CHAPTER VI.

EDINBURGH--THE NIGHT OF THE REVOLUTION.

Meanwhile, regardless of the royal cause, His sword for James no brother sov'raign draws. The Pope himself, surrounded with alarms, To France his bulls, to Corfu sends his arms; And though he hears his darling son's complaint, Can hardly spare one tutelary saint. TICKELL, Edit. 1749.

From the hour in which Lilian had been torn from her, the ased Lady Grisel had never raised her head. Affection and horror, wrath and insulted pride, had all aggravated to the utmost the weakness and debility consequent to exceeding old age; and by her weeping domestics the venerable dame was borne to her great chair in the Chamber-of-Dais, where she remained long insensible to all that passed around her.

The storm and hurry of political events employed otherwise Sir Thomas Dalyel and those friends who might have served her in this dilemma; and now she found herself quite deserted.

Syme the baillie, and the whole male population of the barony had fruitlessly searched the Burghmuir for the remainder of the night and morning; but, for reasons which will shortly be apparent, any application to the Privy Council or magistrates of Edinburgh would have been utterly futile, as their attention was amply occupied by more important matters than the abduction of a girl.

Long fits of stupor, succeeded by querulous bursts of passion, left the poor old lady so weak, that, as Elsie related to Sir Thomas of Binns, "between the night and morning, she cried on Sir Archibald _to save_ her doo Lilian; and then she just soughed awa like a blink o' the sunshine, and lay back under her canopy in the Chaumer-o'-Deese, a comely corpse to see as ever was streekit."

The old lady did not die, however, but recovered her senses by having a pistol fired at her ear by the rough old Muscovite trooper, "a cure for the vapours, whilk," he said, "he had often seen practised on Samoieda."

As before related, in consequence of the vigilance of Sir James Montgomerie, the Privy Council and people of Scotland had been kept for several weeks in a state of painful uncertainty as to the fate of James's affairs in England: but a letter from Lord Dundee reached the Scottish ministry, expressive of apprehensions for the issue of a conflict between the troops of the King and those of his invader.

To ascertain the true aspect of affairs, they despatched into England a man named Brand, a baillie of Edinburgh, who basely betrayed his trust by carrying his despatches straight to the Prince of Orange, to whom he was introduced by Dr. Burnet.

On Craigdarroch's arrival at the Scottish capital, and others with similar tidings of the desertion and dissolution of the army, the flight of James, and success of William, the long-threatening storm burst forth in all its fury. Scotland at that time swarmed with brave and hardy soldiers, skilful officers, ruined barons, and desperate vassals--the veterans of the Covenant, and the endless wars of Sweden, France, and Flanders; thus, ingloriously as the campaign had passed over in the south, a cloud was gathering on the Highland hills, that threatened to descend, as of yore, in wrath and blood on the fertile Lowlands.

Infuriated by the severities of what was called the "twenty-eight years' persecution," the Lowland population were ripe for armed revolt, and the capital, to which they flocked in overwhelming masses, became the grand centre of their operations, and the scene of newer atrocities. The greatest outrages were committed upon the persons and property of those unhappy Catholics, Episcopalians, and cavaliers, who fell into the hands of this wild mob.

Perth, the Lord Chancellor fled; the Privy Council, which had been severe to the nation, in proportion as it was servile to James, dispatched an immediate address to William, and none were more cordial in their offers of dutiful service than Provost Prince, and the worthy council of Edinburgh: those very men who had so lately declared to the unfortunate Stuart, that they "would stand by his sacred person on all occasions." Now they were equally prompt in offers to his dethroner, to whom they complained bitterly "of the hellish attempts of Romish incendiaries, and of the just grievances of all men relating to conscience, liberty, and property."

For three days the capital was in the power of a mad and lawless rabble, who, rendered furious by bigotry and intoxication, committed the most dreadful atrocities.

The houses of all who were obnoxious to them were plundered and given to the flames, and all effects of value were scattered in the streets. There were episodes of horror ensued such as Edinburgh had never witnessed before. The streets were filled with the smoke of burning houses; the air was sheeted with flame; the shrieks of the perishing inmates, the howls of their destroyers, and the crash of falling masonry, rang night and day. The college of the Jesuits was levelled to the dust; crosses, and reliques, statues, pictures, and vestments were borne aloft through the streets, and consigned to the flames amid yells of derision.

The ale and wine found in the cellars of the cavaliers, inflamed the inborn savagism of the multitude, who were urged by their ministers to commit a thousand nameless atrocities. For three days they continued in a state of perfect intoxication (says Lord Balcarris in his _Memoirs_), and in open daylight, in the crowded streets of the city, committed upon the persons of many Catholic ladies such outrages as cannot be written, and "without any attempt being made by the authorities to restrain such brutality." (pp. 22, 27.)

Of all the members of the old government none was more obnoxious to the people than Sir George Mackenzie, of Rosehaugh, the celebrated lawyer and essayist, who had rendered himself an object of intense hatred, by the severity with which he had stretched the criminal laws to answer the views of the Government; and who, in his office of Public Prosecutor, had obtained the unenviable soubriquet of "the persecutor of God's saints," "the blood-thirsty advocate," "bluidy Mackenzie;" and to this hour his vaulted mausoleum at Edinburgh is regarded with hatred and loathing by the old Cameronians and "true blue" Presbyterians.

