighbour- 
 hood to the magistrates, and information given 
 that, notwithstanding of the presbytery's sentence, 
 the said Mr. James Greenshields had continued in 
 exercising the ministerial function within the city of 
 Edinburgh, in his meeting-house." As he did not 
 deny the charge, he was at last ordained " to go to 
 the prison and Tolbooth of this city, therein to re- 
 main, ay, and till he find caution that he should 
 desist from the exercise of his ministry within this
 
 THE EPISCOPALIANS. 301 
 
 city, liberty, or privileges, in all time coming, or else 
 that he should remove himself therefrom."* 
 
 This being a decision by a civil court, Green- 
 shields sought redress in the court of session. The 
 proceedings had naturally roused the spirit of the 
 friends of Episcopacy, who were previously luke- 
 warm; and he was well backed. The obscure 
 clergyman, occupying a place of worship in a dark 
 alley for 61. a year, became, as generally happens in 
 such matters, a power in the state ; and people 
 looked with eager anxiety at the judicial battle. 
 The cause had one bitter enemy on the bench, in 
 the person of the well-known Lord Grange, who 
 had just been appointed a judge, and who had 
 his own designs to accomplish, by doing the will of 
 the more exclusive party in the Church of Scot- 
 land, f 
 
 * The case of Mr. Greenshields, 1710. 
 
 t Lord Grange was one of those vile, but fortunately rare 
 characters, a perfect hypocrite, who led two distinct lives, the 
 one immersed in the blackest vices, the other whitewashed with 
 a thin covering of the purest piety. He joined, with extreme 
 mystery and secrecy, in the hideous debauches of Lovat, and 
 the other profligates of the day? hatching Jacobite plots with 
 them, while he publicly professed the strongest Hanoverian 
 and Presbyterian principles. The tragic romance acted by 
 him towards his wretched wife, is well known. It is, perhaps, 
 not quite so well known, that he attempted to kidnap his sister- 
 in-lawj Lady Mar ; but, when carrying her across the Border into 
 Scotland, he was pounced on by her sister, the Lady Wortley 
 Montague, who, armed with a King's Bench warrant, snatched
 
 302 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST 
 
 The presbytery and the magistrates had acted 
 with little more guidance than their convictions 
 and prejudices. In the court of session, it was neces- 
 sary to look deeper into the legal warrants for such 
 
 the prey from his grasp. His object in seizing on the weak 
 woman, who fortunately had a no less scrupulous protector, was 
 purely mercenary. (See this incident brought out in Black- 
 wood's Magazine, for September, 1849.) Such deep duplicity 
 could not pass unquestioned before men of the world, and despite 
 his utmost art, people shunned Lord Grange, and shook their 
 heads. To honest zealots like Wodrow, however, his ultra- 
 religious enthusiasm was a sufficient passport ; and the histo- 
 rian's note-book is filled with Avondrous relations of the apostolic 
 piety of the venerated judge. Thus, in relation to a barber's 
 boy : " It pleased the Lord, as a great mercy to James Nesbit, to 
 incline his nephew to a liking to what is good and serious, and 
 my Lord Grange was the occasion of it, in some words dropped 
 from him when the boy was shaving him." We have the fol- 
 lowing curious account of this virtuous man's attempt to sup- 
 press the circulating library established by Allan Eamsay the 
 poet: " Eamsay has a book in bis shop, wherein all the names 
 of those that borrow his plays and books for 2d. a night, or some 
 such rate, are set down, and by these, wickedness of all kinds 
 are dreadfully propagate among the youth of all sorts. My 
 informer, my Lord Grange, tells me, he complained to the ma- 
 gistrates of this, and they scrupled at meddling with it, till he 
 moved that his book of borrowers should be inspected, which 
 was done, and they were alarmed at it, and sent some of their 
 number to his shop, to look through some of his books ; but he 
 had notice an hour before, andliad Avithdrawn a great many of 
 the worst, and nothing was done to purpose. This, with the 
 plays and interludes come down from England this winter, 
 dreadfully spreads all abominations, and profaneness, and lewd- 
 ness." — Analecta, iv., 516. Lord Grange's brother, the Jaco- 
 bite Earl of Mar, appears to have been a man of the same 
 insincere and treacherous character, but, working in a different 
 sphere, it took another shape.
 
