Page:Sketches of the History of the Church of Scotland.djvu/33

 five months, until he managed to elude his jailors and make his escape into a foreign country." Two others of the Aberdeen Clergy, Dr. Burnett and Mr. Blair, were in hiding; and "Dr. James Garden," Professor of Divinity in King's College, "cannot with safety keep his own house, but under the infirmities of old age, has been forced to wander from place to place. Thus was that congregation, composed of the best and most intelligent burgesses and people of the town, deprived of the worship of God, and of their rightful Pastors." In the country parishes, the treatment of the Clergy was the same or worse. The minister of Aberlour was banished the kingdom for the crime of baptising an infant. In the western districts, the Clergy were "rabbled;" they, their wives and children, were driven from the manses in the midst of a snow storm; and more than one of the "outed" ministers perished under the infliction. Once more I have to state that this Confessorship is suppressed in the histories which circulate most among Scotsmen, who have yet to learn that there are two sides to this portion of the ecclesiastical history of our country.

"Mr. William Livingstone, the Parson of Deer after Mr. Keith's death in 1711, was seized by a party of military, and forced away from his family and flock. They rifled his house of everything of value within it; leaving not so many clothes as would cover his wife and an infant a few months old. Mr. Alexander, the aged Parson of Kildrummie,"—the father of Bishop Alexander, who ministered for many years to the faithful in the town of Alloa,—" was seized, and carried a prisoner to Aberdeen. From thence he was taken, along with Dr. Garden, to Edinburgh. But on their way there, they were both thrust into a noisome dungeon at Cupar-Angus, where the worst of criminals were imprisoned; and after many months of suffering were at last set at liberty on bail." Mr. William Dunbar, Parson of Cruden, and afterwards Bishop of Aberdeen, underwent the same sort of treatment. Mr. Dunbar, after his expulsion in 1717, from the church and parish of Cruden, retired to the neighbouring town of Peterhead; and on Bishop Gadderar's death, succeeded him as Bishop of the Diocese. Bishop Gadderar presided over the Diocese until 1733. About the beginning of his Episcopate in 1723, the persecution seems to have somewhat slackened. I possess a manuscript record, probably in the Bishop's own handwriting, of the Ordinations performed by him from 1723 to 1726. In the course of those three years, he conferred Holy Orders on twenty-eight Deacons and Priests; a fact proving how numerous the congregations in the Diocese were at the period. The memory of Bishop Gadderar continued green among Aberdeen Churchmen down to the end of the first quarter of the present century. As a youth, I have often heard his name mentioned with veneration by the older Clergy.

Of Bishop Dunbar, who resided, as I have said at Peterhead, where he ministered to a numerous congregation, I have heard Bishop