His mansion in Rosehaugh Close was soon made the object of attack. The night of the third day had closed over the city, and still the scene of tumult and frenzy, the din and the flames of destruction, loaded the air with sounds of horror and outrage.

In great anxiety for his personal safety, the unhappy statesman heard with no ordinary perturbation the increasing roar of sounds, like the chafing of a distant sea; the mingling of a myriad human voices, and the rush of feet, which betokened the approach of a vast mob.

With drums beating before them, and armed with various weapons, the thousand bright points of which gleamed in the lurid blaze of the uplifted torches, a dense mass of ragged, squalid, and insane-looking men, poured like a human flood into the deep and narrow alley at the foot of which still stands the house of Rosehaugh. Begrimed with smoke and filth, maddened by intoxication and excess, their yells as they resounded between the solid walls of the narrow street, rang like those of fiends from some deep abyss, and the heart of Mackenzie died away within him. To appeal to their pity would be like craving mercy from the waves of an angry ocean? there was no escape, no remedy, no bribe, no hope; for among that terrible mob were the fathers, the sons, the brothers--yea, and the mothers of those who at his instance had perished in thousands, by the sword, by the torture, and the gibbet, or were lingering out a miserable existence as slaves and bondsmen in the distant Indies.

"My God! my God! for what am I reserved?" he exclaimed, as from a lofty upper window he surveyed the dense mass of madmen, who, wedged in the alley below, impeded each other's motions. Conspicuous above all, raised on the shoulders of two strong men, whose arms and faces were smeared with blood and blackness, there was upborne a man, whose sad-coloured garments and white bands announced him a preacher; his gaunt visage and long hair of raven hue waving around a face ghastly, though flashed with passion, his large hazel eyes glowing like those of a tiger, his upraised hands clenching one a bible, and the other a broadsword, declared him a wild enthusiast (another "Habakuk Mucklewrath").

It was Ichabod Bummel, who had escaped from the damp vaults of the wave-beaten Bass, and had now come to take vengeance on Mackenzie for his exile, his captivity, his crushed bones, and long persecution.

"Come forth, Achan, thou troubler of Israel!" he shrieked; "come forth, thou destroyer of the good and just, thou persecutor of the saints of God! come forth, thou thing that art accursed, or we will burn thee in the ruins of thy dwelling, and salt them with salt. Courage, my brethren! Oh, is not this a brave hour and a glorious one? For lo, the time is come when the host of Pharaoh shall be discomfited and stricken as of old. Achan, thou persecutor of the covenanted kirk, behold me towering amid Baal's prophets, four hundred and fifty men, as the book saith!"

This rhapsody was responded to with yells of ardour, and the din of hammers rang like thunder against the strong oaken door of the mansion, while many bullets were discharged at the windows, which were securely grated. A door of massive oak closed the entrance of the turnpike stair, and though the whole house resounded under the energy of the blows, the barrier refused to yield, though gradually it was falling in splinters, a process too slow to suit the fierce impatience of the increasing mob.

"Let fire be brought," cried Ichabod, "let the mansion be consumed, that its flames may be as a light to the house of Judah. Know, O thou persecutor of God's covenanted saints, that a sword is this night upon the inhabitants of Babylon, and upon her princes, and her mighty men; for it is the load of graven images, and they are mad upon their idols."

Urged by this blasphemous application of Scripture, burning brands were heaped by the people against the door, and soon the increased yells of satisfaction announced to the miserable advocate that the barrier was rapidly giving way, and that in another moment the reeking hands of the destroyers would be upon him. He threw round a glance of agony, the barred windows denied all hope of escape, and now his stern soul sank at the prospect of a cruel and immediate death, when lo! one tremendous yell of another import brought him once more to the shattered windows. "It is a dream!" he exclaimed.

A troop of the Royal Life Guards, with their bright arms flashing in the light of the waving torches, were hewing and treading down the mob like a field of rye; and chief above all shone one cavalier--it was Dundee--the gallant, the terrible Claver'se, that man-fiend, whom all deemed six hundred miles away. There was no mistaking the splendour of his armour, the nobility of his air, the ferocity of his purpose.

"Close up--fall on, gentlemen; no quarter to the knaves!" he exclaimed, while, standing erect in his stirrups, he showered his blows on every side, his white plumes rising and falling in unison with his trenchant rapier.

"Hey for King James! Ho for the cavaliers! Down with the rebels--down with the whigamores!" cried Holsterlee and others, as they pressed forward, and the rabble grovelled in the dust beneath the tremendous rush of the heavy horses, and their riders in steel and buff. In a minute the narrow alley was cleared of the living, and piled knee-deep with dead and dying. The shrill voice of Ichabod, as he was borne off by his disciples, was heard dying away in the distance, like that of an evil spirit carried away by a stormy wind.

