Page:Sketches of the History of the Church of Scotland.djvu/13

 Protestantism had obscured and explained away, in which he was followed at a long interval by another Bishop of the same honoured name and race, whose passing away before his time, as in our short-sightedness we think, from the Church which he loved and served, and which his learning and piety adorned, we are yet lamenting.

The violent abolition and suppression of Episcopacy in both kingdoms, which was in fact the suppression of the Church as the Body of Christ in the land, was followed by the deposition and murder of the king. By an eternal and unerring law, the sins of schism, rebellion, and bloodshed are closely linked together. The Scottish Covenanters who sold their king to the English regicides for a sum of money ready down—the antitype of the bargain of the traitor Judas—were not permitted to profit long by the blood-money. Cromwell and his Ironsides speedily overran Scotland. It is a popular boast that the kingdom was never conquered. It is conveniently forgotten that Cromwell accomplished that feat. As a retributive punishment, we may believe, for its disloyalty to God and the king, the battle of Dunbar saw the country at the usurper's feet. Cromwell suppressed Presbytry in Scotland as he had done Episcopacy in England, with the strong hand, and at the sword's point. He despatched one of his colonels to the General Assembly, who stalked in as Dickson, the Moderator, was calling the roll. The officer contemptuously interrupted him while beginning to say a prayer, and bade him and the rest of them begone. They obeyed on the instant. A company of foot soldiers conducted them to the West Port, from which they were escorted by a troop of horse to Bruntsfield Links. After being ordered to stand while their names were called over, and written down, they were forbidden to meet again, and so dismissed. Yes; the very men who had defied their king, burnt his Prayer Book, and excommunicated the Bishops, went out from their Assembly with the submission of sheep, and never met again for forty years.

For twelve of these years, Scotland groaned under the heel of the Republican despot, whose little finger it found heavier than the King's hand. England at its core, however, and we may say the same of Scotland, was loyal. As happens in most revolutions, it was a bold, determined, and noisy faction, a minority of the nation, that overthrew the Government in Church and State and slew the King. On the black morning of the 30th of January, 1649, the scaffold had to be guarded by mounted dragoons, and military music was kept playing to drown the indignant murmurings of the crowd. And the wailings and sobbings of the multitude rose above those sounds, when the masked executioner held up the head of the martyr, and proclaimed "this is the head of a traitor." Numbers rushed forward to dip their handkerchiefs in the blood of their anointed King, to be treasured in their families as a memorial of the sacrilegious murder.