But he could not do so straight away, for there was at once a terrible perturbation.
The ministers tried to hush it up, and put all the blame on Warriston.
Mr David Dickson (who had not yet paid him) rose to apologize for the negligence of the Clerk in leaving a private note on a document that was to be read in public.
Before he could speak more than a few sentences, Montrose was on his feet, hotly disclaiming the apology.
‘What I have written, I have written,’ he said, ‘and am ready to avow the least jot of it.’
The frightened minister actually began to apologize this time to Montrose, pulled himself up, but did not dare go on with his speech. He sat down in a huddle, his head poking out from the folds of his hood like an anxious tortoise.
But there was another lion there who could roar as angrily as my Lord of Montrose. The Earl of Southesk had risen, and fiercely attacked his son-in-law for cancelling Carnegie’s election. He spoke for his son, Montrose for Erskine, but they spoke for far more than that.
Here in this arena, set for a national struggle, before hundreds of spectators, they fought out their personal quarrel, saying the cruel things they had never yet uttered in private.
Southesk saw in the young man only the unscrupulous resolve to get his own way, the desire to avenge his pique against his King, and against his brother-in-law. He saw all his work as mediator, in procuring this Assembly, destroyed by Montrose, who had given Hamilton this chance to dissolve it.
And Montrose saw in the old man only the instinct to guard family and property and honours granted by royal favour – knew himself to be unfair, to have behaved abominably, but was determined to stick to it. Only one thing mattered – the business that they had to do. He was in a fury that this should have interrupted it; he flung out that he did not care what he had done, nor who knew of it, he would have no half-hearted moderates in the Assembly if he could help it.
His cloak swung back with the violence of his gesture, it was seen that he had drawn his sword an inch of two from the scabbard. The movement had been unconscious, but the blazing anger in his eyes and voice made it deadly. A rustle ran through the Assembly.
Henderson, who loved both him and Southesk, could not bear to look upon their faces. He rose slowly, leaning forward with his long fine hands upon his table to keep them from shaking, and interrupted the quarrel. Since these two elections had caused such dissension, he would annul them both.
Old Southesk turned and rent him. How dare he annul Lord Carnegie’s appointment, which had been won by fair election? Not only his son-in-law, but his own minister, who had served him down in his parish of Leuchars for twenty-four years, had turned against him. He had forgotten Henderson’s few-days-old office as Moderator.
One of the Lords of the Council rebuked him for rating the Moderator.
The old man sat down, bewildered with anger. He had in his time stood up for reform and freedom against his King, and was now scorned for selfish prudence. His son-in-law had gone mad, that was all that could be said about it. But so had many others.
Like a deaf man watching the movements of a dance, meaningless without its music, he watched the flame of this new enthusiasm leap from one member of the Assembly to another, lighting some in the name of God, and others in the name of Scotland, and others with a strange new belief, which had as yet no name and no confirmation – the belief that men must be free to work out their own salvation and damnation.
Hamilton had dissolved the Assembly in the name of the King. But the Assembly would not be dissolved.
Hamilton sat waiting, fearful lest when he rose and left, only his immediate supporters would leave with him. Darkness was shutting in on the great church, on the crowds of angry people who were sitting there, waiting to see what would happen.
A boy had begun to go down the aisles, lighting candles, his boots squeaking loudly in the silence of that suspense. In the flickering and vagrant light, a man with red hair rose from among the Lords of the Council, just below the Royal Commissioner’s great chair of state, and began to speak in a low, hesitating, and curiously inexpressive voice.
It was the new Earl of Argyll, the head of the great clan of Campbell. People craned their necks to see him, to hear on which side he would enlist his enormous power and estates, as those low, slow, vague words dropped through the candle-lit church, that had lately resounded to such haste and fury of speech.
Argyll was to make himself a good speaker, to acquire even charm in the grave courtesy of his manner. But that was to come with deliberation and practice – a charm won by sheer hard work. As yet he was untried, a man who looked out on the world, suspiciously, from eyes that could never look both together at anything. And now one looked at worldly advantage, at the probabilities of success in this new, popular movement; while the other looked at heaven, seeing more good than he ever had in his life before, in this Covenanters’ creed of a man’s lonely communion with his God – a creed removed as far as possible from that of his father.
But so anxious was he to be cautious and not to commit himself unduly, so strange was it to that compressed mouth to speak freely, that it was clear to no one what he had stood up to say – not even when he sat down again, his face a pale blur behind the candles.
‘It is a ruse,’ thought Hamilton approvingly, ‘cunning fellow, how like him!’
But as he rose at last and left the church with all his supporters, he looked back at the table of the Privy Council; and one man still sat on alone at it, and that man was the Earl of Argyll.
‘Is he showing himself on our side?’ ran the excited whisper through the church.
‘Devil take me, but I believe he is!’ exclaimed Rothes.
But Montrose felt no such elation.
‘Devil take me, but I would rather have that man my enemy than my ally,’ he replied.
The King’s men passed out. The others sat on.
