Ringan Gilhaize, or, The Covenanters

The kirk was filled to its uttermost bunkers; my father, however, got for Janet Geddes, she being an aged woman, a stool near the skirts of the pulpit; but nothing happened to cause any disturbance till the godly Mr Patrick Henderson had made an end of the morning prayer, when he said, with tears in his eyes, with reference to the liturgy, which was then to be promulgated, "Adieu, good people, for I think this is the last time of my saying prayers in this kirk;" and the congregation being much moved thereat, many wept.

No sooner had Mr Henderson retired, than Master Ramsay, that horn of the Beast, which was called the Dean of Edinburgh, appeared in the pulpit in the pomp of his abominations, and began to read the liturgy. At the first words of which Janet Geddes was so transported with indignation that, starting from her stool, she made it fly whirring at his head, as she cried, "Villain, dost thou say the mass at my lug?" Then such an uproar began as had not been witnessed since the destruction of the idols; the women screaming, and clapping their hands in terrification as if the legions of the Evil One had been let loose upon them; and the men crying aloud, "Antichrist! Antichrist! down wi' the Pope!" and all exhortation to quiet them was drowned in the din.

Such was the beginning of those troubles in the church and state so wantonly provoked by the weak and wicked policy of the first King Charles, and which in the end brought himself to an ignominious death; and such the cause of that Solemn League and Covenant, to which, in my green years, my father, soon after his return home, took me to be a party, and to which I have been enabled to adhere, with unerring constancy, till the glorious purpose of it has all been fulfilled and accomplished.

CHAPTER XXXVIII

When my father returned home, my mother and all the family were grieved to see his sad and altered looks. We gathered around him, and she thought he had failed to get the legacy, and comforted him by saying they had hitherto fenn't without it, and so might they still do.

To her tender condolements he however made no answer; but, taking a leathern bag, with the money in it, out of his bosom, he flung it on the table, saying, "What care I for this world's trash, when the ark of the Lord is taken from Israel?" which to hear daunted the hearts of all present. And then he told us, after some time, what was doing on the part of the King to bring in the worship of the Beast again, rehearsing, with many circumstances, the consternation and sorrow and rage and lamentations that he had witnessed in Edinburgh.

I, who was the ninth of his ten children, and then not passing nine years old, was thrilled with an unspeakable fear; and all the dreadful things, which I had heard my grandfather tell of the tribulations of his time, came upon my spirit like visions of the visible scene, and I began to weep with an exceeding sorrow, in so much that my father was amazed, and caressed me, and thanked Heaven that one so young in his house felt as a protestant child should feel in an epoch of such calamity.

It was then late in the afternoon, towards the gloaming, and having partaken of some refreshment, my father took the big Bible from the press-head, and, after a prayer uttered in great heaviness of spirit, he read a portion of the Revelations, concerning the vials and the woes, expounding the same like a preacher; and we were all filled with anxieties and terrors; some of the younger members trembled with the thought that the last day was surely at hand.

Next morning a sough and rumour of that solemn venting of Christian indignation which had been manifested at Edinburgh, having reached our country-side, and the neighbours hearing of my father's return, many of them came at night to our house to hear the news; and it was a meeting that none present thereat could ever after forget: – well do I mind everything as if it had happened but yestreen. I was sitting on a laigh stool at the fireside, between the chumley-lug and the gown-tail of old Nanse Snoddie, my mother's aunty, a godly woman, that in her eild we took care of; and as young and old came in, the salutation was in silence, as of guests coming to a burial.

The first was Ebenezer Muir, an aged man, whose grandson stood many a blast in the persecution of the latter days, both with the Blackcuffs and the bloody dragoons of the remorseless Graham of Claver. He was bent with the burden of time, and leaning on his staff, and his long white hair hung down from aneath his broad blue bonnet. He was one whom my grandfather held in great respect for the sincerity of his principles and the discretion of his judgment, and among all his neighbours, and nowhere more than in our house, was he considered a most patriarchal character.

"Come awa, Ebenezer," said my father, "I'm blithe and I'm sorrowful to see you. This night we may be spar't to speak in peace of the things that pertain unto salvation; but the day and the hour is not far off, when the flock of Christ shall be scattered and driven from the pastures of their Divine Master."

To these words of affliction Ebenezer Muir made no response, but went straight to the fireside, facing Nanse Snoddie, and sat down without speaking; and my father, then observing John Fullarton of Dykedivots coming in, stretched out his hand, and took hold of his, and drew him to sit down by his side.

