union of interests between the Crown and the Church. CHAP. II. He then bestows a complete and unqualified approba- 1685. tion of the persecuting measures of the last reign, in which he had borne so great a share: and to those measures, and to the steadiness with which they had been persevered in, he ascribes the escape of both church and state from the fanatics, and expresses his regret that he could not be present, to propose in person, the other remedies of a similar nature, which he recommended as needful in the present conjuncture. Now, it is proper, in this place, to enquire into the Transactions in Scotland, nature of the measures thus extolled, as well for the purpose of elucidating the characters of the King and his Scottish ministers, as for that of rendering more intelligible the subsequent proceedings of the parliament, and the other events which soon after took place in that kingdom. Some general notions may be formed of that course of proceedings, which, according to his Majesty's opinion, had been so laudably and resolutely pursued during the late reign, from the circumstances alluded to in the preceding chapter, when it is understood, that the sentences of Argyle and Laurie of Blackwood were not detached instances of oppression, but rather a sample of the general system of administration. The covenant, which had been so solemnly taken by the whole kingdom, and, among the rest, by the King himself, had been declared to be unlawful, and a refusal to abjure it had been made subject to the severest penalties. Episcopacy, which was detested by a great majority of the nation, had been established, and all public exercise of religion, in the forms to which the people were most attached, had been prohibited. The attendance upon field conventicles had been made highly penal, and the preaching at them capital; by which means, according to the computation of a late writer, no less 1685. CHAP. II. remarkable for the accuracy of his facts, than for the force and justness of his reasonings, at least seventeen thousand persons in one district were involved in criminality, and became the object of persecution. After this, letters had been issued by government, forbidding the intercommuning with persons who had neglected, or refused, to appear before the privy council, when cited for the above crimes; a proceeding, by which, not only all succour or assistance to such persons, but, according to the strict sense of the word made use of, all intercourse with them, was rendered criminal, and subjected him who disobeyed the prohibition to the same penalties, whether capital or others, which were affixed to the alleged crimes of the party with whom he had intercommuned.* Measures of persecution. These measures not proving effectual for the purposé for which they were intended, or, as some say, the object of Charles the Second's government being to provoke an insurrection, a demand was made upon the landholders, in the district supposed to be most disaffected, of bonds, whereby they were to become responsible for their wives, families, tenants, and servants; and likewise for the wives, families, and servants of their tenants, and finally, for all persons living upon their estates; that they should not withdraw from the church, frequent or preach at conventicles, nor give any succour, or have any intercourse with persons with whom it was forbidden to intercommune ; and the penalties attached to the breach of this engagement, the keeping of which was obviously out of the power of him who was required to make it, were to be the same as those, whether capital or other, to which the several persons, for whom he engaged, might be liable. The landholders, not being willing to subscribe to their own destruction, refused to execute the bonds, and this was thought sufficient grounds for considering the district to which they belonged as in a state of rebellion. English and Irish armies were ordered to the frontiers; a train of artillery, and the militia, were sent into the district itself; and six thousand Highlanders, who were let loose upon its inhabitants, to exercise every species of pillage and plunder, were connived at, or rather encouraged, in excesses of a still more atrocious nature.* CHAP. II. 1685. Law-bur rows. The bonds being still refused, the government had Writs of recourse to an expedient of a most extraordinary nature; and issued what the Scotch called a writ of Law-burrows, against the whole district. This writ of Law-burrows is somewhat analagous to what we call swearing the peace against any one, and had hitherto been supposed, as the other is with us, to be applicable to the disputes of private individuals, and to the apprehensions, which, in consequence of such disputes they may mutually entertain of each other. A Government swearing the peace against its subjects was a new spectacle; but if a private subject, under fear of another, hath a right to such a security, how much more the government itself? was thought an unanswerable argument. Such are the sophistries which tyrants deem satisfactory. Thus are they willing even to descend from their loftiness, into the situation of subjects or private men, when it is for the purpose of acquiring additional powers of persecution; and thus truly formidable and terrific are they, when they pretend alarm and fear. By these writs, the persons against whom they were directed, were bound, as in case of the former bonds, to conditions which were not in their power to fulfil, such as the preventing of conventicles and * Burnet. Woodrow. Laing, IV. 83. CHAP. II. the like, under such penalties as the privy council might inflict, and a disobedience to them was followed by outlawry and confiscation. 1685. Approved of t Court. Assassinati on of Archbishop Sharp. Insurrection Bridge. The conduct of the Duke of Lauderdale who was the chief actor in these scenes of violence and iniquity, was completely approved and justified at Court, but, in consequence, probably, of the state of politics in England, at a time when the Whigs were strongest in the House of Commons, some of these grievances were in part redressed, and the Highlanders, and writs of Law-burrows were recalled. But the country was still treated like a conquered country. The Highlanders were replaced by an army of five thousand regulars, and garrisons were placed in private houses. The persecution of conventicles continued; and ample indemnity was granted for every species of violence that might be exercised by those employed to suppress them. In this state of things, the assassination and murder of Sharp, Archbishop of St. Andrews, by a troop of fanatics, who had been driven to madness by the oppression of Carmichael, one of that prelate's instruments, while it gave an additional spur to the vindictive temper of the government, was considered by it as a justification for every mode and degree of cruelty and persecution. The outrage committed by a few individuals, was imputed to the whole fanatic sect, as the government termed them, or, in other words, to a description of people which composed a great majority of the population in the low-lands of Scotland; and those who attended, field or armed conventicles, were ordered to be indiscriminately massacred. By such means an insurrection was at last produced of Bothwell which, from the weakness, or, as some suppose, from the wicked policy of an administration eager for confiscations, and desirous of such a state of the country 1685 as might, in some measure, justify their course of CHAP. II. government, *[made such a progress that the insurgents] became masters of Glasgow, and the country adjacent. To quell these insurgents, who, undisciplined as they were, had defeated Graham, afterwards. Viscount Dundee, the Duke of Monmouth was sent with an army from England; but, lest the generous mildness of his nature should prevail, he had sealed orders, which he was not to open till in sight of the rebels, enjoining him not to treat with them, but to Fall upon them, without any previous negotiation. In pursuance of these orders, the insurgents were attacked at Bothwell Bridge, where, though they were entirely routed and dispersed, yet, because those who surrendered at discretion were not put to death, and the army, by the strict enforcing of discipline, were prevented from plunder and other outrages, it was represented by James, and in some degree even by the King, that Monmouth had acted as if he had meant rather to put himself at the head of the fanatics than to repel them, and were inclined rather to court their friendship than to punish their rebellion. All complaints against Lauderdale were dismissed; his power confirmed; and an act of indemnity, which had been procured at Monmouth's intercession, was so clogged with exceptions, as to be of little use to any but to the agents of tyranny. Several persons, who were neither directly, nor indirectly concerned in the murder of the Archbishop, were executed as an expiation for that offence; † but many more were obliged to compound for their lives, by submitting to the most rapacious *The words between the brackets have been inserted to complete the sense, there having been evidently an omission in the manuscript copy. Laing, IV. 164. Woodrow, II. 87. 90. |