Killing Fields of Scotland

by R J M Pugh

  Dalyell led the sorry survivors of Rullion Green to Edinburgh where his troopers combed the streets for sympathizers; those who paused to watch the captives being led into the High Street Tolbooth no doubt did so in silence lest they might be implicated and taken into custody. The prisoners were subsequently brought before the High Court of Justiciary where they were interrogated by two formidable lawyers, Sir George Lockhart and Sir George Mackenzie (later known as ‘Bluidy Mackenzie’). Mackenzie put a case for clemency on that occasion as the captives had been granted quarter at Rullion Green. Mackenzie argued that if clemency were denied, no one would ever again trust a promise of quarter. He was overruled on the grounds that the Rullion Green prisoners were not participants in a war, but guilty of an act of sedition. This manipulation of the facts was deliberate on the part of the prosecution which demanded nothing less than blood; the Pentland Rising, the alternative name for Rullion Green, had been proclaimed a rebellion, now it was reduced to a seditious act, punishable by imprisonment and even death. The argument was that the rules of war were inappropriate in this case. Ten of the prisoners were hanged on 7 December 1666; another five shared the same fate on 14 December. After execution the victims’ right arms were cut off, these being the arms with which they had saluted the Covenant at Lanark; the severed limbs were sent to that town for public exhibition.12 During the subsequent witch-hunt, another twenty-five men were hanged – four in Glasgow and a large number in Ayr.13 A further fifty were transported in prison ships to Barbados. Rullion Green only served to stiffen resistance; the slaughter on a dismal November morning of men who had followed the dictates of their conscience would not be forgotten.

  Even Charles II, the implacable enemy of Scottish Presbyterianism in general and the ‘irreconcilable’ Covenanters in particular, admitted that the Pentland Rising had been clumsily managed; the cruelty meted out only served to create martyrs. So the King made concessions to those who resided in the centre of anarchy in south-west Scotland; prayer meetings could be held as long as they were conducted indoors. Charles hoped that this concession would bring back the stray sheep to a church run by bishops subservient to himself. The hard-core radicals refused to comply. The open air Conventicles increased in number and size until they took on the appearance of military musters rather than prayer meetings. Charles was incensed by this flagrant disobedience; he was determined to bring the irreconcilables to heel with force. Between 1666 and 1673 several of the ringleaders, hellfire preachers like Alexander ‘Prophet’ Peden, minister of the parish of New Luce in Galloway, refused to sign Charles’s Oath of Allegiance to the bishops and by extension the King himself. (The concept of ‘loyal opposition’ had not yet become accepted.) Of the 1,000 Presbyterian ministers preaching in Scotland, Peden and 260 others refused to comply. Peden was obliged to take to the heather, always one step ahead of his pursuers until he was captured in 1673 and thrown into the dank dungeon on the Bass Rock, off North Berwick, East Lothian. In time the Rock would become a prison for others of the same stamp, men like John Blacader, or Blackadder, who died on the Bass Rock for his principles.

  At least one positive result from Rullion Green was the appointment of the Earl of Lauderdale as virtual governor of Scotland in 1667; Lauderdale replaced the bitter enemy of the Covenanters, James Sharp, Archbishop of St Andrews known as Judas Sharp to the irreconcilables. Lauderdale pursued a more conciliatory policy towards the irreconcilables and for the moment, peace was restored. However, in 1667, a propagandist book entitled Naphtali was published in support of the Covenanter cause. (Naphtali was the son of Jacob; in the Book of Genesis, he is described as ‘a hound let loose; he giveth goodly words’.)14 The book listed all the fines that the government’s agent Sir James Turner had exacted from the dissidents; not surprisingly, Turner disputed the facts. Although the author of Naphtali was our old friend Anonymous, the book was written by two men – James Goodtrees, son of a former Edinburgh provost and James Stirling, a Paisley minister. The book was immediately banned and publicly burned.15 Anyone caught in possession of a copy was subject to a fine of £10,000; it was described as ‘a damned book that came to Scotland from beyond the sea’. Naphtali so incensed Andrew Honeyman, Bishop of Orkney, a prelate in the same mould as Archbishop Sharp that he was moved to publish a counter-blast. In 1668 Honeyman and Sharp were shot at in their coach in Edinburgh; Sharp escaped unscathed, Honeyman was wounded. Their would-be assassin, the Reverend James Mitchell, a minister who had taken part in the Pentland Rising walked away free; he would remain at large until 1678.

