It will be necessary now to review the condition of Scotland at the time when Claverhouse began first to be concerned in her affairs, and of the causes political and religious—if, indeed, in Scottish history it be ever possible to separate the two—which produced that condition. Without clearly understanding the state of parties which then distracted that unhappy country, it will not be possible clearly to understand the position of Claverhouse; and without a clear understanding of his position, it will certainly not be possible to form a just estimate of his character. It is by too readily yielding to the charm of a writer, who had not then for his purpose the impartial estimate of a human character so much as the embellishment of a political principle, that public opinion has been for many years content to accept a savage caricature in place of a portrait. It would be impertinent to say that Macaulay did not understand the circumstances into which Claverhouse was forced, and the train of events which had caused them; but it would not have suited his purpose so clearly and strictly to have explained them that others might have traversed the verdict he intended to be established. He heard, indeed, and he determined to hear, only one side of the case: indeed, at the time he wrote, there was not much to be heard on the other; and on the evidence he accepted the verdict was a foregone conclusion. It is impossible altogether to acquit Claverhouse of the charges laid to his account, nor will any attempt here be made to do so; but even the worst that can be proved against him, when considered impartially with the circumstances of his position and the spirit of the time, will, I think, be found to take a very different complexion from that which has been somewhat too confidently given to them.[7]

When Charles the Second was restored to the throne of his fathers he was hailed in Scotland with the same tumultuous joy that greeted him in England. The Scottish nation was indeed weary of the past. It was weary alike of the yoke of Cromwell and of the yoke of the Covenant. The first Covenant—the Covenant of 1557—had been a protest against the tyranny of the Pope: the Covenant of 1643 was a protest against the tyranny of the Crown. It was the Scottish supplement, framed in the religious spirit and temperament of the Scottish nation, to the English protest against ship-money. The voice, first sounded among the rich valleys and pleasant woods of Buckinghamshire, was echoed in the churchyard of the Grey Friars at Edinburgh. Six months later the triumph of Presbyterianism was completed, when in the church of Saint Margaret's at Westminster the Commons of England ratified the Solemn League and Covenant of Scotland. Over the wild time which followed it will be unnecessary for our purpose to linger. The work was done: then followed the reaction. In both countries the oppressed became in turn the oppressors. The champions of religious liberty became as bigoted and intolerant as those whose intolerance and bigotry had first goaded them into rebellion. The old Presbyterian saw the rise of new modes of worship with the same horror that he had shown at the ritual of Laud. Milton protested that the "new Presbyter is but old Priest writ large." Within only four years of the outbreak of the civil war no less than sixteen religious sects were found existing in open defiance of the principles of faith which that war was pledged to uphold. One common bond, indeed, united these sects in sympathy: one and all repudiated with equal energy the authority of the Church to prescribe a fixed form of worship: a national Church was, in their eyes, as odious and impossible a tyranny as the divine right of kings. But this common hatred of the interference of a Mother Church could not teach them tolerance for each other. Cardinal Newman has described the enthusiasm of Saint Anthony as calm, manly, and magnanimous, full of affectionate loyalty to the Church and the Truth. "It was not," he says, "vulgar, bustling, imbecile, unstable, undutiful." The religious enthusiasm of the two nations at this time, though at heart sincere and just, was unfortunately in its public aspect the exact opposite of Saint Anthony's. There was the essential great meaning of the matter, to borrow Carlyle's words, but there were also the mean, peddling details. It was the misfortune of many, of three kings of England among the number, that the latter should seem the most vital of the two. Presbyterian and Independent, Leveller and Baptist, Brownist and Fifth Monarchy Man, one and all stood up and made proclamation, crying, "Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth; for I am God, and there is none else." Well might Cromwell adjure them in that war of words which followed the sterner conflict on the heights of Dunbar, "I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken."

