THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY, AT ST ANDREW’S, 1642.

It is not necessary to recapitulate such of the proceedings of the immediately preceding Assembly as are introduced in the printed Acts. But a few particulars, not thus recorded, may be slightly adverted to.

Mr John Guthrie, the ousted Bishop of Moray, petitioned that Assembly that his benefice might be kept vacant for some time; but the Assembly disregarded his petition, and ordered his charge to be filled up, by the Presbytery of the bounds, without delay. They, however, reponed Mr Andrew Logie, who had been deposed by the Presbytery of Aberdeen; and overtures relative to the Universities (of which, to its credit, the Presbyterian Church never lost sight) were adopted, and ordered to be submitted to Parliament. The schism of the preceding year about private conventicles still continued; and their great patron, Mr Henry Guthrie, still fanned the flame, to quench which, it was necessary to “misken” or overlook the Aberdeen Act upon the subject, and frame a new one against impiety and schism. A case of Conscience, though for a political purpose, was submitted to the Assembly by a deputation from Parliament, relative to a Bond into which Montrose and others had entered, and which was thought inconsistent with the Covenant. The Assembly not only gave a deliverance suited to the views of the predominant party in Parliament, but volunteered their advice and assistance to it, which, however, was declined. In consequence, probably, of the brotherly communings which had recently taken place betwixt the Scotch and English nonconformists in London. A number of the latter wrote an Epistle to the Moderator touching Presbytery and Independency, and an answer was returned, intimating the unanimous adherence of the Scottish Church to Presbytery and its aversion to the other system; and a proposition was also mooted for framing a new Confession of Faith, Catechism, and Directory for public worship, &c., as a platform for an extension of Presbytery to England—a scheme which, ere long, was matured in the Westminster Assembly, and by the “Solemn League and Covenant,” of which we shall have to treat on a future occasion.

Of the minor concerns, we may mention the appointment of a committee to adjust the state of the churches in Orkney, Zetland, Lochaber, and the Isles; an application for erecting the Presbytery of Biggar; the rejection of applications from Aberdeen to translate George Gillespie and Edward Wright from Glasgow, and an Assistant at Scotscraig—but, to quiet the murmurs of the applicants, they got John Oswald from Pencaitland, which made room for David Calderwood, the well-known chronicler of the Kirk, from Crailing in Teviotdale. Among the other removes that took place at that Assembly, Mr Andrew Ker was transferred from Carriden to Linlithgow, William Bennet to Edinburgh, and John Colins to Glasgow; and Alexander Henderson sought and obtained leave to retire from Edinburgh to a rural parish, of which permission, however, he never availed himself. During the sitting of that Assembly, an awkward occurrence took place in the person of a Mr Thomas Lamb, a minister in Peebleshire, who, having killed a man on the road betwixt Leith and Edinburgh, was tried, condemned, and executed for the act. Many complaints by ministers for want of adequate stipends, were given in, and referred, as a matter of necessity, to the Parliament—the Church not having yet discovered any mode of accomplishing that object, otherwise than by the civil authority, although in these four last Assemblies it had assumed the prerogative of removing and transplanting ministers at its pleasure, without consulting either patrons or people, so far as we have been able to discover. Many matters were left over unfinished, and remitted to a Commission—the first, it has been alleged, (erroneously, we think,) in the history of the Church, on whom such powers were devolved. The Assembly terminated by appointing its next meeting at St Andrew’s, on the 27th of July, 1642.

As already noticed in a preceding chapter, the treaty of peace betwixt the two kingdoms was concluded on the 7th of August 1641.278 Immediately after, on the 9th, his Majesty left London, and proceeded to Scotland. He arrived about the middle of that month at Edinburgh, having, in the course of his journey, interchanged courtesies with the chief of the Scottish army, which was still in the north of England. But his reception was far different in the Scottish capital from that which he had experienced in 1633 on the occasion of his coronation. The Covenanters were now triumphant in all their pretensions, not solely by moral, but visibly by the influence of overbearing physical force. By the terms of the treaty, and its inevitable sequences, the executive sceptre was wrenched from the hand of the King; the prerogatives of monarchy were one and all extinguished in Scotland and assumed by the Estates; and, as he had formerly meditated the assumption of undue authority, he now tasted a bitter retribution. Charles, the descendant of above a hundred Scottish Kings, virtually bowed his “discrowned head” in the palace of his fathers, beneath the victorious banner of “THE COVENANT.”

The Scottish Estates, which had been continued from time to time, reassembled on the 15th of July 1641, before the treaty was yet completed. The convention at first consisted of one hundred and forty-five members, of whom thirty-nine were of the nobility, forty-nine barons, and fifty-seven burgesses.279 Lord Burlie was chosen President; and it was agreed on that the Estates should sit till the 17th of August, when the King or his Commissioner was expected to be present, and should prepare business, but not determine anything except the most urgent affairs for the public service. This Parliament was new-modelled, arbitrarily, (as indeed were all its proceedings from the first,) by the exclusion of the eldest sons of Peers, who previously had access to it—an exclusion which excited no little discontent among the rising aristocracy—and the Clergy, the Lords of Session, the Lord Advocate, and “all disaffected members,” were debarred from taking any part in its deliberations; and, among other stretches of its assumed intrinsic power, it ordered Traquair’s Declaration, as already noticed,280 at the close of the Assembly 1639, to be delete from the register of Privy Council; as if such a proceeding could extinguish the document, which still stands on record, though partially obliterated. In short, it was a packed and arbitrary convention, having no legal authority, according to the ancient constitution of Scotland, until after the King had sanctioned its past and pending proceedings by an ex post facto concurrence, in terms of the concessions which had been extorted from him by the joint coercion of the House of Commons in England, and the Scotch Commissioners in London.

On the 17th of July, Among their preparatory measures, proceedings against the incendiaries were commenced. These were John Earl of Traquair, Sir Robert Spottiswood of Dunipace,281 Sir John Hay, Clerk-Register, Dr Walter Balcanquell, and John Maxwell, late Bishop of Ross; and in the list of the proscribed were James Earl of Montrose, Archibald Lord Napier, Sir George Stirling of Keir, and Sir Lewis Stewart of Blackball.

