Ringan Gilhaize, or, The Covenanters Part 19

Pa.s.sing, however, by all those afflictions which took the colour of political animosities, I hasten to speak of the proceedings which, from the hour of the Restoration, were hatched for the revival of the prelatic oppression. The tyranny of the Stuarts is indeed of so fell a nature that, having once tasted of blood in any cause, it will return again and again, however so often baffled, till it has either devoured its prey, or been itself mastered; and so it showed in this instance.

For, regardless of those troubles which the attempt of the first Charles to exercise an authority in spiritual things beyond the rights of all earthly sovereignty caused to the realm and to himself, the second no sooner felt the sceptre in his grip than he returned to the same enormities; and he found a fit instrument in James Sharp, who, in contempt of the wrath of G.o.d, sold himself to Antichrist for the prelacy of St Andrews.

But it was not among the ambitious and mercenary members of the clergy that the evidences of a backsliding generation were alone to be seen; many of the people, n.o.bles and magistrates were infected with the sin of the same reprobation; and in verity, it might have been said of the realm that the restoration of King Charles the Second was hailed as an advent ordained to make men forget all vows, sobriety and solemnities.

It is, however, something to be said in commendation of the constancy of mind and principle of our West Country folk that the immorality of that drunken loyalty was less outrageous and offensive to G.o.d and man among them, and that although we did submit and were commanded to commemorate the anniversary of the King's restoration, it was nevertheless done with humiliation and anxiety of spirit. But a vain thing it would be of me to attempt to tell the heartburning with which we heard of the manner that the Covenant, and of all things which had been hallowed and honourable to religious Scotland, were treated in the town of Lithgow on that occasion, although all of my grandfather's stock knew that from of old it was a seat and sink of sycophancy, alien to holiness, and p.r.o.ne to lick the dust aneath the feet of whomsoever ministered to the corruption abiding there.

Had the general inebriation of the kingdom been confined only to such mockers as the papistical progeny of the unregenerate town of Lithgow, we might perhaps have only grieved at the wantonness of the world; but they were soon followed by more palpable enormities. Middleton, the King's commissioner, coming on a progress to Glasgow, held a council of state there, at which was present the apostate Fairfoul, who had been shortly before nominated Archbishop of that city; and at his wicked incitement, Middleton, in a fit of actual intoxication from strong drink, let loose the bloodhounds of persecution by that memorable act of council which bears the date of the 1st of October, 1662,--an anniversary that ought ever to be held as a solemn fast in Scotland, if such things might be, for by it all the ministers that had received Gospel ordination from and after the year forty-nine, and who still refused to bend the knee to Baal, were banished, with their families, from their kirks and manses.

But to understand in what way that wicked act, and the blood-causing proclamation which ensued, came to take effect, it is needful, before proceeding to the recital, to bid the courteous reader remember the preaching of the doctrine of pa.s.sive obedience by our time-serving pastor, Mr Sundrum, and how the kirk was deserted on that occasion; because, after his death, which happened in the forty-nine, G.o.dly Mr Swinton became our chosen pastor, and being placed and inducted according to the apostolic ordination of Presbytery, fell, of course, like many of his Gospel brethren, under the ban of the aforesaid proclamation, of which some imperfect sough and rumour reached us on the Friday after it was framed.

At first the particulars were not known, for it was described as the muttering of unclean spirits against the purity of the Truth; but the tidings startled us like the growl of some unknown and dreadful thing, and I dreamt that night of my grandfather, with his white hair and the comely venerableness of his great age, appearing pale and sorrowful in a field before me, and pointing with a hand of streaming light to hors.e.m.e.n, and chariots, and armies with banners, warring together on the distant hills.

Sat.u.r.day was then the market-day at Irvine; and though I had but little business there, I yet went in with my brother Robin, chiefly to hear the talk of the town. In this I but partook of the common sympathy of the whole country-side; for, on entering the town-end port, we found the concourse of people there a.s.sembled little short of the crowd at Marymas Fair, and all eager to learn what the council held at Glasgow had done; but no one could tell. Only it was known that the Earl of Eglinton, who had been present at the council, was returned home to the castle, and that he had sent for the provost that morning on very urgent business.

While we were thus all speaking and marvelling one with another, a cry got up that a band of soldiers was coming into the town from Ayr, the report of which, for the s.p.a.ce of several minutes, struck every one with awe and apprehension. And scarcely had the sough of this pa.s.sed over us, when it was told that the provost had privately returned from Eglinton Castle by the Gallows-knowes to the backsides, and that he had sent for the minister and the bailies, with others of the council, to meet him in the clerk's chamber.

