hey do otherwise, the said presentation and | letter; and in this the council, withadmission shall be void and null, as if they out any warrant from the king or never had been granted. And ordains these resents to be printed, and published at the narket-crosses of the head burghs of the several shires within this kingdom, that none pretend ignorance." 166 1. parliament, turn lawmakers, and go beyo nd their power, which was only to execute the laws made; but of this we shall have more flaming instances afterwards. Perhaps they thought nothing beyond their sphere, which might be a service to the prelates, and they would rather suffer many congregations to lie vacant, than hazard the admission of one who might happen to be averse from episcopacy. Thus I have gone That same day the council make the following act concerning the presbytery of Peebles, who, it seems, either had not received the chancellor's letter to them, of the 10th, or could not stop the ordination, having all necessary to the gospel settle-through what I find done by the council ment of a minister. Apud Edinburgh, Dec. 12th, 1661. "Forasmuch as the presbytery of Peebles have proceeded to the admission of one Mr John Hay to the kirk of Manner, notwithstanding of the letter and command to the contrary from the lords of council, of the 10th instant; the council do therefore ordain letters to be directed against the haill members of the said presbytery, who were present at the said admission, viz. Messrs Richard Brown minister at Drumelzier, Robert Brown of Lyne, Robert Eliot at Linton, Hew Craig at Railey, David Thomson at Dask, Patrick Purdie at Newlands, and Patrick Fleming at Stobo, to compear and answer to the premises, under pain of rebellion." I have nothing further of this matter, but what is now insert from the registers, where I do not find any more concerning this presbytery: but next year we shall find some other presbyteries writ to by the council; and in a little time all presbyteries were suppressed, save such as came and subjected to the bishops. This procedure against presbyteries was a stretch beyond the king's letter in August, and the council's own act, September 6th, which only discharged synods. They might have as well prohibited presbyteries to cognosce upon scandal, and have abrogate all discipline, to which indeed many were obnoxious, as limit them in point of ordination, which is one great part of their ministerial function, yet reserved to them by the king's last this year, for the erection of episcopacy, by the king's orders, and their abridging church judicatories in their liberties; I shall now shut up this section, with some account of the bishops themselves now set up, their character and reordination in England. When law, such as it was, had made way for the prelates, solicitations begin apace for bishoprics. No great disliker of prelacy observes, "In September and October this year, many of the ministry were seeking after the episcopal dignity, while in the mean time a great many others spoke and taught against it as unlawful." Such apostate, ambitious, and aspiring ministers as had most friends in court, carried them. Mr James Sharp had secured the primacy and archbishopric of St Andrews to himself: though he wanted not the impudence and dissimulation to make offers of it to some eminent presbyterian ministers, one of which told him, he doubted not but he designed that for himself, and he would receive the curse of God with it. Our bishoprics in Scotland are far from the fatness and opulency of those in England. An account before me bears, that in bulk they came but to £4000 or £5000 sterling a year, in ordinary years, much of suppose I their rent being in victual. I will not be much out, when I say the bishopric of Winchester is better than all our Scots bishoprics put together. Some of them are very mean; the revenue of that of Argyle is but about £130 a year. That of Dumblane is about £120. But a weak temptation goes far, where there is a strong corruption. Surely it was violent avarice and ambition, which | not perceived, and the suspicious the pro1661. could persuade them to accept an testing ministers had about him, were not office so odious, and of so inconsiderable regarded: but very soon he opened out, incomes. and at length appeared in his true colours; and none were more grieved at his base For the honour of the first and great authors of all the ensuing sufferings of pres-dealing than the reverend Mr. Douglas, and the ministers of Edinburgh, who had for merly so much confided in him; and we have seen Mr. Douglas's thoughts of him. However, he got his ambition satisfied, and his patent and gift under the great seal in November this year, of which some notice may be taken afterwards. byterians, I thought it not improper to give here a short hint of the persons the king was pleased to pitch upon for the first set of our bishops; aud as they were persons abundantly obsequious to the designs now on foot, so it will easily appear that none of them were any great ornaments to their office, which was so much hated în Scotland, neither any great credit to their brethren in England. Mr. James Sharp was metropolitan, and placed as primate at St. Andrews. I shall not offer any large character of him; some what has been narrated, and more is yet before us. His life, until his arriving at the top of his ambition, I have read, written by one of the after-sufferers, a worthy gentleman; and should I give an abstract of it, the portrait would be very black and surprising. His dream, when at the university; his taking the tender; his proposal to Oliver Cromwell, which made the usurper to assert him very publicly to be an atheist; his betraying presbyterian ministers when at court, and afterwards pursuing them for his charges; his baseness with Isobel Lindsay, as she declared in his face openly enough, and share in the murder of the poor infant; his perjury in Mr. James Mitchel's case; his cruel life and strange death, would make up a very black history; and as they were commonly talked of, so I find they were generally believed by those who lived with, and had access to know him. But this is not a place to insist on them. His great talents were caution, cunning, and dissimulation, with unwearied diligence; these very much qualified him for his terrible undertakings. He got himself into the archbishopric of St. Andrews, as a reward for betraying this church. Indeed when he first came down, August 1660, as we have heard, with the double faced letter to the presbytery