Though the number and variety of the dissentients in England were far greater than in Scotland, where the bulk both of the people and the clergy stood firmly within the old Presbyterian lines, yet in the latter country the separation was far more bitter and productive of far more violent results. In the former the strong hand of Cromwell, himself an Independent, but keen to detect a useful man under every masquerade of worship, and prompt to use him, kept the sects from open disruption. Quarrel as they might among themselves, there was one stronger than them all, and they knew it. The old Committee of Estates, originally appointed by the Parliament as a permanent body in 1640, was not strong enough to control the spirit it had helped to raise: it was not even strong enough to keep order within its own house. The new Committee was but a tool in the hands of Argyle. The old Presbyterian viewed with equal dislike the sectaries of Cromwell, the men of the Engagement which had cost Hamilton his head, and the Malignants who had gathered to the standard of Montrose. The Resolutioner, who wished to repeal the Act of Classes, was too lukewarm: the Remonstrant was too violent. It was by this last body that the troubles we have now to examine came upon Scotland.

After the collapse of Hamilton's army at Uttoxeter in August 1648, a body of Covenanters assembled at Mauchline, in Ayrshire, to protest against the leniency with which the Engagement had been treated in the Estates, where, indeed, a considerable minority had been inclined openly to countenance it. Their leader was at first the Earl of Eglinton, a staunch Covenanting lord; but as they gathered strength Argyle joined them with his Highlanders, and the command soon passed into his hands. The Protesters marched upon Edinburgh. In an attempt to take Stirling Castle they were defeated by Sir George Monro with a division of Hamilton's army which had not crossed the border; but Argyle had better tools to work with than the claymores of his Highlanders. He opened negotiations with Cromwell, who led an army in person into Scotland, renewed the Covenant, laid before the Estates (the new Estates of Argyle and his party) certain considerations, as he diplomatically called them, demanding, among other things, that no person accessory to the Engagement should be hereafter employed in any public place or trust. The Committee were only too willing to have the support of Cromwell to what they themselves so vehemently desired. Two Acts were quickly passed: one reversing many of the acts of its predecessors and confirming the considerations: the other, known in history as the Act of Classes, defining the various misdemeanours which were to exclude men from sitting in Parliament or holding any public office, for a period measured by their offences, and practically to be determined by the judicatories of the Kirk.

This Mauchline Convention was popularly known at the time as the Whiggamores' Raid, a name memorable as the first introduction into history of a word soon to become only too familiar, and still a part of our political vocabulary.[8] Its immediate result was to throw the direction of affairs still more exclusively into the hands of the clergy: indirectly, but no less surely, it was the cause of the Pentland Rising and the savage persecution which followed, of the murder of Archbishop Sharp, of the battles of Drumclog and Bothwell Bridge, and of those terrible years still spoken of in Scotland as the "killing-time." It was, in short, like the wrath of Achilles, the spring of unnumbered woes.

Then followed the execution of Charles. Against this the whole body of Presbyterians joined in protesting. The hereditary right of kings was, indeed, as much a principle of the Covenant as their divine right was opposed to it; and the execution at Whitehall on January 30th, 1649, was regarded with as much horror by the Presbyterians of England as by the Presbyterians of Scotland.

The first act of the Estates was to proclaim the Prince of Wales king of Great Britain, their next to send a deputation to Holland to invite him to take possession of his kingdom. It had been better both for Charles and for Scotland that the invitation had never been accepted. The terms on which alone the Scots would see the son of Charles Stuart back among them as crowned king were such as only the direst necessity could have induced him to accept: they were such as it seems now amazing that even the most bigoted and inexperienced could really have believed that the son of his father, or, indeed, any man in his position, would keep one moment longer than circumstances compelled him. But his advisers, led on by Wilmot and Buckingham, bid him sign—sign everything, or all would be lost. He signed everything. First he put his hand to the Solemn League and Covenant: then to a second declaration promising to do his utmost to extirpate both Popery and Prelacy from all parts of his kingdom: finally, he consented to figure as the hero of a day of public fasting and humiliation for the tyranny of his father and the idolatry of his mother. And while he was acquiescing to each fresh demand with a shrug of his shoulders and a whispered jest to Buckingham, and in his heart as much hatred for his humiliators as he was capable of feeling for anybody, he was all the while urging on Montrose to strike that wild blow for his crown which was to lead the brave marquis to the scaffold. The deaths of Hamilton and Huntly had preceded the death of Montrose by a few weeks: a few more weeks and Charles was in Scotland, a crowned king in name, virtually a prisoner. Within little more than a year the fight at Dunbar, and the "crowning mercy" of Worcester, had bitterly taught him how futile was all the humiliation he had undergone.

