Chapter XV: Part 15

"Two gallant officers," continues the Bishop, in the "History of his own Times," "that had served him in the wars, and when these were over had gone with his letters to serve in Muscovy, where one of them, Dalyell, was raised to be a general, and the other was advanced to be a lieutenant-general and Governor of Smolensko, were now, but _not without great difficulty_, sent back by the czar."

There can be little doubt that Dalyell returned to Scotland, with a heart boiling with rancour against those who had sold and destroyed the king; and who had brought so many of his brother soldiers--the Scottish Cavaliers of Montrose, of Hamilton and Munro--and so many of his own kinsmen, to the scaffold. With this sentiment may have been a longing for vengeance upon those who had been so long dominant in the land; who had deprived him of his estate and driven him into exile; and all these bitter sentiments were doubtless fostered by the inborn prejudice of class, religion, education, and the foreign service of years. To all these must be attributed many of the fierce and relentless acts which are related of him by the historians of the Covenant. Many of these dark deeds must, however, be doubted; and many accepted with caution.

After the Restoration, the Parliament of Scotland, which was presided over by Lieutenant-General the Earl of Middleton as High Commissioner, proved a very pliant and complying body. They granted to Charles II. a revenue of 40,000_l._ for life, and rescinded all the acts passed by their wiser predecessors for defining or _restricting_ the royal prerogative. The Solemn League and Covenant was pronounced a treasonable and seditious bond; and they passed other acts, by which the Earl of Lauderdale, Secretary of State for Scotland, gradually prepared a way for the abolition of Presbytery, and the restoration of an Episcopal Hierarchy. Alarmed by these measures, the Scottish Kirk sent James Sharpe, one of their most eminent divines, to expostulate with Charles II.; but Sharpe abandoned his colours, and betrayed their cause by accepting the Archbishopric of St. Andrews, while the Marquis of Argyle, James Guthrie, and Johnstone of Warriston, who had conspired with Cromwell, and directly, or indirectly, abetted the sale and execution of Charles I., were consigned to the headsman. Such was the new aspect of affairs, and it made religion and rancour grow side by side in the land.

The rash king next enjoined the Scottish privy council openly to establish Episcopacy, and bishops for the new dioceses were consecrated in England; while Fairfowl, Archbishop of Glasgow, was insane enough to solicit an act of council to eject all recusant ministers, and close their churches until episcopally ordained incumbents could be procured: and by this act, _three hundred and fifty_ parishes, about a third of those in the kingdom, were declared to be vacant; and this tyranny was attempted after all the wars, battles, and bloodshed in defence of the Covenant--after all the armies levied and lives lost since 1638, and after the king himself had perished in attempting to subvert the rights of the people! Now, the Scots became justly more than ever inflamed against the cruelty and injustice of their own government.

Finding their churches closed, they met in arms on the green hill sides, and in lonely muirs, to hold what were termed field conventicles, where the oppression they endured for conscience sake, the recollection of their present danger, and the memory of their struggles made in years gone by, together with the grandeur of the solemn scenery by which they were surrounded, filled their hearts with a splendid enthusiasm and with a purity of soul, as, with the sword by their sides, they worshipped God in those wild places, which, since the days of the Romans, had been the best stronghold of their forefathers.

As a ballad (which I quote from memory) has it:--

"Oh, sad and dreary was the lot of Scotland's true ones then, A famine-stricken remnant with scarce the guise of men; They burrowed few and lonely mid the chill dark mountain caves, For those who once had sheltered them were in their martyr-graves.

"A sword had rested on the land! it did not pass away; Long had they watched and waited; but there dawned no brighter day, And many had gone back from them, who owned the truth of old, Because of much iniquity their love was waxen cold."

To crush this growing enthusiasm (which was so great at times, that an angel was more than once averred to have been seen in mid air, overhanging a conventicle), to suppress these armed religious meetings, and enforce Episcopacy on the people, was now the ungrateful task assigned to Dalyell, to Drummond, and the Scottish standing forces, who were all commanded by officers of high Cavalier principles, and were usually men without much scruple in obeying the orders of the king and council.

Alarmed at the spirit of resistance evinced by the people, and remembering perhaps the fate of his father, Charles II. changed the Scottish ministry. Lauderdale had begun to persuade him that more lenient measures were necessary, and Sharpe, whom the Covenanters received as a Judas, retired from the administration of ecclesiastical affairs; but the change came _too late_, for again the banner which had been displayed so victoriously of old, "for an oppressed Kirk and broken Covenant," was unfurled, and a body of the Presbyterians rose in arms.

Lieutenant-colonel Sir James Turner, author of a little treatise on the art of war, and of his own Memoirs, from which we may learn that he was a fierce and unscrupulous _sabreur_, was captured with his troops at Ayr, by the Lairds of Corsack and Barscob at the head of a few followers. Another party of soldiers were routed by them at Dalry, and these insurgents began at once their march for Edinburgh, the seat of government, in the autumn of 1666.

They first proposed to put Turner to death; but spared his life on Corsack discovering that his conduct to the people had been much less severe than the written _orders_, which were found on his person, had inculcated.

Dalyell at this crisis commanded the king's troops in the capital. He concentrated all the detachments which were dispersed throughout the adjacent country, and marched westward, by the Glasgow road, to meet these insurgents, whose strength was ever varying, and whose numbers were greatly exaggerated.

