Part 2

After some difficulties on these and similar points, a regiment was actually constituted on the 14th of May, and nowhere out of Scotland perhaps could a corps have been formed under such unique regulations. They declared that they appeared for the preservation of the Protestant religion, and for ‘the work of reformation in Scotland, in opposition to popery, prelacy, and arbitrary power.’ They stipulated that their officers should exclusively be men such as ‘in conscience’ they could submit to. A minister was appointed for the regiment, and an elder nominated [Sidenote: 1689.] for each company, so that the whole should be under precisely the same religious and moral discipline as a parish, according to the standards of the church. A close and constant correspondence with the ‘United Societies’—the _Carbonari_ of the late evil times—was settled upon. A Bible was a part of the furniture of every private’s knapsack—a regulation then quite singular. Great care was taken in the selection of officers, the young Earl of Angus, son of the Marquis of Douglas, being appointed colonel; while the second command was given to William Cleland, a man of poetical genius and ardent soldierly character, who had appeared for God’s cause at Bothwell-brig. It is impossible to read the accounts that are given of this Cameronian Regiment, as it was called, without sympathising with the earnestness of purpose, the conscientious scrupulosity, and the heroic feelings of self-devotion, under which it was established, and seeing in these demonstrations something of what is highest and best in the Scottish character.

It is not therefore surprising to learn that in August, when posted at Dunkeld, it made a most gallant and successful resistance to three or four times the number of Highlanders, then fresh from their victory at Killiecrankie; though, on this occasion, it lost its heroic lieutenant-colonel. Afterwards being called to serve abroad, it distinguished itself on many occasions; but, unluckily, the pope being concerned in the league for which King William had taken up arms, the United Societies from that time withdrew their countenance from the regiment. The Cameronians became the 26th Foot in the British army, and, long after they had ceased to be recruited among the zealous in Scotland, and ceased to exemplify Presbyterian in addition to military discipline, they continued to be singular in the matter of the Bible in the knapsack.[8]

[Sidenote: JUNE 7.]

There had been for some time in Scotland a considerable number of French Protestants, for whom the charity of the nation had been called forth. To these was now added a multitude of poor Irish of the same faith, refugees from the cruel wars going on in their own country, and many of whom were women, children, and infirm persons. Slender as the resources of Scotland usually were, and sore pressed upon at present by the exactions necessary for supporting the new government, a collection was going on in behalf of the refugee Irish. It was [Sidenote: 1689.] now, however, represented, that many in the western counties were in such want, that they could not wait till the collection was finished; and so the Lords of the Privy Council ordered that the sums gathered in those counties be immediately distributed in fair proportions between the French and Irish, and enjoining the distributors ‘to take special care that such of those poor Protestants as stays in the remote places of those taxable bounds and districts be duly and timeously supplied.’ Seventy pounds in all was distributed.

Five days before this, we hear of John Adamson confined in Burntisland tolbooth as a papist, and humanely liberated, that he might be enabled to depart from the kingdom.[9]

[Sidenote: JUNE 23.]

This morning, being Sunday, the royal orders for the appointment of fifteen new men to be Lords of Session reached Edinburgh, all of them being, of course, persons notedly well affected to the new order of things. Considering the veneration professed for the day by zealous Presbyterians in Scotland, and how high stood the character of the Earl of Crawford for a religious life, one is rather surprised to find one of the new judges (Crossrig) bluntly telling that that earl ‘sent for me in the morning, and intimated to me that I was named for one of them.’ He adds a curious fact. ‘It seems the business had got wind, and was talked some days before, for Mr James Nasmyth, advocate, who was then concerned for the Faculty’s Library, spoke to me to pay the five hundred merks I had given bond for when I entered advocate; which I paid. It may be he thought it would not be so decent to crave me after I was preferred to the bench.’[10]

It is incidental to liberating and reforming parties that they seldom escape having somewhat to falsify their own professions. The Declaration of the Estates containing the celebrated Claim of Right (April 1689) asserted that ‘the imprisoning of persons, without expressing the reasons thereof, and delaying to put them to trial, is contrary to law.’ It also pronounced as equally illegal ‘the using of torture without evidence in ordinary crimes.’ Very good as a party condemnation of the late government, or as a declaration of general principles; but, for a time, nothing more.

One of the first acts of the new government was for the ‘securing of suspect persons.’ It could not but be vexing to [Sidenote: 1689.] the men who had delivered their country ‘from thraldom and poperie, and the pernicious inconveniences of ane absolute power,’ when they found themselves—doubtless under a full sense of the necessity of the case—probably as much so as their predecessors had ever felt—ordering something like half the nobility and gentry of the country, and many people of inferior rank, into ward, there to lie without trial—and in at least one notorious case, had to resort to torture to extort confession; thus imitating those very proceedings of the late government which they themselves had condemned.