It will be enough to briefly recall the main incidents of the years which intervened between the battle of Worcester and the Restoration. After the establishment of the Protectorate an Act of Indemnity was passed for the Scottish people. From this certain classes were excepted. All of the House of Hamilton, for instance, and some other persons of note, including Lauderdale: all who had joined the Engagement, or who had not joined in the protestation against it: all who had sat in Parliament or on the Committee of Estates after the coronation of Charles at Scone: all who had borne arms at the battle of Worcester. From this proscribed list, however, Argyle managed to extricate himself. He had fortified himself at Inverary, and summoned a meeting of the Estates to which the chiefs of the Royalist party had been bidden. To conquer him in his own stronghold would have been difficult, perhaps impossible, to English soldiers unused to such warfare. Cromwell wisely preferred to negotiate, and Argyle was not hard to bring to terms. He bound himself to live at peace with the Government, and to use his best endeavours to persuade others to do so. In return he was to be left unmolested in the free enjoyment of his estates, and in the exercise of religion according to his conscience.

The politicians were now silenced; but a noisier and more troublesome body had still to be reckoned with. In July, 1653, the General Assembly was closed, and Resolutioners and Remonstrants were sent to the right about together. Some measures, however, had to be taken to prevent them, not from cutting each other's throats, which would have suited the Government well enough, but from stirring up a religious war, which they would inevitably have done if left to the free enjoyment of their own humours. It was necessary so to strengthen the hands of one of the two parties that the other should be compelled to refrain at least from open hostilities. The Resolutioners, as the most tolerant and the mildest-mannered, would have been those Cromwell would have preferred to see in the ascendency. But the Resolutioners had acknowledged Charles, and were, after their own fashion, in favour of the royal title. The Remonstrants were accordingly preferred. They, indeed, denied the authority of the Commonwealth over spiritual matters, but they also denied the authority of Charles; and it was felt that at such a crisis the civil allegiance was of more value than the religious. A law was accordingly established dividing Scotland into five districts, in each of which certain members of the Remonstrant clergy were empowered to ordain ministers, as it were, to the exercise of their functions. At the same time it was not the object of Cromwell to exalt one party at the expense of the other so much as to strike a balance between the two; and in doing this he was much served by the tact and good sense of James Sharp, whose name now first begins to be heard in Scottish history. He was on the side of the Resolutioners, but he so managed matters as to be favourably regarded by the Government as a person likely to be of service to them in the event of any open disruption between the two bodies, without losing the confidence of his own party. The Court of Session was the next to go, and in its place rose the Commission of Justice, of which James Dalrymple, afterwards Lord Stair, the first Scottish lawyer of his day, was the most conspicuous member. In 1654 the Act for incorporating the Union between England and Scotland was passed by the Commonwealth. With that Commonwealth disappeared the Union, but the few years of its existence were fruitful of at least one great boon to Scotland. In those years was established free-trade between the two countries: a boon for Scotland which she never properly appreciated till she lost it by the Navigation Act of the Restoration: an alleged grievance to England which had its share in bringing that Restoration to pass; for it was then, and for long after, a fixed principle in the philosophy of English commerce that free-trade between the two countries meant pillaging Englishmen to enrich Scotchmen. A regular postal service was also established. The abortive rising known as Glencairn's Expedition was the only act of open hostility that broke those few years of comparative tranquillity; and the lenient terms granted by Monk to the Highland leader tended more than anything to show how weary of the long rule of disorder and bloodshed all the best of the two nations were growing. On September 3rd, 1658, Oliver Cromwell died, and in November of the following year Monk began his famous march to London. On May 25th, 1660, Charles the Second landed at Dover.

