Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 25.djvu/400

H On 27 April 1646 Charles left Oxford for the Scottish army, reaching Newcastle-on-Tyne on 13 May. In hope of inducing him to take the ‘league and covenant,’ Henderson was sent for. He arrived on the 26th, and proposed a personal correspondence on the two points at issue, the divine institution of episcopacy, and the obligation of the coronation oath. Charles would have preferred a discussion of divines on both sides, but yielded to Henderson's plea for saving time, though thinking him ‘mistaken in the way to save it.’ The papers in Henderson's crabbed hand were copied for the king by Sir Robert Murray. The letters extend from 29 May to 16 July, and leave the impression that Charles was a more adroit debater than Henderson. The most interesting things in the correspondence, which was without the desired result, are the references by both men to their early training.

The failure of this last enterprise was fatal to Henderson's already broken health. In June 1645 he had suffered from gravel, and tried the Epsom waters; he now showed symptoms of decline. Baillie, on 7 Aug., wrote that he heard he was ‘dying most of heartbreak.’ He sailed from Newcastle to Leith, and got home to Edinburgh. Here he dined with Sir James Stewart, and was extremely cheerful and hearty, but said, ‘there was never a schoolboy more desirous to have the play than I am to have leave of this world.’ He made his will on 17 Aug., and died on 19 Aug. 1646, ‘at his duelling-house, neir wnto the hie schoole.’ Aiton says, but the statement needs confirmation, that he was buried in St. Giles's churchyard, near to the grave of Knox, and that when the churchyard was formed into the Parliament Square, his body was removed to the ground of the Hendersons of Fordel in the Greyfriars churchyard. There a monument was erected by his nephew, George Henderson. It was demolished by an order of parliament in June or July 1662, but it was restored at the revolution of 1689, and still stands. The existing inscription (misread by Aiton and others) correctly gives the date of death as 19 Aug. Henderson never married; he left property valued at over 2,350l. sterling, besides the small farm of Pittenbrog, near Leuchars, purchased in 1630. In person he was under middle height, well formed, with small and shapely hands; his countenance was pensive and careworn; his pointed beard rested on a huge ruff. Aiton enumerates six original portraits of him in Scotland, of which the finest, a three-quarter length, is at Duff House, Banffshire. There is an engraving by Hollar; another, by Freeman (reproduced by Kelly), from the Glasgow College portrait; a third, by R. Scott, from the portrait at Fordel House, is prefixed to Aiton's ‘Life.’ He was a man of learning and refinement, temperate in speech, and conciliatory in bearing. He had great capacity for organisation, and his power of giving effect to popular sentiment is indisputable.

His publications, which were not numerous, include: 1. ‘Reasons against the Rendering of our Sworn Covenant,’ &c., 1638, 4to. 2. ‘The Bishops' Doom,’ &c., 1638; reprinted, Edinburgh, 1762, 8vo. 3. ‘A Sermon … before the … General Assembly, 1639,’ &c.; reprinted Edinb. 1682, 8vo. 4. ‘The Remonstrance of the Nobles … within the Kingdom of Scotland,’ &c., 1639, 4to. 5. ‘The Government and Order of the Church of Scotland,’ &c., Edinburgh, 1641, 4to. 6. ‘Speech … before the taking of the Covenant by the House of Commons and Assembly of Divines,’ &c., Edinburgh, 1643, 4to. 7. ‘The Reformation of Church Government in Scotland cleared,’ &c., 1644, 4to. 8. ‘A Sermon … to the .... House of Commons,’ &c., 1644, 4to. 9. ‘A Sermon … before the … Lords and Commons,’ &c., 1644, 4to. 10. ‘A Sermon … before the … House of Lords,’ &c., 1645, 4to. Posthumous were 11. ‘The Papers … betwixt His Sacred Majestie and M. Al. Henderson,’ &c., 1649, 8vo; another edition, ‘Certaine Papers,’ &c., Haghe (sic), 1649, 4to. 12. ‘Sermons, Prayers, and Pulpit Addresses,’ &c., Edinburgh (1867), 4to (edited from manuscript reports by R. T. Martin; they were delivered at St. Andrews and Leuchars between February and November 1638). He was an indefatigable writer of ecclesiastical state papers; several will be found in Rothes, Baillie, Wodrow, and Stevenson. His literary executors were John Duncan, minister of Culross, and William Dalgliesh, minister of Cramond, but they do not seem to have published any of his manuscripts. Wodrow possessed three of them, viz. ‘Instructions about Defensive Arms,’ 1639; ‘Directions as to the Voicing in Parliāt,’ 1639; ‘Answers to some Propositions in Defence of Episcopacy’ (about same time). In 1648 was published in London, 4to, ‘The Declaration of Mr. Alexander Henderson … made upon his Deathbed.’ There is no external witness of its authenticity; the general assembly, on 7 Aug. 1648, pronounced it a forgery. Internal evidence is rather in favour of its genuineness, though its recommendation to adhere to their ‘native king’ and be satisfied with the reformation of their own church would be unpalatable to Henderson's party. Later writers represent it as a recantation, and add hearsay accounts of similar