  During the next three years, Lauderdale’s lenient policy towards the recalcitrant Covenanters grew harsher. Open air Conventicles had become more numerous; what was worse, those who attended them had begun to carry weapons as well as their Bibles. This produced an understandable knee-jerk from Lauderdale; every year of his administration of Scotland from 1670 was marked by ever-increasing severity towards the irreconcilables. For this and other achievements, Lauderdale was elevated to the rank of Duke in 1672. No matter, Conventicles spread from the south-west to Fife, the coastal farmlands of Moray and Easter Ross as well as East Lothian and Berwickshire. In 1677 the Privy Council ordered a half-company (about thirty troopers) of the Earl of Linlithgow’s Regiment to be quartered at Dunbar ready to act against Conventicles being held in the vicinity.16

  In 1678 the would-be assassin of Archbishop Sharp, James Mitchell was brought to justice. Lauderdale would have spared Mitchell but Sharp insisted that Mitchell be despatched on the gallows in Edinburgh’s Grassmarket, a demand which was duly carried out, making another martyr for the cause of the Covenanters. By way of revenge for Mitchell’s execution Sharp was murdered on 3 May 1679 at Magus Muir, two miles from St Andrews. This episode brought a dismal close to Lauderdale’s administration and caused yet another armed conflict between the government forces and the Covenanters.

  Drumclog

  On 29 May 1679, the nineteenth anniversary of Charles II’s Restoration, a band of eighty armed dissidents converged on the village of Rutherglen, three miles to the east of Glasgow. They extinguished the bonfires lit in honour of the King; then, at the village market cross, they burned copies of all the acts passed by the government persecuting the Irreconcilable adherents of ‘the true Kirk of Scotland’. This episode attracted more recruits to the cause; on 1 June a growing number of diehard Covenanters camped on Loudon Hill, near Strathaven, ostensibly to attend an open air Conventicle. Warned that government troops commanded by John Graham of Claverhouse were approaching, the insurgents agreed they would stand and fight. With a combined force of 1,500, some of whom were mounted, the Covenanters outnumbered Claverhouse’s troopers. The Covenanters made for the advantageous position of Drumclog on Hairlawhill, beneath Loudon Hill, the scene of Robert the Bruce’s victory over Aymer de Valance in 1307. (Perhaps the Covenanters chose the site with that in mind, trusting that history would repeat itself – if they thought in such terms. It is more likely that they chose the ground because it was boggy and unfavourable for Claverhouse’s dragoons.) When informed that Claverhouse was not far away, the Reverend Thomas Douglas broke off his sermon with the words ‘Ye have got the theory, now for the practice’.

  On 1 June 1679, a peaceful Sunday morning, John Graham of Claverhouse was enjoying breakfast at an inn in Strathaven when he received word that a large Conventicle was being held at Drumclog. Claverhouse immediately called his troops to horse and rode furiously at the head of his men along the road to Darvel; on reaching the moor of High Drumclog, Claverhouse looked down on the motley crowd of farmers, shepherds, ploughmen and labourers commanded by Robert Hamilton, brother of the Laird of Preston, who resided near Prestonpans, East Lothian. Hamilton had chosen his ground well; it was boggy and treacherous for both horses and men. He had deployed his horsed men – they could hardly be called cavalry – and infantry in battle formation, mounted men on the wings, infantry in the centre. Some of Hamilton’s men bore firearms and swords but the majority were armed with
only home-made pikes, cleeks (hook-like devices used to prise vegetables out of frozen ground) pitchforks and other farm tools. 17 Facing them were Claverhouse’s 150 well armed troopers; on Claverhouse’s advance, Hamilton gave the order ‘No quarter!’ For a time the two sides exchanged a desultory musket fire; while Claverhouse was confident of victory, his cavalry were unable to engage the Covenanters in close combat as they had had to dismount on account of the boggy ground. Then William Cleland, one of Hamilton’s commanders led a force round the side of Drumclog Moss and successfully attacked the dismounted troopers. In the ensuing short, sharp fight, Claverhouse was routed, forty-two of his men being left dead on the field; Hamilton lost six.18 Drumclog was the first and last battle Claverhouse would lose in his relatively short life. In 1839 a monument was raised at Drumclog to commemorate the battle.