Though the Remonstrants had won the upper hand for a time, the bulk of the Scottish nation had been all along on the side of the Resolutioners. Much as the character and religious views of Charles were to their distaste, the principle of the Covenant was for a king, and it was by the principle of the Covenant that the Scottish nation stood. The stern and narrow bigotry of the Remonstrants, whom their short taste of power had made of course more fanatical and more quarrelsome than ever, had almost succeeded in forcing the more moderate Presbyterians into the arms of the Royalists. A little tolerance, a little tact on the English side would probably have cemented the alliance. But it was not to be.

It is important to remember this. The extreme party with which Claverhouse had to deal no more represented the Scottish nation than the Irishmen who follow Mr. Parnell's call in the House of Commons represent their nation now, or than men like Napper Tandy and Wolfe Tone represented it a century ago. It seems still a common belief that Claverhouse and his troopers were sent to force upon a sober, patient, God-fearing nation a religion and a king that they abhorred. Nothing could be farther from the truth. The large majority of the Scottish nation was as eager to welcome Charles as the old squires who had lost their fortunes for his father, or the young bloods who hoped to find fortunes under the son. The narrow and blatant form of religion professed by the extreme party was as repulsive to the bulk of their countrymen as to the King himself.

These men were a remnant of the old Remonstrants of the Mauchline Convention. They had originally, as we have seen, looked to Argyle as their leader; but when Argyle ranged himself on the side of the young King there were some among them who would not follow him. These maintained, and so far they were unquestionably right, that the "young man Charles Stuart" was, for all his protestations and oaths, as much at heart a Malignant as his father; and that those who pretended to believe him were playing the Kirk and the Covenant false. When Cromwell marched into Scotland to win the battle of Dunbar these men had formed themselves into a separate party under Colonel Archibald Strachan, an able soldier who commanded that division of Leslie's army which had defeated Montrose in Rossshire. Strachan's design seems to have been to stand aloof for the present from either side; but from some not very intelligible cause he fell into disgrace with his party, and this is said to have so preyed upon his mind as to have caused his death. From that time the Wild Westland Whigs, as they began now to be called, had no ostensible leader. They withdrew sullenly to their own homes, contenting themselves during the remaining years of the Commonwealth with protesting against everybody and everything outside their own narrow circle. They must not be confounded with the general body of the Remonstrants, between whom and the Resolutioners Cromwell had to keep the balance. They were a people apart. Throughout the wild hill-districts of the Western Lowlands they preached their fierce crusade against all who were not prepared to stand by the spirit of the Covenant as they chose to interpret it. The toleration they demanded they would not give. No man should be free to worship God as he pleased: every man must worship Him in the way which seemed good to them, and in that way only. The moderate Presbyterians were as hateful to them as Charles himself and all his bishops; and they in their turn were as obnoxious to the majority of the Scottish nation as to the English Government. Cleric and layman alike was weary of the unending squabbles that had distracted the Church of Scotland since the days of Knox. They wished for peace; and no peace was possible so long as an ignorant and noisy minority would suffer it only at their own price.

One other point should also be remembered. It has been the custom to excuse the cruelties of the Covenanters, when they could not be denied, as the acts of men goaded into madness by years of persecution. This excuse will hardly serve. It might, indeed, serve to explain the murder of Sharp and the savage deeds of such men as Hamilton and Burley; but long before that time the Scottish fanatic had proved himself a match in ferocity for the bloodiest Malignant of them all. After Philiphaugh one hundred Irish prisoners were shot in cold blood, while a minister of the Covenanting Church stood by, reiterating in savage glee, "The wark goes bonnily on." About the same time eighty women and children were in one day flung over the bridge at Linlithgow for the crime of having been followers of the camp of Montrose. In 1647 three hundred of the Macdonalds who held a fortified post on a hill in Kintire surrendered at discretion to David Leslie. It is said that Leslie would have let them go but for his chaplain, John Nave. Borrowing the words of Samuel, "What meaneth then this bleating of the sheep in mine ears, and the lowing of the oxen which I hear?" in a long and fiery harangue this man of God exhorted the conquerors to finish their work, and threatened their captain with the curse of Saul who spared the Amalekites. The prisoners were butchered to a man.[9]