"A great many came to the rebels who were called _Whiggs_," says Bishop Burnet; "at Lanark, in Clydesdale, they held a solemn fast day, in which, after much praying, they renewed the Covenant and set out their manifesto, in which they denied that they rose against the King, but complained of the oppressions under which they groaned; they desired that Episcopacy might be put down, that the Covenant might be set up, their ministers restored to them; and then they promised that they would be, in all other things, _the king's most obedient subjects_."

Such were the simple and just demands of these poor people. Dalyell followed them closely from place to place with his cavalry, the flower of which were the high-spirited Scottish Life Guards. He published a proclamation, offering pardon to all who within twenty-four hours returned to their own houses; but he threatened with death all who were taken in arms after that brief period. He found the whole country so completely in the interest of the revolters, that he could obtain no intelligence of their number, intention, or movements, save the rumours brought to head quarters by his own parties and horse-patrols; and thus, while _he_ was hovering in the west, by a sudden march, they appeared unexpectedly within four miles of Edinburgh.

Their number had considerably augmented during their march; but few men of any influence or property joined them; as most of the Covenanting gentry had been committed to various castles and prisons, on the plausible pre-text that it was necessary to insure their neutrality in case of a war with the Dutch.

On reaching the vicinity of the Pentland Hills, they numbered about three thousand horse and foot, ill armed and totally undisciplined.

Colonel James Wallace, of Auchans, a descendant of the Wallaces of Dundonald, a brave officer, who had served with distinction in former wars, and been lieutenant-colonel of Argyle's Highland regiment in Ireland--a veteran soldier, who had seen the battles of Benburb, Kilsythe, and Dunbar, when he was lieutenant-colonel of the Scottish Foot Guards[34]--took command of the whole, and, knowing how slender was his force, how destitute of succour, and how desperate in purpose and position, he left nothing undone to ensure a victory, or at least a death that should avenge their defeat and fall.

On reaching the secluded village of Colinton, which lies in a deep and wooded hollow, they learned that in Edinburgh, where they confidently expected a great accession, the citizens, under their provost, Sir Andrew Ramsay, were in arms against them, and had made vigorous preparations for a defence. The barrier gates were shut and fortified by cannon; the gentlemen of the neighbouring shires had been summoned to defend the walls; the College of Justice had formed a corps of cavalry, and all gentlemen in the city who possessed horses were ordered to mount, and appear in arms in the Meal Market, under the young Marquis of Montrose, to await the orders of General Dalyell.

The latter sent Alexander Seton, Viscount Kingston, with a body of the Guards, to the old quarries in Bruntsfield Links, with orders to lie there concealed, as across these links lay the direct road to the quarters of the insurgents, who had many friends in the capital; but, overawed by the active measures of the Cavalier government, they--according to Kirkton--"could only fast and pray for them."

On learning all this, Colonel Wallace marched along the slope of the Pentland Hills, in the hope of being able to effect a retreat towards Biggar. The season was the dreary month of November. Dogged by Dalyell and battered by a storm of wind and rain, the hapless Covenanters had been losing heart, and as their spirit diminished, so did their numbers, which, from three thousand, dwindled down to nine hundred hungry, wet, and famished creatures, "who looked more like dying men than soldiers going to conquer."

Wallace began to see the hopelessness of the cause he had undertaken; but the spirit of the few who adhered to him never flinched.

"We are not unwilling to die for religion and liberty," said these brave fellows; "yea, we would esteem a testimony for the Lord and our country a sufficient reward for all our loss and labour."

They wrote to General Dalyell a long and pathetic letter, setting forth their religious grievances; but no answer was returned to it, save the sound of his trumpets and the clash of the kettle-drums, when, on the afternoon of the 28th of November, his cavalry and infantry--upwards of three thousand strong,--after a fortnight's constant marching, were seen traversing the western slope of the beautiful Pentland range, and, descending, with all their standards displayed, towards Rullion Green, where these nine hundred devoted men, with their swords and Bibles, awaited them. As Dalyell approached, they sang the seventy-fourth and seventy-eighth Psalms.

Wallace drew up his little band in line, with a few of his toil-worn horsemen covering the right flank, which was somewhat exposed. Desperation and religious enthusiasm enhanced their natural bravery, and twice they repulsed the attack of the royal troops; but it was renewed by Dalyell's horse, the finest cavalry in Scotland, being principally cavaliers of the Life Guards, nobly mounted and richly accoutred. Dalyell led them on, and, by a single charge, they bore down horse and foot alike, at sword's point. This was when the dusk was closing on these lofty and heath-clad mountains. Fifty Covenanters were slain, including two eminent Irish divines--Andrew MacCormick and John Crookshanks--who had joined them, and who perished in the front rank.

In this conflict Dalyell and the famous Covenanter, Captain John Paton, of Meadowhead, met hand to hand on horseback, and exchanged several blows before they were separated by the pressure of their soldiers. Paton then discharged his pistols at Dalyell, off whose person the balls were seen _to recoil_. On perceiving this (and knowing him to be shot-proof, according to a superstitious historian), the captain loaded his pistol with a _silver coin_, a manoeuvre observed by Dalyell; he stepped behind a soldier, who fell, pierced by the coin which was supposed to be proof to any spell; but the same legend is related of Claverhouse at Killycrankie. Paton was among the last who left the field. Dalyell perceived him retiring, and sent three well-mounted troopers in pursuit, and these came to blows with him when he was urging his horse to leap a deep ditch. By a back-handed stroke he clove in two the head and helmet of his first assailant; the other two fell headlong into the ditch, where they lay struggling under their fallen chargers.

"Take my compliments to Dalyell, your master," said Baton, tauntingly, as he rode off; "tell him that I am not going home with him to-night."

