The History of England, from the Accession of James the Second - Volume 1 by Thomas Babington Macaulay (diy ebook reader .txt) π
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Scotland as the surest pledge of their
loyalty, the most sanguinary law that has ever in our island been
enacted against Protestant Nonconformists.
With this law the whole spirit of his administration was in
perfect harmony. The fiery persecution, which had raged when he
ruled Scotland as vicegerent, waxed hotter than ever from the day
on which he became sovereign. Those shires in which the
Covenanters were most numerous were given up to the license of
the army. With the army was mingled a militia, composed of the
most violent and profligate of those who called themselves
Episcopalians. Preeminent among the bands which oppressed and
wasted these unhappy districts were the dragoons commanded by
John Graham of Claverhouse. The story ran that these wicked men
used in their revels to play at the torments of hell, and to call
each other by the names of devils and damned souls.287 The chief
of this Tophet, a soldier of distinguished courage and
professional skill, but rapacious and profane, of violent temper
and of obdurate heart, has left a name which, wherever the
Scottish race is settled on the face of the globe, is mentioned
with a peculiar energy of hatred. To recapitulate all the crimes,
by which this man, and men like him, goaded the peasantry of the
Western Lowlands into madness, would be an endless task. A few
instances must suffice; and all those instances shall be taken
from the history of a single fortnight, that very fortnight in
which the Scottish Parliament, at the urgent request of James,
enacted a new law of unprecedented severity against Dissenters.
John Brown, a poor carrier of Lanarkshire, was, for his singular
piety, commonly called the Christian carrier. Many years later,
when Scotland enjoyed rest, prosperity, and religious freedom,
old men who remembered the evil days described him as one versed
in divine things, blameless in life, and so peaceable that the
tyrants could find no offence in him except that he absented
himself from the public worship of the Episcopalians. On the
first of May he was cutting turf, when he was seized by
Claverhouse's dragoons, rapidly examined, convicted of
nonconformity, and sentenced to death. It is said that, even
among the soldiers, it was not easy to find an executioner. For
the wife of the poor man was present; she led one little child by
the hand: it was easy to see that she was about to give birth to
another; and even those wild and hardhearted men, who nicknamed
one another Beelzebub and Apollyon, shrank from the great
wickedness of butchering her husband before her face. The
prisoner, meanwhile, raised above himself by the near prospect of
eternity, prayed loud and fervently as one inspired, till
Claverhouse, in a fury, shot him dead. It was reported by
credible witnesses that the widow cried out in her agony, "Well,
sir, well; the day of reckoning will come;" and that the murderer
replied, "To man I can answer for what I have done; and as for
God, I will take him into mine own hand." Yet it was rumoured
that even on his seared conscience and adamantine heart the dying
ejaculations of his victim made an impression which was never
effaced.288
On the fifth of May two artisans, Peter Gillies and John Bryce,
were tried in Ayrshire by a military tribunal consisting of
fifteen soldiers. The indictment is still extant. The prisoners
were charged, not with any act of rebellion, but with holding the
same pernicious doctrines which had impelled others to rebel, and
with wanting only opportunity to act upon those doctrines. The
proceeding was summary. In a few hours the two culprits were
convicted, hanged, and flung together into a hole under the
gallows.289
The eleventh of May was made remarkable by more than one great
crime. Some rigid Calvinists had from the doctrine of reprobation
drawn the consequence that to pray for any person who had been
predestined to perdition was an act of mutiny against the eternal
decrees of the Supreme Being. Three poor labouring men, deeply
imbued with this unamiable divinity, were stopped by an officer
in the neighbourhood of Glasgow. They were asked whether they
would pray for King James the Seventh. They refused to do so
except under the condition that he was one of the elect. A file
of musketeers was drawn out. The prisoners knelt down; they were
blindfolded; and within an hour after they had been arrested,
their blood was lapped up by the dogs.290
While this was done in Clydesdale, an act not less horrible was
perpetrated in Eskdale. One of the proscribed Covenanters,
overcome by sickness, had found shelter in the house of a
respectable widow, and had died there. The corpse was discovered
by the Laird of Westerhall, a petty tyrant who had, in the days
of the Covenant, professed inordinate zeal for the Presbyterian
Church, who had, since the Restoration, purchased the favour of
the government by apostasy, and who felt towards the party which
he had deserted the implacable hatred of an apostate. This man
pulled down the house of the poor woman, carried away her
furniture, and, leaving her and her younger children to wander in
the fields, dragged her son Andrew, who was still a lad, before
Claverhouse, who happened to be marching through that part of the
country. Claverhouse was just then strangely lenient. Some
thought that he had not been quite himself since the death of the
Christian carrier, ten days before. But Westerhall was eager to
signalise his loyalty, and extorted a sullen consent. The guns
were loaded, and the youth was told to pull his bonnet over his
face. He refused, and stood confronting his murderers with the
Bible in his hand. "I can look you in the face," he said; "I have
done nothing of which I need be ashamed. But how will you look in
that day when you shall be judged by what is written in this
book?" He fell dead, and was buried in the moor.291
On the same day two women, Margaret Maclachlin and Margaret
Wilson, the former an aged widow, the latter a maiden of
eighteen, suffered death for their religion in Wigtonshire. They
were offered their lives if they would consent to abjure the
cause of the insurgent Covenanters, and to attend the Episcopal
worship. They refused; and they were sentenced to be drowned.