If, then, it be but a delusion of later times that Scotland could at the Restoration have been conciliated into accepting a moderate form of Episcopacy, it is at least clear that there was at that time a strong party in the country anxious for a compromise between the two Churches, and willing to make all reasonable advances towards one. Unfortunately the first move on both sides was of a nature to make all chances of a compromise impossible.

Charles had conceived a violent dislike to Presbyterianism, and with his experiences of it the dislike was not unnatural. It was not, he told Burnet, a religion for gentlemen, and he found few among his court to contradict him. Scarcely had he settled himself in his capital when the Presbyterians were upon him. Sharp had already been some months in London as ambassador of the moderate party, the party of the old Resolutioners. But an easy way of reconciling Sharp's conscience was soon found. It is not precisely clear when the bargain was struck which was to convert the chosen champion of the Presbyterian Church into an archbishop, but struck it was, and in no long time. He had by Monk's advice visited Charles at Breda, and some suppose that the first interview completed the transformation. If so, he managed to delude his party very skilfully. His letters to the Assembly, though the light of subsequent events enables us to translate them more clearly than was possible at the time, were full of wise counsel, of apparently honest confessions of the many difficulties he foresaw in the way, and of protestations of fidelity and firmness which were no less implicitly believed. "I told him," said his colleague Robert Douglas, a man of very different stamp, when Sharp went up to London later for his ordination, "I told him the curse of God would be on him for his treacherous dealing; and that I may speak my heart of this man, I profess I did no more suspect him in reference to Prelacy than I did myself."[10]

Meanwhile the extreme party had not been idle. It will be perhaps most convenient henceforth to distinguish them as Covenanters: to call them Whigs, as Burnet and other historians of the time call them, would not convey to modern ears the significance it had for their contemporaries. Even those stern and unbending Tories of whom Mr. Gladstone was once the spokesman have long ceased to regard the men who are still sometimes called Whigs as the most fanatical members of the body politic. It would be no mere fanciful application of modern terms to distinguish the two parties of the Scottish Church as Liberals and Radicals; but it will for many reasons be best henceforth to write of them as Presbyterians and Covenanters.

The Covenanters, then, had not been idle. Shortly after the Restoration they had, through a deputation of their elders and ministers, called upon their brethren of the Church to unite with them in an address to the King, praying him, as a member of the Covenant with themselves, to remember his obligations to that sacred institution and zealously to prosecute its blessed work in all his three kingdoms. Toleration in things religious was especially denounced as a vast mischief disguised under the specious pretence of liberty for tender consciences. Schismatics were to be stamped out as sternly as Papists and Prelatists; and by Schismatics were meant all men, members of their own Church no less than of others, who ventured to differ from them on any point of doctrine whatsoever.

The Committee of Estates, which had resumed its sittings, did not like the job. They called the deputation a private meeting of some protesting ministers, and clapped the leaders into prison.