John Nesbit, of Hardhill, a tall and powerful Covenanter, fell on the field, covered with wounds, but was found to be alive next day, when he was stripped and about to be interred with the dead. He was a brave man, and had served in foreign wars, for which he was made a captain of Musketeers at Bothwell some years after.

The gloom of the November night, and a sentiment of chivalry--of pity, perhaps, for their poor and persecuted countrymen--inspired the Life Guards to spare the fugitives, the mass of whom escaped and dispersed; but eighty prisoners--among whom was Neilson, the unfortunate Laird of Corsack--were taken, and these were next day marched in triumph through the streets of Edinburgh, while cannon thundered a salute from the castle, and the bells rang in every steeple; while the streets resounded with the tramp of the cavalry, who, with standards advanced and kettle-drums beating, escorted them to prison. "It is recorded that Andrew Murray, an aged Presbyterian minister, when he beheld the ferocious Dalyell in his rusted head-piece, buff coat, and long waving beard, riding at the head of his cavalier squadrons, who, flushed with victory, surrounded the manacled prisoners with drawn swords and cocked carbines--and when he heard the shouts of acclamation from the people, was so overpowered with grief for what he deemed the downfall for ever of _God's Covenanted Kirk_, that he became ill, and expired."

The dead were buried on the field, and there may yet be seen, within a small and rude enclosure, which is overshadowed by a few trees, a monument bearing an inscription to the memory of Crookshanks, MacCormick, and others who lie where they fell. At the back of the Pentland Hills runs a rivulet named the Deadman's-grain, from the circumstance of a wounded Covenanter falling there when pursued by a cavalier trooper. Drawing a pistol from his holsters, he fired it at his pursuer underneath his bridle arm, but, missing, shot his own horse in the flank. The animal fell, and his rider was immediately slain, where his green grave is yet shown by the side of the mountain burn.

At Easton, in Dunsyre, there was long visible a lonely grave, in which, according to a tradition transmitted from father to son, there lay a Covenanter who had expired of wounds received at Rullion Green. It was opened in 1817, and found to contain the skeleton of a tall man, with two silver coins dated 1620. On being touched, the bones crumbled to dust.

Colonel Wallace, on seeing all lost, left the field, accompanied by Mr. John Welsh, and, favoured by the darkness, took a north-westerly direction among the hills, and escaped. After long concealment and enduring many privations, he reached the Continent, and died in penury, at Rotterdam, in 1678.

It is a strange circumstance that, after the rout of his followers, many of them were slain by the Lothian peasantry.

Of the unfortunate prisoners, the servile and barbarous Scottish Privy Council made a severe example. Twenty were executed at Edinburgh, ten being hanged upon the same gibbet at once; seven were executed at Ayr, and many were hanged before their own doors in other parts of the country. The heads of those who perished at Edinburgh were fixed above the city gates, and their right arms and the hands with which they subscribed the Covenant were affixed to the Tolbooths of Lanark and other towns.

When Gordon, of Knockbreck, and his brother were hanged on the same gibbet, they clasped each other in their arms, that together, and at once, they might endure the pangs of death.

Like all Covenanters, the whole of these men maintained, with their dying breath, that they had taken up arms _not_ against the king, but against the insupportable tyranny of the Episcopal prelates. And that these men, and such as these, did not die in vain, the future history of their country has shown, for their last words left an echo that lingers yet in the hearts of the people.

Dalyell was highly complimented by the Council for this victory, and Neilson of Corsack, the most important of his prisoners, was ordered to be tortured in that dark, panelled room under the Parliament Hall, wherein sat the Council, over which the Duke of Rothes presided.

Neilson of Corsack was a country laird, who had been long distinguished for gentleness and amiability of disposition; but rage at the ill-treatment he received from the new clergy alone drove him to despair, and from despair to arms. On his refusal to become an Episcopalian, by the information (or at the instance) of the curate of his parish, he was dragged from his house, fined, and imprisoned, while his delicate wife and little children had been driven as outcasts into the mountains. Soldiers were then quartered on his lands, and his cattle were carried off. This was scarcely such treatment as a Scottish gentleman of the seventeenth century would endure with calmness. Rendered desperate, Corsack took to his sword, and commanded the party which surprised Sir James Turner, whose life he subsequently saved. That officer was not ungrateful for the act, and did all in his power to obtain mercy for him, but in vain. The Council were inexorable, and "Corsack was so cruelly tortured by the iron boots, that his shrieks were sufficient to move the heart of a stone."

The _thumbikins_ were the favourite instrument of torture most generally resorted to by the Lords of Council. These were small steel screws which compressed the thumb-joint, or whole hand if necessary, and were an invention brought to Scotland by General Dalyell from the Continent.

Charles II. distinctly, by letter, ordained the Privy Council to substitute banishment for torture and death; but his _missive was concealed_, and in his name the work of cruelty still went on, and still unsated by the daily horrors furnished by the result of the conflict at Rullion Green, Generals Dalyell and Drummond were ordered into the Shires of Ayr, Dumfries, and Galloway, to complete the destruction of any Covenanters or recusants who might remain in these districts.

In this year, and most probably for that duty, he raised a regiment of infantry; but it has long ceased to exist, and was probably one of the many Scottish corps disbanded at the peace of Ryswick.

While on this new service the enemies of Dalyell record innumerable instances of cruelty perpetrated by him; and though his temper was hot and his character undoubtedly fierce and resolute, these stories must be accepted under reservation.