It would be foreign to our task were we to enter on the grounds of imputation against these parties; and it belongs rather to the biography of the individuals, or the political history of the times, than to our humble track, to elucidate the nature and extent of their alleged offences against the compulsory unity prescribed by the Covenant and its rigid interpreters—armed with supreme and irresistible power. But we may be permitted to remark, that it is no ways surprising that good and honourable men, who, either as avowed friends of the King, or as honest Covenanters, in 1637, had voluntarily adopted, or from compulsion yielded to a predominant power, discovered good and sufficient grounds, in the interval of four years of intestine commotion, intrigue, and factious procedure—more especially after the invasion of England and the treaty in London—to shrink from following in the courses of the “Root and Branch” combination which had sprung up in both kingdoms during the past year. Without at all entering on the minutiæ, we are not prepared to concur with some enthusiastic admirers of the Covenanters in condemning those proscribed individuals, because they deprecated or dissented from the radicalism (a modern term, but sufficiently intelligible) of the seventeenth century, being satisfied perhaps, as we believe they were, that it was not identical either with reform or religion, and that its spirit and its tendency were inevitably, as they proved to be at no distant period, subversive alike of a constitutional monarchy, and of the civil and religious liberties of the land. Betwixt the conclusion of the treaty of Berwick and that of London, the cause of the Covenant had entirely changed its character; and if men of the present day will study with calmness and impartiality the whole progress of these troubles, and examine carefully the acts of the Scotch Convention, and those of its negotiators, he cannot fail, we think, to discern, in the authentic records of Parliament and otherwise, the most conclusive proofs that that convention exercised an unlawful and despotical authority, and employed it for the most vindictive and selfish purposes. Let one of its decrees suffice as a test of the ruling power. The convention declared, that in the proceedings against the proscribed individuals, members of the house might be witnesses as well as judges!

But we proceed with the narrative of events. The King arrived at Holyrood about six o’clock in the afternoon of Saturday the 14th of August, having but a small attendance. The Palatine, however, with the Duke of Lennox, the Marquis of Hamilton, and Lord Willoughby, were in his train. On the Sunday following, he attended divine service in the Chapel-Royal, where Alexander Henderson officiated. The King, however, did not return in the afternoon; “but,” says Balfour, “being wearie, reposed himself in privat;” and Baillie tells us, with his wonted simplicity, that “being advertised by Mr Alexander, he promised not to do so again. Mr Alexander in the morning, and evening before supper, daily says prayers, reads a chapter and sings a psalm, and says prayers again. The King hears all duly; and we hear none of his complaints for want of a liturgy or any ceremonies. On Monday, the King came not abroad.”

Balfour, however, with all the minuteness and circumstance befitting a “Lord Lion King-at-Arms,” narrates a number of particulars. The King held a council, where it was discussed, whether there should be a “ryding” of the Parliament next day; but, as may easily be conceived, the King had no spirit, in his present humiliating circumstances, to take part in a hollow-hearted pageant; and it was resolved that he should hear sermon in the Abbey Church, and then proceed in his coach to the Parliament. “After Mr Andrew Ramsay’s long sermon,”282 this course was adopted; and we cannot better paint the scene than we find it in Balfour’s Annals:283—

“The Marques Hamilton ves ordained to beare the croune, the Earle Argyle the scepter, and the Earle of Sutherland the suord.

“The Kinges Maᵗⁱᵉ came to the hous about 11 houres, the heraulds preceiding the honors, and the trumpets them.

“At his Maᵗⁱᵉˢ entrey wnto the hous, the Laird of Langtone, with a batton in his hand, went befor the honors as grate wsher, and offred to make ciuill interruptione for mantinence of his right aganist the Earle of Vigtone. The King reteired to the inner roume in a choler, and ther subscriued a varrant to put the La: of Langtone in the castle.

“Then did his Maᵗⁱᵉ enter the hous, and sitts him doune in his chaire, and, after a prayer said by Mr Alexander Hendersone, hes Maᵗⁱᵉ kyndly saluting the housse, spake thus:—

“‘My Lords and Gentlemen,’

“‘Ther hath beine nothing so displeassing to me, as thosse vnluckie differences vich of laite haue hapned betuix me and my subiects; and nothing that I haue more desyred as to see this day, quherin I houpe, not onlie to setle thesse vnhapey mistakinges, bot rightly to know and be knowen of my natiue countrey. I neid not tell you (for I think it is well knouen to most) quhat difficulties I haue passed by and ouercome to be heir at this tyme; zet this I will say, that if loue to my natiue countrey had not beine a cheiffe motiue to this iorney; other respects might easily haue found a shift to doe that by a commissioner, wich I am come to performe myselue. Al this considered, I cannot doubt bot to find such reall testimonies of your affections for the mantinance of that royall pouer wich I doe inioy after a 108 discents, and wiche you haue so often professed to manteine, and to wich your auen nationall othe doeth oblidge you, that I shall not thinke my paines ill bestoued. Nou the end of my coming is shortly this, to perfecte quhatsoeuer I haue promissed, and withall to queit thosse distractions wich haue and may fall out amongest you; and this I mynd not superficially, bot fully and cheirfullv to doe; for I assure you, that I can doe noething vith more cheerfulnesse then to giue my people content and a generall satisfactione. Wherefor, not offring to indeere myselue to you in vords, (wich indeid is not my way,) I desyre, in the first place, to settle that wich concerns the religione and iust liberties of this my natiue countrey, befor I proceid to aney wther acte.’

“The Lord Burlie, president of the parliament, in name of the housse, made a prettey speiche to hes Maᵗⁱᵉ, of thankes for all the former demonstrationes of his goodnes, and expressiones of loue to his Maiesties ancient and natiue kingdome.

“And therafter the Earle of Argyle did second the president, with a short and pithy harraing, comparing this kingdome to a ship tossed in a tempestuous sea, thir zeires by past; and seing his Majesty had, lyke a skillfull pilote, in the tymes of most danger, steired her throughe so maney rockes and shelwes, to saue anchor, he did humbly intreat his Maᵗⁱᵉ that nou he wold not leaue her, (since that for her saftie lie had giuen way to cast out some of the naughtiest baggage to lightin her,) bot be gratiously pleassed to setle her in her secure statione and harbour againe.