A government had now been formed for Scotland. Middleton was Lord High Commissioner, a soldier of fortune who had been raised to the peerage for the occasion. He was also named commander-in-chief of the forces and governor of Edinburgh Castle. With him were associated Glencairn as Lord Chancellor, Lauderdale as Secretary of State, Rothes as President of the Council, and Crawford as Lord Treasurer. The first proceeding of this Parliament, known in the gossip of the time as the Drunken Parliament from the too frequent condition of its chiefs, was to pass a Rescissory Act, repealing all measures that had become law since the year 1633, including even those passed by the Parliament professing the authority of Charles himself. This was followed by an Act "concerning religion and Church government," in which, after some pious but vague protestations of the royal design to "encourage the exercise of religion both public and private, and to suppress all profaneness and disorderly walking," it was promised that the administration by sessions, presbyteries, and synods would not for the present be interfered with. That present, however, soon passed. On May 27th, two days before the anniversary of the Restoration of the Monarchy, the Act for the Restoration of Episcopacy was made law. A previous Act had ordained May 29th to be kept holy; and the opposition taken to this by those who objected to all holidays as idolatrous had in turn produced a measure which practically marks the beginning of that system of vague bullying, as Dr. Burton has happily called it, which was in no long time to pass into a persecution anything but vague. On December 15th, in Westminster Abbey, Sharp was consecrated Primate of Scotland, and at the same time Fairfoul was raised to the see of Glasgow, Hamilton to the see of Galloway, and the good and gentle Leighton to the see of Dunblane.

Meanwhile the English Parliament had by its Navigation Act crushed for the time the short-lived hopes of Scottish commerce, and was now busy with an Act of Indemnity. This had been practically one of the conditions of the Restoration, but Scotland had not been included in the bargain. Argyle was the first to suffer from the omission. He had gone up to London to pay his court to the new King, but had been refused an audience. He was arrested, and, after a short sojourn in the Tower, sent back to Edinburgh to stand his trial for high treason before the Estates. He was found guilty and beheaded in the High Street on May 27th, 1661, two days after the anniversary of the more shameful death which he had helped to bring upon Montrose. As he had been expressly pardoned during the King's short reign in Scotland for all acts committed by him against the Crown up to the year 1657, and as his accusers could find no evidence of communications with the Parliament after that time, he must have been acquitted had it not been for Monk, who at the last moment produced certain letters written by Argyle to him when acting for Cromwell. Johnstone of Warriston was another victim, whom, like Argyle, it was no hard matter for judges who had a mind that way to bring within the compass of the law of treason. He, however, managed to get across to the Continent before he could be arrested. He was tried and condemned in his absence. After two years of painful shifts and wanderings he was tracked down in France by a man known as Crooked-back Murray, and sent back to his fate. A third victim was James Guthrie, the most vehement and active of the Covenanters, the framer of the original Remonstrance and author of a seditious pamphlet called "The Causes of the Lord's Wrath." With him would probably have suffered Samuel Rutherford, a minister as zealous as Guthrie, but of more education and manners. Fortunately for him, he died before the reign of punishment began; and the Government was forced to content itself with ordering his book "Lex, Rex," to be burned by the hangman at the Cross of Edinburgh and at the gate of the University of Saint Andrews, where he had been Professor of Divinity. In 1662, an Act of Indemnity was made law, by which future punishment for the past was adjusted by a scale of fines.

Close on the heels of the Act of Indemnity followed one demanding from all persons holding any office of public trust a public abjuration of the Covenant, and another requiring all clergymen who had been appointed since 1649 to receive collation from the bishop of their diocese. Those who did not obey were, after a short respite, expelled from their parishes. Those who obeyed were regarded by their congregations as backsliders and self-seekers. Three hundred and fifty ministers were driven with their families from their homes in the depth of winter; and to supply their places new ministers were appointed, popularly known as the King's Curates. Another Act required attendance at the parish church on penalty of a fine graduated according to the rank of the absentee. Finally, to crown all, the Solemn League and Covenant was publicly burned at the market-cross of Edinburgh; and an aggravated copy of the English Five-mile Act against Non-jurors, known as the Mile Act, was passed, prohibiting all recusant clergymen from residing within twenty miles of their old parishes, within six miles of Edinburgh or any cathedral town, and within three miles of any royal burgh. The punishment for transgressing this law was to be the same as that for sedition.

Enough has now been said to show the nature of the bullying adopted by the Government. Over the years which still lie between us and the entry of Claverhouse on the stage I must pass more rapidly.