They were carried to a spot which the Solway overflows twice a
day, and were fastened to stakes fixed in the sand between high
and low water mark. The elder sufferer was placed near to the
advancing flood, in the hope that her last agonies might terrify
the younger into submission. The sight was dreadful. But the
courage of the survivor was sustained by an enthusiasm as lofty
as any that is recorded in martyrology. She saw the sea draw
nearer and nearer, but gave no sign of alarm. She prayed and sang
verses of psalms till the waves choked her voice. After she had
tasted the bitterness of death, she was, by a cruel mercy unbound
and restored to life. When she came to herself, pitying friends
and neighbours implored her to yield. "Dear Margaret, only say,
God save the King!" The poor girl, true to her stern theology,
gasped out, "May God save him, if it be God's will!" Her friends
crowded round the presiding officer. "She has said it; indeed,
sir, she has said it." "Will she take the abjuration?" he
demanded. "Never!" she exclaimed. "I am Christ's: let me go!" And
the waters closed over her for the last time.292
Thus was Scotland governed by that prince whom ignorant men have
represented as a friend of religious liberty, whose misfortune it
was to be too wise and too good for the age in which he lived.
Nay, even those laws which authorised him to govern thus were in
his judgment reprehensibly lenient. While his officers were
committing the murders which have just been related, he was
urging the Scottish Parliament to pass a new Act compared with
which all former Acts might be called merciful.
In England his authority, though great, was circumscribed by
ancient and noble laws which even the Tories would not patiently
have seen him infringe. Here he could not hurry Dissenters before
military tribunals, or enjoy at Council the luxury of seeing them
swoon in the boots. Here he could not drown young girls for
refusing to take the abjuration, or shoot poor countrymen for
doubting whether he was one of the elect. Yet even in England he
continued to persecute the Puritans as far as his power extended,
till events which will hereafter be related induced him to form
the design of uniting Puritans and Papists in a coalition for the
humiliation and spoliation of the established Church.
One sect of Protestant Dissenters indeed he, even at this early
period of his reign, regarded with some tenderness, the Society
of Friends. His partiality for that singular fraternity cannot be
attributed to religious sympathy; for, of all who acknowledge the
divine mission of Jesus, the Roman Catholic and the Quaker differ
most widely. It may seem paradoxical to say that this very
circumstance constituted a tie between the Roman Catholic and the
Quaker; yet such was really the case. For they deviated in
opposite directions so far from what the great body of the nation
regarded as right, that even liberal men generally considered
them both as lying beyond the pale of the largest toleration.
Thus the two extreme sects, precisely because they were extreme
sects, had a common interest distinct from the interest of the
intermediate sects. The Quakers were also guiltless of all
offence against James and his House. They had not been in
existence as a community till the war between his father and the
Long Parliament was drawing towards a close. They had been
cruelly persecuted by some of the revolutionary governments. They
had, since the Restoration, in spite of much ill usage, submitted
themselves meekly to the royal authority. For they had, though
reasoning on premises which the Anglican divines regarded as
heterodox, arrived, like the Anglican divines, at the conclusion,
that no excess of tyranny on the part of a prince can justify
active resistance on the part of a subject. No libel on the
government had ever been traced to a Quaker.293 In no conspiracy
against the government had a Quaker been implicated. The society
had not joined in the clamour for the Exclusion Bill, and had
solemnly condemned the Rye House plot as a hellish design and a
work of the devil.294 Indeed, the friends then took very little
part in civil contentions; for they were not, as now, congregated
in large towns, but were generally engaged in agriculture, a
pursuit from which they have been gradually driven by the
vexations consequent on their strange
loyalty, the most sanguinary law that has ever in our island been
enacted against Protestant Nonconformists.
