Hunted and Harried by Robert Michael Ballantyne (booksvooks TXT) 📕

Dick as he glanced at the youth.

"Hoots, man! sit doon," he said quietly; "ye micht as weel try to rescue a kid frae the jaws o' a lion as rescue Andry Black frae the fangs o' Lauderdale an' his crew. But something may be dune when they're takin' him back to the Tolbooth--if ye're a' wullin' to help. We mak' full twunty-four feet amangst us, an' oor shoothers are braid!"

"I'm ready," said David Spence, in the quiet tone of a man who usually acts from principle.

"An' so am I," cried Bruce, smiting the table with the fist of a man who usually acts from impulse.

While Wallace calmed his impatient spirit, and sat down to hatch a plot with his brother conspirators, a strange scene was enacting in the Council Chamber, where the perjured prelates and peers were in the habit of practising cruelty, oppression, and gross injustice under the name of law.

They sat beside a table which was covered with books and parchments. In front of them, seated on a chair with his arms pinioned, was Andrew Black. His face was pale and had a careworn look, but he held his head erect, and regarded his judges with a look of stern resolution that seemed to exasperate them considerably. On the table lay a pair of brass-mounted thumbscrews, and beside them the strange-looking instrument of torture called the boot. In regard to these machines there is a passage in the Privy Council Records which gives an idea of the spirit of the age about which we write. It runs thus: "Whereas the _boots_ were the ordinary way to explicate matters relating to the Government, and there is now a new invention and engine called the _Thumbkins_, which will be very effectual to the purpose aforesaid, the Lords ordain that when any person shall by their order be put to the torture, the said boots and thumbkins be applied to them, as it shall be found fit and convenient."

Lauderdale on this occasion found it fit and convenient to apply the torture to another man in the presence of Black, in order that the latter might fully appreciate what he had to expect if he should remain contumacious. The poor man referred to had not been gifted with a robust frame or a courageous spirit. When asked, however, to reveal the names of some comrades who had accompanied him to a field-preaching he at first loyally and firmly refused to do so. Then the boot was applied. It was a wooden instrument which enclosed the foot and lower limb of the victim. Between it and the leg a wedge was inserted which, when struck repeatedly, compressed the limb and caused excruciating agony. In some cases this torture was carried so far that it actually crushed the bone, causing blood and marrow to spout forth. It was so in the case of that well-known martyr of the Covenant, Hugh McKail, not long before his execution.

The courage of the poor man of whom we now write gave way at the second stroke of the mallet, and, at the third, uttering a shriek of agony, he revealed, in short gasps, the names of all the comrades he could recall. Let us not judge him harshly until we have undergone the same ordeal with credit! A look of intense pity overspread the face of Andrew Black while this was going on. His broad chest heaved, and drops of perspiration stood on his brow. He had evidently forgotten himself in his strong sympathy with the unhappy martyr. When the latter was carried out, in a half fainting condition, he turned to Lauderdale, and, frowning darkly, said--

"Thou meeserable sinner, cheeld o' the deevil, an' enemy o' a' righteousness, div 'ee think that your blood-stained haund can owerturn the cause o' the Lord?"

This speech was received with a flush of anger, quickly followed by a supercilious smile.

"We shall see. Get the boot ready there. Now, sir," (turning to Black), "answer promptly--Will you subscribe the oath of the King's supremacy?"

"No--that I wull _not_. I acknowledge nae king ower my conscience but the King o' Kings. As for that perjured libertine on the throne, for whom there's muckle need to pray, I tell ye plainly that I consider the freedom and welfare o' Scotland stands higher than the supposed rights o' king and lords. Ye misca' us rebels! If ye ken the history o' yer ain country--whilk I misdoot--ye would ken that the Parliaments o' baith Scotland an' England have laid it doon, in declaration and in practice, that resistance to the exercise o' arbitrary power is _lawfu'_, therefore resistance to Chairles and you, his shameless flunkeys, is nae mair rebellion than it's rebellion in a cat to flee in the face o' a bull-doug that wants to worry her kittens. Against the tyrant that has abused his trust, an' upset oor constitution, an' broken a' the laws o' God and man, I count it to be my bounden duty to fecht wi' swurd an' lip as lang's I hae an airm to strike an' a tongue to wag. Noo, ye may dae yer warst!"

At a signal the executioner promptly fitted the boot to the bold man's right leg.