"The forces were ordered to lie in the west," says Burnet, "where Dalyell acted the Muscovite too grossly. He threatened to _spit_ men and to _roast_ them, and he killed some in cold blood, or rather hot blood, for he was then drunk, when he ordered one to be hanged because he would not tell where his father was, for whom he was in search. When he heard of any who did not go to church, he did not trouble himself to set a fine upon him, but sent as many soldiers as might eat him up in a night. And the clergy were so delighted with it, that they used to speak of that time as the poets do of the golden age. They looked upon the soldiery as their patrons. They were ever in their company, and complying with them in their excesses, and, if they are not much wronged, they rather led them into them, than checked them for them. _Dalyell_ himself and his officers were so disgusted with them, that they increased the complaints, that had now more credit from them than from those of the country, who were looked on as their enemies. Things of so strange a pitch in vice were told of them, that they seemed scarce credible."

And this severe picture of the Episcopal Clergy is given by a Scottish Bishop, which renders it the more worthy of credence.

It is recorded of Dalyell, that once, when inflamed by passion, he struck a prisoner on the face with the hilt of his dagger so severely that blood flowed from the wound but it must be remembered that this person had boldly taunted the fierce old man, as "a Muscovite beast who used to roast men alive!" He established his head-quarters at Lanark for some weeks, and there he imprisoned many Covenanters in a damp dungeon, which was so narrow that, owing to their number, they could neither sit nor lie at length with comfort; and where they were deprived of all accommodation for preserving cleanliness or decency.

While his troops were in this town, a peasant when passing through the streets was seized by a patrol, and brought before him; and because this man either could not, or would not, give such information as would commit some of the prisoners, he was condemned to instant death. He begged one night's reprieve, that he might prepare to die, and make his peace with Heaven; but even this was denied him, and, according to the historians of the Kirk, he was dragged into a neighbouring field, shot dead by a platoon of carbines, stripped and left nude upon the ground.

On another occasion, we are told that he ordered a woman, who had aided the escape of a fugitive, to be cast into a hole filled with toads and reptiles, where she died in great misery.

Such stories seem exceedingly improbable, yet they pass current in Scotland, and are still believed to the present day.

In Dumfries the soldiers were accused of "having tied a man neck and heels to a pole, and turned him like a joint of meat before a great fire." In Kilmarnock, the men of Dalyell's regiment placed an old recusant in a dungeon, which was destitute of vent or chimney, and there tortured him by the smoke of a coal fire. When almost suffocated he was borne forth, amid laughter and derision, to the open air, and permitted to revive. After this he was imprisoned again; and this torture was continued for several nights and days.

At Dalry, Sir William Bannatyne, one of Dalyell's officers, ordered a woman who had been accessory to the escape of her husband, to be tortured by having lighted musket-matches tied between her clenched fingers, a cruelty by which she lost one hand entirely, and some days afterwards expired of torture. A farmer, whom this officer was dragooning, and from whom he was extorting money, asked why he was thus fined.

"Because," replied Sir William, with provoking candour, "you have great gear, and I must have part of it."

And on service so barbarous as this, the year 1667 passed away; and the estates of the forfeited Wallace of Auchans and others were bestowed by Parliament upon Dalyell and Drummond, or were retained by the grasping officers of State to enrich themselves. Thus for a time the unhappy Covenanters seemed to be completely crushed. Upon Dalyell was conferred the valuable estate of Mure of Caldwell, who had been accessory to that revolt which terminated at the Pentland hills; but of this property his family were deprived by the Revolution of 1688. Those who made peace with the Government, by interest, bribery, or fines, received protections, of which the following, in my own possession, granted the year before Bothwell, may serve as an example:--

"At Glasgow, the twenty day of March, 1678.

"For saemeikelas Major Alexander Coult of Garturke, in the parish of Monkland, hath signed the bond appoynted by the Lords of His Maties Privy Councell ffor himself and all such who live under him, ffor their peaceable and orderlie deportment; the Comitty of His Maties Privy Councell do hereby take the said Major Alexander Coult under their special protection and safeguard: and hereby discharge all officers and souldiers to trouble or molest the said Major Alexander Coult, his house, famillie, tenants, cottars or servants, or any belonging to him, in their personal gudes or estate, as they will be answerable at their highest perill, and allows him _to have and wear his wearing sword and pistolls_.

"Glencairne, "Strathmore, Wigtoune, "Airlie, Caithness."

Captain John Creichton, the celebrated cavalier trooper, who served long, both as a private and officer, under Dalyell in Scotland, and whose interesting memoirs were published by Dean Swift, has left us the following portrait of his stern leader, and it is so graphic that I may be pardoned quoting it entire.

"He was bred up very hardy from his youth, both in diet and clothing. He never wore boots, nor above one coat, which was close to his body, with close sleeves like those we call jockey coats. He never wore a peruke, nor did he shave his beard since the murder of King Charles the First. In my time his head was bald, which he covered only with a beaver hat, the brim of which was not above three inches broad. His beard was white and bushy, and yet reached down almost to his girdle. He usually went to London once or twice in a year to kiss the King's hand, who had a great esteem for his valor and worth. His unusual dress and figure, when he was in London, never failed to draw after him a great crowd of boys and other young people, who constantly attended at his lodgings, and followed him with huzzas, as he went to court and returned from it. As he was a man of humour, he would always thank them for their civilities when he left them at the door to go to the King, and would let them know exactly at what hour he intended to come out again and return to his lodgings.

