Note 337 — Chapter III

‘Sir James Turner, that commanded them, was naturally fierce, but was mad when he was drunk; and that was very often.’ Burnet's History of his own Time, vol. i. p. 364. Kirkton (History of the Church, p. 221) says: ‘Sir James Turner hade made ane expedition to the west countrey to subdue it to the bishops, in the year 1664; another in the year 1665; and a third in the year 1666; and this was the worst.’ Full particulars will be found in Wodrow's History of the Church of Scotland, vol. i. pp. 373–375, 411, vol. ii. pp. 8, 17, vol. iii. pp. 264, 265. ‘This method of dragooning people to the church, as it is contrary to the spirit of Christianity, so it was a stranger in Scotland, till Bishop Sharpe and the prelates brought it in.’ vol. i. p. 401.

Sir James Turner, whose Memoirs, written by himself, were not published till thirty years ago, relates an anecdote of his own drunkenness in a strain of maudlin piety well worthy of his career. Turner's Memoirs of his own Life, Edinburgh, 1829, 4to, pp. 42, 43. At p. 206, this impudent man writes: ‘And yet I confesse, my humour never was, nor is not yet, one of the calmest; when it will be, God onlie knoues; yet by many sad passages of my life, I know that it hath beene good for me to be afflicted.’ Perhaps, however, he may take the benefit of his assertion (p. 144), ‘that I was so farre from exceeding or transgressing my commission and instructions, that I never came the full length of them.’ Considering the cruelties he committed, what sort of instructions could his superiors have given to him?