All through the summer of 1689, the register of the Privy Council is crammed with petitions from the imprisoned, calling for some degree of relief from the miseries they were subjected to in the Edinburgh Tolbooth, Stirling Castle, Blackness Castle, and other places of confinement, to which they had been consigned, generally without intimation of a cause. The numbers in the Edinburgh Tolbooth were particularly great, insomuch that one who remembers, as the author does, its narrow gloomy interior, gets the idea of their being packed in it much like the inmates of an emigrant ship.

Men of the highest rank were consigned to this frightful place. We find the Earl of Balcarres petitioning (May 30) for release from it on the plea that his health was suffering, ‘being always, when at liberty, accustomed to exercise [his lordship was a great walker];’ and, moreover, he had given security ‘not to escape or do anything in prejudice of the government.’ The Council ordained that he should be ‘brought from the Tolbooth to his own lodging in James Hamilton’s house over forgainst the Cross of Edinburgh,’ he giving his parole of honour ‘not to go out of his lodgings, nor keep correspondence with any persons in prejudice or disturbance of the present government.’ With the like humanity, Lord Lovat was allowed to live with his relative the Marquis of Athole in Holyroodhouse, but under surveillance of a sentinel.

Sir Robert Grierson of Lagg—who, having been an active servant of the late government in some of its worst work, is the subject of high popular disrepute as a _persecutor_—was seized in his own house by Lord Kenmure, and taken to the jail of Kirkcudbright—thence afterwards to the Edinburgh Tolbooth. He seems to have been liberated about the end of August, on giving security for peaceable behaviour.

The most marked and hated instrument of King James was [Sidenote: 1689.] certainly the Chancellor Earl of Perth. He had taken an early opportunity of trying to escape from the country, so soon as he learned that the king himself had fled. It would have been better for all parties if his lordship had succeeded in getting away; but some officious Kirkcaldy boatmen had pursued his vessel, and brought him back; and after he had undergone many contumelies, the government consigned him to close imprisonment in Stirling Castle, ‘without the use of pen, ink, or paper,’ and with only one servant, who was to remain close prisoner with him. Another high officer of the late government, John Paterson, Archbishop of Glasgow, was placed in close prison in Edinburgh Castle, and not till after many months, allowed even to converse with his friends: nor does he appear to have been released till January 1693.

Among the multitude of the incarcerated was an ingenious foreigner, who for some years had been endeavouring to carve a subsistence out of Scotland, with more or less success. We have heard of Peter Bruce before[11] as constructing a harbour, as patentee for a home-manufacture of playing-cards, and as the conductor of the king’s Catholic printing-house at Holyrood. It ought likewise to have been noted as a favourable fact in his history, that the first system of water-supply for Edinburgh—by a three-inch pipe from the lands of Comiston—was effected by this clever Flandrian. At the upbreak of the old government in December, Bruce’s printing-office was destroyed by the mob, and his person laid hold of. We now (June 1689) learn, by a petition from him to the Privy Council, that he had been enduring ‘with great patience and silence seven months’ imprisonment, for no other cause or crime but the coming of one Nicolas Droomer, skipper at Newport, to the petitioner’s house, which Droomer was likewise on misinformation imprisoned in this place, but is released therefra four weeks ago,’ He adds that he looks on his imprisonment to be ‘but ane evil recompense for all the good offices of his art, has been performed by him not only within the town of Edinburgh, but in several places of the kingdom, to which he was invited from Flanders. He, being a stranger, yet can make it appear [he] has lost by the rabble upwards of twenty thousand merks of writs and papers, besides the destruction done to his house and family, all being robbed, pillaged, and plundered from him, and not so much as a shirt left him or his wife.’ He [Sidenote: 1689.] thinks ‘such barbarous usage has scarce been heard [of]; whereby, and through his imprisonment, he is so out of credit, that himself was like to starve in prison, [and] his family at home in the same condition.’ Peter’s petition for his freedom was acceded to, on his granting security to the extent of fifty pounds for peaceable behaviour under the present government.

Another sufferer was a man of the like desert—namely, John Slezer, the military engineer, to whom we owe that curious work the _Theatrum Scotiæ_. The Convention was at first disposed to put him into his former employment as a commander of the artillery; but he hesitated about taking the proper oath, and in March a warrant was issued for securing him ‘untill he find caution not to return to the Castle [then held out for King James].’[12] He informed the Council (June 3) that for some weeks he had been a close prisoner in the Canongate Tolbooth by their order, till now, his private affairs urgently requiring his presence in England, he was obliged to crave his liberation, which, ‘conceiving that he knew himself to be of a disposition peaceable and regular,’ he thought they well might grant. They did liberate him, and at the same time furnished him with a pass to go southward.