  Although more of a skirmish than a battle, Drumclog had significant repercussions. The momentary success fired the imagination and morale of the Covenanters, attracting new recruits to the cause. But the victory would prove as brief as the flash of blue of a kingfisher darting across a river. However, encouraged by the volume of new recruits, Hamilton led his growing army to Glasgow, where he had many sympathizers. Be that as it may, Glasgow proved a difficult nut to crack, being heavily garrisoned by government troops. After a half-hearted assault on the town, Hamilton retreated to the town of Hamilton. When news of Drumclog reached London the government considered that matters were serious enough to justify the raising of an army of 15,000 to put down what was seen as a full-scale rebellion. James Scott, Duke of Monmouth, Charles II’s illegitimate son by his mistress Lucy Walters was appointed commander and sent north to confront the irreconcilables.

  Bothwell Brig

  On 22 June 1679 the two armies faced each other across the narrow bridge which spanned the river Clyde at the village of Bothwell, near Motherwell. The Covenanter army was placed on the south bank of the Clyde; Hamilton’s force consisted of about 6,000, supported by a single cannon. The Royalist army commanded by James, 1st Duke of Monmouth, John Graham of Claverhouse and the Earl of Linlithgow numbered 5,000, supported by three field pieces. On that Sunday morning, Hamilton’s picquets watched the Royalist musketeers blowing on their saltpetre matches for their matchlocks, preparing to storm the bridge.

  Hamilton’s commanders included David Hackston of Rathillet, John Balfour of Kinloch and William Cleland, the latter who had brought Hamilton success at Drumclog. Seven weeks earlier Hackston and Balfour had been among the men who murdered Archbishop Sharp on 3 May.19 (Hackston would be apprehended and executed on 30 July 1680 for his crime.)20 Hamilton and Monmouth both knew that success would be achieved by whoever held the narrow bridge across the Clyde, so the former entrusted David Hackston and 300 men from Galloway, Clydesdale and Stirling with its defence. The battle opened with the Royalist artillery firing on Hamilton’s position but the fire was ineffectual, being too high; the single cannon Hamilton possessed returned a fire so effective that it silenced Monmouth’s gunners. Monmouth could not use his field pieces against Hackston, knowing he needed to gain control of the bridge intact in order to attack the bulk of Hamilton’s army on Hamilton Moss. For about an hour Hackston kept up a hot, masking fire, gallantly standing steady like the Roman hero Horatius who, with two companions, held the Sublician Bridge against the Etruscans in 507 BC. But Hackston was low on ammunition; calling for more, he was informed there was none to spare so he was forced to retreat. This shameful decision – there was a significant number of musketeers in the Covenanter army who could have given up their bullets, or relieved Hackston – cost Hamilton dearly. Monmouth could not believe his good fortune; he ordered his men to cross the bridge which they did in perfect formation.

  The bulk of Hamilton’s army was drawn up in good order on Hamilton Moss. However, on Monmouth’s advance, Hamilton lost his nerve and fled the field, leaving his leaderless men to their fate. Claverhouse was first to attack, last to leave the field, accounting for most of the 600 casualties, 400 being fatal, with 1,200 taken prisoner. Some of the fugitive Covenanters sought sanctuary in Hamilton Parish Kirk, where they were butchered inside. Monmouth’s losses were neglible; he treated his prisoners fairly, despite the urgings of Claverhouse to put them to the sword. (Ironically, Monmouth was censured by the government for his clemency, while Claverhouse earned himself the epithet ‘Bluidy Clavers’ after Bothwell Brig.) Victory at Bothwell Brig might have given the Covenanters a breathing space and possibly brought the government to the negotiating table. Sadly, it was not to be; the gallant country folk who stood in the front line that day were poorly led and inadequately provisioned. A monument to Bothwell Brig was erected in 1903, beside the modern bridge over the Clyde.21

  Monmouth’s prisoners were taken to Edinburgh and held in Greyfriars Churchyard – probably intentionally, it being the site where the National Covenant had been signed nearly forty years earlier. At least on this occasion there were no executions. Many of the prisoners resided there for several months, branded as rebels and traitors. In their open prison, half clad, ill fed and exposed to all weather, many were brought to submission; 400 swore an oath that they would never again take up arms. More than 250 diehards refused the terms offered by the government;22 they were sentenced to transportion to the colonies in November 1679 but the prison ship carrying them to Barbados was caught in a storm off Orkney, 200 of the prisoners perishing in the shipwreck. The Martyrs’ Monument in Greyfriars Churchyard is an impressive memorial to the Killing Time.

