Man, one and all stood up and made proclamation, crying, "Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth; for I am God, and there is none else." Well might Cromwell adjure them in that war of words which followed the sterner conflict on the heights of Dunbar, "I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken."
Though the number and variety of the dissentients in England were far greater than in Scotland, where the bulk both of the people and the clergy stood firmly within the old Presbyterian lines, yet in the latter country the separation was far more bitter and productive of far more violent results. In the former the strong hand of Cromwell, himself an Independent, but keen to detect a useful man under every masquerade of worship, and prompt to use him, kept the sects from open disruption. Quarrel as they might among themselves, there was one stronger than them all, and they knew it. The old Committee of Estates, originally appointed by the Parliament as a permanent body in 1640, was not strong enough to control the spirit it had helped to raise: it was not even strong enough to keep order within its own house. The new Committee was but a tool in the hands of Argyle. The old Presbyterian viewed with equal dislike the sectaries of Cromwell, the men of the Engagement which had cost Hamilton his head, and the Malignants who had gathered to the standard of Montrose. The Resolutioner, who wished to repeal the Act of Classes, was too lukewarm: the Remonstrant was too violent. It was by this last body that the troubles we have now to examine came upon Scotland.
After the collapse of Hamilton's army at Uttoxeter in August 1648, a body of Covenanters assembled at Mauchline, in Ayrshire, to protest against the leniency with which the Engagement had been treated in the Estates, where, indeed, a considerable minority had been inclined openly to countenance it. Their leader was at first the Earl of Eglinton, a staunch Covenanting lord; but as they gathered strength Argyle joined them with his Highlanders, and the command soon passed into his hands. The Protesters marched upon Edinburgh. In an attempt to take Stirling Castle they were defeated by Sir George Monro with a division of Hamilton's army which had not crossed the border; but Argyle had better tools to work with than the claymores of his Highlanders. He opened negotiations with Cromwell, who led an army in person into Scotland, renewed the Covenant, laid before the Estates (the new Estates of Argyle and his party) certain considerations, as he diplomatically called them, demanding, among other things, that no person accessory to the Engagement should be hereafter employed in any public place or trust. The Committee were only too willing to have the support of Cromwell to what they themselves so vehemently desired. Two Acts were quickly passed: one reversing many of the acts of its predecessors and confirming the considerations: the other, known in history as the Act of Classes, defining the various misdemeanours which were to exclude men from sitting in Parliament or holding any public office, for a period measured by their offences, and practically to be determined by the judicatories of the Kirk.
This Mauchline Convention was popularly known at the time as the Whiggamores' Raid, a name memorable as the first introduction into history of a word soon to become only too familiar, and still a part of our political vocabulary.[8] Its immediate result was to throw the direction of affairs still more exclusively into the hands of the clergy: indirectly, but no less surely, it was the cause of the Pentland Rising and the savage persecution which followed, of the murder of Archbishop Sharp, of the battles of Drumclog and Bothwell Bridge, and of those terrible years still spoken of in Scotland as the "killing-time." It was, in short, like the wrath of Achilles, the spring of unnumbered woes.
Then followed the execution of Charles. Against this the whole body of Presbyterians joined in protesting. The hereditary right of kings was, indeed, as much a principle of the Covenant as their divine right was opposed to it; and the execution at Whitehall on January 30th, 1649, was regarded with as much horror by the Presbyterians of England as by the Presbyterians of Scotland.
The first act of the Estates was to proclaim the Prince of Wales king of Great Britain, their next to send a deputation to Holland to invite him to take possession of his kingdom. It had been better both for Charles and for Scotland that the invitation had never been accepted. The terms on which alone the Scots would see the son of Charles Stuart back among them as crowned king were such as only the direst necessity could have induced him to accept: they were such as it seems now amazing that even the most bigoted and inexperienced could really have believed that the son of his father, or, indeed, any man in his position, would keep one moment longer than circumstances compelled him. But his advisers, led on by Wilmot and Buckingham, bid him sign—sign everything, or all would be lost. He signed everything. First he put his hand to the Solemn League and Covenant: then to a second declaration promising to do his utmost to extirpate both Popery and Prelacy from all parts of his kingdom: finally, he consented to figure as the hero of a day of public fasting and humiliation for the tyranny of his father and the idolatry of his mother. And while he was acquiescing to each fresh demand with a shrug of his shoulders and a whispered jest to Buckingham, and in his heart as much hatred for his humiliators as he was capable of feeling for anybody, he was all the while urging on Montrose to strike that wild blow for his crown which was to lead the brave marquis to the scaffold. The deaths of Hamilton and Huntly had preceded the death of Montrose by a few weeks: a few more weeks and Charles was in Scotland, a crowned king in name, virtually a prisoner. Within little more than a year the fight at Dunbar, and the "crowning mercy" of Worcester, had bitterly taught him how futile was all the humiliation he had undergone.
It will be enough to briefly recall the main incidents of the years which intervened between the battle of Worcester and the Restoration. After the establishment of the Protectorate an Act of Indemnity was passed for the Scottish people. From this certain classes were excepted. All of the House of Hamilton, for instance, and some other persons of note, including Lauderdale: all who had joined the Engagement, or who had not joined in the protestation against it: all who had sat in Parliament or on the Committee of Estates after the coronation of Charles at Scone: all who had borne arms at the battle of Worcester. From this proscribed list, however, Argyle managed to extricate himself. He had fortified himself at Inverary, and summoned a meeting of the Estates to which the chiefs of the Royalist party had been bidden. To conquer him in his own stronghold would have been difficult, perhaps impossible, to English soldiers unused to such warfare. Cromwell wisely preferred to negotiate, and Argyle was not hard to bring to terms. He bound himself to live at peace with the Government, and to use his best endeavours to persuade others to do so. In return he was to be left unmolested in the free enjoyment of his estates, and in the exercise of religion according to his conscience.
The politicians were now silenced; but a noisier and more troublesome body had still to be reckoned with. In July, 1653, the General Assembly was closed, and Resolutioners and Remonstrants were sent to the right about together. Some measures, however, had to be taken to prevent them, not from cutting each other's throats, which would have suited the Government well enough, but from stirring up a religious war, which they would inevitably have done if left to the free enjoyment of their own humours. It was necessary so to strengthen the hands of one of the two parties that the other should be compelled to refrain at least from open hostilities. The Resolutioners, as the most tolerant and the mildest-mannered, would have been those Cromwell would have preferred to see in the ascendency. But the Resolutioners had acknowledged Charles, and were, after their own fashion, in favour of the royal title. The Remonstrants were accordingly preferred. They, indeed, denied the authority of the Commonwealth over spiritual matters, but they also denied the authority of Charles; and it was felt that at such a crisis the civil allegiance was of more value than the religious. A law was accordingly established dividing Scotland into five districts, in each of which certain members of the Remonstrant clergy were empowered to ordain ministers, as it were, to the exercise of their functions. At the same time it was not the object of Cromwell to exalt one party at the expense of the other so much as to strike a balance between the two; and in doing this he was much served by the tact and good sense of James Sharp, whose name now first begins to be heard in Scottish history. He was on the side of the Resolutioners, but he so managed matters as to be favourably regarded by the Government as a person likely to be of service to them in the event of any open disruption between the two bodies, without losing the confidence of his own