"When the King walked in the park attended by some of his courtiers, and Dalziel in his company, the same crowds would always be after him, shewing their admiration at his beard and dress, so that the King could hardly pass on for the crowd, upon which his Majesty bade '_the devil take Dalziel for bringing such a rabble of boys together to have their guts squeezed out_,' while they gaped at his long beard and antique habit, requesting him at the same time--as Dalziel used to express it--'_to shave and dress like other Christians, and keep the poor bairns out of danger_.' All this could never prevail on him to part with his beard; but yet, in compliance to his Majesty, he went once to Court in the very height of the fashion; but as soon as the King and those about him had laughed sufficiently at the strange figure he made, he resumed his usual habit, to the great joy of the boys, who had not discovered him in his fashionable dress."

From this it would appear that Dalyell had been much of a wag, that he loved to humour children, and enjoyed their fun and amazement at the sight of his huge beard, and by appearing once in the gaudy frippery of a Cavalier, had striven to ridicule the foppery of the Court of Charles II.--three points of character very different from those usually attributed to him.

He was appointed a Privy Councillor, and soon after represented the county of Linlithgow in Parliament, and in 1670 an act of ratification, confirming all his estates and honours, was passed. In this document he is designated "His Majesties right trustie and weel-beloved Generall Thomas Dalyell, of Binns, late Lieutenant-Generall of His Majesties late forces within this ancient kingdome." From this it would appear that promotion, as well as profit, had resulted to him after the affair at Rullion Green and dragooning the Westland Whigs. He represented his native county in the Scottish Parliament from 1678 to 1685.

To assist in the security of Episcopacy in Scotland, and still further to fortify the royal authority and the power of that tyrannical Council, which committed so many atrocities in the king's name, Lauderdale, who was created a duke when at the head of the Scottish affairs, obtained the formation of a militia consisting of two thousand cavalry and sixteen thousand infantry; and as the northern kingdom swarmed with experienced and high-spirited officers all lacking military employment, these troops were soon disciplined and equipped; but the flower of the national troops were the standing forces of the country.

These, at this time, were as follows:--

1. The Royal Life Guards, the regiment of the famous John Grahame of Claverhouse, Viscount of Dundee, were raised after the Restoration, in 1661. The privates were styled, _par excellence_, gentlemen, and usually appear to have been cadets of good families. The Sieur de la Roche, a French Protestant refugee, who was slain in a tavern brawl at Leith by John Master of Tarbet and an Ensign Mowat, is styled in their indictment, "a gentleman of his Majesty's troop of Guards." Under Claverhouse, this Scottish patrician band served at Bothwell Bridge, at Drumclog, and in all the unhappy contentions of the period. Mr. Francis Stuart, afterwards a captain of the Guards, grandson of the Earl of Bothwell, was, says Captain Creichton, "a private _gentleman_ in the Horse Guards, like myself." In this trooper the reader will no doubt recognise the Serjeant Bothwell of _Old Mortality_.

"On the 2nd of April, 1661," according to Wodrow, "the King's Life Guard was formed. By their constitution they were to consist of noblemen and gentlemen's sons, and were to be one hundred and twenty in number, under command of the Lord Newburgh. After taking an oath to be loyal to his Majesty, they made a parade through the town of Edinburgh, with carbines at their saddles and swords drawn."

The maimed and old veteran officers, adds Kirkton, in his secret history, "the poor colonels, majors, and captains who expected great promotion (at the Restoration) were preferred to be troopers in the King's troop of Life Guards. This goodly employment obliged them to spend with one another the small remnant of the stock their miseries had left them, but more they could not have after all their hopes and sufferings" (he means) during the days of Cromwell.

In 1674 these Life Guards consisted of four squadrons, and were commanded by the Marquis of Athole.

After the Union, in 1707, this corps was removed to London, and is now represented by the 2nd troop of the 1st Life Guards.[35]

2. The Scottish Foot Guards, raised in November, 1660, were commanded by George, Earl of Linlithgow, and were, as they are still, named Fusiliers, being armed with the _fusil_, a light French musket; and by the Scottish Privy Council, in their orders to the army in 1667, it was ordained that the field officers of this corps should command in chief, and give orders in field and garrison, to all troops whatsoever. In 1707 these Guards were placed upon the united British establishment; in February, 1712, they were marched to London; in the following year they shared the duties for the _first_ time with the English Guards, and have _never been in Scotland since_.[36]

3. The Royal Regiment, known of old as the Scottish Archers in France, was at this time abroad at Tangiers, and did not return until 1682, when it arrived in Rochester, reduced to sixteen companies, and after the battle of Sedgemoor was sent into Holland.

4. The Earl of Mar's regiment, which served at Bothwell Bridge, was remodelled in 1689, and now known as the 21st Fusiliers.

5. The infantry regiment of Dalyell is no longer in existence, but Leven's Scottish regiment is now known as the 25th, or Royal Borderers; Angus's Foot--the regiment of our old friend, Uncle Toby--is numbered as the 26th, or Cameronians; and the regiment of Argyle, infamous as the perpetrators of the Glencoe tragedy, is no longer in the service.

6. The Scottish train of artillery, commanded by the Laird of Lundin in 1687, was disbanded at the Union, when Lord Leven was its general, and the last survivor of it, then an old man, served as a volunteer, with Sir John Cope's army, at Preston Pans. In this corps was a strange rank, named "gentlemen of the cannon," as we may learn from a letter of Viscount Teviot, dated 1699, and printed among Carstare's State Papers.

At the union with England, in 1707, it would seem to have been arranged that Scotland should have the first regiment of infantry, theirs being the oldest, and that England should have the first regiment of Dragoons.