of Edinburgh, and gave a narrative of his pains at London, the cheat was Mr. Andrew Fairfoul got the archbishopric of Glasgow; a man of some learning and neat expression, but never taken to be either serious or sincere. He had been minister first at Leith, and at this time was at Dunse, and in that country there was no small talking of his intrigues with a lady, who shall be nameless; but death cut him off in little more than a year after his promotion, as will be noticed afterwards. Mr. George Wiseheart is placed at the see of Edinburgh. He had been laid under church censure by the old covenanters, about the time of the encampment at Dunselaw, in the year 1639, and this probably recommended him now. This man could not refrain from profane swearing, even upon the street of Edinburgh; and he was a known drunkard. He published somewhat in divinity; but then, as I find it remarked by a very good hand, his lascivious poems, which, compared with the most luscious parts of Ovid, de Arte Amandi, are modest, gave scandal to all the world. Mr. Thomas Sideserf is fixed at Orkney. He had been bishop of Galloway, and deposed in the year 1638, for the common faults of the prelates at that time, and in particular for erroneous doctrine; and now he is translated to a better benefice. Mr. David Mitchel, once minister of Edinburgh, but deposed by the general assembly for heresy, and thereupon going to England, was made one of the prebendaries of Westminster, is named for Aberdeen, but enjoyed it not a full year. Mr. James Hamilton, brother to the lord Belhaven, minister, at Cambusnethan, is placed at Galloway. His gifts were reckoned every way ordinary; but he was remarkable for his cunning timeserving temper. Mr. Robert Wallace, minister at Barnwell in the shire of Ayr, famous for his large stomach, got the bishopric of the Isles, though he understood not one word of the language of the natives. He was a relation of the chancellor's, and that was enough. Mr. David Fletcher, minister at Melross, a remarkable worldling, was named for the bishopric of Argyle: I doubt if he understood the Irish language either. Melross was a good stipend, and he continued a while preaching there, and because of his preaching there, he boasted of his diligence beyond the rest of his brethren, who, it must be owned, for the most part preached little or none; meanwhile I do not hear any of them, save he, took two stipends. Mr. George Haliburton, minister at Perth, had the see of Dunkeld. His character at that time was, a man who had made many changes, and was sincere in none of them. Mr. Patrick Forbes, the degenerate plant of the excellent Mr. John Forbes, who kept the assembly at Aberdeen, 1605, was fixed at Caithness. Mr. David Strachan, minister at Fettercairn, the commissioner's minister, got the small bishopric of Brechin. Mr. John Paterson, minister at Aberdeen, got the bishopric of Ross, his son made a greater figure than he did. Mr. Murdoch Mackenzie, minister at Elgin, was placed at Murray. While a minister, he was famous for searching people's kitchens on Christmas day for the superstitious goose, telling them, that the feathers of them would rise up in judgment against them one day; and when a bishop, as famous for affecting always to fall a preaching upon the deceitfulness of riches, while he was drawing the money over the board to him. Mr. Robert Leighton, once minister of Newbottle, and at this time principal of the college of Edinburgh, son to Mr. Leighton * Alexander Leighton, father to the bishop, had an information exhibited against him in the starchamber, in the year 1630, for writing a book, entitled, "An Appeal to the Parliament, or a Plea against Prelacy," wherein he was charged with having set forth, "1st, That we read not of greater persecution of God's people in any Christian nation than in this island, especially since the death of queen Elizabeth. 2d, That the prelates were men of blood, and enemies to God and the state, and that the establishing bishops by law is a master sin, and ministers should have no voices in council, deliberative or decisive. 3d, That prelacy is antichristian and Satanical; the bishops, ravens and magpies. 4th, That the canons of 1603 are nonsense. 5th, He condemns that spawn of the beast, kneeling at the sacraments. That prelates corrupted the king, and the queen was a daughter of Heth. 7th, He commends him that murdered the duke of Buckingham, and encourages others in the like attempts. 8th, He saith all that pass by spoil us, and we spoil all that rely upon us, and instances in the black pining death of the Rochellers to the number of fifteen thousand in four months. 6th, 9th, Saith, that the church has her laws from the scriptures, and no king may make laws in the house of God, for if they might, the scrippity, and will be an indelible dishonour to the ture would be imperfect. 10th, He saith it is state's reputation, that so ingenuous and tractable a king should be so monstrously abused to the undoing of himself and his subjects." : The defendant did not deny the book, but refused to acknowledge any evil intention, his end being only to "remonstrate certain grievances in church and state, that the parliament might take them into consideration and redress them." He was, however, sentenced to be committed to the Fleet, during life; to pay a fine of £10,000; to be carried to the pillory at ping to be set in the pillory, have one of his Westminster, and there whipped, and after whipears cut off, one side of his nose slit, and be branded on the one cheek with the letters S. S. for a sower of sedition and on another day to be carried to the pillory in Cheapside, to be there again whipped, have his other ear cut off, the other side of his nose slit, and his other cheek branded with the double S. Mr. Leighton made his escape out of prison the night before his sentence was to have been in part executed, but he was soon retaken, and on the sixteenth of November, underwent the one half of his day sevennight, his sores on his back, car, nose, and face, not being cured, he was again whipped this occasion was purposely half intoxicated, at the pillory in Cheapside. The hangman on and performed his duty with the most savage ferocity. After being thus unmercifully whipped, the poor culprit was exposed nearly two hours on the pillory in a severe frost, and heavy fall of snow, at the end of which he underwent sentence in Palace Yard, Westminster. On that to the full extent thereof, the remainder of his brutal sentence, and being unable to walk, he |