The Cameronians.

1684.

unprovoked. A declaration was put forth by the Cameronians in 1684 CAMEO III. of their intention to do to their enemies, both civil and military, as had been done to them, and they showed themselves in earnest by deliberately murdering two soldiers of the Life Guards who fell into their hands. An Act was hastily passed, sentencing any person who would not disown this treasonable declaration to instant death, whether he had arms or not.

One person who was shot on this Act was John Brown, called the Christian carrier, who had been in hiding on the hills. The despatch from Claverhouse to the Duke of Queensberry relates the having pursued two fellows across the Mosses, till they were seized, when John Brown, the elder of the two, refused to take the oath, or to swear not to rise in arms against the King, but said he knew no King"upon which, there being found bullets and matches in his house and treasonable papers, I caused shoot him dead, which he suffered very unconcernedly." The other man, his nephew, offered to take the oath, and, on promise of his life, confessed to having been with his uncle in a late affray, mentioning others likewise engaged, so that he was taken away as a prisoner.

A piteous story was current among the Covenanters, not always agreeing in the different versions, of the good man shot by his own door, in sight of his wife and child; which of course may have been too true; but it was added that Brown's last prayer was such that it ever after haunted the leader. One account moreover said that he was shot by a file of six soldiers, the other that they refused, and that Claverhouse pistolled him himself. No doubt it was a sad affair, and Brown was probably a pious man, but in the fanatical covenanting, rebel fashion, and as the law stood, there was no choice but to execute him, and there is no evidence of additional brutality save in the later tradition.

Another story of cruelty is quite unjustly saddled on him, for he was far distant from the spot, and had no concern in it. The law had made it high treason to refuse to abjure the Covenant or to attend the parish church, and the mode of execution for women in Scotland was drowning. Two women, Margaret Maclauchan and Margaret Wilson, were brought before the magistrates, among whom was Claverhouse's brother, David Graham, the Deputy Sheriff, and the savage Robert Grierson of Lag.

There was no choice but to sentence the women. However the matter was sent to the Council at Edinburgh, and on the 30th of April a reprieve was prepared, but without stating how long it was to last. Either it never reached Wigton, or the period had elapsed by the 14th of May, for on that day the women were tied to stakes in the sands of the Solway Firth, so as to be drowned by the advancing tide.

It is said that they were entreated to save their lives by only saying "God save the King," and that their friends pleaded with them that VOL. VIII.

D

Martyrs.

CAMEO III. there could be no sin in so doing. "But not at the bidding of every The Wigton profligate," said the elder Margaret, and they sang Psalms together till the waves had washed over her. The younger one said something, and was dragged ashore; but she still held fast to her resolution, and was returned to the waves. Her body was recovered and buried, and later the inscription on her gravestone recorded that here lay the body of Margaret Wilson, who was drowned in the water of the Bledmock on the 11th of May, by the Laird of Lag.

"Murdered for owning Christ supreme,

Head of His Church, and no more crime
But her not owning Prelacy,

And not abjuring Presbytery.

Within the sea, tied to a stake,

She suffered for CHRIST JESUS' sake."

Kirk and stone are both gone, but an obelisk has been erected in their place. Some fifteen or sixteen persons altogether are said to have actually been put to death for refusing to bless the King. One woman to whom the Duke of York sent an offer of pardon if she would only say the words, declared she knew there was no blessing for him, and she would not take God's Name in vain, and another that she would not bless that idol, nor own any King but Christ, and so she was hanged, but the Duke stopped this persecution.

Peter Peirson,

The killing time was not entirely on the royal side. minister of Carnphairn, a somewhat surly man, was murdered by an armed party at his own door, and a week later the same men broke into Kirkcudbright, killed the sentinel and rescued the prisoners, going off beating the town drum in triumph. That when four of these men were taken at Auchenley at a prayer meeting, two were instantly shot, two hanged at Kirkcudbright, was scarcely an act of unusual cruelty. Taking all together, there was a fanatic and violent party, whom the Government repressed by harsh enactments, which were carried out sternly; but on the whole Claverhouse was more inclined to be merciful and just than were most of those concerned in this miserable state of affairs, when men and women suffered as martyrs for mistaken notions of the truth, and the cause of the Church was taken up by evil statesmen and a dissolute king.