The severity with which Dalyell and Drummond treated the Covenanters with these regular troops drove them frantic.

In February, 1677, the former despatched John Creichton, one of his most active, favourite, and relentless troopers, with an ensign and fifty soldiers of the Foot Guards, to seize Adam Stobie, of Luscar, near Culross, in Fife, "a fellow who," as the captain says, "had gone through the west, endeavouring to stir up sedition in the people by his great skill in canting and praying."

After surrounding his house in the night, the unfortunate Covenanter was discovered in concealment under some straw in a lime-kiln, from whence he was at once dragged forth. His daughter, in tears and terror, besought mercy of Creichton, and offered to ransom her father for two hundred dollars; but the trooper knew too well the inflexibility of his general, and, though not always insensible either to the voice of a woman or the offer of a handsome sum, he marched back to Edinburgh, and presented Stobie to Dalyell, together with four other recusants, who had been found in Culross by the Ensign of the Guards.

On the 22nd of February, the General brought his prisoners before the Privy Council, who fined Stobie three thousand marks for keeping conventicles and _conversing_ with intercommuned persons. After paying this he was to be transported; but he saved their lordships further trouble on his account by breaking from his prison and escaping in the night. After this he joined in the next rising, and is believed to have been slain at Bothwell Bridge, as he was never heard of afterwards.

About this time Francis Stuart, the Earl of Bothwell's grandson, was recommended by Dalyell to Charles II. for a commission, and was appointed Captain of Horse with John Creichton, who had hitherto been with him in the Life Guards, as his lieutenant, and these officers served under Colonel Graham, of Claverhouse, at the battle of Drumclog; for after the murder of Archbishop Sharpe on Magus Muir, the armed field conventicles had increased in every part of the country, and discontent, with sullen desperation, were rapidly moulding the people into a mass that was ready for revolt. Conflicts with the soldiers were of daily occurrence, and many of them were barbarously murdered, in lonely billets and solitary parts of the country, by the more savage or fanatical of the hill men, as the recusants were named, from their habit of usually lurking in the mountains.

Superstition was not wanting to lend a darker and more terrible hue to the events of the time, as Scotland is peculiarly the land of omens. Atmospheric visions were everywhere visible, if we are to believe such old memorialists as Law and others.

At Kilbryde, near Glasgow, two armies were seen in the sky, firing platoons of musketry at each other; "the fyre and smock were seen, but without noise or crak." On the slope of a lonely hill near Eastwood Muir, the tall apparition of a blood-red spectre was seen to tower suddenly between the terrified beholders and the blue sky, while a dreadful voice exclaimed--

"Woe! Woe unto the land!"

At a conventicle, suppressed in Fife by Adam Masterton of Grange, an officer of the Life Guards, the fugitive women, who observed the conflict from a distance, asserted that they could perceive, to their awe and terror, "the form of a tall man of majestic stature," hovering in mid air "above the people all the while of the soldiers shooting."

In August, 1678, the devil, who seemed always in those days to take a deep interest in Scottish affairs, held a great meeting of witches and warlocks in Lothian, "where," saith the veracious Law, "there was a warlock who formerly had been admitted to the ministry in the Presbyterian times, and who, when the bishops came in, conformed with _them_; but being deposed, he now turns under the devil, a preacher of hellish doctrine." In the March of the same year, he adds, a tremendous voice was heard in the ancient and half-ruined Abbey of Paisley, exclaiming--

"Woe, woe, woe! Pray, pray, pray!"

Showers of blood and of Highland bonnets, afforded the crones, elsewhere, ample matter for discussion and wonder.

Amid all this absurdity, while the tyrant Lords of Council tortured and hung peasants and preachers, of ruined honourable and long-descended families, for worshipping God as their hearts desired, and for doing so, in wild and sequestered places, or for refusing to say God save a King, who was _uncovenanted_; while Dalyell had every satanic power attributed to him, and the black charger of Claverhouse was believed to be the veritable devil himself, the efforts of some to promote godliness in the land were alike melancholy and amusing; thus people were punished for taking snuff in time of sermon, for carrying water on the Sabbath day, and for a thousand charges equally frivolous.

To repress the conventicles which began to assume a more formidable aspect, from the number of armed men who attended them, additional garrisons were established. Two peers and ten barons, who were obnoxious to Lauderdale, were lawlessly dispossessed of their mansions, which were converted into military stations. In each of these Dalyell placed a company of infantry and ten troopers, who were supplied with everything by provincial assessment or military contribution. Fathers were made responsible for their children; husbands for their wives; magistrates for their citizens; landlords for their tenants; and thus, by a network of military tyranny, it was resolved that at the sword's point, Scotland should become a highly episcopal country. Five hundred marks were offered for the seizure of any one who held a religious meeting; and four thousand pounds sterling was an ordinary price for the head of a good preacher. Others were valued according to their reputation among the people; and under such laws as these the troops of his sacred Majesty King Charles made plenty of prize-money and plunder.

The barbarities to which the people were subjected at last attracted the attention of the English House of Commons, who appointed a committee to inquire into these affairs, and into the Act empowering the Privy Council at Edinburgh to march the Scottish army wheresoever they chose; but there the matter ended. The Government was then _federal_, and any interference might have caused another national rupture.

Roused at last to more open resistance, a body of these poor people appealed again to that which of old was ever the Scotsman's best and most ready argument--the sword--and the defeat of Claverhouse's cavalry at Drumclog was deemed a sure omen of great events to come. They established their camp at Hamilton, and unfurled a standard, which is still preserved at Edinburgh. It is blue, crossed by the white saltire of St. Andrew, and is inscribed--

"COVENANTS--RELIGION--KING AND KINGDOMES."