With this law the whole spirit of his administration was in
perfect harmony. The fiery persecution, which had raged when he
ruled Scotland as vicegerent, waxed hotter than ever from the day
on which he became sovereign. Those shires in which the
Covenanters were most numerous were given up to the license of
the army. With the army was mingled a militia, composed of the
most violent and profligate of those who called themselves
Episcopalians. Preeminent among the bands which oppressed and
wasted these unhappy districts were the dragoons commanded by
John Graham of Claverhouse. The story ran that these wicked men
used in their revels to play at the torments of hell, and to call
each other by the names of devils and damned souls.287 The chief
of this Tophet, a soldier of distinguished courage and
professional skill, but rapacious and profane, of violent temper
and of obdurate heart, has left a name which, wherever the
Scottish race is settled on the face of the globe, is mentioned
with a peculiar energy of hatred. To recapitulate all the crimes,
by which this man, and men like him, goaded the peasantry of the
Western Lowlands into madness, would be an endless task. A few
instances must suffice; and all those instances shall be taken
from the history of a single fortnight, that very fortnight in
which the Scottish Parliament, at the urgent request of James,
enacted a new law of unprecedented severity against Dissenters.
John Brown, a poor carrier of Lanarkshire, was, for his singular
piety, commonly called the Christian carrier. Many years later,
when Scotland enjoyed rest, prosperity, and religious freedom,
old men who remembered the evil days described him as one versed
in divine things, blameless in life, and so peaceable that the
tyrants could find no offence in him except that he absented
himself from the public worship of the Episcopalians. On the
first of May he was cutting turf, when he was seized by
Claverhouse's dragoons, rapidly examined, convicted of
nonconformity, and sentenced to death. It is said that, even
among the soldiers, it was not easy to find an executioner. For
the wife of the poor man was present; she led one little child by
the hand: it was easy to see that she was about to give birth to
another; and even those wild and hardhearted men, who nicknamed
one another Beelzebub and Apollyon, shrank from the great
wickedness of butchering her husband before her face. The
prisoner, meanwhile, raised above himself by the near prospect of
eternity, prayed loud and fervently as one inspired, till
Claverhouse, in a fury, shot him dead. It was reported by
credible witnesses that the widow cried out in her agony, "Well,
sir, well; the day of reckoning will come;" and that the murderer
replied, "To man I can answer for what I have done; and as for
God, I will take him into mine own hand." Yet it was rumoured
that even on his seared conscience and adamantine heart the dying
ejaculations of his victim made an impression which was never
effaced.288
On the fifth of May two artisans, Peter Gillies and John Bryce,
were tried in Ayrshire by a military tribunal consisting of
fifteen soldiers. The indictment is still extant. The prisoners
were charged, not with any act of rebellion, but with holding the
same pernicious doctrines which had impelled others to rebel, and
with wanting only opportunity to act upon those doctrines. The
proceeding was summary. In a few hours the two culprits were
convicted, hanged, and flung together into a hole under the
gallows.289
The eleventh of May was made remarkable by more than one great
crime. Some rigid Calvinists had from the doctrine of reprobation
drawn the consequence that to pray for any person who had been
predestined to perdition was an act of mutiny against the eternal
decrees of the Supreme Being. Three poor labouring men, deeply
imbued with this unamiable divinity, were stopped by an officer
in the neighbourhood of Glasgow. They were asked whether they
would pray for King James the Seventh. They refused to do so
except under the condition that he was one of the elect. A file
of musketeers was drawn out. The prisoners knelt down; they were
blindfolded; and within an hour after they had been arrested,
their blood was lapped up by the dogs.290
While this was done in Clydesdale, an act not less horrible was
perpetrated in Eskdale. One of the proscribed Covenanters,
overcome by sickness, had found shelter in the house of a
respectable widow, and had died there. The corpse was discovered
by the Laird of Westerhall, a petty tyrant who had, in the days
of the Covenant, professed inordinate zeal for the Presbyterian
Church, who had, since the Restoration, purchased the favour of
the government by apostasy, and who felt towards the party which
he had deserted the implacable hatred of an apostate. This man
pulled down the house of the poor woman, carried away her
furniture, and, leaving her and her younger children to wander in
the fields, dragged her son Andrew, who was still a lad, before
Claverhouse, who happened to be marching through that part of the
country. Claverhouse was just then strangely lenient. Some
thought that he had not been quite himself since the death of the
Christian carrier, ten days before. But Westerhall was eager to
signalise his loyalty, and extorted a sullen consent. The guns
were loaded, and the youth was told to pull his bonnet over his
face. He refused, and stood confronting his murderers with the
Bible in his hand. "I can look you in the face," he said; "I have
done nothing of which I need be ashamed. But how will you look in
that day when you shall be judged by what is written in this
book?" He fell dead, and was buried in the moor.291
On the same day two women, Margaret Maclachlin and Margaret
Wilson, the former an aged widow, the latter a maiden of
eighteen, suffered death for their religion in Wigtonshire. They
were offered their lives if they would consent to abjure the
cause of the insurgent Covenanters, and to attend the Episcopal
worship. They refused; and they were sentenced to be drowned.
