Page:Sketches of the History of the Church of Scotland.djvu/36

 for the crime of saying the Morning Service in the presence of a congregation consisting of more than five persons which the statute, made and provided for extinguishing Episcopacy in Scotland, declared to be a congregation beyond which none should be allowed to meet. The violation of the statute rendered the officiating Clergyman liable, for the first offence, to imprisonment for six months; and for the second offence, banishment to the Plantations for life, which meant, as I have before stated, being sold to the Planters as slaves.

Nor did the faithful laity escape. They incurred sharp penalties for being present at the interdicted worship. Those of position were subjected to heavy fines, in addition to their being incapacitated for any office of privilege or trust. If Peers, they were debarred from taking their places in the House of their order; if Commoners, from being elected as members of Parliament; or even from discharging the humbler functions of Justices of the Peace. The law was frequently evaded by the contrivance that only five worshippers were under the purview of the officiating minister; while the passages, bed-rooms, and closets of the dwelling houses in which the worship was conducted,—as often as ten or twelve times in the course of the Sunday, in the presence of fresh relays,—were packed full of people, all more or less within ear-shot. But it sometimes happened that more than the statutable five ventured, with or without the sanction of the minister, to put in an appearance; in which case spies were seldom wanting to lodge information with the authorities, who rarely were inclined to show mercy or forbearance. One of Dean Skinner's neighbours, Mr. Sangster,—he died Dean of the Diocese in 1826, so near are those times brought to our own day,—also suffered imprisonment for the like offence. These are but specimens from the district which is best known to the writer; but the same persistent persecution went on throughout the whole of Scotland for nearly fifty years, until the Church was reduced to the verge of extinction. Indeed, the marvel is that a vestige of it was left. Much of this was told to the writer by Bishop Jolly. When I went to pay my duty to him, and receive his blessing, after my ordination as a Deacon, I well remember the saintly man lifting up his eyes and hands, and,—adverting to the faithlessness which had made himself and others despond and despair when no light appeared in the thick gloom,—thanking God that youthful labourers were at length being raised up in greater numbers to take the places of the old.

Among the last of the Clergy whom I have known who had been forced to worship God in the hidden, make-shift way I have mentioned, was Dr. Patrick Torry, Bishop of St. Andrews, Dunkeld, and Dunblane, who died at Peterhead in extreme old age, so late as 1852. I have heard the Bishop tell that when a young Priest at Arradoul in the Enzie,—now represented by the Buckie Congregation—he had