Robert Hamilton, of Preston, a brave but intolerant and injudicious man, assumed the command. He was without experience as a leader, and his followers were destitute of all discipline as soldiers; hence dissensions were of hourly occurrence in the camp.

Alarmed by the tidings of this rising, the end of which no one could then foresee, the King sent his son James, Duke of Monmouth and Buccleugh, to assume command of the Scottish troops, and enforce the restoration of order. The duke brought with him four troops of English horse, commanded by a Major Main, a novelty which did not increase his popularity in Scotland, where English troops had not been seen since Cromwell's time. At the head of ten thousand men, with a fine park of artillery, he marched westward at midsummer, against the insurgents.

"Upon the duke being made commander-in-chief, Dalyell refused to serve under him," says Captain Creichton, "and remained at his lodgings in Edinburgh, till his Grace was superseded, which happened about a fortnight after."

The principal officers in the kingdom attended the duke on this expedition. Among them were the Earl of Linlithgow, with his regiment of Foot Guards; the Earl of Mar, with his regiment of Fusiliers; the Marquis of Montrose, the Earls of Airley and Home, and Graham of Claverhouse, all commanders of horse; while a host of cavalier nobles and gentlemen attended him to serve as he might require.

On the 22nd of June, he found the Covenanters in position at the bridge of Bothwell, where the Clyde is seventy-one yards wide. This picturesque old bridge was twelve feet broad, and one hundred and twenty feet long, with a rise of twenty in the centre, where there was a barrier gate, which was removed in 1826. This gate Preston had barricaded, while flanking the approaches with musketry. To three hundred stout hearts led by Hackston of Rathillet, and the stern John Balfour of Kinloch, otherwise styled of Burley, was confided the keeping of the bridge, and well these brave men kept it too, under a heavy fire of cannon and musketry, to which the flankers of the bridge replied by firing briskly from behind the thickets of alder and hazel trees which clothed the banks of the stream.

Under cover of a cannonade, Lord Livingstone led the assault, at the head of his father's regiment, the Scottish Foot Guards, and despite its barricade of stones and timber, and all the efforts of its desperate defenders, the gate was stormed by the infantry, and the bridge was carried by the clubbed musket and levelled pike, after a fierce contest. Then a body of the Lennox Highlanders, led, say some authorities, by General Dalyell; by their own chief, Macfarlane, say others, raised the war-cry of _Loch sloy_ and flung themselves, claymore in hand, on the main body of the Covenanters, while Claverhouse with the Life Guards--all burning to avenge their recent defeat at Drumclog--defiled across the bridge at full speed, and forming in squadron on the opposite side, swept all before them, as they might have driven a flock of sheep. Main's English dragoons and the Highlanders are accused of behaving with great barbarity in slaughtering the fugitives. The aged Laird of Earlstone prayed for quarter from Major Main, who ran him through the body and slew him on the spot.

When the charge was over, the gentlemen of the Scottish Life Guards became so exasperated on seeing the Covenanters treated thus by Englishmen, that they fell, sword in hand, upon Main's dragoons, and cut many of them down, "being grieved," as the Rev. John Blackadder has it, "to see Englishmen delighting so much to shed their countrymen's blood."

In the streets of Hamilton the reckless Balfour of Burley made a bold attempt to rally the fugitives; but a musket-ball broke his sword arm, as his troopers reined up their horses in the thoroughfare.

"Withered be the hand that fired the shot--I can fight no longer now!" he exclaimed in bitterness, as the weapon fell from his grasp, and once more the flight was renewed.

Four hundred Covenanters were slain on the field, and twelve hundred were made prisoners; these, on the evening after the battle, were marched to Edinburgh, where they were thrust into the Greyfriars churchyard, like sheep penned in a fold. Some were selected for the scaffold, the rest were banished to the plantations, and of these many perished miserably at sea.

The pursuit was scarcely over and the troops returned to their various colours, when old General Dalyell, on horseback and in fiery haste, lest the fighting should all be over, arrived from Edinburgh, with a new commission appointing _him_ commander-in-chief. This document, which he had received by express from London, was dated 22nd June, 1679, the very day of the encounter. It did not, however, entirely supersede the authority of the Duke of Monmouth, who by the Privy Council was styled "Lord General." Dalyell is said to have publicly upbraided the gentle duke with his clemency to the prisoners, and for the tenor of the orders he issued before the battle. These were, to yield quarter to all who asked it, to make as many prisoners as possible, and to spare life.

"Had _my_ commission come _before_ the battle," said Dalyell, grimly, "these rogues should never more have troubled the king or country."

He marched the troops to Glasgow, and three days afterwards--the insurrection being deemed at an end--they were dispersed in detachments throughout the Lowlands, most of them being sent to where they were far from welcome--their old quarters.

After the battle, Dalyell captured the Reverend John King, a preacher who had once been chaplain to the exiled Lord Cardross. This gentleman he sent in irons to Edinburgh, escorted by a guard of Main's dragoons, and on their march from Glasgow there occurred a strange accident, which the people believed to be a visitation of Heaven. One of these troopers, at a wayside alehouse, drank, "Confusion to the Covenant!" and being asked "where he was going,"

"I am carrying King to hell," said he, an answer likely enough to be made by a reckless soldier.

"The judgment of Heaven did not linger on this wretch," records the superstitious Wodrow; "he had not proceeded many paces on his journey, when his horse stumbled, his carbine went off and shot him dead."

