Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 5.djvu/293

Rh cile and obedient supporter of the measures of government. In the first parliament which he attended, he refused to vote for the forfaulture of the earl of Melville, who had fled from the wrath of government after the discovery of the Rye-house plot.

He was a zealous friend to the protestant faith, when there were few in Scotland who risked an open defence of the religion to which they were so ardently attached. The government, who found it difficult to make the protection of protestantism a crime, had nevertheless power enough to harass him. "On May 1st, 1686," he says, " Mr James Young, son to Andrew Young, writer to the signet, is apprehended by captain Graham, and kept in the court of guard, being delated as a copier and dispenser of a paper, containing reasons why the parliament should not consent to the dispensing with the penal laws against papists, and reflecting in the end on such protestants as had apostatized! and for having verses against the bishop of St Andrews and bishop of Edinburgh; and he having in his examination named John Wilson and John Nasmyth, my servants, as bringers of these papers to his chamber, the chancellor signed an order to captain Graham to arrest them, apprehending possibly to reach myself for libelling, as he termed it. But they having named their authors from whom they had them, were liberated, and their authors, viz. Mr John Ellis, Robert Keill, &c. were cited." "My two servants," he afterwards says, "being imprisoned, and I threatened therewith, as also that they would seize upon my papers, and search if they contained anything offensive to the party then prevailing, I was necessitat to hide the manuscript, and many others, and intermit my historick remarks till the Revolution in the end of 1688, after which 1 began some observes of our meeting of estates of parliament held in 1690-93 and 95, and other occurrents forreign and domestick, briefly summed up, and drawin togither yeirly, (but not with guch enlargements as I have used heir,) and are to be found up and downe in several manuscripts besyde me, to be reviewed cum dab it otium Deus."

When James made his well-known recommendation to the parliament of Scotland to rescind the penal statutes against Roman catholics, Lauder joined in the debate on the appropriate answer, in a spirit of moderation, which, according to the amount of his charity, the reader may attribute to prudence, or liberality, or both united. On the question, what term the parliament should bestow on those who professed the Romish faith, "I represented," says he, "that there was no man within the house more desirous to have these odious marks of division buried, and that we might all be united under the general name of Christian. It is true the names under which they were known in our law were the designations of the papistical kirk, heresy, error, superstition, popish idolatry, and maintainers of the cruel decrees cf the council of Trent; and though it was not suitable to the wisdom and gravity of parliament to give them a title implying as if they were the true church, and we but a sect, yet I wished some soft appellation, with the least offence, might be fallen on, and therefore I proposed it might run thus, those commonly called Roman Catholics; that the most part of our divines calls us the catholics, and so Chamier begins his Panstratia, 'Vertuntur controversiæ, Catholicos inter et Papistas.' The chancellor called this a nicknaming of the king, and proposed it might run in general terms thus, as to those subjects your majesty has recommended to us, &c." The motion of the archbishop of Glasgow, that they should be simply termed "Roman Catholics," a repetition of the king's own words was finally carried. But