by John Galt
CHAPTER LXVIII
It is well set forth in all the various histories of this dismal epoch,that the cry of blood had gone so vehemently up to heaven from thegraves of the martyred Covenanters, that the Lord moved the heart ofCharles Stuart to more merciful measures, but only for a season. Theapostate James Sharp and the other counsellors, whose weakness orwickedness fell in with his tyrannical proselytising purposes, werewised from the rule of power, and the Earls of Tweeddale and Kincardine,with that learned sage and philosopher, Sir John Murray, men of morebeneficent dispositions, were appointed to sit in their places in thePrivy Council at Edinburgh;--so that all in our condition were heartenedto return to their homes.
As soon as we heard that the ravenous soldiery were withdrawn from theshire of Ayr, my brother and I, with Mr Witherspoon, after an abode ofmore than seven months in yon solitary and rocky islet, returned toQuharist. But, O courteous reader, I dare not venture to tell of the joyof the meeting, and the fond intermingling of embraces, that was toogreat a reward for all our sufferings;--for now I approach the memorialsof those things, by which the terrible Heavens have manifested that Iwas ordained from the beginning to launch the bolt that was chosen fromthe quiver in the armoury of the Almighty avenger, to overthrow theoppressor and oppression of my native land. It is therefore enough tostate that, upon my return home, where I expected to find my lands wasteand my fences broken down, I found all things in better order than theymaybe would have been had the eye of the master been over them; for ourkind neighbours, out of a friendly consideration for my family, had inthe spring tilled the ground and sown the seed by day-and-day-aboutlabour; and surely it was a pleasant thing, in the midst of such ageneral depravity of the human heart, so prevalent at that period, tohear of such constancy and Christian-mindedness; for it was not towardsmy brother and me only that such things were done; the same was commonthroughout the country towards the lands and families of the persecuted.
But the lown of that time was as a pet day in winter. In the harvest,however, when the proposal came out that we should give bonds to keepthe peace, I made no scruple of signing the same, and of getting mywife's father, who was not out in the raid, to be my cautioner. In thedoing of this I did not renounce the Covenant; but, on the contrary, Iconsidered that by the bonds the King was as much bound to preservethings in the state under which I granted the bond as I was to remain inthe quiet condition I was when I signed it.
After the bonds of peace came the indulgence, and the chief heritors ofour parish having something to say with the Lord Tweeddale, leave wasobtained for Mr Swinton to come back, and we had made a paction withAndrew Dornock, the prelatic curate and incumbent, to let him have hismanse again. But although Mr Swinton did return, and his family wereagain gathered around him, he would not, as he said himself to me, sofar bow the knee to Baal as to bring the church of Christ in any measureor way into Erastian dependence on the civil magistrate. So he neitherwould return to the manse nor enter the pulpit, but continued, for thespace of several years, to reside at Quharist, and to preach on thesummer Sundays from the window in the gable.
In the spring, however, of the year 1674, he, after a lingering illness,closed his life and ministry. For some time he had felt himself goinghence, and the tenour of his prayers and sermons had for several monthsbeen of a high and searching efficacy; and he never failed, Sabbathafter Sabbath, just before pronouncing the blessing, to return publicthanks that the Lord was drawing him so softly away from the world, andfrom the storms that were gathering in the black cloud of prelacy whichstill overhung and darkened the ministry of the Kirk of Scotland,--amethod of admonition that was awfully awakening to the souls of hishearers, and treasured by them as a solemn breathing of the inspirationof prophecy.
When he was laid in the earth, and Mr Witherspoon, by some handling onmy part, was invited to fill the void which his removal had left amongus, the wind again began to fisle, and the signs of a tempest were seenin the changes of the royal Councils. The gracious-hearted statesmenbefore spoken of were removed from their benignant spheres like fallingstars from the firmament, and the Duke of Lauderdale was endowed withthe power to persecute and domineer.
Scarcely was he seated in the Council when the edicts of oppression wererenewed. The prelates became clamorous for his interference, and thepenalties of the bonds of peace presented the means of supplying theinordinate wants of his rapacious wife. Steps were accordingly soontaken to appease and pleasure both. The court-contrived crime of hearingthe Gospel preached in the fields, as it was by John in the Wildernessand Jesus on the Mount, was again prohibited with new rigour; and I forone soon felt that, in the renewed persecution of those who attended theconventicles, the King had again as much broken the conditions underwhich I gave the bond of peace as he had before broken the vows of theSolemn League and Covenant; so that when the guilty project was ripenedin his bloody councils, that the West Country should be againexasperated into rebellion, that a reason might be procured for keepingup a standing army, in order that the three kingdoms might be ruled byprerogative instead of parliament, I freely confess that I was one ofthose who did refuse to sign the bonds that were devised to provoke therebellion,--bonds, the terms whereof sufficiently manifested the purposethat governed the framers in the framing. We were required by them,under severe penalties, to undertake that neither our families, nor ourservants, nor our tenants, nor the servants of our tenants, nor anyothers residing upon our lands, should withdraw from the churches oradhere to conventicles, or succour field preachers, or persons who hadincurred the penalties attached to these prelate-devised offences. Andbecause we refused to sign these bonds, and continued to worship God inthe peacefulness of the Gospel, the whole country was treated by theDuke of Lauderdale as in a state of revolt.
The English forces came mustering against us on the borders, the Irishgarrisons were drawn to the coast to invade us, and the lawlessHighlanders were tempted, by their need and greed, and a royal promiseof indemnity for whatsoever outrages they might commit, to come downupon us in all their fury. By these means ten thousand ruthless soldiersand unreclaimed barbarians were let loose upon us, while we were sittingin the sun listening, I may say truly, to those gracious counsellingswhich breathe nothing but peace and good-will. When, since the burningdays of Dioclesian, the Roman Emperor,--when, since the massacre of theprotestants by orders of the French king on the eve of St Bartholomew,was so black a crime ever perpetrated by a guilty government on its ownsubjects? But I was myself among the greatest of the sufferers; and itis needful that I should now clothe my thoughts with sobriety, andrestrain the ire of the pen of grief and revenge.--Not revenge! No; letthe word be here--justice.
The Highland host came on us in want, and, but for their license todestroy, in beggary. Yet when they returned to their wild homes amongthe distant hills, they were laden as with the household wealth of arealm, in so much that they were rendered defenceless by the weight oftheir spoil. At the bridge of Glasgow the students of the College andthe other brave youths of that town, looking on them with true Scottishhearts, and wrathful to see that the barbarians had been such robbers oftheir fellow-subjects, stopped above two thousand of them, and took fromthem their congregations of goods and wares, wearing apparel, pots,pans, and gridirons, and other furniture, wherewith they had burdenedthemselves like bearers at a flitting. My house was stript to a wastage,and every thing was taken away; what was too heavy to be easilytransported was, after being carried some distance, left on the road.The very shoes were taken off my wife's feet, and "ye'll no be a refuseto gi'e me that," said a red-haired reprobate as he took hold of SarahLochrig's hand and robbed her of her wedding-ring. I was present and sawthe deed; I felt my hands clench, but in my spirit I discovered that itwas then the hour of outrage, and that the Avenger's time was not yetcome.