No one wist what the meaning of such movements and mysteries could be; but all boded danger to the fold and flock, none doubting that the wolves of episcopalian covetousness were hungering and thirsting for the blood of the covenanted lambs. Nor were we long left to our guesses; for, soon after the magistrates and the minister had met, a copy of the proclamation of the council held at Glasgow was put upon the Tolbooth door, by which it was manifested to every eye that the fences of the vineyard were indeed broken down, and that the boar was let in and wrathfully trampling down and laying waste.

CHAPTER XLVI

The proclamation was as a stunning blow on the forehead of the Covenanters, and for the next two Sabbaths Mr Swinton was plainly in prayer a weighed down and sorrowful-hearted man, but he said nothing in his discourses that particularly affected the marrow of that sore and solemn business. On the Friday night, however, before the last Lord's day of that black October, he sent for my brother, who was one of his elders, and told him that he had received a mandatory for conformity to the proclamation, and to acknowledge the prelatic reprobation that the King's government had introduced into the church; but that it was his intention, strengthened of the Lord, to adhere to his vows and covenants, even to the uttermost, and not to quit his flock, happen what would.

"The beild of the kirk and the manse," said he, "being temporalities, are aneath the power and regulation of the earthly monarch; but in the things that pertain to the allegiance I owe to the King of Kings, I will act, with His heartening, the part of a true and loyal va.s.sal."

This determination being known throughout the parish, and the first of November being the last day allowed for conforming, on the Sabbath preceding we had a throng kirk and a solemneezed congregation. According to their wonted custom, the men, before the hour of wors.h.i.+p, a.s.sembled in the kirk-yard, and there was much murmuring and marvelling among us, that n.o.body in all the land would stand forth to renew the Covenant, as was done in the year thirty-eight; and we looked around and beheld the green graves of many friends that had died since the great day of the covenanting, and we were ashamed of ourselves and of our time, and mourned for the loss of the brave spirits which, in the darkness of His mysterious wisdom, the Lord had taken away.

The weather, for the season, was bright and dry; and the withered leaf still hung here and there on the tree, so that old and young, the infirm and the tender, could come abroad; and many that had been bed-rid were supported along by their relations to hear the word of Truth, for the last time, preached in the house of G.o.d.

Mr Swinton came, followed by his wife and family. He was, by this time, a man well stricken in years, but Mrs Swinton was of a younger generation; and they had seven children,--Martha, the eldest, a fine la.s.sie, was not pa.s.sing fourteen years of age. As they came slowly up the kirk-stile, we all remarked that the G.o.dly man never lifted his eyes from the ground, but came along perusing, as it were, the very earth for consolation.

The private door which, at that epoch, led to the minister's seat and the pulpit, was near to where the bell-rope hung on the outer wall, and as the family went towards it, one of the elders stepped from the plate at the main door to open it. But after Mrs Swinton and the children were gone in, the minister, who always stopped till they had done so, instead of then following, paused and looked up with a compa.s.sionate aspect, and laying his hand on the shoulder of old w.i.l.l.y Shackle, who was ringing the bell, he said,--

"Stop, my auld frien,--they that in this parish need a bell this day to call them to the service of their Maker winna come on the summons o'

yours."

He then walked in; and the old man, greatly affected, mounted the stool, and tied up the rope to the ring in the wall in his usual manner, that it might be out of the reach of the school weans. "But," said he, as he came down, "I needna fash; for after this day little care I wha rings the bell; since it's to be consecrat to the wantonings o' prelacy, I wis the tongue were out o' its mouth and its head cracket, rather than that I should live to see't in the service of Baal and the hoor o' Babylon."

After all the congregation had taken their seats, Mr Swinton rose and moved towards the front of the pulpit, and the silence in the church was as the silence at the martyrdom of some holy martyr. He then opened THE BOOK, and having given out the ninety-fourth psalm, we sang it with weeping souls; and during the prayer that followed there was much sobbing and lamentations, and an universal sorrow. His discourse was from the fifth chapter of the Lamentations of Jeremiah, verse first, and first clause of the verse; and with the tongue of a prophet, and the voice of an apostle, he foretold, as things already written in the chronicles of the kingdom, many of those sufferings which afterwards came to pa.s.s. It was a sermon that settled into the bottom of the hearts of all that heard it, and prepared us for the woes of the vial that was then pouring out.

At the close of the discourse, when the precentor rose to read the remembering prayer, old Ebenezer Muir, then upwards of fourscore and thirteen, who had been brought into the church on a barrow by two of his grandsons, and was, for reason of his deafness, in the bench with the elders, gave him a paper, which, after rehearsing the names of those in distress and sickness, he read, and it was "The persecuted kirk of SCOTLAND."