By something like a miracle, Lord Dundee had traversed the whole of hostile England, and though menaced on every hand by great bodies of troops, had reached his native capital in safety; bringing with him not only the sixty cavalier troopers (who of all his cavalry alone remained staunch to him), but with them Walter Fenton, Lord Dunbarton, Finland, and other officers retaken from De Ginckel. They now rode under his orders as gentlemen-troopers, mounted on heavy black chargers that had whilome belonged to the Swart Ruyters; and the whole, with standards displayed, had entered the city about an hour before the assault on Rosehaugh's house.

The Rev. Dr. Joram, late chaplain to the Royal Scots, also bestrode a horse which he had taken as his spoil in battle; and had donned a trooper's corslet, with which his clerical bob-periwig consorted as oddly as with the fierce and tipsy expression of his flushed and florid face, and with the stern cock of the Monmouth beaver that surmounted it. The gallant divine had recently imbibed so much wine that he could scarcely keep his saddle.

Of the fate of their captured comrades they as yet knew nothing; but Gavin of that Ilk, with twenty other officers and five hundred men, were then at London, close prisoners; the rest had returned to their colours; and after a time, the whole, seeing the futility of resistance, ultimately embarked peaceably under the orders of their new commander, the veteran Duke de Schomberg. None were punished, "as the new government had not yet been fully recognized in Scotland."

Rosehaugh had been saved from a terrible immolation; but the services of the night were not yet over. Claverhouse, with his cavaliers, retired to a quiet part of the city, under protection of the castle batteries, where a brave garrison of Catholic soldiers, led by the Duke of Gordon, remained yet staunch to James.

"My lord Earl," said Dundee to Dunbarton, "we must be somewhat economical of our persons and horses, when encountering these mad burghers and drunken saints, and not forget that we are the last hope of the King in this hotbed of Presbytery and rebellion."

"True," replied the Earl, "and I rejoice that we have but few to regret, and few to mourn for us if we perish in the struggle on which we are about to plunge."

The eyes of the Viscount filled with dusky fire.

"Dunbarton," said he, "I am alone in the world. Our grateful King has given me honours to which none can succeed, for I have cast the die by which they are lost for ever; and nowhere can my coronet be more gloriously surrendered than on the battle-field."

"I thank Heaven that the Countess, my dear little Lætitia, is in England," said the Earl, pointing to the lurid flames that from the blazing houses of the Abbey-hill flashed along the shadowy vista of the Canongate, glowing redly under the arch of the Nether Bow, and throwing forward in bold relief a thousand fantastic projections of the old Flemish mansions that reared up their giant fronts on either hand. "I thank Heaven that she is in a safer place than this poor city of wild fanatics."

"Would that I could say the same of Lilian!" thought Walter, with a deep sigh. "Can she be safe amid all this dreadful uproar?"

At that moment a dense rabble approached, with drums beating, torches blazing, and weapons glinting.

"To the Palace! to the Abbey!" cried a thousand hoarse voices. "Let us pull doon the temple of the Idolater, and gie his fause gods to the flames!" and they swept forward, greeting the troop of Guards with yells of hatred and menace.

They were led--by whom? Lord Mersington, with his wig awry, his clothes soiled with dust, and his face flushed with exertion! The Earl of Balcarris relates "that this fanatical judge, with a halbert in his hand, and drunk as ale and brandy could make him," led on the rabble to the assault of time-hallowed Holyrood; but before reaching the eastern extremity of the city, his followers were joined by the trained bands in their buff coats and bandoleers, the magistrates, and other authorities, who vested this lawless mob with an air of order and official importance.

"Will those villains really dare to molest the palace of our kings?" said Dundee, his eyes kindling, as he looked after the revolters, and reined-up his impatient horse.

"What will they not dare?" rejoined Dunbarton; "but I doubt not they will experience a warm reception. Wallace, who commands the guard, is a brave cavalier as ever drew sword, and the traitors will make nothing of it."

"Under favour, my Lords," said Fenton, "they are in great numbers, and I have misgivings as to the issue."

"Wallace--he is an old friend of mine," said Finland. "'Sdeath! we've seen some sharp work together on the frontiers of Flanders; and with your permission, my Lords, I will take a turn of service with him to-night."

"As you please," replied the Viscount; "Dunbarton commands here, though he rides in my troop. Go--ha, ha! two heads are better than one."

"I go then; and yonder fanatical senator may beware how he comes within reach of my hand."

"Thy riding-whip, say rather."

"I volunteer also," said Walter, who was under great anxiety to have an opportunity of visiting Lilian.

"And I too," added the Reverend Jonadab Joram. "I long to encounter with bible and bilbo, yonder preacher of sedition, that urges on this unhanged rout of traitors. For know ye, gentlemen, (hiccup) that one preacher is better in Scotland than twenty drummers to find recruits for the devil's service; so, in his own phraseology, I will gird up my loins, and go forth to battle against them. Come on, gallants! Ho, for King James, and down with the whigamores! Rub-a-dub, rub-a-dub----"

"Beware, sirs, for the good cause has not many such spirits to spare," said Claver'se, as they dashed spurs into their horses, and making a detour down one narrow wynd and up another, reached without interruption the deep groined archway of the Palace Porch, an ancient gothic edifice, heavily turreted and battlemented.