“Hes Maᵗⁱᵉ offred to ratifie the 39 actes of this parl: 22 Junij, 1639 40 which the housse humbley intreated hes Maiestie to superseid, till, according to the orders of the housse, they had taken them 24 houres to ther considerations; wich with a declaratione insert in the recordes of parl: of hes Maᵗⁱᵉˢ villingnes to doe that, and the housses earnist and humble supplicatione to his Maᵗⁱᵉ for keiping the orders of the housse; to wich he condescendit.

“The housse did humblie supplicat hes Maᵗⁱᵉ that he wold not comitt Langtone to the castle, and so dismember ther housse. His Maᵗⁱᵉ declared, that he [had] not done it for the respecte of aney subiecte, bot for the affront done to his auen persone, for intruding him in his seruice without acquantlng hes Maᵗⁱᵉ therwith. After much intretey, his Maᵗⁱᵉ wes gratiously pleassed onlie to confyne him till to morrow to his auen chamber. So with a prayer, his Maᵗⁱᵉ returned to his palace of Holyrudhousse to dinner.

“The croune, scepter, and suord, wer lefte in the parl: housse, in custodey of the Lordes Constable and Marishall till the last day of the parl: and ordained by his Maᵗⁱᵉ eurey day to be produced, and by the Lyone K. of Armes layed one the table befor the throne.”

Baillie’s account is not less significant of the King’s feelings on this occasion. “He spoke very graceously. The Preses and then Argyle answered him with cordial harangues of welcome. His Majesty offered presently, without delay, to put his sceptre to the thirty-nine Acts of Parliament enjoined in the treaty. He was intreated, according to the order of the house, to suspend till to-morrow; at which time he pressed again that he might ratify the Acts. He was intreated to delay till the return of the Commissioners, who were present at the treaty: at last he was intreated so to do.” (Vide also Acts, vol. v., p. 362.)

The day following Balmerino was chosen President in place of Burlie—and the King consented to defer his ratification of the Acts passed on 22d of June 1640, till the return of the Scotch Commissioners; meanwhile, all the incendiaries who were tangible were imprisoned in the castle, and a variety of preparatory steps taken for energetic legislation; and the Covenant, as a matter of course, was displayed. On the 24th of August, the Treaty betwixt the Commissioners of both Kingdoms, ratified in the Parliament of England, was read; and the same day another Act of the English Parliament for payment of £110,000, of the “brotherly assistance” at Midsummer 1642, and a similar sum in 1643, was produced. Orders for disbanding the army, and paying it off were also issued. On the 25th of August, the King signed the treaty with England in face of Parliament. Next day, it was ratified as an Act, by touching with the sceptre, and the royal sign manual—ordered to be exemplified under the great seal—and delivered to the English Commissioners; and on the 28th, his Majesty, with consent of the Estates, ordained the Acts, passed in June 1640, being in number thirty-nine, to be published in his Majesty’s name, in terms of the treaty.284

And thus Charles I., with all these formal solemnities, ratified a series of statutes, which, up to that hour, were utterly destitute of legal sanction—abandoned all his ill-advised schemes of ecclesiastical policy, and substantially, as will speedily appear, relinquished the most important prerogatives of the crown—devolving its functions entirely into the hands of an encroaching and tyrannical popular convocation, whose sole authority was derived from the power of the sword, and not from the constitutional law of the land.

The extent to which the Estates meant to carry their pretensions, was speedily exemplified; for, on 6th September, the demand made by the Commissioners in March preceding, as to the appointment of the Officers of State, Privy Counsellors, and Lords of Session, was read in the house; and, on the 16th, the King signified to the Estates that he would nominate the executive officers of his government above alluded to, with “the advice” of the Estates; thus transferring the undoubted and constitutional prerogative, which, except in those troublous times, has ever belonged to the Sovereign of these realms, into the hands of the Parliament, and combining, in one popularly constituted and self-created body, both the legislative and executive functions: a system of government which has ever been found alike injurious to the cause of genuine freedom, and mischievous in its consequences to society, wherever it has existed. As might be expected, when “the house had receaved this gratious ansswer from his Majesties owne mouthe, they all arrosse, and bowed themselves to the ground.”285 The results of this most unwise act of the King was speedily manifested in the apponitments which followed.

On the 20th day of the same month, (vide Acts, vol. v., 406,) the King exhibited lists of privy-counsellors and officers of state, expressing a hope that the house would only state reasonable objections. Argyle, however, vehemently objected to Morton as chancellor. The latter retorted that for twenty years he had educated and protected Argyle, and had obtained for him the numerous beneficial possessions and honours which he enjoyed. The advice of the house was procrastinated; and on the 22d a proposal was made that the election of the officers of state and counsellors should take place “by billets or schedules,” on the ground that “men, for feares or houpes, might stand in awe to use the liberty of their consciences!” The King justly remarked that, in his opinion, “that man that feared to voice freelie was not worthy to sitt in the House.” There was much debate on the subject. Morton, to avoid dissension betwixt the King and the People, besought that his name as chancellor might be withdrawn; and subsequently his Majesty proposed Loudoun as chancellor, and urged the house to give its fiat upon his list; and, at length, after much delay and heart-burning, Loudoun was named Lord Chancellor, with the unanimous concurrence of the house, but to the disappontment of Argyle, who evidently aspired to the office. During this interval, the struggles and intrigues which prevailed for place and for power, were incessant; and bitter jealousies among the “covenanted” statesmen, sprung up as rife as among men of less spiritual pretension. The treasury was put in commission, to divide the power and emolument among the parties, when Glencairn, Lindsay, and Argyle were fitted with places. Orbiston was patronised by Hamilton for the office of Clerk-Register, (Hay being under process,) while Johnston was the elect of his adherents; but, ultimately, Gibson of Durie was appointed and Johnston was dubbed a knight, and, for his consolation, appointed a Lord of Session, and Orbiston made Justice-Clerk. The Marquis of Huntly and eight other Lords nominated by the King, were superseded, and an equal number of the covenanting Lords substituted in their place as Members of Council. And, to make room for their friends, Sir Robert Spottiswood, (President of the Session,) Sir William Elphingston, (Justice-Clerk,) Sir John Hay, and Sir Patrick Nisbit, were removed as judges, and Leslie of Newton, Sir Thomas Hope, (the Lord Advocate’s son,) Hepburn of Huntly, and Johnston appointed in their stead. Having now moulded the executive departments to their own satisfaction, and reduced the royal authority to a shadow, the Parliament proceeded in the work of reformation at a rapid pace. The conformation of the executive at that time being eminently illustrative of the spirit of the Scottish Estates, we subjoin, in a note, a list of the functionaries who were installed under the first reformed Parliament of Charles I.,286 leaving all details of Parliamentary proceedings and squabbles among the jarring factions which then prevailed, to be gathered from the appropriate chronicles of the times.