 THE EPISCOPALIANS. 303 
 
 proceedings. Greenshields maintained, that even 
 independently of his position as holding letters in 
 the Church of England, he came under the act 
 of 1695, which protected the clergy who took 
 the oaths, even though they should not come 
 within the scope of the Presbyterian polity. But 
 he was met by the plea, that his ordination had 
 been made by one of the " exauctorate " bishops; 
 and the very law on which he founded, prohibited 
 acts of clerical succession by those whom it tole- 
 rated. " And it is a vain imagination to think a 
 deposed bishop retains the power to ordain, for 
 that were to perpetuate the schism; and the non- 
 jurant bishops in England do not so much as pre- 
 tend to it ; so that this volunteer is truly no Church- 
 man at all, but a pure layman; and the consoli- 
 dation with England is a sophistical notion, the 
 union establishing the Presbyterians; and no other 
 set of a Church has a legal being and existence here, 
 but them only ; and there needs no law condemning 
 the English service, for the introducing of the 
 Presbyterian worship explodes it as inconsistent." 
 "Some alleged," says the same authority, "the 
 want of a prohibitory law was not warrant enough; 
 for if a Mahometan mufti should set up to teach 
 the Alcoran in Edinburgh, it would be no excuse 
 to him to say there is no law in Scotland against
 
 304 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST 
 
 the Alcoran: others thought this comparison too 
 wide."* The views of Grange, who was probably 
 the author of the too-wide comparison, prevailed, 
 and twice the court solemnly decided in favour of 
 the presbytery, and in support of the imprisonment. 
 Greenshields entered an appeal from the decision 
 of the court of session to the House of Lords. 
 Great changes, tending to favour his cause, had 
 taken place before it was finally heard. When first 
 brought in, we are told, that the House was too much 
 occupied with the impeachment of Sacheverell to 
 attend to it. Before it came on for judgment, the 
 political wheel of fortune had turned. Sacheverell 
 had made his triumphant procession ; Mrs. Ma- 
 sham had driven away Sarah Jennings ; Marl- 
 borough was checked in his career of victory; the 
 treaty of Utrecht was projected, and Harley and 
 St. John were masters of the cabinet. It was 
 not to be supposed that the party which had be- 
 come predominant, would permit a poor brother 
 to wither in a Scottish gaol for supporting their 
 principles and pretensions. 
 
 It appears, however, that even Harley was an- 
 noyed that such an incidental matter should occur 
 to add to the causes of irritation in the Presbyterian 
 party. " I answered," says Lockhart, the Jacobite 
 * FountainhalTs Decisions, ii., 523, 549.
 
 THE EPISCOPALIANS. 305 
 
 leader, " that I could assure him we were much 
 mistaken, if any bad consequences happened from 
 supporting Mr. Greenshields in his just plea, for the 
 contrary was designed by those who pushed it. 
 That the Scots Presbyterians were as much ex- 
 asperate already as they could be, and had neither 
 ability nor courage to give any disturbance; for 
 their interest in the country was very small, as suf- 
 ficiently appeared from the great majority of Tories 
 in this parliament, which he knew was not owing 
 to any assistance they got from the court, but 
 arose wholly from the inclinations of the people. 
 That as for himself (Harley), he had no reason to 
 show them any favour, for they preached and 
 prayed against him — nominatim, giving him over 
 to the gallows and the devil from their pulpits ; and 
 I was confident — at least, hopeful, he would never 
 give them reason to have a better opinion of him."* 
 
 Appeals from the court of session to the British 
 House of Lords were just beginning to come into 
 practice ; and it is probable that such a case as the 
 present, showing the necessity of some protection 
 against local prejudice and oppression, tended to 
 give support to the partially- developed system. It 
 was long ere it came to be the exclusive function of 
 the law lords in the House to decide on these appeals 
 * Lockhart Papers, i., 347. 
 
 VOL. II. X
 
 306 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST 
 
 from the courts below; and we have some curious 
 insight into the influence brought to bear on this 
 branch of the administration of justice in its infancy. 
 Lockhart states, that the Scottish members of the 
 Commons subscribed freely to enable Greenshields to 
 conduct his case. " And when the day prefixed for 
 discussing the appeal drew near, they divided them- 
 selves into several classes, to each of which was as- 
 signed a certain number of English lords, on whom 
 they waited, and gave a true and clear representa- 
 tion of the case, which had so much weight, and 
 produced such good effects, that the underhand 
 dealings of the ministry were entirely baffled."* On 
 the 1st of March, 1711, it was ordered that the 
 sentence of the magistrates, and the decree of the 
 court of session, be reversed. 
 