"If I forget thee, O Jerusalem! let my right hand forget her cunning,"

cried Mr Swinton at the words, with an inspiration that made every heart dirl; and surely never was such a prayer heard as that with which he followed up the divine words.

Then we sang the hundred and fortieth psalm, at the conclusion of which the minister came again to the front of the pulpit, and with a calm voice, attuned to by ordinare solemnity, he p.r.o.nounced the blessing; then, suddenly turning himself, he looked down to his family and said, "The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head." And he covered his face with his hands, and sat down and wept.

Never shall I forget the sound which rose at that sight; it was not a cry of woe, neither was it the howl of despair, nor the sob of sorrow, nor the gurl of wrath, nor the moan of anguish, but a deep and dreadful rustling of hearts and spirits, as if the angel of desolation, in pa.s.sing by, had shaken all his wings.

The kirk then began to skail; and when the minister and his family came out into the kirk-yard, all the heads of families present, moved by some sacred instinct from on high, followed them with one accord to the manse, like friends at a burial, where we told them, that whatever the Lord was pleased to allow to ourselves, a portion would be set apart for His servant. I was the spokesman on that occasion, and verily do I think that, as I said the words, a glorious light shone around me, and that I felt a fanning of the inward life, as if the young cherubims were present among us, and fluttering their wings with an exceeding great joy at the piety of our kind intents.

So pa.s.sed that memorable Sabbath in our parish; and here I may relate, that we had the satisfaction and comfort to know, in a little time thereafter, that the same Christian faithfulness with which Mr Swinton adhered to his gospel-trusts and character, was maintained on that day by more than three hundred other ministers, to the perpetual renown of our national worth and covenanted cause. And therefore, though it was an era of much sorrow and of many tears, it was thus, through the mysterious ways of Providence, converted into a ground of confidence in our religion, in so much that it may be truly said, out of the ruins and the overthrow of the first presbyterian church the Lord built up among us a stronghold and sanctuary for his truth and law.

CHAPTER XLVII

Nothing particular happened till the second week of November, when a citation came from Irvine, commanding the attendance of Mr Swinton, on a suffragan of Fairfoul's, under the penalties of the proclamation. In the meantime we had been preparing for the event; and my father having been some time no more, and my brother with his family in a house of their own, it was settled between him and me, that I should take our mother into mine, in order that the beild of Quharist might be given up to the minister and his houseless little ones; which all our neighbours much commended; and there was no slackness on their part in making a provision to supply the want of his impounded stipend.

As all had foreseen, Mr Swinton, for not appearing to the citation, was p.r.o.nounced a non-conformist; and the same night, after dusk, a party of the soldiers, that were marched from Ayr into Irvine on the day of the proclamation, came to drive him out of the manse.

There was surely in this a needless and exasperating severity, for the light of day might have served as well; but the men were not to blame, and the officer who came with them, having himself been tried in the battles of the Covenant, and being of a humane spirit, was as meek and compa.s.sionate in his tyrannical duty as could reasonably be hoped for.

He allowed Mrs Swinton to take away her clothes, and the babies, that were asleep in their beds, time to be awakened and dressed, nor did he object to their old ploughman, Robin Harrow, taking sundry articles of provision for their next morning's repast; so that, compared with the lewd riots and rampageous insolence of the troopers in other places, we had great reason to be thankful for the tenderness with which our minister and his small family of seven children were treated on that memorable night.

It was about eight o'clock when Martha, the eldest daughter, came flying to me like a demented creature, crying the persecutors were come, with naked swords and dreadful faces; and she wept and wrung her hands, thinking they were then murdering her parents and brothers and sisters.

I did, however, all that was in my power to pacify her, saying our lots were not yet laid in blood, and, leaving her to the consolatory counsellings of my wife, I put on my bonnet and hastened over to the manse.

The night was troubled and gusty. The moon was in her first quarter, and wading dim and low through the clouds on the Arran hills. Afar off, the bars of Ayr, in their roaring, boded a storm, and the stars were rus.h.i.+ng through a swift and showery south-west carry. The wind, as it hissed over the stubble, sounded like the whisperings of desolation; and I was thrice startled in my walk by pa.s.sing shapes and shadows, whereof I could not discern the form.

At a short distance from the manse door I met the G.o.dly sufferer and his dest.i.tute family, with his second youngest child in his arms. Mrs Swinton had their baby at her bosom, and the other four poor, terrified, helpless creatures were hirpling at their sides, holding them by the skirts, and often looking round in terror, dreading the persecutors, by whom they were in that dismal and inclement night so cast upon the mercy of the elements. But He that tempers the wind to the shorn lamb was their protector.