In this cold cathedral, where respectful protest was hardening into revolution, many fates were being determined; and many of those ardent and arrogant heads that there conferred together would be struck from the neck and held up by the bloody hand of the executioner; as also one that, confused in the extreme, was now waiting unhappily in London for news from the North.
And Hamilton, whose uneasy imagination could see none of this, knew at least that he could write no satisfactory answer to King Charles’ question to him as to ‘what might be the end of it all?’
Chapter Twelve
Of all letters Hamilton had ever had to write, this answer to King Charles’ question placed him in the most delicate situation.
Ever since he had been born, Hamilton had been in a delicate situation. His mother then, and now at the head of the Covenanters, was against him. The King blamed him for her outrageous activities, and she blamed him for the King’s shilly-shallying.
Every time he had come north, it had been with two royal proclamations in his pocket, one severe and one lenient, to use according to his judgement, but as everyone knew about the first, they guessed him to be only gaining time when he used the second.
He was so discreet that nobody could understand what he meant; he was so sympathetic with the petitions handed to him that he wept in the street in front of the largest crowds; he was so friendly with the Covenanting leaders that he suggested to Montrose, ‘as a kindly Scot,’ that he had only to go on ‘with that courage and resolution you have already shown,’ to win his cause.
At this astonishing betrayal, the young man’s contemptuous glance had shot in his direction, but only once, as though it found nothing there to detain it. Hamilton rolled away, to waver between the roles of a kindly Scot and a loyal Royal commissioner, between the conflicting methods of reserve and frankness, sympathy and sternness, to sow suspicion between the nobles and the clergy by warning each against the other in strictest confidence; and thus waste his time very unhappily until the General Assembly burst upon him.
And now he had dissolv
ed the Assembly – but the Assembly sat on – and he had to write to the King and explain why. He could not very well give Mr David Dickson’s explanation – that the Marquis of Hamilton had obeyed the word of his royal master, but that they themselves had to follow a still greater master, and obey the word of Christ.
Who was to say which word that would be for each occasion, chosen out of all the words spoken on such different occasions, sixteen hundred years ago?
The Assembly found no difficulty.
But Hamilton did.
It was easier to write – ‘Next to hell do I hate this place.’ His sons should all be brought up in England; none of his daughters should marry Scots – that should convince his master how little truth there was in his hoping to clutch a crown here for himself.
How little truth was there? Very little – there must be – or he could not think with such tenderness of Charles’ last note to him, that began with all its old affectionate intimacy – ‘James’ – and was signed, ‘Your loving Friend and Cousin.’ Was Charles’ trust in him but another instance of his folly?
But that did not bear thinking of. Hastily he pulled the paper towards him, and began instead to write character sketches of the leaders of the Assembly, especially of those who had annoyed him most.
Since Argyll had declared himself, he was to be reckoned as chief of them, for the Covenanters were calling him ‘a true patriot, a faithful counsellor.’ He was now, in Hamilton’s opinion, ‘the dangerousest man in this State’, and he added, not very helpfully, ‘What course to advise you to take with him I cannot say; but remit it to your Majesty’s serious consideration.’
A personal annoyance now dug his pen into the paper as he wrote – ‘of them all, none is more vainly foolish than Montrose.’
A pity the young man could not see that. It would teach him not to look at him, the King’s representative, as if he were an unpleasant insect. Thank God there had been one man in the Assembly who dared stand up to the young rebel. And down went his approval of Southesk, the only praise that he gave undiluted by qualifications and withdrawals – ‘He has beyond all expectations shown himself forwardly stout in all that has concerned your service.’
It might have cheered Southesk to know that his sovereign would read such praise of him; he needed comfort, fuming and fretting in his poky Glasgow lodging. It cost ten times as much as it had any right to do, but not all the rules and restrictions could keep down the cost of living in this crowded town. He had supported the King’s Commissioner by leaving the Assembly when he dissolved it; but he lingered on for some days in Glasgow, cold, crammed and uncomfortable as it was, to hear what the rascals were doing in the Cathedral.
He sent out his servants half a dozen times a day to collect the scraps of news that blew in from the draughty street corners where the retainers of great houses loitered with the latest rumours. The King had commanded that a nobleman’s tail be restricted to a single page or body-servant, but in spite of that all the full tails were there, wagging furiously, flourishing their plaids about them, and glaring upon the tartans of their rival clans.
In odd contrast to these rough retainers with their haughty bearing and fierce glances and the brilliance, frequently tattered, of their plaids and saffron-yellow shirts, were the little black groups of ministers, huddling together like ruffled crows in the sea wind, their cloaks flapping and their solemn heads pecking towards each other as they discussed points of doctrine – or, even more eagerly, the merciful dispensation of Providence which had ordained the Assembly to sit each day from ten to five and so saved the cost of dinner.
So that it did not matter so much that the Assembly took several weeks to abolish bishops, and the new Prayer Book, and the Book of Canons, and salmon fishing on the Sabbath.
But this last, Lord Southesk approved, for as a good fisherman he had sworn against the practice of netting salmon often enough to be glad that it should be stopped for at least one day out of the seven.