King perished on the gibbet soon after, and had his head and right hand cut off.

In the winter after the battle, Dalyell quartered himself at Kilmarnock, with one battalion of Linlithgow's Foot Guards, and the horse troops of the Earl of Airlie and Captain Francis Stuart of Bothwell.

"Here," says Captain Creichton, "the general, one day happening to look on while I was exercising the troop of dragoons, asked me when I had done, whether I knew any one of my men who was skilful in praying well in the style and tone of the Covenanters? I immediately thought upon one named James Gibb, who had been born in Ireland, and whom I had made a dragoon. This man I brought to the general, assuring his Excellency 'that if I had raked hell, I could not find his match in mimicking the Covenanters.' Whereupon the general gave him five pounds to buy him a greatcoat and a bonnet, and commanded him to find out the rebels, but be sure to take care of himself among them.

"The dragoon went eight miles off that very night, and got admittance into the house of a notorious rebel, pretending he had come from Ireland out of zeal for the cause, to assist at the fight of Bothwell Bridge, and could not find an opportunity since of returning with safety; and therefore, after bewitching the family with his gifts of praying, he was conveyed in the dusk of the evening by a guide to the house of the next adjoining rebel, and thus in the same manner from one to another, till in a month's time he got through the principal of them in the west, telling the general at his return, that he 'made the old wives, in their devout fits, tear off their biggonets and mutches;' he likewise gave the general a list of their names and places of abode, and into the bargain brought back a good purse of money in his pocket."

"How used you to pray among them?" asked Dalyell.

"It was my custom in my prayers," replied the trooper, "to send the king, the ministers of state, the officers of the army, with all their soldiers and the episcopal clergy, all at one broadside to hell; but particularly our general himself."

"What," exclaimed the general, "did you also send _me_ to hell, sir?"

"Yea," replied the unabashed dragoon, "you at the head of them as their leader."

This discreditable abuse of hospitality and breach of faith in the soldier is recorded as a piece of admirable tact and strategy by Creichton, and doubtless Dalyell would make good use of the notes supplied to him.

In the month of July, in the following year, 1680, Dalyell sent Creichton with thirty of Airlie's horse, and fifty of Strachan's dragoons, under Captain Bruce of Earlshall, to capture or kill a hundred and fifty Covenanters, who, since the fight at Bothwell, had been lurking in the wilds of Galloway. These unfortunates, after being tracked from place to place by Bruce and Creichton, made a stand against them at Airsmoss, near Muirkirk, on the 22nd July, and there these desperate men fought as only the homeless and the outlawed, the brave and the foredoomed, can fight; but they were routed, and fourteen of them were taken prisoners. Among these was David Hackston, of Rathillet, who had been present at the murder of the Archbishop of St. Andrews. Sixty were slain, and one of these was Richard Cameron, a preacher, and formerly a schoolmaster at Falkland, for whose capture five thousand marks had long been offered by the government at Edinburgh.

"Lord!" he exclaimed, before the cavalry charged; "Lord, spare the green and take the ripe! Come on," he added, drawing his sword, "let us fight it out to the last. This is the day I longed for! This is the death I have prayed for; to die fighting against the avowed enemies of the Lord."

He was shot and buried in the moss, where his grave is still shown; but his head and hands were conveyed by Creichton to head-quarters. So perished this enthusiast; but he bequeathed his name to a sect from which the 26th Scottish Regiment of the Line still takes its title of _the Cameronians_.

With a barbarity worthy of the Sepoy mutineers his head and hands were exhibited to his aged father, then a prisoner in the gloomy Tolbooth of Edinburgh, and tauntingly he was asked, if he knew to whom they had belonged.

"Oh yes," said the old man, as he wept and kissed the bloody relics; "they are my son's--my dear son's--but good is the will of the Lord!"

After this revolting incident, they were fixed to the Netherbow-porte, the eastern gate of Edinburgh.

Captains Bruce and Creichton had also brought with them from Airsmoss the Laird of Rathillet, who had received many wounds in the skirmish. He was personally questioned by Dalyell, who is said to have threatened to roast him, because his answers to certain queries were brief, sullen, and unsatisfactory. Covenanting writers add, that the general refused to permit Hackston's wounds to be dressed, and ordered him to be chained to the floor of his dungeon till he was conveyed to Edinburgh, where he was executed by prolonged tortures with a barbarity that had never been equalled, even in those days.

Among others seized by Dalyell was John Spreul, an apothecary in Glasgow, whom he brought before the Council, and accused of being concerned in the fight at Bothwell. His leg was put in the iron boot, and at each query the headsman gave the wedges five strokes with a mallet. "Dalyell," says Wodrow, "complained that he did not strike strongly enough; upon which, he (the torturer) offered himself the mallet, saying he struck with all his might." Spreul was afterwards imprisoned on the Bass Rock, where he remained for six years.

Amid the many instances of severity attributed to Dalyell, I must not omit to record one of a different kind.

The most celebrated prisoner taken at Bothwell was Captain John Paton, of Meadowhead, who served under Gustavus Adolphus, and had fought at Kilsythe against Montrose, where he had displayed remarkable bravery and skill in the use of his sword. Dalyell was present when this fine old veteran was examined before the Privy Council. On this occasion a soldier had the rudeness to taunt him with being "a rebel."

"Sir," retorted Paton, "I have done more for the King perhaps than you have done--I fought for him at Worcester."

Some humane impression or soldierly emotion stirred the heart of Dalyell at these words.