Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 21.djvu/540

Rh 516 SCOTLAND [HISTORY. 664-1681. not warned by the fate of Laud, procured the restora- tion of the Court of High Commission to enforce the laws against ecclesiastical offenders. Fines were imposed on all who absented themselves from their parish churches or attended the sermons of the deposed ministers. Sir James Turner was sent by the privy council to the western shires to prevent conventicles and field preaching and to enforce the law as to conformity ; and his exactions, with the burden of maintaining his soldiers quartered upon all persons suspected of favouring the ousted ministers, led to risings in Galloway, Clydesdale, and Ayr. With their ministers and a few of the gentry at their head the Covenanters marched to Edinburgh, but were defeated at Bullion Green in the Pentlands by Dalziel, a Scottish officer whom Charles had recalled from the service of the czar. The executions which followed, and especially that of Hugh M'Kail, a young and enthusiastic preacher, sank deeply into the spirit of the people. He was the first martyr of the Covenant as Wishart had been of the Re- formation. The use of torture, before this rare, now be- came frequent, and bonds of law- burrows were wrested from their original use to compel the principal landowners to be sureties for the peace of the whole district. Large fines continued to be extorted from all persons who re- fused to conform to the ecclesiastical laws. Next year a change in the Scottish administration, the cause of which is not well explained, but which was probably due to the fall of Clarendon and the rise of the Cabal ministry, led to Policy of a milder but undecided policy in Scotland. Lauderdale, indul- one O f the Cabal, still directed Scottish affairs, but Rothes lce> and Sharp were treated as responsible for the rising in the west and suspended. An indemnity was offered to all who would appear before the council and subscribe bonds to keep the peace. A rash attempt to assassinate Sharp in Edinburgh prevented this policy from being adhered to in 1668 ; but it was renewed in the following year. An in- dulgence was granted which allowed the deposed ministers who had lived peaceably to return to their manses and glebes, and to receive such a stipend as the privy council might allow. The grace of this concession was undone by a severe Act against conventicles. It favoured a con- ciliatory policy that schemes for union were in the air. Leighton, the good bishop of Dunblane, proposed a union of the churches upon the basis that the bishops were no longer to exercise jurisdiction, but to act only as perpetual moderators of presbyteries, subject to censure by the synods, and that ministers should be ordained by the bishops, but with consent of the presbyters. There was a meeting at Holyrood with some of the leading ministers, but they would listen to no compromise. The name of bishop was hateful whatever were his functions. It may be doubted whether Charles and his English advisers would have submitted to a curtailment of the bishop's office and dignity. The subject of the union of the kingdoms was again brought forward in the parliament of 1669, to which Lauderdale was sent as commissioner; and though it was not well received commissioners were appointed in the following year, who went to London in autumn to dis- cuss with English commissioners certain specified points proposed by the king. After several meetings the con- ference broke up in consequence of a demand by the Scottish members that Scotland should have the same number of members in the united as in its own parliament. The arbitrary government favoured by the want of a settled constitution in Scotland was more to the taste of the king and his advisers. Lauderdale openly boasted, as James VI. had done, that nothing could be proposed in the Scot- tish parliament except what the king through the Lords of the Articles approved. The "indulgence" entirely failed of the desired effect. The ministers who took advantage of it were despised by the people, who continued to attend the conventicles. In 1672 an Act was passed punishing preachers at such conventicles with death and imposing fines, imprisonment, and exile for having children baptized by deprived ministers and for absence for three Sundays from the parish church. In 1675 letters of intercommun- ing were issued against about a hundred of those who attended the conventicles, both ministers and laymen, for- bidding their friends and relations to have any dealings with them under the same penalties as if they had them- selves been present at the conventicles. In 1678 Mitchell, a fanatical preacher, who had ten years before attempted the life of Sharp and mortally wounded the bishop of Orkney, was tried and executed. The feeling of the times, and the cruel manner in which a confession had been wrung from him by torture, led to his being regarded as a martyr. Prior to this year 17,000 persons had suffered fines or imprisonment for attending conventicles. A host of 10,000 men, chiefly Highlanders, was quartered in the western shires in order to force the landowners who favoured the Covenanters to enter into bonds of law-burrows. It appears to have been the design of Lauderdale, who still governed .Scotland absolutely through the privy council (no parliament having been summoned since 1674), to force the Scots to rebel. "When I was once saying to him," relates Burnet, " ' Was that a time to drive them into a rebellion?' 'Yes,' said he, 'would to God they would rebel that he might bring over an army of Irish Papists to cut their throats.' " One part of his wish was speedily fulfilled. In 1679 the rebellion so long smoulder- ing broke out. The murder of Sharp (3d May) by Hack- ston of Rathillet and a small band of Covenanters was followed by a still more stringent proclamation against field conventicles, which were declared treasonable, and the possession of arms was prohibited. This severity provoked a rising in the west. A small party led by Hamilton, a youth educated by Bishop Burnet at Glasgow, who had joined the Covenanters, burnt at Rutherglen the statutes and acts of privy council on the anniversary of the Restoration, and being allowed to gather numbers defeated Graham of Claverhouse at Loudon Hill (1st June). The duke of Monmouth, the favourite natural son of Charles, sent with troops from England to suppress the rising, gained an easy victory at Both well Bridge (22d June). His desire was to follow it up by a policy of clemency, and a new indulgence was issued, but its effect was counteracted by Lauderdale. All officers, ministers, and landowners, as well as those who had taken part in the rising and did not surrender within a short space, were excepted from the indulgence. Several preachers were executed and many persons sent to the colonies, while fines and forfeitures multiplied. A new and fiercer phase of the rebellion was originated by Cargill and Cameron, two preachers who escaped at Bothwell Bridge, and, assembling their followers at Sanquhar, pub- lished a declaration renouncing allegiance to Charles as a perjured king. They were soon surprised and Cameron was killed, but Cargill continued to animate his followers, called the " Society Men" or "Cameronians," by his preaching, and at a conventicle at Torwood in Ayrshire excommunicated the king, the duke of York, Lauderdale, and Rothes. The duke of York, who had become a Roman Catholic during his residence abroad, was now sent to Scotland, partly to avoid the discussion raised by his conversion as to his exclusion from the succession. During a short stay of three months he astonished the Scots by the mildness of his administration, but on his return in the following year he revealed his true character. The privy council renewed its proclamations against conventicles and increased the fines, which were levied by the sheriff or other magistrate under the pain of liability if they were remiss in their Rising ol 1679. f'outini anoe of ' severiti