He gave this single crumb of comfort to his wife and daughter on his despondent return to Kinnaird, and Lady Southesk attempted no answer, for once men started to talk sport there would be no end to it – but how could her lord think it of any importance as to whether one caught fish with nets or with rod and line, when all that concerned them was that Jamie had taken clean leave of his senses, and was plunging himself and everyone else into trouble?
As wild and as ungovernable as a stag – that he should have ousted her son from the Assembly, and defied her husband – ‘he can never have done such things of himself. It must have been the ministers – he likes them less and less—’
But Southesk answered that the ministers were all wagging their heads over him, complaining that he was ‘capricious for his own fancies,’ and ‘very hard to be guided.’
‘“Hard to be guided,” indeed!’ snorted the old man, ‘when he behaves as though he ruled all Scotland.’
‘And so he will,’ echoed in Magdalen’s heart, inevitably thrilled, though all her reasonable sympathy went out to her father, who looked so much older and more tired than she had ever seen him.
But when she spoke of her husband, her father burst out that she was never to mention his name to him again. He spoke of a separation between them, and at that she went rigid, speaking her refusal only in her eyes.
Yet separation was inevitable for the time, apart from any quarrel. Southesk would not let his house harbour a rebel to the King, ‘for that is what he has become, however much he may dispute it – and so have all those who dared sit on in the Assembly against the King’s command. They are all drunk with their own power. You, boy’ – he pulled his elder grandson towards him – ‘pray against success in struggle. For whatever you strive for, if you get it, you will insist on more, and yet more. Well, don’t you believe me? What are you staring at, hey?’
‘Johnnie is old enough to know what success you have always had yourself, my lord,’ said Magdalen, who hoped to tease a smile from him, also to remind him that Johnnie was quite able to understand that his father was being blamed. But old people could never remember that a child of nearly seven was more than three.
And her father was too much engrossed to take any hint; he forgot even that he was still holding on to Johnnie’s shoulder, and jerking him now away from his chair, now towards it, in accompaniment to his violent comments on the Assembly.
Her mother slid in a whisper to her to go and call for a cup of lamb’s-wool, her father’s favourite caudle, which she had prepared against his coming to take off the cold of his long ride – and the roasted apple must be frothing on top of the hot ale by now, and why had none of the stupid creatures brought it?
They had brought it, and been brushed away quite unconsciously by Lord Southesk in his impatience to tell his complaint, but Magdalen was not the one to remind either parent of that.
She released her son from her father’s grasp, led him out with her, and took a rushlight in its pan from a bracket outside the door; as she did so, he shook off her hand, and scampered down the passage. She stood looking after him. He had lumped her with the rest of her family, and was declaring his independence, his desire to join his father.
Her habitual reserve, imposed on her by her large and vigorous and confidently assertive family, reached breaking point; she longed to run after him, to cry, And so do I, Johnnie, I want to go to him too – I am his too, not theirs!’
The impulse to speak thus to a child was a thing unheard of. Her mother would have smacked him soundly for his impertinence in running away – ‘well, but she would have to catch him first!’ she smiled in excuse; and promised herself, ‘If he looks back, then I will say it.’
But he did not look back; his bright hair, his stubborn little back, his sturdy legs trotted steadily on, away from her.
Chapter Thirteen
It had come to war – against the bishops, people said, for not the most ardent Covenanter would admit that it was against the King.
The Earl of M
ontrose was made Commander General to the Covenanters’ forces, an office in itself a declaration of war, and one that brought him once again into direct conflict with his father and brother-in-law, at a committee meeting in Forfar. He issued his warrant to the nobles to provide men and arms in readiness for the service of the Covenant, and Southesk replied that they were all the King’s men and subject to the King’s service, but no other. And he and Carnegie left the committee, and prepared measures for their defence.
Magdalen could not hope to see her husband; she must not speak of him to any of her family, not even to Johnnie, for it would encourage the child to speak defiantly of him to the others, and so call down reproof.
Her father and mother had the comfort of indignation, but that kept them silent.
A note came now and then from him, scribbled on a scrap of paper, telling her little but that he loved her.
Master Forrett was her best companion these days – and Sir Walter Raleigh. Once she had been jealous of Jamie’s preoccupation with that history, written as it was by an adventurer, of God’s strange adventure, the world. Now she felt herself nearer to Jamie, thinking his thoughts, when she sat with the great book on her knees.
‘The world’s tragedy and time are near at an end.’
What did that sonorous prophecy foretell? Her eyes fell from the book to the smouldering sea-coal on the hearth, then raised themselves to Master Forrett, who was bending with infinite patience over Johnnie’s copybook. So short a time since he had been teaching Johnnie’s father, that he looked scarcely a day older himself, though perhaps his small wrinkled face was more than ever like an anxious withered apple these days.
From him she could gather news of Jamie that was not broken by angry comment nor veiled by discretion. For him, as for herself, Jamie’s movements were not a matter of politics, but of intrinsic importance. He could bring back from the little town of Montrose the news that they both wanted most of their young lord.
The Proud Servant Page 22