One of the petitioning prisoners, Captain Henry Bruce, states that he had been in durance for nine months, merely because, when the rabble attacked Holyroodhouse, he obeyed the orders of his superior officer for defending it. That superior officer himself, Captain John Wallace, was in prison on the same account. He presented a petition to the Council—February 5, 1691—setting forth how he had been a captive for upwards of a year, though, in defending Holyrood from the rabble, he had acted in obedience to express orders from the Privy Council of the day, and might have been tried by court-martial and shot if he had not done as he did. He craved liberation on condition of self-banishment. The Council ordered their solicitor to prosecute him; and on a reclamation from him, this order was repeated. In the ensuing November, however, we find Wallace still languishing in prison, and his health decaying—although, as he sets forth in a petition, ‘by the 13th act of the Estates of this kingdom, the imprisoning persons without expressing the reasons, and delaying to put them to a trial, is utterly and directly contrary to the known statutes, laws, and freedoms of this kingdom.’ He was not [Sidenote: 1689.] subjected to trial till August 6, 1692, when he had been nearly four years a prisoner. The laborious proceedings, extending over several days, and occupying many wearisome pages of the Justiciary Record, shew the anxiety of the Revolution government to be revenged on this gallant adversary; but the trial ended in a triumphant acquittal.

Several men and women were imprisoned in the Tolbooth for giving signals to the garrison holding out the Castle. One Alexander Ormiston petitioned for his liberation as innocent of the charge. He had merely wiped his eyes, which were sore from infancy, with his napkin, as he passed along the Grassmarket; and this had been interpreted into his giving a signal. After a confinement of twelve days, Alexander obtained his liberation, ‘free of house-dues.’

John Lothian petitioned, August 19, for liberation, having been incarcerated on the 8th of July. He declared himself unconscious of anything that ‘could have deserved his being denied the common liberty of a subject,’ A most malignant fever had now broken out in the Tolbooth, whereof one prisoner died last night, and on all hands there were others infected beyond hope of recovery. He, being reduced to great weakness by his long confinement, was apprehensive of falling a victim. John Rattray, on the ensuing day, sent a like petition, stating that he had lain six weeks ‘in close prison, in a most horrible and starving condition, for want of meat, drink, air, and bedding,’ A wife and large family of small children were equally destitute at home, and likely to starve, ‘he not having ane groat to maintain either himself or them.’ Lothian was liberated, but the wretched Rattray was only transferred to ‘open prison’—that is, a part of the jail where he was accessible to his family and to visitors.

Amongst the multitude of political prisoners was one James Johnstone, who had been put there two years before, without anything being laid to his charge. The new government had ordered his liberation in June, but without paying up the aliment due to him; consequently, he could not discharge his prison-dues; and for this the Goodman—so the head-officer of the jail was styled—had detained him. He was reduced to the most miserable condition, often did not break bread for four or five days, and really had no dependence but on the charity of the other scarcely less miserable people around him. The Council seem to have felt ashamed that a friend of their own should have been allowed to lie nine months in jail after the Revolution; so they ordered [Sidenote: 1689.] his immediate dismissal, with payment of aliment for four hundred and two days in arrear.[13]

Christopher Cornwell, servitor to Thomas Dunbar, stated to the Privy Council, March 19, 1690, that he had been in the Edinburgh Tolbooth since June last with his master, ‘where he has lived upon credit given him by the maid who had the charge of the provisions within the prison, and she being unable as well as unwilling to furnish him any more that entertainment, mean as it was, his condition hardly can be expressed, nor could he avoid starving.’ He was liberated upon his parole.

David Buchanan, who had been clerk to Lord Dundee’s regiment, was seized in coming northward, with some meal believed to be the property of his master, and he was thrown in among the crowd of the Tolbooth. For weeks he petitioned in vain for release.

The Privy Council, on the 13th May 1690, expressed anxiety about the prisoners; but it was not regarding their health or comfort. They sent a committee to consider how best the Tolbooth might be made secure—for there had been an escape from the Canongate jail—and for this purpose it was decreed that close prisoners should be confined within the inner rooms; that the shutters towards the north should be nightly locked, to prevent communications with the houses in that direction; and that ‘there should be a centinel all the daytime at the head of the iron ravell stair at the Chancellary Chamber, lest letters and other things may be tolled up.’[14]

[Sidenote: JUNE.]

The chief of the clan Mackintosh, usually called the Laird of Mackintosh, claimed rights of property over the lands of Keppoch, Glenroy, and Glenspean, in Inverness-shire, ‘worth five thousand merks of yearly rent’—a district interesting to modern men of science, on account of the singular impress left upon it by the hand of nature in the form of water-laid terraces, commonly called the Parallel Roads of Glenroy, but then known only as the haunt of a wild race of Macdonalds, against whom common processes of law were of no avail. Mackintosh—whose descendant is now the peaceable landlord of a peaceable tenantry in this [Sidenote: 1689.] country—had in 1681 obtained letters of fire and sword as a last desperate remedy against Macdonald of Keppoch and others; but no good had come of it.