 Nearly at the same time, the Toleration Act of 
 1711 was passed, " to prevent the disturbing those 
 of the Episcopal communion in that part of Great 
 Britain called Scotland, in the exercise of their 
 religious worship, and the use of the liturgy of 
 the Church of England." In two or three instances 
 — chiefly in Glasgow — the Episcopal places of 
 worship, where the English liturgy was used, had 
 been attacked by mobs; and the local magistrates 
 had refused them protection. The Church, in 
 * Lockhart Papers, i., 348.
 
 THE EPISCOPALIANS. 307 
 
 England so powerful, was thus threatened by the 
 rabble on the one hand, and the law on the other. 
 It is observable in this act, that the clerical qualifica- 
 tion necessary to the persons whom it protects is, 
 that they " shall have received holy orders from the 
 hands of a Protestant bishop;" it is not required 
 that he should be a bishop of the Church of Eng- 
 land. They required to produce their letters of 
 orders to the justices at quarter sessions, to be 
 recorded, and to take the oaths of allegiance and 
 abjuration.* The act contained a provision which 
 became equally a stumbling-block to the Jacobites, 
 and the more zealous of the Presbyterians — that 
 every clergyman, whether of the Established 
 Church or the protected Episcopal communion, 
 must, on each occasion of divine service, " pray, in 
 express words, for her Most Sacred Majesty Queen 
 Anne, and the Most Excellent Princess Sophia." 
 
 The rebellion of 1715 developed the strong Ja- 
 cobite spirit which had been curdling in the Epis- 
 copalian Church, and the pacification was followed 
 by a crop of prosecutions for the penalties leviable 
 under the act. They were preceded by a letter, 
 under the sign-manual, to the Court of Justiciary, 
 
 * 10th Anne, c. 7. One of the rubrics of the act charac- 
 teristically bears " This act shall not give any ease, &c, to 
 Papists." 
 
 X 2
 
 308 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST 
 
 referring to the existence of meeting-houses, where 
 service was performed without prayers for the king 
 and royal family ; and requiring the court " to give 
 strict orders for shutting up all such meeting- 
 houses." The court sent, in answer, their humble 
 opinion that their forms did not allow such summary 
 procedure, till after trial and conviction by due 
 course of law ; but the royal letter so stimulated the 
 prosecutions, that twenty-five Episcopal clergymen 
 in Edinburgh were brought to the bar at once, on 
 the 11th of June, 1716. One of them, named Cock- 
 burn, was exempted from the proceedings on pro- 
 ducing his certificate of letters of orders from one 
 of the " exauctorate " Scottish bishops; twenty- 
 one of them were subjected to the statutory penalty 
 of 20/. By the literal words of the act, the penalty 
 was leviable only for omission of prayers for Queen 
 Anne, in whose reign it passed ; and Mr. Arnot — 
 himself a lawyer — calls the sentence " palpably 
 illegal ; for, as this penal statute annexed the pe- 
 nalty of 20/. to the not praying for Queen Anne 
 tvhile living, it was repugnant to every rule of law, 
 to every principle of liberty, to extend the penalty 
 to the not praying for King George after she was 
 dead. 1 '* 
 
 * Criminal Trials, p. 388. The indictment mentions an order 
 in council to pray for King George ; but, of course, if Mr.
 
 THE EPISCOPALIANS. 309 
 
 But in the indictment against them, their offence 
 was almost made one of commission as well as 
 omission, for " pretending to use the liturgy of the 
 Church of England, in virtue of the Act of Tolera- 
 tion, each of them in the day foresaid, or one or 
 other of them, in their respective meeting-houses, 
 wherein they did officiate as pastors, wilfully and 
 contemptuously omitted every prayer, petition, or 
 part of the said liturgy and service of the Church of 
 England, where his majesty's name, or the names of 
 their Royal Highnesses the Prince and Princess of 
 Wales, &c, are by authority expressly apppointed 
 to be named or mentioned ; and in place thereof, 
 made use of certain general and equivocal words, to 
 the dishonour of God and true piety, and contrary 
 to their profession of following and making use of 
 the liturgy of the Church of England, and duty, of 
 praying for his majesty as supreme Christian magis- 
 trate, manifestly in contempt of his authority, and 
 tending to excite sedition, and alienate the affection 
 of his people from his majesty's person and govern- 
 ment, stirring up thereby his subjects to misliking 
 seditious unquietness, and to cast off their obedience 
 