while the King was resident in Scotland during these transactions, and harrassed by the unceasing turmoils among the leading men in his northern parliament, and tortured with the rising flame of faction in England, the natural effects of those commotions, and the total disruption of society in Britain, were fearfully developed in Ireland. On the 1st of November 1641, his Majesty received, by express, accounts of a rebellion and widely extended massacre by the Papists of Ireland, of his Protestant subjects in that portion of his empire. Of that rebellion we shall extract an account from the pages of Hume, whose liberality will scarcely be called in question by the most liberal parties of the present day, in regard to religious sects of all sorts;287 and this we prefer to any attempt of our own, lest our Presbyterian leanings might subject us to misconstruction in exhibiting the characteristics of that atrocious occurrence. It is an episode, doubtless, in the annals of the Church of Scotland, but an episode, closely connected with that history, and full of instruction at the present day—and not the less so that the conflagration which overspread Ireland with horrors, was kindled by the fires which were first lighted up on Dunse Law and at Newburn. The moral of that sad tale may be practically applied with important benefit in the passing hour, when disruption in our constitutional establishments is imminent, when democracy is stalking abroad with its torch and its dagger, and when incendiarism and murder are perpetrated in Ireland to an appalling extent with impunity, and seemingly beyond the reach of repression in that devoted land.

“After Strafford fell a victim to popular rage, the humors excited in Ireland by that great event could not be suddenly composed, but continued to produce the greatest innovations in the government.

“The British Protestants, transplanted in Ireland, having every moment before their eyes all the horrors of Popery, had naturally been carried into the opposite extreme, and had universally adopted the highest principles and practices of the Puritans: monarchy, as well as the hierarchy, was become odious to them; and every method of limiting the authority of the Crown, and detaching themselves from the King of England, was greedily adopted and pursued. They considered not, that as they scarcely formed the sixth part of the people, and were secretly obnoxious to the ancient inhabitants, their only method of supporting themselves was by maintaining royal authority, and preserving a great dependence on their mother-country. The English Commons, likewise, in their furious persecution of Strafford, had overlooked the most obvious consequences; and, while they imputed to him, as a crime, every discretionary act of authority, they despoiled all succeeding governors of that power, by which alone the Irish could be retained in subjection: and so strong was the current for popular government in all the three kingdoms, that the most established maxims of policy were everywhere abandoned, in order to gratify this ruling passion.

“Charles, unable to resist, had been obliged to yield to the Irish, as to the Scottish and English Parliaments; and found, too, that their encroachments still rose in proportion to his concessions. Those subsidies, which themselves had voted, they reduced by a subsequent vote to a fourth part: the court of high commission was determined to be a grievance; martial law abolished; the jurisdiction of the council annihilated; proclamations and acts of state declared of no authority; every order or institution, which depended on monarchy, was invaded; and the prince was despoiled of all his prerogative, without the least pretext of any violence or illegality in his administration.

“The old Irish remarked all these false steps of the English, and resolved to take advantage of them. Though their animosity against that nation, for want of an occasion to exert itself, seemed to be extinguished, it was only composed into a temporary and deceitful tranquillity: their interests, both with regard to property and religion, secretly stimulated them to a revolt. No individual of any sept, according to the ancient customs, had the property of any particular estate; but as the whole sept had a title to a whole territory, they ignorantly preferred this barbarous community before the more secure and narrower possessions assigned them by the English. An indulgence, amounting almost to a toleration, had been given to the Catholic religion: but so long as the churches and the ecclesiastical revenues were kept from the priests, and they were obliged to endure the neighbourhood of profane heretics, being themselves discontented, they continually endeavoured to retard any cordial reconciliations between the English and the Irish nations.

“There was a gentleman called Roger More, who, though of a narrow fortune, was descended from an ancient Irish family, and was much celebrated among his countrymen for valour and capacity: this man first formed the project of expelling the English, and asserting the independency of his native country. He secretly went from chieftain to chieftain, and roused up every latent principle of discontent: he maintained a close correspondence with Lord Maguire and Sir Phelim O’Neale, the most powerful of the old Irish: by conversation, by letters, by his emissaries, he represented to his countrymen the motives of a revolt. He observed to them, that by the rebellion of the Scots, and factions of the English, the King’s authority in Britain was reduced to so low a condition, that he never could exert himself with any vigour in maintaining the English dominion over Ireland; that the Catholics in the Irish House of Commons, assisted by the Protestants, had so diminished the royal prerogative and the power of the lieutenant, as would much facilitate the conducting, to its desired effect, any conspiracy or combination which could be formed; that the Scots, having so successfully thrown off dependence on the crown of England, and assumed the government into their own hands, had set an example to the Irish, who had so much greater oppressions to complain of; that the English planters, who had expelled them their possessions, suppressed their religion, and bereaved them of their liberties, were but a handful in comparison of the natives; that they lived in the most supine security, interspersed with their numerous enemies, trusting to the protection of a small army, which was itself scattered in inconsiderable divisions throughout the whole kingdom; that a great body of men, disciplined by the government, were now thrown loose, and were ready for any daring or desperate enterprise; that though the Catholics had hitherto enjoyed, in some tolerable measure, the exercise of their religion from the moderation of their indulgent prince, they must henceforth expect that the government will be conducted by other maxims and other principles; that the puritanical parliament, having at length subdued their sovereign, would, no doubt, as soon as they had consolidated their authority, extend their ambitious enterprises to Ireland, and make the Catholics in that Kingdom, feel the same furious persecution to which their brethren in England were at present exposed; and that a revolt in the Irish, tending only to vindicate their native liberty against the violence of foreign invaders, could never, at any time, be deemed rebellion; much less during the present confusion, when their prince was, in a manner, a prisoner; and obedience must be paid, not to him, but to those who had traitorously usurped his lawful authority.