  Aird’s Moss

  The last armed conflict between the Covenanters and the government during the Killing Time took place on 20 July 1680 at Aird’s Moss, near Sanquhar, Dumfriesshire, where the Reverend Richard Cameron and a party of Covenanters were attending a Conventicle. It was a morning of thick mist and Cameron and his people were taken by surprise by 120 troopers commanded by David Bruce of Earshall who had been tracking the group for several days. Some accounts23 say the Covenanters numbered sixty-three, of whom only a pitiful few escaped by fighting their way through Bruce’s troops, twenty-eight of whom were slain. Cameron and his brother were among the nine Covenanters who lost their lives; five others were wounded and taken prisoner, among them David Hackston of Rathillet who had fought gallantly at Bothwell Brig. Richard Cameron’s head and right arm were cut off and taken to Edinburgh and shown to his father, imprisoned in the Tolbooth for nonconformity. A monument to the skirmish was later raised; beside it is the gravestone of Richard Cameron which bears his and eight other names. Annual commemorative Conventicles on the site began in 2002. Richard Cameron gave his name to the famous Cameronians (Scottish Rifles) regiment which was disbanded in 1968 after obtaining many battle honours over nearly three centuries.

  Many of the Covenanter leaders who escaped from Bothwell Brig fled to Holland to join the English exiles opposed to Charles II at the time of the Restoration. They were subsequently joined by the Duke of Monmouth, exiled by his exasperated father Charles II on account of the former’s involvement in the Rye House Plot to assassinate the King and his brother, James, Duke of York (later James VII and II).

  In July 1681 James, Duke of York, was appointed Royal Commissioner of Scotland, passing two laws; one was the Act of Succession declaring ‘that no difference in religion … can alter or divert the right of succession and lineal descent of the Crown’.24 This, of course, meant that James, a Roman Catholic and heir-presumptive to the throne was assured of accession on the death of his brother. The second of the measures was the Test Act which required all persons holding offices in Church and State to swear an oath in support of the Crown; a risible piece of legislation, this meant that whoever signed it was committed to being a Presbyterian, an Episcopalian and a Roman Catholic!25 Between 1681 and 1682, James’s policy in Scotland was repressive; some historians consider that policy as a foretaste in microcosm of what James would have done in England after Charles II’s death in 1685 if he had been given the chance. Judicial torture was sti
ll legal in Scotland but its use had to be authorized by the Privy Council, of which James was President; he personally witnessed several torture victims subjected to the ‘boot’, a particularly nasty instrument which was fitted to the victim’s leg with wooden wedges hammered in to break the shinbones. Another cruel instrument was the ‘thumbikins’, attached to the thumb and screwed tightly until the joint was broken. While such atrocities mirrored those committed between 1640 and 1650 in the name of the Covenanter Church and its supporters against supposed witches, they discredited the government in Scotland and added to the martyrology of the Covenanters.

  Bothwell Brig effectively brought an end to the aspirations of the Covenanters who had hoped to gain recognition through a feat of arms; to many of their supporters this had never seemed in any sense likely to succeed, nor to light the path to their desired goal – to worship in the manner enshrined in the National Covenant, not in any watered-down version. That unadulterated form of Scottish Presbyterianism expired on 22 June 1679. Even so, the remnants of the old-guard Covenanters continued to press for their religious rights, led by a young James Renwick, son of a weaver in Glencairn, Nithsdale. Renwick was ordained as a minister devoted to the Covenant. By 1685 Sir George Mackenzie, Lord Advocate of Scotland, had stamped his foot on the remnants. Bluidy [Bloody] Mackenzie had a long memory; he had abhorred the hysterical reaction of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland to its belief that witchcraft and witches were on the increase during the 1640s, when several hundred, perhaps a thousand people – mainly women – had been executed for the supposed crime of witchcraft. Until Cromwell’s invasion of 1650, the witch-hunt went on up to the very eve of Dunbar; on reaching Edinburgh in September 1650, Cromwell set free several people incarcerated in Edinburgh’s Tolbooth awaiting trial for witchcraft. (After the Restoration the witch-hunt in Scotland reached its peak; between 1660 and 1663, several hundred people were executed – murdered in fact – by the Covenanter Kirk, hundreds more than Mackenzie sentenced to death during the Killing Time.)