 Arnot's very literal view of the statute be right, this would 
 not enlarge its operation. Mr. Arnot seems to think it was an 
 act of personal meanness for the lord-advocate, or public pro- 
 secutor, to pursue for the informer's half of the penalty.
 
 310 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST 
 
 to his majesty, to their evident peril, tinsel, and 
 destruction." * 
 
 On the 4th of March, 1717, they were again 
 brought to the bar on a similar charge, " indecent 
 and unpastorial " being added to the terms of re- 
 proach which the indictment heaped on them. But 
 there was a more serious new feature in this prose- 
 cution. One of the prosecuted clergymen had, as we 
 have seen, been released on producing a certificate 
 of ordination by a Scottish bishop. A resolution 
 seemed now to be formed to question the legality of 
 such orders. It was stated in the subsequent proceed- 
 ings, that in the earlier stage the illegal source of the 
 orders had been overlooked, the court having merely 
 turned its attention to the statutory certificate from 
 the quarter sessions, that letters of orders from a 
 Protestant bishop had been produced. In the new 
 indictment it was set forth, that the accused had 
 received orders from persons calling themselves 
 bishops in Scotland, which were illegal, " pretended 
 orders from pretended bishops," as they were termed. 
 The crown, however, did not press for a verdict on 
 this point, as the accused were found guilty of the 
 omissions to pray for the king. It was, evidently, 
 now in contemplation to extinguish this dangerous 
 Jacobitical Scottish Episcopacy, and get its ad- 
 * Books of Adjournal, MS.
 
 THE EPISCOPALIANS. 311 
 
 herents, partly by force, partly by coaxing, attached 
 in some form to the Church of England. In an act, 
 however, passed in 1719, for fixing more distinctly 
 the terms in which the Episcopal clergy were to 
 take out their licences, and pray for the royal family, 
 there was no provision for accomplishing the pro- 
 posed end, which appears to have been suspended 
 until the government received new provocation. 
 
 For some years the Episcopal clergy seem to have 
 been left in comparative peace. An agreeable fea- 
 ture in the history of the times is the absence of 
 any cruel popular outbreaks against them. In the 
 West country, where the spirit of the more obdurate 
 Covenanters still lingered, there was a faint, but only 
 a faint, indication of popular restlessness. Wodrow 
 mentions the concurrence of two moral phenomena in 
 the year 1728 : " Two things happen pretty singular, 
 which twenty or thirty years ago would have been 
 very odd in Glasgow — the setting up of an Episcopa- 
 lian meeting-house, and public allowing of comedies." 
 The clergyman, named Wingat, who appears to have 
 been a nonjuror, " was very uppish" to the magis- 
 trates. " A mob was threatened," but did not come 
 forth, though Glasgow had been for some years in 
 a very turbulent state. " These two or three years," 
 says Wodrow, " there have been very strong efforts 
 made to have public meeting-houses set up in the
 
 312 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST 
 
 west and south of Scotland, where the greatest 
 opposition was formerly made to Episcopacy; and 
 this, no doubt, makes a great dash abroad, where 
 things are magnified ; and what the consequences 
 will be to following generations, I tremble at the 
 thoughts." And if the honest zealot had lived to 
 see the spruce ecclesiological edifices, duly Oriental- 
 ized, with their stone altars, sedilia, credence- 
 tables, lecterns, and rood screens, he would have 
 probably deemed all his worst prophecies too sadly 
 verified. 
 