“By these considerations, More engaged all the heads of the native Irish into the conspiracy. The English of the pale, as they were called, or the old English planters, being all Catholics, it was hoped would afterwards join the party, which restored their religion to its ancient splendour and authority. The intention was, that Sir Phelim O’Neale and the other conspirators, should begin an insurrection on one day throughout the provinces, and should attack all the English settlements; and that, on the same day, Lord Maguire and Roger More should surprise the castle of Dublin. The commencement of the revolt was fixed on the approach of winter, that there might be more difficulty in transporting forces from England: succours to themselves and supplies of arms they expected from France, in consequence of a promise made them by Cardinal Richelieu; and many Irish officers, who served in the Spanish troops, had engaged to join them as soon as they saw an insurrection entered on by their Catholic brethren. News, which every day arrived from England, of the fury expressed by the Commons against all Papists, struck fresh terror into the Irish nation, and both stimulated the conspirators to execute their fatal purpose, and gave them assured hopes of the concurrence of all their countrymen.

“Such propensity to a revolt was discovered in all the Irish, that it was deemed unnecessary as it was dangerous to entrust the secret to many hands; and the appointed day drew nigh, nor had any discovery been yet made to the government. The king, indeed, had received information from his ambassadors, that something was in agitation among the Irish in foreign parts; but, though he gave warning to the administration in Ireland, the intelligence was entirely neglected: secret rumours likewise were heard of some approaching conspiracy; but no attention was paid to them. The Earl of Leicester, whom the King had appointed lieutenant, remained in London: the two justices, Sir William Parsons and Sir John Borlace, were men of small abilities; and, by an inconvenience common to all factious times, owed their advancement to nothing but their zeal for the party by whom everything was now governed. Tranquil from their ignorance and inexperience, these men indulged themselves in the most profound repose on the very brink of destruction.

“But they were awakened from their security on the very day before that which was appointed for the commencement of hostilities.288 The castle of Dublin, by which the capital was commanded, contained arms for 10,000 men, with thirty-five pieces of cannon and a proportionable quantity of ammunition: yet was this important place guarded, and that too without any care, by no greater force than fifty men. Maguire and More were already in town with a numerous band of their partisans; others were expected that night: and, next morning, they were to enter on what they esteemed the easiest of all enterprises, the surprisal of the castle. O’Conolly, an Irishman, but a Protestant, betrayed the conspiracy to Parsons: the justices and council fled immediately for safety into the castle, and reinforced the guards: the alarm was conveyed to the city, and all the Protestants prepared for defence. More escaped; Maguire was taken; and Mahone, one of the conspirators, being likewise seized, first discovered to the justices the project of a general insurrection, and redoubled the apprehensions which already were universally diffused throughout Dublin.

“But though O’Conolly’s discovery saved the castle from a surprise, the confession extorted from Mahone came too late to prevent the intended insurrection. O’Neale and his confederates had already taken arms in Ulster: the Irish, everywhere intermingled with the English, needed but a hint from their leaders and priests to begin hostilities against a people whom they hated on account of their religion, and envied for their riches and prosperity. The houses, cattle, goods of the unwary English were first seized: those who heard of the commotions in their neighbourhood, instead of deserting their habitations, and assembling for mutual protection, remained at home, in hopes of defending their property; and fell thus separately into the hands of their enemies. After rapacity had fully exerted itself, cruelty—and the most barbarous that ever in any nation was known or heard of—began its operations: a universal massacre commenced of the English, now defenceless, and passively resigned to their inhuman foes: no age, no sex, no condition was spared: the wife, weeping for her butchered husband, and embracing her helpless children, was pierced with them, and perished by the same stroke: the old, the young, the vigorous, the infirm, underwent a like fate, and were confounded in one common ruin. In vain did flight save from the first assault; destruction was everywhere let loose, and met the hunted victims at every turn: in vain was recourse had to relations, to companions, to friends: all connections were dissolved, and death was dealt by that hand from which protection was implored and expected. Without provocation, without opposition, the astonished English, living in profound peace and full security, were massacred by their nearest neighbours, with whom they had long upheld a continual intercourse of kindness and good offices.

“But death was the slightest punishment inflicted by those rebels: all the tortures which wanton cruelty could devise, all the lingering pains of body, the anguish of mind, the agonies of despair, could not satiate revenge excited without injury, and cruelty derived from no cause. To enter into particulars would shock the least delicate humanity: such enormities, though attested by undoubted evidence, appear almost incredible: depraved nature, even perverted religion, encouraged by the utmost license, reach not to such a pitch of ferocity; unless the pity inherent in human breasts be destroyed by that contagion of example, which transports men beyond all the usual motives of conduct and behaviour.

“The weaker sex themselves, naturally tender to their own sufferings and compassionate to those of others, here emulated their more robust companions in the practice of every cruelty: even children, taught by the example, and encouraged by the exhortation of their parents, essayed their feeble blows on the dead carcasses or defenceless children of the English. The very avarice of the Irish was not a sufficient restraint of their cruelty: such was their frenzy, that the cattle which they had seized, and by rapine made their own, yet, because they bore the name of English, were wantonly slaughtered, or, when covered with wounds, turned loose into the woods and deserts.

“The stately buildings or commodious habitations of the planters, as if upraiding the sloth and ignorance of the natives, were consumed with fire, or laid level with the ground; and where the miserable owners, shut up in their houses, and preparing for defence, perished in the flames, together with their wives and children, a double triumph was afforded to their insulting foes.

“If any where a number assembled together, and, assuming courage from despair, were resolved to sweeten death by revenge on their assassins; they were disarmed by capitulations and promises of safety, confirmed by the most solemn oaths: but no sooner had they surrendered, than the rebels, with perfidy equal to their cruelty, made them share the fate of their unhappy countrymen.

