LITMIR.BIZ

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of the 28th of November. A sharp engagement followed. Twice in the course of it success seemed to favour the insurgents; but in the end the military training and the superior weapons of their opponents prevailed, and the Covenanters were scattered in headlong flight. Of the soldiers, only five fell. On the other side there were about forty killed and a hundred and thirty taken. These prisoners were next day marched into Edinburgh. They might all have saved their lives if they had consented to renounce the Covenant; but their refusal to do so was severely punished. According to Burnet, who certainly does not exaggerate the number who suffered the death penalty, ten were hanged upon one gibbet in Edinburgh, and thirty-five more were sent to be hanged up before their own doors. Many were transported across the seas. The torture of the boot and of the thumbkins – the latter said to have been introduced by Dalziel, who had learnt their use in Russia, where he served for a time – was freely applied in the hope of wringing from the prisoners the admission that the rising was part of a concerted plot for the subversion of the existing government. They all strenuously denied it.

      That shortly prior to this, a conspiracy had been formed for this object is a well established fact. A document discovered by Dr M’Crie in the Dutch archives and published by him in his edition of the Memoirs of Veitch, shows that a plan was formed, in July 1666, for seizing on the principal forts in the kingdom, and that ‘the persons embarked in this scheme had carried on a correspondence with the Government of the United Provinces then at war with Great Britain, and received promises of assistance from that quarter.’ Another document referred to by the same writer asserts that the castles of Edinburgh, Stirling, and Dumbarton were amongst those to be taken possession of. Whether this Dutch plot and the Galloway insurrection were connected with each other, is a point with regard to which historians have maintained conflicting opinions in accordance with their own sympathies. The strongest evidence that Napier is able to adduce, on the one side, is the fact that a Mr Wallace is mentioned as one of those in correspondence with Holland, and that Colonel James Wallace was the leader of the insurgents whom Dalziel routed at Rullion Green. But, on the other hand, it is pointed out by Dr M’Crie that, as the other names are obviously fictitious, this coincidence affords no ground for supposing that the Colonel was the person referred to.

      For many months after the Pentland rout, the harrying of the late insurgents continued; but, at length, the political changes which placed the administration of the country into the hands of Lauderdale, also marked the inauguration of a more lenient policy towards the Presbyterians. On the 15th of July 1669, a letter was communicated to the Council, in which the King signified his desire that it should authorise as many of the ejected ministers as had lived peaceably in the places where they had resided, to return and preach, and exercise the other functions of their office in the parish churches which they formerly occupied, providing these were vacant. Ministers who took collation from the bishop of the diocese and kept presbyteries and synods, might be allowed to receive their stipends. The others were not to be permitted ‘to meddle with the local stipend, but only to possess the manse and glebe.’

      This concession proved of little effect. The few who availed themselves of the ‘Indulgence’ – two and forty in all, according to Wodrow – were looked upon as renegades by the irreconcilables, and found no more toleration at their hands than the curates had done. The moderate Presbyterians who accepted the ‘indulged’ clergy were denounced as traitors to the cause. The conventicles which it had been hoped the new measure would suppress, began to assume a more desperate character, as the gatherings of those who, in their unbending determination to abide by the very letter of the Covenant, declared themselves freed from their allegiance to a king whom they considered as perjured, and against whose agents, as malignant persecutors of the true religion, they believed themselves justified in adopting the most violent measures. It is of these extremists that the covenanting party now consisted.

      It has been urged that these new developments were too natural, in the circumstances of the time, not to have been anticipated, by some, at least, of those who were responsible for the government of the country. They have consequently been credited with the deliberate intention not only of causing a disruption in the ranks of the Presbyterians, but also of making the expected refusal of the indulgence a pretext for further and sterner measures of coercion. If such were the case, the machiavellian policy was successful. Within six months, the old system of penal legislation was again adopted. On the 3rd of February 1670, a proclamation prohibiting conventicles under heavy penalties was issued by the Council. It was followed in August by an Act of Parliament which made it illegal for outed ministers not licensed by the Council or for any other persons not authorised or tolerated by the bishop of the diocese, to preach, expound Scripture, or pray in any meeting, except in their own houses and to members of their own family. Such as should be convicted of disobedience to this law were to be imprisoned till they found security, to the amount of five thousand merks, for their future good behaviour. Persons attending meetings of this kind were to be heavily fined, according to their respective conditions, for each separate offence. Against outdoor meetings, or ‘field conventicles,’ the law was still more severe. Death was to be the penalty for preaching or praying at them, or even for convening them. A reward of five hundred merks was offered to any of his Majesty’s subjects who should seize and secure the person of an active conventicler. As a further inducement, a subsequent proclamation made over to the captor the fine incurred by the offender he secured.

      Amongst the many devices resorted to at this time, with a view to enforcing conformity, there is one which, because of its immediate consequences, is deserving of special mention. In October 1677, the Council addressed a letter to the Earls of Glencairn and Dundonald and to Lord Ross, requiring them to call together the heritors of the shires of Ayr and Renfrew, and to urge on them the necessity for taking effective measures to repress conventicles. The answer given to the three noblemen and forwarded by them to Edinburgh was practically a refusal though it took the form of a plea of inability on the part of those whose co-operation had thus been invoked. This alleged powerlessness was made an excuse for the next step taken by the Government, that of quartering a body of eight thousand Highlanders in the disaffected counties, on those who refused to subscribe a bond by which every heritor made himself answerable, not only for his wife, children, and servants, but also for his tenants.

      The commission for raising the Highlanders authorised them to take free quarters, and, if need were, to seize on horses as well as on ammunition and provisions. They were indemnified against all pursuits, civil and criminal, which might at any time be intented against them or anything they should do, by killing, wounding, apprehending, or imprisoning such as should make opposition to the King’s authority, or by arresting such as they might have reason to suspect. For two months the clansmen availed themselves to the full of the arbitrary powers with which the royal warrant invested them. At length the Duke of Hamilton appealed directly to the King to put an end to the oppression exercised in his name by the Highland men; and an express was sent down from London, requiring the Council to disband them and to send them back to their homes. This brings events down to 1678, the year in which Claverhouse was appointed to the command of the dragoons who were to make another effort to disperse the conventicles against which so many Acts of Parliament and decrees of Council had been directed in vain, and which even the depredations of the Highland host had failed to check.

      III

      DISPERSING THE CONVENTICLERS

      By the end of 1678 Claverhouse was at Moffat, expecting to be joined by one of the newly-levied troops of dragoons – that under Captain Inglis. From that town he forwarded to the Earl of Linlithgow, Commander-in-chief of the King’s forces, the first of a series of despatches which contain a precise and detailed account of his movements at this time. As indicating the spirit in which he had undertaken the duties assigned to him, and the strict and literal obedience to orders that characterised his execution of them, the document is both interesting and valuable. It is dated the 28th of December, and runs as follows: —

      ‘My Lord, – I came here last night with the troop, and am just going to march for Dumfries, where I resolve to quarter the whole troop. I have not heard anything of the dragoons, though it be now about nine o’clock, and they should have been here last night, according to your Lordship’s orders. I suppose they must have taken some other route. I am informed, since I came, that this country has been very loose. On Tuesday was eight days, and Sunday, there were

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