In 1663 Rothes succeeded Middleton as commissioner. The latter had been rash enough to measure his strength with Lauderdale, and had been signally worsted. To complete the legislative machinery a Conventicle Act was passed this year, declaring all assemblies of more than five persons, besides members of the family, unlawful and seditious. As most of their congregations had followed the expelled ministers into the wilderness, this new law so mightily increased the labours of the authorities that it was found necessary to institute a new tribunal of justice for the especial treatment of ecclesiastical offences. This was no less than a renewal of that old Court of High Commission which had been abolished by the Long Parliament twenty years before to the joy of the whole nation. To strengthen its hands a body of troops was sent down into the western shires, now the stronghold of the Covenant, to impose and exact the fines ordained by the Commission. Their leader was Sir James Turner, a man of some education, but rough and brutal. He had served on the Continent under Gustavus Adolphus, had fought under Leslie in the Presbyterian ranks, and had accompanied Hamilton with the Engagers into England. Turner, in his own memoirs, declares that he not only did not exceed his orders, but was even lenient beyond his commission. When, a few years later, in a momentary fit of indulgence, his acts were called in question by the Privy Council, the evidence hardly served to establish his assertion.

At length the West rose. On November 13th, 1666, four countrymen came into the little village of Dalry, in Galloway, in search of refreshment. There they found a few soldiers, driving before them a body of peasants to thresh out the corn of an old man who would not pay his fines. There was an argument and a scuffle: a pistol was fired and a soldier fell: the rest yielded. It was now too late to go back. Turner was posted at Dumfries with a considerable sum of money in his charge. It was determined to seize him. The four champions had now been joined by some fifty horsemen and a large body of unmounted peasants. Turner was made prisoner; and the money restored to the service of those from whose pockets it had been originally drawn.

The number of the insurgents had now risen to three thousand. They determined to march on Edinburgh, thinking to gather recruits on the way; but when they came within five miles of the city their hearts failed them. The weather was bitterly cold: provisions and arms were scarce: the peasantry of the more cultivated districts had proved either lukewarm to the cause or openly hostile: no recruits had come in, and their own ranks were growing daily thinner. At length they turned on their tracks and made once more for their western fastnesses. But they had now to reckon with a more dangerous foe than Turner.

The garrison in Edinburgh was commanded by Thomas Dalziel, a ferocious old soldier who had learned his trade in the Russian wars. His dress was as uncouth as his manners, and he wore a long white bushy beard that no steel had been suffered to touch since the death of the first Charles.[11] With all the regulars he could muster Dalziel was quickly after the fugitives. He came up with them on Rullion Green, a ridge of the Pentland Hills. Though now numbering scarce a thousand men, the Covenanters were strongly posted, and defended themselves bravely. The royal troops were twice driven back before they could carry the ridge, and night had fallen before the insurgents were fairly broken. The slaughter was not great; and it is significant of the unpopularity of their cause that the fugitives suffered more from the Lothian peasantry than from the victorious soldiers.

The Government could now assume the virtue of those who are summoned to quell an open rebellion. Dalziel was put in command of the insurgent districts, and his little finger was indeed found thicker than Turner's loins. Twenty men were hanged on one gibbet in Edinburgh and many others in various parts of the country: crowds were shipped off to the plantations: torture was freely applied, and the ingenious devices of the boot and the thumbkin were in daily requisition.[12] Dalziel was in his element. A prisoner reviled him at the council board for "a Muscovy beast who roasted men." The old savage struck the man with the hilt of his sword so fiercely in the mouth that the blood gushed out.

At length there came a lull. Weary of the useless butchery, which, hitherto, they had not perhaps fully realised, the English Government determined to see if indulgence could persuade where persecution was powerless to force. Orders to that effect were sent up to Edinburgh. The soldiers were withdrawn from the western shires. Sharp was bidden to retire to his see. Lauderdale took the place of Rothes as commissioner.

The character of Lauderdale is one of the most curious problems of the time. In his youth he had been as zealous for the Covenant as he now appeared to be zealous for Episcopacy. Hence some have supposed that his real design was by favouring the intolerance of the bishops to bring them to discomfiture, and to re-establish on their ruin the old Presbyterian Church, for which, despite the profligacy of his life and conversation, he was still believed to entertain as much veneration as he was capable of feeling for any form of religion. But whatever may have been his regard for the old Covenant of his youth, he was set as a rock against the men who were now as much opposed to any moderate observance of Presbyterian worship as the most inveterate Malignant at Whitehall.