“Others, more ingenious still in their barbarity, tempted their prisoners by the fond love of life, to imbrue their hands in the blood of friends, brothers, parents; and having thus rendered them accomplices in guilt, gave them that death which they sought to shun by deserving it.

“Amidst all these enormities, the sacred name of religion resounded on every side; not to stop the hands of these murderers, but to enforce their blows, and to steel their hearts against every movement of human or social sympathy. The English, as heretics, abhorred of God, and detestable to all holy men, were marked out by the priests for slaughter; and, of all actions, to rid the world of these declared enemies to Catholic faith and piety, was represented as the most meritorious. Nature, which, in that rude people, was sufficiently inclined to atrocious deeds, was farther stimulated by precept, and national prejudices empoisoned by those aversions, more deadly and incurable, which arose from an enraged superstition. While death finished the sufferings of each victim, the bigoted assassins, with joy and exultation, still echoed in his expiring ears, that these agonies were but the commencement of torments infinite and eternal.

“Such were the barbarities by which Sir Phelim O’Neale and the Irish in Ulster signalised their rebellion:—an event memorable in the annals of humankind, and worthy to be held in perpetual detestation and abhorrence. The generous nature of More was shocked at the recital of such enormous cruelties: he flew to O’Neale’s camp; but found that his authority, which was sufficient to excite the Irish to an insurrection, was too feeble to restrain their inhumanity. Soon after, he abandoned a cause polluted by so many crimes, and he retired into Flanders; Sir Phelim, recommended by the greatness of his family, and perhaps too by the unrestrained brutality of his nature, though without any courage or capacity, acquired the entire ascendant over the northern rebels. The English colonies were totally annihilated in the open country of Ulster: the Scots, at first, met with more favourable treatment. In order to engage them to a passive neutrality, the Irish pretended to distinguish between the British nations; and, claiming friendship and consanguinity with the Scots, extended not over them the fury of their massacres. Many of them found an opportunity to fly the country: others retired into places of security, and prepared themselves for defence: and by this means, the Scottish planters, most of them at least, escaped with their lives.

“From Ulster, the flames of rebellion diffused themselves in an instant over the other three provinces of Ireland: in all places death and slaughter were not uncommon, though the Irish in these other provinces pretended to act with moderation and humanity—but cruel and barbarous was their humanity. Not content with expelling the English their houses, with despoiling them of their goodly manors, with wasting their cultivated fields, they stripped them of their very clothes, and turned them out, naked and defenceless, to all the severities of the season. The heavens themselves, as if conspiring against that unhappy people, were armed with cold and tempest unusual to the climate, and executed what the merciless sword had left unfinished. The roads were covered with crowds of naked English, hastening towards Dublin and the other cities which yet remained in the hands of their countrymen: the feeble age of children, the tender sex of women, soon sunk under the multiplied rigours of cold and hunger. Here, the husband, bidding a final adieu to his expiring family, envied them that fate which he himself expected so soon to share: there, the son, having long supported his aged parent, with reluctance obeyed his last commands; and, abandoning him in his uttermost distress, reserved himself to the hopes of avenging that death which all his efforts could not prevent or delay. The astonishing greatness of the calamity deprived the sufferers of any relief from the view of companions in affliction: with silent tears or lamentable cries, they hurried on through the hostile territories; and found every heart which was not steeled by native barbarity, guarded by the more implacable furies of mistaken piety and religion.

“The saving of Dublin preserved in Ireland the remains of the English name: the gates of that city, though timorously opened, received the wretched supplicants, and presented to the view a scene of human misery beyond what any eye had ever before beheld. Compassion seized the amazed inhabitants, aggravated with the fear of like calamities; while they observed the numerous foes without and within which everywhere environed them and reflected on the weak resources by which they were themselves supported. The more vigorous of the unhappy fugitives, to the number of 3000, were enlisted into three regiments: the rest were distributed into the houses; and all care was taken, by diet and warmth, to recruit their feeble and torpid limbs; diseases of unknown name and species, derived from these multiplied distresses, seized many of them, and put a speedy period to their lives: others, having now leisure to reflect on their mighty loss of friends and fortune, cursed that being which they had saved. Abandoning themselves to despair, refusing all succour, they expired; without other consolation than that of receiving among their countrymen, the honours of a grave, which to their slaughtered companions had been denied by the inhuman barbarians.

“By some computations, those who perished by all these cruelties, are supposed to be 150,000, or 200,000; by the most moderate, and probably the most reasonable account, they are made to amount to 40,000; if this estimation itself be not, as is usual in such cases, somewhat exaggerated.”

Such were the calamitous circumstances in which the Kingdoms of Britain and Ireland were placed at the period to which we now refer, arising, primarily from the mistaken policy of the King, in attempting to rule the nations under his sway, (in which the seeds of public liberty had been planted at the time of the Reformation, and had become widely disseminated,) solely by virtue of the royal prerogative, suited only to a very different state of society. The dissolution and entire disuse of Parliaments in England, the wealthier of his Kingdoms—his rash attempt to enforce, by mere authority, an equivocal system of Episcopacy in Scotland—the results of these several unfortunate measures, which we have already detailed—and the fatal error which he committed in sacrificing one of his most heroical and devoted friends, Stratford, to the antipathy of the English Puritans and Republicans—combined to produce the lamentable state of affairs which we are now contemplating; and, assuredly, if ever a human being, in the whole range of history, has claims on our commiseration, that man was Charles I., when, in the month of November 1641, the tidings of this horrible carnage in Ireland reached him, at Holyrood, in the palace of his ancestors, and in the bosom of his fatherland, of which he was now, indeed, but a nominal sovereign. We pause not to detail the particulars of those jealousies and jarrings, the “plots” and “incidents,” which at the moment surrounded him in Scotland, or awaited him in England, on his return thither, of which ample accounts are elsewhere to be found. On receiving the news of the Irish massacre, the King immediately went to the Parliament House and communicated the intelligence, calling on the Estates to co-operate with the Parliament of England in suppressing this frightful rebellion. And although he repeatedly urged them to the dispatch of business, that he might return to England in the exigency of these complicated national affairs, it was not until the 17th day thereafter that he was enabled to prorogue the Parliament—the intermediate time being consumed in an infinite variety of legislative proceedings, many of them trivial, but others of them eminently calculated to consolidate the supremacy of the Estates, and to benefit and strengthen the Presbyterian Church now firmly established. The first long parliament of Scotland was adjourned on the 17th of November 1641, and continued till the 1st Tuesday of June 1644.289 The King entertained all the nobility in the great banquet-hall of the palace, in the evening—after having previously bestowed honours on the chiefs among them; and early next morning, he set out on his journey towards London, never to revisit the home of his fathers, or to look with patriotic emotion on the hills of his native land.

