learning, and diligence in their vocation, the most eminent that country had seen since the reformation, or most churches have enjoyed since the primitive times. And we have seen the proof of it here [London] by the conversation of severals of them, who have been driven hither, as well as by the learned works of others, well acccepted in this nation, by scholars of the first form."-" And if the presbyterians there would speak the truth, they must own that they received great favours from the Scotch bishops, who often skreened them as much as they could from the rigour of the law, and treated them with humanity and tenderness. And particularly the lord archbishop of St. Andrews (whom they most barbarously murdered) made it his practice to interpose for them at council, and mitigated many severities against them. He was noted for this, and their vengeance fell most upon him according to their wont. Nay, to this day, they will not own that inhuman butchery to be a murder, or any crime at all, but a glorious action to destroy the enemies of the Lord."

TO THE WORDS cited from Leslie may be added the words of one of those authors who were obliged to write anonymously, and to publish in London: "What reasons were given them by our clergy in the two last reigns to provoke them to lay aside all humanity, and against the common rules of society, let be christianity, to become so cruel and barbarous, I am altogether ignorant; and I am sure our clergy are able to defy them to give one instance where any dissenter suffered death, or were any ways injured by the information or instigation of any [episcopal] minister of Scotland, or that any dissenter did suffer purely for dissenting, but only in the case of open rebellion, which being destructive of civil government, no civil magistrate can tolerate; or in the case of the murder of archbishop Sharp, or the wounding of Mr. Honyman, bishop of Orkney, with a poisoned bullet, that occasioned his death; or the murder of Mr. Peter Pearson, minister of Carsphairn, in Galloway; or the murder of Mr. Stewart and Mr. Kennoway, two gentlemen of the king's life-guard, at Swyne Abbey; or the horrid butcheries and murder committed on the person of Mr. Blair, one of the duke of Hamilton's chamberlains, they ripping up his body alive and taking out his bowels, at his own house; or the barbarous cruelties committed on the person of Mr. Lawson, minister of Irongray, whom, after he had plentifully regaled them at his house, he being a lame man, they brought out and wounded him in nineteen several places of his body, whereof thirteen were in his head, leaving him, in their apprehension, dead, although afterwards, by

God's good providence, to the admiration of all men, he recovered; and also for their barbarous cruelties committed upon Mr. Ramsay, then minister of Auchinleck, Mr. Shaw, of Anworth, and several others; and yet when any of them were punished for these notorious crimes, as the authors, abettors, or actors, the clergy never appeared against them, either as judges, accusers, party, or witnesses. Yea, when the government commanded the clergy to inform against these people, they generally declined it, until at last, when the justice-courts went through the country, they summoned the clergy to give in catalogues of their parishioners and dissenters upon oath, or otherwise to be committed to gaol to abide trial for disobeying authority; so that being upon oath forced to give in the names of dissenters, yet they did it with such excuses and mitigations, that very few ever suffered, either in their persons or estates, upon their information, which sufficiently testified the ministers' aversion to any thing that in the least might give them reason to suspect them, in having any dealing in what was inflicted on them by the government. Even oftentimes the clergy employed their power and moyen [influence] to save them when accused; and now those who, by their intercession, escaped, will not acknowledge those clergymen as active instruments, but tell them it was against their inclination to save them, but that God forced them to do what they did . . . and indeed those who escaped by the intercession of any minister are now become the greatest enemy and persecutor that such a minister hath. . . . For all the loud clamours of a persecution against the presbyterians in the two last reigns, I can confidently affirm, and am able to prove, that the episcopal clergy were the only persons persecuted all the time, either in their names, goods, or persons, several of them murdered, some wounded, and others affrighted from their houses, and forced in frosty and stormy nights to wander about for fear of their lives. And, indeed, because the presbyterians were not suffered without punishment to supplant government, murder, plunder, and defame, then they rung it abroad that they were persecuted; and because the episcopal clergy were established by law, and countenanced by the government, as more consonant to monarchy, and of more apostolical, quiet, and better principles, than the others; when only the civil powers took cognizance of the fanatic crimes, therefore they gave it out, that by prelacy they were persecuted"

1 A late Letter concerning the Sufferings of the Episcopal Clergy in Scotland. London, small 4to. pp. 22-25. 1691,

426

CHAPTER LI.

THE PRIMACY OF ARCHBISHOP ROSS.

1689.-Message to the English parliament.-King James lands in Ireland.Oath of allegiance refused by some of the bishops.-Carstares appointed chaplain his advice and opinions.-Meeting of parliament.-Act abolishing episcopacy. First estate of parliament removed.-Origin of parliaments.— Observations.-A respite to the rabbling.—Address of the presbyterians to parliament.-Bishops ejected from their houses.-Council commence to per. secute their mode of proceeding.-Deprivations.-The earl of Crawford's hostility.-Proclamation inviting the people to accuse the clergy.-Inatten. tion in sending copies of the proclamation to the clergy-cited before the privy council-falsely accused.-Difficulties of the presbyterians.-A fast ordered-causes assigned. — Distress of the clergy. Deprivations. - Mr. Ramsay-deprived.—The number rabbled and deprived.-The design of the government.-Dr. Robertson and Mr. Malcom.-The clergy slandered-the learning of the clergy.-The four pleas of presbytery confuted: First plea, ignorance, manner of examination, method of study, philosophy-The second plea, immorality-The third plea, negligence-The fourth plea, error.-The plea of persecution.-Wherein the clergy plead guilty to the four pleas of presbytery.-Reflections.