They were carried to a spot which the Solway overflows twice a
day, and were fastened to stakes fixed in the sand between high
and low water mark. The elder sufferer was placed near to the
advancing flood, in the hope that her last agonies might terrify
the younger into submission. The sight was dreadful. But the
courage of the survivor was sustained by an enthusiasm as lofty
as any that is recorded in martyrology. She saw the sea draw
nearer and nearer, but gave no sign of alarm. She prayed and sang
verses of psalms till the waves choked her voice. After she had
tasted the bitterness of death, she was, by a cruel mercy unbound
and restored to life. When she came to herself, pitying friends
and neighbours implored her to yield. "Dear Margaret, only say,
God save the King!" The poor girl, true to her stern theology,
gasped out, "May God save him, if it be God's will!" Her friends
crowded round the presiding officer. "She has said it; indeed,
sir, she has said it." "Will she take the abjuration?" he
demanded. "Never!" she exclaimed. "I am Christ's: let me go!" And
the waters closed over her for the last time.292
Thus was Scotland governed by that prince whom ignorant men have
represented as a friend of religious liberty, whose misfortune it
was to be too wise and too good for the age in which he lived.
Nay, even those laws which authorised him to govern thus were in
his judgment reprehensibly lenient. While his officers were
committing the murders which have just been related, he was
urging the Scottish Parliament to pass a new Act compared with
which all former Acts might be called merciful.
In England his authority, though great, was circumscribed by
ancient and noble laws which even the Tories would not patiently
have seen him infringe. Here he could not hurry Dissenters before
military tribunals, or enjoy at Council the luxury of seeing them
swoon in the boots. Here he could not drown young girls for
refusing to take the abjuration, or shoot poor countrymen for
doubting whether he was one of the elect. Yet even in England he
continued to persecute the Puritans as far as his power extended,
till events which will hereafter be related induced him to form
the design of uniting Puritans and Papists in a coalition for the
humiliation and spoliation of the established Church.
One sect of Protestant Dissenters indeed he, even at this early
period of his reign, regarded with some tenderness, the Society
of Friends. His partiality for that singular fraternity cannot be
attributed to religious sympathy; for, of all who acknowledge the
divine mission of Jesus, the Roman Catholic and the Quaker differ
most widely. It may seem paradoxical to say that this very
circumstance constituted a tie between the Roman Catholic and the
Quaker; yet such was really the case. For they deviated in
opposite directions so far from what the great body of the nation
regarded as right, that even liberal men generally considered
them both as lying beyond the pale of the largest toleration.
Thus the two extreme sects, precisely because they were extreme
sects, had a common interest distinct from the interest of the
intermediate sects. The Quakers were also guiltless of all
offence against James and his House. They had not been in
existence as a community till the war between his father and the
Long Parliament was drawing towards a close. They had been
cruelly persecuted by some of the revolutionary governments. They
had, since the Restoration, in spite of much ill usage, submitted
themselves meekly to the royal authority. For they had, though
reasoning on premises which the Anglican divines regarded as
heterodox, arrived, like the Anglican divines, at the conclusion,
that no excess of tyranny on the part of a prince can justify
active resistance on the part of a subject. No libel on the
government had ever been traced to a Quaker.293 In no conspiracy
against the government had a Quaker been implicated. The society
had not joined in the clamour for the Exclusion Bill, and had
solemnly condemned the Rye House plot as a hellish design and a
work of the devil.294 Indeed, the friends then took very little
part in civil contentions; for they were not, as now, congregated
in large towns, but were generally engaged in agriculture, a
pursuit from which they have been gradually driven by the
vexations consequent on their strange
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