"You see, Ringan Gilhaize," said the minister, "how it fares with them in this world whose principles are at variance with the pretensions of man. But we are mercifully dealt by--a rougher manner and a harder heart, in the agent of persecution that has driven us from house and home, I had laid my account for; therefore, even in this dispensation, I can see the gentle hand of a gracious Master, and I bow the head of thankfulness."

While we were thus speaking and walking towards Quharist, several of the neighbours, who had likewise heard the alarm of what had thus come to pa.s.s, joined us on the way; and I felt within myself that it was a proud thing to be able to give refuge and asylum to an aged gospel minister and his family in such a time and on such a night.

We had not been long in the house when a great concourse of his friends and people gathered around, and among others Nahum Chapelrig, who had been some time his father's successor in the school. But all present were molested and angry with him, for he came in battle array, with the sword and gun that he had carried in the raids of the civil war, and was bragging of valorous things then needful to be done.

"Nahum Chapelrig," said the Worthy to him with severity, "this is no conduct for the occasion. It would hae been a black day for Scotland had her children covenanted themselves for temporal things. No, Nahum; if the prelatic reprobation now attempted on the kirk gang nae farther than outing her ministers from their kirks and manses, it maun be tholet; so look to it, that ye give not the adversary cause to reproach us with longing for the flesh-pots of Egypt when we are free to taste of the heavenly manna. I redde ye, therefore, Nahum Chapelrig, before these witnesses, to unbuckle that belt of war, and lay down thae weapons of offence. The time of the s.h.i.+eld and banner may come owre soon upon us.

Let us not provoke the smiter, lest he draw his sword against us, and have law and reason on his side. Therefore, I say unto thee, Peter, put up thy sword."

The zealous dominie, being thus timeously rebuked, unharnessed himself, and the minister having returned thanks for the softness with which the oppression was let down upon him, and for the pious affection of his people, we returned home to our respective dwellings.

But though by this Christian submission the power of cruelty was at that time rendered innocent towards all those who did as Mr Swinton had done, we were, nevertheless, not allowed to remain long unvisited by another swirl of the rising storm. Before the year was out, Fairfoul, the Glasgow Antichrist, sent upon us one of the getts that prelacy was then so fast adopting for her sons and heirs. A lang, thin, bare lad he was, that had gotten some spoonful or two of pagan philosophy at college, but never a solid meal of learning, nor, were we to judge by his greedy gaping, even a satisfactory meal of victuals. His name was Andrew Dornock; and, poor fellow, being eschewed among us on account of his spiritual leprosy, he drew up with divers loose characters, that were nae overly nice of their company.

This made us dislike him more and more, in so much that, like others of his nature and calling, he made sore and secret complaints of his paris.h.i.+oners to his mitred master; representing, for aught I ken to the contrary, that, instead of believing the Gospel according to Charles Stuart, we preferred that of certain four persons, called Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, of whom, it may be doubted, if he, poor man, knew more than the names. But be that as it may, to a surety he did grievously yell and cry, because we preferred listening to the Gospel melody of Mr Swinton under a tree to his f.e.c.kless havers in the kirk; as if it was nae a more glorious thing to wors.h.i.+p G.o.d in the freedom and presence of universal Nature, beneath the canopy of all the heavens, than to bow the head in the fetters of episcopal bondage below the stoury rafters of an auld bigging, such as our kirk was, a perfect howf of cloks and spiders.

Indeed, for that matter, it was said that the only sensible thing Andrew Dornock ever uttered from the pulpit was, when he first rose to speak therein, and which was caused by a spider, that just at the moment lowered itself down into his mouth: "O Lord," cried the curate, "we're puzhened wi' speeders!"

CHAPTER XLVIII

It might have been thought, considering the poor hand which the prelatic curates made of it in their endeavours to preach, that they would have set themselves down content with the stipend, and allowed the flocks to follow their own shepherds in peace; but their hearts were filled with the bitterness of envy at the sight of the mult.i.tudes that went forth to gather the manna in the fields, and their malice was exasperated to a wonderful pitch of wickedness by the derision and contempt with which they found themselves regarded. No one among them all, however, felt this envy and malice more stirring within him, than did the arch-apostate James Sharp; for the faithfulness of so many ministers was a terror and a reproach to his conscience and apostacy, and made him labour with an exceeding zeal and animosity to extirpate so many evidences of his own religious guilt. Accordingly, by his malignant counsellings, edicts and decrees came out against our tabernacle in the wilderness, and under the opprobrious name of conventicles, our holy meetings were made prohibited offences, and our ministers subjected to pains and penalties, as sowers of sedition.