Without enumerating all the public Statutes of this Parliament, it is important to notice some of them, and the acts of grace and favour bestowed by the King, during his residence, on that occasion.

Among the honours conferred, the Earl of Argyle was created a Marquis; the Lords Loudoun and Lindsay, and General Leslie, were promoted to the rank of Earls; and, to grace the elevation of the man who had twice been the leader in baffling his King in the field, four of his attendants were knighted. Balmerino was overlooked in this distribution of titles, and Rothes was cut off by death, from reaping, in a higher title, the first fruits of his exertions to shear the crown of its beams; thus eluding, too, the unpopularity which was impending over him, as a backslider in the cause of the Covenant. In this particular he was not singular; for Dunfermline and the Lairds of Waughton, Cavers, Riccarton, and others, besides Montrose and his “banders,” fell into discredit, on account of their “cauldrifeness” in the cause; whilst Hamilton, Traquair, and others were destined to suffer all the varieties of fortune, which political revolutions and popular favour, alternately and invariably exhibit.

But these were not the only boons which were bestowed by Charles on his Scottish subjects, and which called forth from the Lord Chancellor, Loudoun, and Sir Thomas Hope, in the face and name of Parliament, at its close, the grateful declaration, that his Majesty had given his Estates satisfaction in all things concerning religion and liberty, and that he was about to depart “a contented king from a contented country.” Among the more substantial largesses on this occasion, General Leslie, now Earl of Leven, obtained 100,000 merks out of the “brotherly assistance;” Alexander Henderson received a gift of the revenues belonging to the dean of the chapel royal; while other leading men, cities and universities, cast lots for the garments which had previously clothed the Episcopal establishment. The bishopricks and deanery of Edinburgh and Orkney, were bestowed on the university of Edinburgh. That of St Andrew’s obtained £1000 sterling per annum, out of the bishoprick and priory of St Andrew’s. The bishoprick of Galloway, and spirituality of Glasgow were given to its college, while the temporalities of the latter were bestowed on the Duke of Lennox. The old college of Aberdeen got its bishoprick revenues. The town of Perth got a moiety of the revenues of Dunkeld, to build a bridge over the Tay; the Hammermen of Edinburgh (doubtless for services in their own department) receiving the remainder. Argyle secured the revenues of that see and of the Isles, whilst Ross, Moray, and Caithness, were distributed amongst other zealous friends of the cause. These vulgar facts go far to explain some of the public phenomena of “the Second Reformation,” and to account for the zeal which had been manifested under the banner, with “Christ’s Crown and Covenant, in letters of gold,” inscribed upon its foldings. For the working clergy—for the Church, in its ordinary acceptation, nothing was done in this scramble for a share of the plunder; but the discontent thus excited, was partially allayed by the appointment of a Commission to value the teinds, and grant augmentations to the parish ministers—a barren and unfruitful gift, which left many of the Presbyterian clergy, for a long period, in a state approaching to pauperism, until within the last thirty years, that a decent provision was made for the maintenance of the Scottish Church, by an act of the British Parliament.290

The only other act of the King and Estates of Scotland in 1641, to which our attention is more especially called at present, is that by which a commission of that body was appointed as Conservators of the late treaty of peace with England, and under this guise invested with all the executive powers of the Crown, and the functions of Parliament. It consisted of fifty-six members, of whom seventeen were peers, twenty-one barons, and eighteen burgesses, any twelve of them a quorum; and on this junto was devolved, for the space of three years, with all the formalities of law, the supreme authority of the state, enabling them to levy men and taxes, and exercise uncontrolled sway over the land as they listed. Henceforward the Scottish monarchy was in abeyance, and the kingly authority and prerogatives extinguished, and the government vested in a motley oligarchy, to whose unlimited sway, no constitutional check was provided, save the remote contingency of rendering an account of their conduct to a full Parliament, to be held at the distance of three years thereafter. This extraordinary arrangement has been lauded by some historians, as a wise and safe measure; but we take leave to dissent from the theory, and to think that, had the royal prerogative of calling parliaments, not been thus practically abrogated for a time, many of the calamities which ensued in both kingdoms, might have been averted or greatly softened in their character.

But leaving Scotland, for the present, under the sway of its Parliamentary Commission, our attention is unavoidably called to the state of matters in England, after the King returned thither on the 25th of November. On that occasion he was warmly welcomed by the citizens of London, and sumptuously banqueted by the corporation, which His Majesty requited by bestowing honours on the chief functionaries. The amicable termination of the Scottish Parliament, and the prostration of royal authority which had there taken place, inspired the English malcontents at once with jealousy, lest their own schemes might eventually be thwarted by a good understanding betwixt Charles and his Scottish subjects—and with hopes that, by intimidation and coercion, they might constrain him into a similar subjection to their own designs. For this purpose, and in striking contrast with the professions of loyalty which had greeted the King’s return to Whitehall, the Commons appointed a committee to draw up a catalogue of grievances, which, when finally concocted in the shape of a “Remonstrance,” contained no fewer than 206 articles of accusation, enumerating almost every act of the King since his accession, as infringements of the liberties of the people. This remonstrance, or rather impeachment, was presented to the King, calling on him, amongst other unconstitutional propositions, to concur in ejecting the bishops from the House of Peers; and, without consulting the other branch of the legislature on the subject, the Commons, in violation of all the usages of Parliament, printed and dispersed it over the country, thereby exciting an agitation, and spreading this firebrand of sedition throughout the whole land. Proceedings of a most violent nature were also instituted against the bishops who had recently absented themselves from Parliament under protest, being deterred from attendance by the violence of the mob, which had been incited by the usual methods to insult and assail them personally. And the collision betwixt the King and the Commons was brought to a crisis by His Majesty going to the house in person, to arrest with an armed force, five of its members, as guilty of high treason, by reason of the part which they had acted in various matters. In this he failed—the objects of his resentment having escaped from the effects of his immediate and natural resentment. Failing in his object, the irritation of the Commons was unbounded, and the populace was so much excited by the alarm, real or affected, of the Commons, lest their personal safety and their privileges were endangered, that the King, to avoid indignity and outrage to himself and his family, (on January 10,) left Whitehall and retired to Hampton Court—a removal which afforded to the Commons and their supporters, the populace of London, a great advantage over him. The Commons had impeached the Bishops, and the King had impeached Lord Kimbolton, Hampden, Pym, and others of the Commons, as guilty of high treason; one chief ground of the latter being an accusation against them, that the Scots invasion had been mainly occasioned by their invitation and encouragement, of which it has been said that Montrose furnished the King with information.

