History of the Scotch Church from the Restoration of Charles II. to his Death, in 1685 (3)

From Scotch and Irish Seeds in American Soil by Rev. J. G. Craighead

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CHAPTER IV. … continued

Wherever the people refused to attend the churches of the prelates or to acknowledge their authority, there the soldiery were sent with full powers to perpetrate whatever barbarities they pleased. Suspicion was all that was required for the infliction of any punishment which caprice or cruelty might dictate. From some money was extorted, others were reduced to starvation, and many more crowded into dungeons, where they could only stand upright day and night, though sick and dying from the fetid and pestilential vapors. The recital, even, of such deeds as were committed in the name of religion stirs the blood with horror, and we cannot dwell upon them.

Through many more years and with slight intermissions and unimportant alleviations, the persecutions against the Covenanters continued. Conventicles were still more sternly repressed, and it was made a capital offence for ministers to attend them. Gentlemen were held responsible if their wives, children, servants or tenantry were found in attendance upon them, and were ruined by the exorbitant fines exacted. But all these unjust and cruel measures, as well as the vigilance of the curates and dragoons, failed to suppress the assemblages. As a necessary precaution those who attended them went armed, and their numbers were frequently large enough to overawe the soldiers sent to disperse them. Yet wherever vengeance could be exercised it was unsparingly indulged. Fiends in human shape like Dalziel and Claverhouse were the ready tools of the cruel policy of which Archbishop Sharp was the ruling spirit. At the solicitation of the latter, repeated orders were issued by the council against field-meetings, each one more oppressive and cruel than the preceding. At length war was virtually declared against the ministers and all who should attend their meetings and protect them, and the barbarities attendant upon the execution of these orders drove the people to desperation. Nine gentlemen took it upon themselves to rid the country of this arch-enemy. Meeting him unexpectedly—for they were looking for his tool, Carmichael—they made him leave his coach; and notwithstanding his offers of money, his promise to abandon his prelatic office and his cries for mercy, they first shot him and then pierced him with their swords. So perished the guilty apostate who, by his repeated acts of perjury, and by eighteen years of bloodshed, had brought untold woe and ruin upon his country, and who finally fell a victim to the indignation which his merciless proceedings had aroused in the breasts of his countrymen.

Large but ineffectual rewards were offered for the apprehension of the murderers. The king was greatly incensed, and sent a proclamation to his council expressing regret for his past clemency, and a determination to wage a war of extermination in future against conventicles. He and his council, for their own purposes, chose to represent the persecuted Presbyterians as approving of the death of Sharp, while they could not but know that their oft-avowed principles would never sanction private individuals in taking the law into their own hands even to redress the greatest wrongs. But the time when endurance ceased to be a virtue had nearly come. The persecuted had either to submit to live as abject slaves or to rise up in defence of civil and religious liberty. Some of the more impetuous, judging themselves entitled by the laws of God and nature to defend their own lives when assailed, banded themselves together for this purpose. In their declaration of principles, however, they not only asserted this right, but censured the conduct of those who had brought the great evils upon the country. This was construed into an act of rebellion against the government, and an armed force was dispatched to apprehend those who had made the manifesto. Claverhouse was in command of the king’s troops; and meeting two hundred Covenanters, who were protecting a field-meeting near Loudon hill, he ordered his men to fire upon them. The fire was returned with vigor by the Presbyterian party, who at last rushed upon their assailants, putting them to flight and leaving forty of the soldiers dead upon the field of battle. This spirited and successful contest is known in history as the battle of DRUMCLOG.

With the victors the question to be decided was whether to disperse, or to remain together in order to protect each other. The latter course was decided upon, and the insurgents were joined by large numbers. Unhappily, however, there had been no previous plans or concert of action agreed upon, and differences of opinion paralyzed the assembled forces. One party was for asserting their loyalty to the king, although such oppressive tyranny had been practiced in his name; the other declared that when kings violate their solemn engagements with their subjects and become tyrants, the people are released from their obligations to support and defend those who thus oppress them. Neither party would submit to the other, and the scenes of contention which arose discouraged those already in arms, prevented many from joining the army, and led others to abandon the cause. After seizing Glasgow the insurgents marched toward Edinburgh, then returned to their former camp on Hamilton Moor, near Bothwell Bridge. Here they were met by the royal army in command of the duke of Monmouth, who ordered them to lay down their arms and submit themselves to the king’s clemency. The half hour given them for consultation having passed, and they not yielding, their position was charged by a detachment, which attempted to wrest the bridge from them. It was defended with great bravery, but want of proper support and a superior force obliged them at last to yield this, the key of the position. The enemy, crossing the bridge and charging the undisciplined and poorly commanded army of Covenanters, put them to flight, hewing down large numbers of them in the defenceless rout. While but few fell during the conflict, four hundred were slain in their flight, and twelve hundred were taken prisoners, many of whom afterward perished upon the scaffold. Such was the result of the battle of BOTHWELL BRIDGE.

The Presbyterians owed their defeat mainly to their divided councils. Some of their clergy were among the “indulged,” and had been restored to their pulpits by a defection from their principles, as some of their brethren understood it. Others had consented, under protest, to pay the tax levied for the support of the troops engaged in plundering the adherents of the Covenant, while many persistently refused to pay it. These irreconcilable opinions, not to say dissensions, rendered their overthrow inevitable.

But disastrous as was the battle, it was followed by still more terrible horrors. The prisoners, bound together two and two, were driven to Edinburgh as cattle to the slaughter. Arriving there, they were confined for five months in Grayfriars’ churchyard, half naked and half starved, without any protection from the cold and rain except the tombstones, and at the best a few rude huts. Some of them were hanged, others kept a long time in vile prisons, while two hundred of them were crowded into a small vessel to be transported to Barbadoes and sold for slaves. Upon the western and southern counties “the bloody Claverhouse” and his cruel soldiers were let loose to fine, imprison, torture and murder all suspected of aiding or approving of the late rising. Indiscriminate carnage followed. The country was put under martial law, and unparalleled atrocities were committed by the licentious soldiery. The people who fled from their homes were shot down in the fields, while their houses were pillaged and burnt; aged men of threescore and ten were dashed to the ground and trampled under foot; the sick were dragged from their beds and murdered; women were subjected to brutal violence worse than death itself; and tender youth were tortured with the hope to wring from them the place of concealment of their parents. In a word, complete desolation reigned wherever the fierce exterminators went.

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