Black's look of indignant defiance passed away, and was replaced by an expression of humility that, strangely enough, seemed rather to intensify than diminish his air of fixed resolve. While the instrument of torture was being arranged he turned his face to the Bishop of Galloway, who sat beside Lauderdale silently and sternly awaiting the result, and with an almost cheerful air and quiet voice said--

"God has, for His ain wise ends, made the heart o' the puir man that has just left us tender, an' He's made mine teuch, but tak' notice, thou wolf in sheep's clothing, that it's no upon its teuchness but upon the speerit o' the Lord that I depend for grace to withstand on this evil day."

"Strike!" said the Duke, in a low stern voice.

The mallet fell; the wedge compressed the strong limb, and Andrew compressed his lips.

"Again!"

A second time the mallet fell, but no sign did the unhappy man give of the pain which instantly began to shoot through the limb. After a few more blows the Duke stayed the process and reiterated his questions, but Black took no notice of him whatever. Large beads of sweat broke out on his brow. These were the only visible signs of suffering, unless we except the deathly pallor of his face.

"Again!" said the merciless judge.

The executioner obeyed, but the blow had been barely delivered when a loud snap was heard, and the tortured man experienced instant relief. Jock Bruce's little device had been successful, the instrument of torture was broken!

"Thanks be to Thy name, O God, for grace to help me thus far," said Black in a quiet tone.

"Fix on the other boot," cried Lauderdale savagely, for the constancy as well as the humility of the martyr exasperated him greatly.

The executioner was about to obey when a noise was heard at the door of the Council Chamber, and a cavalier, booted and spurred and splashed with mud, as if he had ridden fast and far, strode hastily up to the Duke and whispered in his ear. The effect of the whisper was striking, for an expression of mingled surprise, horror, and alarm overspread for a few moments even his hard visage. At the same time the Bishop of Galloway was observed to turn deadly pale, and an air of consternation generally marked the members of Council.

"Murdered--in cold blood!" muttered the Duke, as if he could not quite believe the news,--and perhaps realised for the first time that there were others besides the Archbishop of Saint Andrews who richly deserved a similar fate.

Hastily ordering the prisoner to be removed to the Tolbooth, he retired with his infamous companions to an inner room.

The well-known historical incident which was thus announced shall receive but brief comment here. There is no question at all as to the fact that Sharp was unlawfully killed, that he was cruelly slain, without trial and without judicial condemnation, by a party of Covenanters. Nothing justifies illegal killing. The justice of even legal killing is still an unsettled question, but one which does not concern us just now. We make no attempt to defend the deed of those men. It is not probable that any average Christian, whether in favour of the Covenanters or against them, would justify the killing of an old man by illegal means, however strongly he might hold the opinion that the old man deserved to die. In order to form an unprejudiced opinion on this subject recourse must be had to facts. The following are briefly the facts of the case.

A merchant named William Carmichael, formerly a bailie of Edinburgh, was one of Sharp's favourites, and one of his numerous commissioners for suppressing conventicles in Fife. He was a licentious profligate, greedy of money, and capable of undertaking any job, however vile. This man's enormities were at last so unbearable that he became an object of general detestation, and his excessive exactions had ruined so many respectable lairds, owners, and tenants, that at last nine of these (who had been outlawed, interdicted the common intercourse of society, and hunted like wild beasts on the mountains) resolved, since all other avenues of redressing their unjust sufferings were denied them, to take the law into their own hands and personally chastise Carmichael. Accordingly, hearing that the commissioner was hunting on the moors in the neighbourhood of Cupar, they rode off in search of him. They failed to find him, and were about to disperse, when a boy brought intelligence that the coach of Archbishop Sharp was approaching.

Baffled in their previous search, and smarting under the sense of their intolerable wrongs, the party regarded this as a providential deliverance of their arch-enemy into their hands. Here was the chief cause of all their woes, the man who, more almost than any other, had been instrumental in the persecution and ruin of many families, in the torture and death of innumerable innocent men and women, and the banishment of some of their nearest and dearest to perpetual exile on the plantations, where they were treated as slaves. They leaped at the sudden and unexpected opportunity. They reasoned that what had been done in the past, and was being done at the time, would continue to be done in the future, for there was no symptom of improvement, but rather of increasing severity in the Government and ecclesiastics. Overtaking the coach, which contained the Prelate and his daughter, they stopped it, made Archbishop Sharp step out, and slew him there on Magus Moor.

It was a dark unwarrantable deed, but it was unpremeditated, and necessarily unknown, at first, to any but the perpetrators, so that it would be inexcusably unfair to saddle it upon the great body of the Covenanters, who, as far as we can ascertain from their writings and opinions, condemned it, although, naturally, they could not but feel relieved to think that one of their chief persecutors was for evermore powerless for further evil, and _some_ of them refused to admit that the deed was murder. They justified it by the case of Phinehas. A better apology lies in the text, "oppression maketh a wise man mad."

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