 There is no doubt that the Duke of Cumberland's 
 troops treated the Episcopal clergy with that brutality 
 which they distributed among all who were deemed 
 disloyal, and sprinkled even among many warm 
 friends of the Hanover interest. It is extremely 
 difficult at all times to keep a victorious military 
 force from treating even those it is sent to protect 
 as subdued enemies. Many of the Episcopalian 
 meeting-houses were burned or dismantled in the 
 general retribution, and several buildings of an ar- 
 chitectural pretension considerably above the efforts 
 made by the subdued Church for many subsequent 
 years, are said to have been thus demolished. It 
 was now, too, that the government determined, if 
 possible, to exterminate the Scottish Episcopal 
 Church, and drive its flock into the English sheep-
 
 THE EPISCOPALIANS. 313 
 
 fold. An act was passed, strengthening the restric- 
 tions on Episcopal clergymen, and rendering more 
 minute and complicated the regulations they were 
 bound to observe. The act was made to apply to 
 every clergyman performing service for five persons, 
 besides the household ; that being deemed a congre- 
 gation, and making the worship public. The main 
 provision of the act, however, was, that no letters 
 of orders would be admitted as effective, " but such 
 as have been given by some bishop of the Church of 
 England or of Ireland." As it was doubtful whe- 
 ther this had a retrospective effect, so as to make it 
 exclude the clergy who had received ordination 
 from Scottish bishops before the passing of the act, 
 an explanatory statute was passed, making it posi- 
 tively retrospective. 
 
 As an instance of the operation of the statute, 
 a short account may be given of the proceedings 
 against Alexander Greig, John Petrie, and John 
 Troup, tried before the sheriff of Kincardineshire, 
 on the 5th of December, 1748. The principal wit- 
 ness was Richard Shaw, corporal in General Blake- 
 ney's regiment, who went, by order of his lieutenant, 
 to watch a house, which he knew to be a meeting- 
 house, having often seen persons resort thither on 
 Sunday. His description of the scene is curious : 
 "When he went into the house, there were convened 
 in one room about forty persons, young and old ;
 
 314 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST 
 
 and in the same room there was a closet, in which 
 he saw Mr. Greig standing in an Episcopal habit, 
 with a book in his hand, in which he was reading ; 
 and he heard him, in the reading, several times make 
 mention of Paul the Apostle. There were only two 
 women with Mr. Greig in the closet, the door 
 whereof was open to the room." This evidence 
 was confirmed by that of three other soldiers. 
 William Cooper, a tailor, said that he had often 
 seen " convened and met together, in the next room 
 to MivGreig's,more than five persons over and above 
 the household; which room was possessed by Jane 
 Steven, for the purpose of hearing Mr. Greig, who 
 was in a closet within his own room. He did not 
 see him, but he knew him to be the preacher by 
 his voice, and those in Jane Steven's room made 
 responses to him in the time of prayer. That he 
 has heard Mr. Greig perform the whole of divine 
 service after the form of the Church of England, 
 and he never heard him pray for his Majesty by 
 name, his heirs and successors, and all the royal 
 family. That between the doors of the two rooms 
 there was a plate, or basin, in which the persons 
 convened put in offerings in money, intended for 
 the use of Mr. Greig." * 
 
 Such severities only fortified the victims up to 
 
 * Black Book of Kincardine. Stephen's History of the 
 Church of Scotland, iv., 336.
 
 THE EPISCOPALIANS. 315 
 
 the pitch of enduring them; and there might, from 
 the domestic annals of this period, be gathered many 
 affecting instances of the zealous devotion of these 
 humble pastors. Thus, in the register of the Epis- 
 copal chapel of Muthell, in Perthshire, there is, of 
 date 20th March, 1750, this entry by the clergy- 
 man: 
 
 " N.B. With such excessive severity were the 
 penal laws executed at this time, that Andrew 
 Moir having neglected to keep his appointment 
 with me at my own house this morning, and fol- 
 lowing me to Lord Rollo's house, at Duncrub, we 
 could not take the child into the house ; but I was 
 obliged to go under the cover of the trees in one of 
 Lord Rollo's parks, to prevent our being discovered, 
 and baptize the child there." * 
 
 Among the numerous instances of penalties in- 
 flicted on these poor clergymen in the middle of 
 the eighteenth century, one is remarkable from this 
 peculiarity, that the punishment of the statute not 
 bein^ thought sufficient for the occasion, the accu- 
 sation was extended so as technically to include 
 other and more penal charges. In 1755, John 
 Connachar, an Episcopal clergyman, officiating in 
 Argylcshire, was brought to trial under the act. 
 On a fuller examination of his case, however, the 
 * Steph., iv., 346.
 