They had been in a manner brothers from their youth upward. An uncle of John Fullarton's, by whom he was brought up, had been owner, and he himself had heired, and was then possessor of, the mailing of Dykedivot, beside ours. He was the father of four brave sons, the youngest of whom, a stripling of some thirteen or fourteen years, was at his back: the other three came in afterwards. He was, moreover, a man of a stout and courageous nature, though of a much-enduring temper.

"I hope," said he to my father – "I hope, Sawners, a' this straemash and hobbleshow that fell out last Sabbath in Embro' has been seen wi' the glamoured een o' fear, and that the King and government canna be sae far left to themsels as to meddle wi' the ordinances of the Lord."

"I doot, I doot, it's owre true, John," replied my father in a very mournful manner; and while they were thus speaking, Nahum Chapelrig came ben. He was a young man, and his father being precentor and schoolmaster of the parish, he had more lair than commonly falls to the lot of country folk; over and aboon this, he was of a spirity disposition, and both eydent and eager in whatsoever he undertook, so that for his years he was greatly looked up to amang all his acquaintance, notwithstanding a small spicin of conceit that he was in with himself.

On seeing him coming in, worthy Ebenezer Muir made a sign for him to draw near and sit by him; and when he went forward, and drew in a stool, the old man took hold of him by the hand, and said, "Ye're weel come, Nahum;" and my father added, "Ay, Nahum Chapelrig, it's fast coming to pass, as ye hae been aye saying it would; the King has na restit wi' putting the prelates upon us."

"What's te prelates, Robin Fullarton?" said auld Nanse Snoddie, turning round to John's son, who was standing behind his father.

"They're the red dragons o' unrighteousness," replied the sincere laddie with great vehemence.

"Gude guide us!" cried Nanse with the voice of terror; "and has the King daur't to send sic accursed things to devour God's people?"

But my mother, who was sitting behind me, touched her on the shoulder, bidding her be quiet; for the poor woman, being then doited, when left to the freedom of her own will, was apt to expatiate without ceasing on whatsoever she happened to discourse anent; and Nahum Chapelrig said to my father, —

"'Deed, Sawners Gilhaize, we could look for nae better; prelacy is but the prelude o' papistry; but the papistry o' this prelude is a perilous papistry indeed; for its roots of rankness are in the midden-head of Arminianism, which, in a sense, is a greater Antichrist than Antichrist himself, even where he sits on his throne of thraldom in the Roman vaticano. But, nevertheless, I trust and hope, that though the virgin bride of protestantism be for a season thrown on her back, she shall not be overcome, but will so strive and warsle aneath the foul grips of that rampant Arminian, the English high-priest Laud, that he shall himself be cast into the mire, or choket wi' the stoure of his own bakiefu's of abominations, wherewith he would overwhelm and bury the Evangil. Yea, even though the shield of his mighty men is made red, and his valiant men are in scarlet, he shall recount his worthies, but they shall stumble in their walk."

While Nahum was thus holding forth, the house filled even to the trance-door with the neighbours, old and young; and several from time to time spoke bitterly against the deadly sin and aggression which the King was committing in the rape that the reading of the liturgy was upon the consciences of his people. At last Ebenezer Muir, taking off his bonnet, and rising, laid it down on his seat behind him, and then resting with both his hands on his staff, looked up, and every one was hushed. Truly it was an affecting sight to behold that very aged, time-bent and venerable man so standing in the midst of all his dismayed and pious neighbours, – his grey hairs flowing from his haffets, – and the light of our lowly hearth shining upon his bald head and reverent countenance.

"Friens," said he, "I hae lived lang in the world; and in this house I hae often partaken the sweet repast of the conversations of that sanctified character, Michael Gilhaize, whom we a' revered as a parent, not more for his ain worth than for the great things to which he was a witness in the trials and troubles of the Reformation; and it seems to me, frae a' the experience I hae gatherit, that when ance kings and governments hae taken a step, let it be ne'er sae rash, there's a something in the nature of rule and power that winna let them confess a fau't, though they may afterwards be constrained to renounce the evil of their ways. It was therefore wi' a sore heart that I heard this day the doleful tidings frae Embro', and moreover, that I hae listened to the outbreathings this night of the heaviness wherewith the news hae oppressed you a'. Sure am I, that frae the provocation given to the people of Scotland by the King's miscounselled majesty, nothing but tears and woes can ensue; for by the manner in which they hae already rebutted the aggression, he will in return be stirred to aggrieve them still farther. I'm now an auld man, and may be removed before the woes come to pass; but it requires not the e'e of prophecy to spae bloodshed and suffering, and many afflictions in your fortunes. Nevertheless, friens, be of good cheer, for the Lord will prosper his own cause. Neither king, nor priest, nor any human authority has the right to interfere between you and your God; and allegiance ends where persecution begins. Never, therefore, in the trials awaiting you, forget that the right to resist in matters of conscience is the foundation-stone of religious liberty; O see, therefore, that you guard it weel!"