In 1681, the Duke assembled the Scottish Parliament, which secured his succession to the throne, but prepared a Test Act, declaring attachment to Protestantism, but renouncing the Covenant. The terms were such that eighty Episcopal Clergy scrupled at them, and so did the Earl of Argyll; but he afterwards accepted it, with the reservation that he was not to be debarred from making improvements in Church or State. This was called by his enemies leasing making, and sowing discord, between King and people; he was tried before a jury, with Montrose, his hereditary enemy, as foreman, and condemned to death; but his daughter, Lady Sophia Lindsay, contrived his escape by an exchange

of clothes with her footman. Some of the Council actually proposed that the lady should be whipped through Edinburgh, but James would not hear of such brutality.

The Bass rock, bearing a castle projecting into the sea, fearfully desolate and cold, became for many years the prison of the Covenanters

CAMEO III.

Escape of
Argyll.

CAMEO IV.

The Restoration in Ireland.

1660.

1670. Clement X.

WHEN it was probable that the Restoration would take place in England, the Irish Whigs held consultation, most of them being men who had become wealthy through the confiscations under Cromwell.

The chief mover was Lord Broghill, a man who had played a double part, his inclinations being to the monarchy, though he had, between self-interest and impatience at mismanagement, joined the ascendant party. During the domination of Cromwell he had amused himself with writing a romance called Parthenissa, on the lengthy Scudery model, and at the same time he had corresponded with the Cavaliers and had done his best for them.

On Cromwell's death, he took counsel with the Puritan generals, especially Sir Charles Coote, and they were on the point of sending an invitation to Charles, when they found that England was beforehand with them, and all they had to do was to send £20,000 to the King, £4,000 to the Duke of York, and £2,000 to the Duke of Gloucester.

The condition of things was very strange. Ireland had always been a land of division and hatred, between tribe and tribe, Kelt and Dane, native and English, old inhabitant and Scot, Romanist and Protestant, and now the Cromwellian settlers were a fresh element of combustion among the Protestants.

Familics ejected for their opposition to the English clamoured for restoration, and some took the law into their own hands, so that private wars began, and a fresh rebellion was expected. In the Act of Indemnity, the Cromwellians, as the least mischievous element, were secured by the clause that no estates disposed of by the Parliament of Convention should be restored to the former owners, and it was with

CAMEO IV.

difficulty that a clause was inserted in favour of the Marquis of Ormond and other loyal Protestants; but for the loyal Roman Catholic nobility-- The Church who had really stood aloof from the massacres-there was no redress, for it would have been both unsafe and impossible to oust the Cromwellians in possession.

Lord Broghill, Sir John Clotworthy, and Sir Arthur Mervyn devised a scheme for forming the forfeited lands, not hitherto appropriated, into a common stock, whence the deserving might be compensated. Expelled Protestants and innocent Roman Catholics were to have their own again-the dispossessed holders receiving the compensation-only where the estates lay within a town with a corporation, the Papist was not to return thither, but to have an equivalent elsewhere. Charles was thankful for the arrangement, and Lord Broghill was rewarded by being created Earl of Orrery. It might have been fairly equitable had it been properly carried out, but the commissioners were all strong in the Protestant interest, and had little or no sense of justice towards those whom they systematically desired to depress, and thus they took every means—often most unfair—of eluding due treatment of the Romanists. Moreover the strange notions of political economy then prevalent led to the opinion that to encourage Ireland and make it prosperous would be to interfere with the trade and agriculture of England, and thus that the cattle and the linen of Ireland must not be imported, except under heavy duties, to protect the English farmer and manufacturer, thus condemning the Irish to poverty and idleness; and the Cromwellian settlers, being more English than Irish, undertook to discourage all attempts to secure an English market for Irish produce.

The Presbyterians in the north petitioned for the continuance of their system; but Charles had no mind to consent, and restored the Church to its former status. Eight bishops survived, among them the excellent Bramhall of Derry, who was appointed Archbishop of Armagh, and the saintly Jeremy Taylor, one of the most eloquent prose writers in the English language, received the see of Down and Connor, and was likewise made Vice-Chancellor of the University of Dublin. To him also was committed the preaching of the sermon at his own consecration, together with eleven others, in St. Patrick's Cathedral, an event, as he observed, unparalleled even in the time of St. Patrick, who was said to have ordained 5,000 priests and consecrated 350 bishops. At this time Ireland had four archbishops and seventeen bishops, but there was great difficulty in obtaining, not merely of the temporalities of the see, but of the necessary ornaments of the Church, and between Romanists and sectarians of all shades, their position was extremely difficult and perplexing.

The bishops, with some hope of converting the Roman Catholics, persuaded Jeremy Taylor to write a Dissuasive from Fopery, which shows a very low opinion of the intelligence and morals of the Irish. He says, "They can give no account of their religion, what it is, only they believe as their priests bid them, and go to mass, which they

restored. 1660.