In the year of the Revolution, these letters had been renewed, and about the time when Seymour and Russell were inviting over the Prince of Orange for the rescue of Protestantism and liberty, Mackintosh was leading a thousand of his people from Badenoch into Glenspean, in order to wreak the vengeance of the law upon his refractory tenants. He was joined by a detachment of government troops under Captain Mackenzie of Suddy; but Keppoch, who is described by a contemporary as ‘a gentleman of good understanding, and of great cunning,’ was not dismayed. With five hundred men, he attacked the Mackintosh on the brae above Inverroy, less than half a mile from his own house, and gained a sanguinary victory. The captain of the regular troops and some other persons were killed; the Laird of Mackintosh was taken prisoner, and not liberated till he had made a formal renunciation of his claims; two hundred horses and a great quantity of other spoil fell into the hands of the victors.[15] The Revolution, happening soon after, caused little notice to be taken of this affair, which is spoken of as the last clan-battle in the Highlands.

Now that Whiggery was triumphing in Edinburgh, it pleased Keppoch to rank himself among those chiefs of clans who were resolved to stand out for King James. Dundee reckoned upon his assistance; but when he went north in spring, he found this ‘gentleman of good understanding’ laying siege to Inverness with nine hundred men, in order to extort from its burghers at the point of the sword some moneys he thought they owed him. The northern capital—a little oasis of civilisation and hearty Protestantism in the midst of, or at least close juxtaposition to, the Highlands—was in the greatest excitement and terror lest Keppoch should rush in and plunder it. There were preachings at the cross to animate the inhabitants in their resolutions of defence; and a collision seemed imminent. At length the chieftain consented, for two thousand dollars, to retire. It is alleged that Dundee was shocked and angry at the proceedings of this important partisan, but unable or unwilling to do more than expostulate with him. Keppoch by and by joined him in earnest with his following, while Mackintosh held off in a state of indecision.

[Sidenote: 1689.]

This gave occasion for a transaction of private war, forming really a notable part of the Scottish insurrection for King James, though it has been scarcely noticed in history. It was when Dundee, in the course of his marching and countermarching that summer, chanced to come within a few miles of Mackintosh’s house of Dunachtan, on Speyside, that Keppoch bethought him of the opportunity it afforded for the gratification of his vengeful feelings. He communicated not with his commander. He took no counsel of any one; he slipped away with his followers unobserved, and, stooping like an eagle on the unfortunate Mackintosh, burned his mansion, and ravaged his lands, destroying and carrying away property afterwards set forth as of the value of two thousand four hundred and sixty-six pounds sterling.

This independent way of acting was highly characteristic of Dundee’s followers; but he found it exceedingly inconvenient. Being informed of the facts, he told Keppoch, in presence of his other officers, that ‘he would much rather choose to serve as a common soldier among disciplined troops, than command such men as he; that though he had committed these outrages in revenge of his own private quarrel, it would be generally believed he had acted by authority; that since he was resolved to do what he pleased, without any regard to command and the public good, he begged that he would immediately be gone with his men, that he might not hereafter have an opportunity of affronting the general at his pleasure, or of making him and the better-disposed troops a cover to his robberies. Keppoch, who did not expect so severe a rebuke, humbly begged his lordship’s pardon, and told him that he would not have abused Mackintosh so, if he had not thought him an enemy to the king as well as to himself; that he was heartily sorry for what was past; but since that could not be amended, he solemnly promised a submissive obedience for the future.’[16]

The preceding was not a solitary instance of private clan-warfare, carried on under cover of Dundee’s insurrection. Amongst his notable followers were the Camerons, headed by their sagacious chief, Sir Ewen of Locheil, who was now well advanced in years, though he lived for thirty more. A few of this clan having been hanged by the followers of the Laird of Grant—a chief strong in the Whig cause—it was deemed right [Sidenote: 1689.] that a revenge should be taken in Glen Urquhart. ‘They presumed that their general would not be displeased, in the circumstances he was then in, if they could supply him with a drove of cattle from the enemy’s country.’ Marching off without leave, they found the Grants in Glen Urquhart prepared to receive them; but before the attack, a Macdonald came forward, telling that he was settled amongst the Grants, and claiming, on that account, that none of the people should be injured. They told him that, if he was a true Macdonald, he ought to be with his chief, serving his king and country in Dundee’s army; they could not, on his account, consent to allow the death of their clansmen to remain unavenged. The man returned dejected to his friends, the Grants, and the Camerons made the attack, gaining an easy victory, and bearing off a large spoil to the army in Lochaber.