During the progress of these agitations in England, the spirit which guided them extended to Scotland; and the multitude, who, once excited by popular movements, are ever liable to sudden impulses from incendiary excitement elsewhere, joined in the clamours of the English malcontents, threatening to carry another crusade into England, and to aid in the subversion of its Church, and against the King—a project in which they were countenanced by too many of the Scotch clergy and politicians of the day. Even Henderson, the best, and, perhaps, the brightest man of which Scotland could then boast, incurred unpopularity for opposing this piece of extravagance. Balmerino, Lothian, Lindsay, Archibald Johnston, and Hope the younger, having been sent up by the Scotch Committee of Estates, to negotiate with the English Parliament about sending troops to Ireland, were not contented to restrict themselves within the limits of their commission, but renewed their intrigues (as during the progress of the treaty of peace,) with the wildest of the English incendiaries; and, on the 15th of January, 1642, had the audacity, under a pretext of mediating betwixt the King and his English Parliament, to make written communications to both, embodying the sentiments which they cherished, for the destruction of Episcopacy in England and the planting of Presbytery in its stead. A theory was then prevalent, which has been revived even in more recent times, that Presbytery is clothed with a jus divinum—that it alone and exclusively is the form of church-government sanctioned by Scripture—and that it was the bounden duty of its professors, like the Propaganda of Rome, to exert themselves in its extension to all the nations of the earth. This phantasy was evidently not merely inconsistent, but irreconcilable with the maxims on which they themselves had avowedly acted in resisting the imposition of the Service Book and Episcopal Canons on Scotland: but no incongruity of principle or conduct is too gross for fanatics of any sort; and, as remarked by Dr Cook, “their vehement complaints against the Church of England are entitled to as little attention as the contemptuous aspersions which the zealots for prelacy, even at the present day, cast upon every form of ecclesiastical polity different from their own.” The King indignantly prohibited such officious interferences, and, on the 26th of the same month, wrote to the Chancellor of Scotland, requesting that the Council would prohibit these mischievous meddlers from indulging in such practices.291 The Parliament, however, received this intervention most graciously, encouraged their sympathizing testimonies, and opened correspondence with the most bustling Covenanters in Scotland, to secure co-operation and support in their destructive projects.292

The differences betwixt the King and his English Parliament had now assumed a very decisive character; and for some time, it had been evident that no accommodation could be effected otherwise than by the ultima ratio—the sword. The King proceeded to York on the 10th of March; and, on the 23d day of April, went to Hull, with an attendance of 300 cavalry, his usual guard; but Sir John Hotham, the Governor, refused him admission within its walls with more than twelve attendants, assigning as his warrant an order from the Parliament.293 The King pronounced him a traitor; and thus the civil war in England may be said to have commenced.

A very unprofitable question has often been agitated with regard to who began the civil war. In this particular stage of it, however, there seems to be no room for doubt: by the pretensions of the Parliament, or rather of the House of Commons, to the entire control over the militia and army, which the King refused to concede, but more especially by this mandate to the governor of Hull, to refuse admission to their sovereign, with such a military attendance as he might deem fitting—that body usurped a prerogative inherent in the crown from the earliest times of the monarchy, and inseparable from the supreme executive authority in every country.

Whatever may be said by partisan advocates as to the King’s intentions—of his procuring military munitions, pledging the crown jewels for these and such like pretexts—all these apologies for the Commons are utterly irrelevant; and the logic by which they are enforced, is akin to that by which the same faction, in a decree of constructive treason, converted a cluster of insufficient facts into an offence, for which they shed Stratford’s blood. That the command of the army—that military occupation of every place within his dominions—are essential elements in the prerogatives of a British monarch, (subject only to the constitutional control of the Commons, in withholding supplies for its maintenance, if they see cause,)—is a proposition that cannot be soundly questioned. And, independently of every other consideration, this single overt act of usurpation of supreme executive functions, was unconstitutional, and an undeniable act of rebellion on the part of the English Parliament.

While these high points of controversy were in dependence betwixt the King and the Commons, (for from the commencement of the troubles, the House of Lords unfortunately relinquished its independent jurisdiction, instead of operating as a check on the two other conflicting branches of the legislature,) the King was intent on raising forces not merely for the maintenance of his authority at home, but for the suppression of the Irish rebellion, and he purposed heading the forces to be supplied from England and Scotland for this latter purpose. The republicans of that day, however, in both kingdoms, were averse to this, fearing lest the King might win the attachment of the army, and thereby quash their projects. In Scotland, Loudoun the chancellor, by his Majesty’s command, convened the Council; and the work of agitation having preceded its meeting, multitudes thronged to Edinburgh, and petitioned the Council that nothing should be done “prejudicial to the work of reformation, and the treaty of union betwixt the kingdoms.” The most malign surmises as to the King’s intentions, were propagated and believed by the vulgar, while the real incendiaries in both kingdoms were scattering their firebrands far and wide, and by the most approved modes of open and clandestine excitement.

While the political affairs of the three kingdoms were in this unsettled and perilous state, and all the elements of social disorganization let loose in every quarter of these islands, the General Assembly of the church convened at St Andrews on the 27th of July 1642. We now proceed to record its Acts, and give in our supplement of documents, a detailed account of its proceedings by Baillie, which presents a very lively picture of the feverish state of the public mind at the period now referred to.