The first Indulgence was passed in 1669, in favour of the ministers whom the Act of 1662 had driven from their parishes. Such as had since that time kept from open violation of the law were now to be reinstated in their livings where vacant. The manse and the glebe were to be theirs as formerly, but the stipend was not to be renewed. These terms were accepted by some forty or fifty clergymen. By the advice of the gentle Leighton, who almost alone among his brethren seems at this time to have dared, or to have been even willing, to counsel tolerance, a deputation, nicknamed "the Bishop's Evangelists," was sent into the West to preach the doctrine of this Indulgence. The pious crusade was in vain. The failure of the Pentland rising and its terrible sequel had turned those stubborn hearts to madness. Their weaker brethren were now classed with the apostate Sharp and the butcher Dalziel; and the Indulgence was declared a snare for the soul far more deadly than any torture the Government could devise for the body. Nor, if time could have strengthened Leighton's hands, was time allowed him. Following close upon the Indulgence came a fresh Act, now making not only all field-preaching a capital offence, but even laying heavy penalties on any exercise of the Presbyterian worship except under an Indulged minister. This again was soon followed by a fresh law against Intercommuning—that is to say, against all who should offer even the simplest act of common charity to a Covenanter—and promising large rewards to all who should give information against them or their protectors. By this law it is said that thousands of both sexes, including many persons of rank, suffered severely; and from it sprang a curious incident in the miserable history of this time.

An order was issued to the landed gentry of Renfrew and Ayr, the shires where the disaffection was strongest, requiring them to give bail that their servants and tenants should not only abstain from personal attendance at conventicles, but also from all intercourse with intercommuned persons. The gentry answered that such assurance was impossible. It was not, they said, within the compass of their power to do this thing. The reply from Edinburgh was short and conclusive: if the landlords could not keep order in their districts, order must be kept for them. A body of English troops had already been moved up to the border and an Irish force collected at Belfast; but a more ingenious mode of punishment was now devised. Since the barbarous excesses of the Highland clans under Montrose, it had become an acknowledged breach of the rules of civilised warfare to employ men who, like the Red Indians used in our own American wars, were amenable to no discipline and recognised no principles of humanity. Eight thousand of these savages were now let loose on the disobedient Lowlanders. The result was, indeed, not all that had been anticipated at Edinburgh. The Council had naturally enough expected that the descent of these plaided barbarians would be the signal for a general insurrection, which would relieve them of their troubles as certainly and much more conveniently than Dalziel's dragoons and Perth's thumbkins. While Highlander and Lowlander were cutting each other's throats, Lauderdale and his colleagues would have ample leisure to decide on the apportionment of the booty.[13] In this, however, they were disappointed. No armed resistance was offered. During the two months these marauders lived at free quarters, without any distinction between friend and foe, on a land which, compared with their own barren moors and mountains, was a paradise flowing with milk and honey, only one life was lost, and that the life of a Highlander. At length the scandal became too great even for Lauderdale. Hamilton, who, like his brother before him, had always stood by the Crown, went up to London with several gentlemen of rank to protest against a tyranny which they vowed was that of Turks rather than Christians. According to one account, the King would not see them: according to another, he admitted Hamilton to an interview, and, after hearing his protest, owned that many bad things had been done in Scotland, but none, so far as he could see, contrary to his interests. It was clear, however, that in this matter Lauderdale had gone too far. The Highlanders were ordered to return to their homes. They returned accordingly, laden with spoil such as they had never dreamed of, and of the use of a large part of which they were as ignorant as a Red Indian or a negro.[14]

The departure of the Highland host leaves the stage free for Claverhouse. It was at this crisis he returned to Scotland, and here this summary of one of the most miserable chapters in British history may fitly end.