1689.-ON THE 5th of March, king William informed his English parliament that king James had sailed from Brest with a body of 1500 French troops, in order to invade Ireland. Both houses agreed to an address to king William, that they would stand by him with their lives and fortunes in supporting his alliances abroad, in reducing Ireland, and in defence of the protestant religion and of the laws of the kingdom. In answer to this address, William recommended them to give timely assistance to the Dutch, and to repay them the charges of his expedition. He directed them to provide for 20,000 troops to be sent to Ireland, and such a fleet as might make them masters at sea, and to settle a revenue upon himself.

KING JAMES sailed from Brest with the pitiful detachment of 1500 men, under the command of field-marshal de Rosen, and landed at Kingsale on the 12th of March, and went

straight to Dublin. On the 20th of April he laid siege to Londonderry, which, after enduring incredible hardships from famine, was relieved by major-general Kirke on the 30th of July, who threw in a reinforcement and provisions, and the seige was raised on the following day. Dr. Walker, who so bravely defended Londonderry, received a reward of £5,000, and was afterwards killed at the battle of the Boyne. King James summoned a parliament to meet in Dublin, and coined brass money, to which he gave, by proclamation, the value of silver. The Irish parliament attainted the duke of Ormond, and several of the Irish protestant nobility, and deprived the archbishops and seven of the bishops. It was prorogued to the 12th of January.

ON THE 1st of March the oath of allegiance to William and Mary was taken by both houses of parliament; but many of the peers refused it. The archbishop of Canterbury, the bishops of Bath and Wells, Kenn; of Ely, Turner; of Gloucester, Frampton; of Norwich, Lloyd; of Peterborough,White; of Worcester, Thomas; of Chichester, Lake; and Chester, Cartwright, from a conscientious regard to the oaths of allegiance. that they had taken to James, absolutely refused to take the oath of allegiance to the new sovereigns. Bishops Thomas, Cartwright, and Lake, died in the course of this year, before they were suspended. Bishop Thomas, just before his death, sent for Dr. Hickes, the late dean of Worcester, and declared to him, in the strongest terms, against the new oaths: he said, "it is time for me now to die, who have outlived the honour of my religion, and the liberties of my country. If my heart deceive me not, and the grace of God fail me not, I think I could burn at a stake before I took this new oath." Lake, bishop of Chichester, made a similar declaration on his deathbed1." As the other prelates were firm in their resolution not to transfer their allegiance, nor to take the oath, they were suspended on the 1st of August, and about four hundred of the clergy, of different degrees, in the two universities and in the different dioceses of the kingdom 2.

MR. CARSTARES, who had been the medium of intercourse betwixt the Ryehouse conspirators in England and Scotland, and the prince of Orange and their other friends in Holland, was rewarded for the dangers he had undergone in his many intrigues by being appointed their majesty's chaplain in Scotland. He enjoyed William's entire confidence, and being constantly about his person, with free access to him at all

1 D'Oyley's Life of Sancroft, 260. * Life of Kettlewell, app. xiii.-xxxv.

times, he persuaded him, contrary to his own political sagacity, to establish presbyterianism. His biographer says, he represented to William "that the episcopal party in Scotland were generally disaffected to the Revolution, and enemies to the principles on which it was conducted; whereas the presbyterians had almost to a man declared for it. . . . that the episcopal clergy in Scotland, particularly the prelates, had been so accustomed to warp their religious tenets with the political doctrines of regal supremacy, passive obedience, and non-resistance, that it became inconsistent with the very end of his coming to continue episcopacy upon its present footing in Scotland." These political doctrines, of which he was so much afraid, might rather have recommended the church to William's protection, in preference to a sect that had given the late sovereign so many and such bloody instances of the opposite principles, and which, by implication,were threatened to be continued under William's government, unless they could reach supremacy. "Mr. Carstares," says his biographer, a presbyterian, "though the best friend ever the presbyterians had at court, knew too well the spirit of the party not to foresee the danger of their abusing that power which was to be put into their hands: that some, from the narrowness of their principles with respect to church government, others irritated by the personal injuries they had received from those of the episcopal persuasion, might be disposed to push matters farther against them than was consistent with his majesty's interest, or the maxims of sound policy 1."

THE CONVENTION-PARLIAMENT met as appointed on the 5th of June pro forma, and was adjourned till the 17th, when it met for despatch of business. Very little power was given to the high commissioner, the duke of Hamilton, especially in the disposal of places, which was his own and his party's grand object. William made lord Melville secretary of state, whom he knew in Holland, and therefore could trust; for the same reason he trusted chiefly to Dalrymple lord Stair. Both of these noblemen had been too deeply implicated in the plots and conspiracies of the preceding reigns to be suspected of any secret attachment to the exiled king. The hopes of the presbyterian party were still deferred. Although the church had been declared " an insupportable grievance and trouble," yet nothing had as yet been done to gratify the "inclinations" of that small minority that called themselves the people. The duke of Hamilton became discontented that his merits had

1 M'Cormick's Life of Carstares, 40.