 316 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST 
 
 public prosecutor found that he could be proved to 
 have celebrated several marriages, in such a manner 
 as to subject himself to the operation of an act of 
 the reign of Charles II., directed against the Cove- 
 nanters. The accused was prepared with evidence 
 that his conduct did not come within the avowed 
 aim of the act, which was to punish those who 
 celebrated marriages clandestinely and irregularly; 
 he could adduce proof, in all cases, of the regular 
 proclamation of banns. That which, however, 
 would have been all-sufficient, had the law acknow- 
 ledged him as a clergyman, was undermined by his 
 legal disqualification. The statutory punishment to 
 which he was subjected, was banishment from 
 Scotland, under pain of death should he return to 
 the country. He went to England, where he might 
 live as he pleased, and be a living caricature of 
 a penal law which made him a criminal, punishable 
 with death, in one division of the empire, and an 
 innocent man in the other.* 
 
 Possibly, when the state of civilisation, of political 
 morality, and of the administration of justice, in the 
 year 1755, is compared with their state in the 
 reign of Charles II., it might be admitted that 
 Episcopacy in Scotland can compete with Presby- 
 
 * See his case at length in the Scots' Magazine for 1755, 
 pp. 207-313.
 
 THE EPISCOPALIANS. 317 
 
 terianism for the distinction of martyrdom ; recent- 
 ness being in some measure put in the balance 
 against intenseness. The temper of the two Churches, 
 however, is different. The Presbyterians delight 
 in enumerating their sufferings from the wrath of 
 the mighty ; the Episcopal Church rather shuns 
 any allusion to its adversity, and would be inclined 
 to forget that it ever was humble and poor, or found 
 it necessary to skulk and evade the law. 
 
 In the case of Connachar, the judge, in charging 
 the jury, said, that a person of his activity and 
 diligence was " dangerous to our present happy 
 Establishment." This allusion expressed the true 
 motive-spirit of the persecution. Connachar offi- 
 ciated in Glencoe, and the district so unhappily 
 associated with the tragic history of the execution 
 of James Stewart, for the murder of Campbell of 
 Glenure.* The clergyman was punished because 
 he was a Jacobite, and all the proceedings against 
 his class were directed to the suppression, not of 
 the Episcopal religion, but of the Jacobite cause. 
 Perhaps few people will count this a vindication of 
 penal prosecutions for peculiar forms of worship. 
 If there be any who do so, the answer to them is, 
 that a well-regulated government will be able to 
 protect itself from attack, without interfering with 
 * See vol. i., p. 73.
 
 318 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST 
 
 religious observances. That the Episcopalians had 
 the option of joining with the Church of England, 
 was no better vindication of the severities, than 
 any other careless challenge to zealous religionists 
 to be reasonable. People whose religion is inter- 
 fered with are never reasonable, and never will be 
 so. The Scottish Episcopalians had made, indeed, 
 a considerable gulf between themselves and their 
 English brethren, by adopting forms so different 
 from the Anglican, that, on a late occasion, a clergy- 
 man who had been ordained in England, was ex- 
 communicated by a Scottish bishop for following 
 the English and evading the Scottish form. 
 
 On the accession of George III., when terrors 
 of Jacobite invasions died away, the poor humble 
 Episcopal Church began to raise its long-drooping 
 head. When Prince Charles-Edward died, in 1788, 
 the Jacobites became loyal, by an ingenious fiction 
 overlooking the fact that half the crown-heads of 
 Europe still stood between George III. and the 
 legitimate descent from the house of Stuart. About 
 the same period a fortunate incident occurred. After 
 the independence of the United States was acknow- 
 ledged, the members of the Episcopal Church there 
 were desirous of possessing a duly-authorised hier- 
 archy. The English bishops disliked the republican 
 connexion, yet thought it a pity that a branch of
 
 THE EPISCOPALIANS. 319 
 
 the Church should be cut off from the succession. 
 They bethought them that they had a poor relation 
 in Scotland, who might not be too fastidious to 
 acknowledge and receive the upstart. Accordingly, 
 after some diplomatic negotiations, certain American 
 bishops were consecrated in Scotland. The Church 
 of England did not forget this favour, and lent its 
 influence to the passing of the act which, in 1792, 
 relieved the Scottish Episcopalians from the penal 
 laws. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 WHITINC, BEAUFORT HOUSE, STKAND.
 
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