The voice and manner of the aged speaker melted every heart. Many of the women sobbed aloud, and the children were moved, as I was myself, and as I have often heard them in their manhood tell, as if the spirit of faith and fortitude had entered into the very bones and marrow of their bodies; nor ever afterwards have I heard psalm sung with such melodious energy of holiness as that pious congregation of simple country folk sung the hundred and fortieth psalm before departing for their lowly dwellings on that solemn evening.

CHAPTER XXXIX

It was on the Wednesday that my father came home from Edinburgh. On Friday the farmer lads and their fathers continued coming over to our house to hear the news, and all their discourse was concerning the manifest foretaste of papistry which was in the praying of the prayers, that an obdurate prince and an alien Arminian prelate were attempting to thrust into their mouths, and every one spoke of renewing the Solemn League and Covenant, which, in the times of the Reformation and the dangers of the Spanish Armada, had achieved such great things for the Truth and the Word.

On Saturday, Mr Sundrum, our minister, called for my father about twelve o'clock. He had heard the news, and also that my father had come back. I was doing something on the green, I forget now what it was, when I saw him coming towards the door, and I ran into the house to tell my father, who immediately came out to meet him.

Little passed in my hearing between them, for, after a short inquiry concerning how my father had fared in the journey, the minister took hold of him by the arm, and they walked together into the fields, where, when they were at some distance from the house, Mr Sundrum stopped, and began to discourse in a very earnest and lively manner, frequently touching the palm of his left hand with the fingers of his right, as he spoke to my father, and sometimes lifting both his hands as one in amaze, ejaculating to the heavens.

While they were thus reasoning together, worthy Ebenezer Muir came towards the house, but, observing where they were, he turned off and joined them, and they continued all three in vehement deliberation, in so much that I was drawn by the thirst of curiosity to slip so near towards them that I could hear what passed; and my young heart was pierced at the severe terms in which the minister was condemning the ringleaders of the riot, as he called the adversaries of popedom in Edinburgh, and in a manner rebuking my honest father as a sower of sedition.

My father, however, said stiffly, for he was not a man to controvert with a minister, that in all temporal things he was a true and leil subject, and in what pertained to the King as king, he would stand as stoutly up for as any man in the three kingdoms; but against a usurpation of the Lord's rights, his hand, his heart, and his father's sword, that had been used in the Reformation, were all alike ready.

Old Ebenezer Muir tried to pacify him, and reasoned in great gentleness with both, expressing his concern that a presbyterian minister could think that the attempt to bring in prelacy, and the reading of court-contrived prayers, was not a meddling with things sacred and rights natural, which neither prince nor potentate had authority to do. But Mr Sundrum was one of those that longed for the flesh-pots of Egypt, and the fat things of a lordly hierarchy; and the pacific remonstrances of the pious old man made him wax more and more wroth at what he hatefully pronounced their rebellious inclinations; at which bitter words both my father and Ebenezer Muir turned from him, and went together to the house with sadness in their faces, leaving him to return the way he had come alone – a thing which filled me with consternation, he having ever before been treated and reverenced as a pastor ought always to be.

What comment my father and the old man made on his conduct when they were by themselves I know not; but on the Sabbath morning the kirk was filled to overflowing, and my father took me with him by the hand, and we sat together on the same form with Ebenezer Muir, whom we found in the church before us.

When Mr Sundrum mounted into the pulpit, and read the psalm and said the prayer, there was nothing particular; but when he prepared to preach, there was a rustle of expectation among all present, for the text he chose was from Romans, chapter xiii. and verses 1 and 2; from which he made an endeavour to demonstrate, as I heard afterwards, for I was then too young to discern the matter of it myself, the duty and advantages of passive obedience – and, growing warm with his ungospel rhetoric, he began to rail and to daud the pulpit in condemnation of the spirit which had kithed in Edinburgh.

Ebenezer Muir and my father tholed with him for some time; but at last he so far forgot his place and office, that they both rose and moved towards the door. Many others did the same, and presently the whole congregation, with the exception of a very few, also began to move, so that the kirk skayled; and from that day, so long as Mr Sundrum continued in the parish, he was as a leper and an excommunicant.

Meanwhile the alarm was spreading far and wide, and a blessed thing it was for the shire of Ayr, though it caused its soil to be soakened with the blood of martyrs, that few of the ministers were like the time-serving Mr Sundrum, but trusty and valiant defenders of the green pastures whereon they had delighted, like kind shepherds, to lead their confiding flocks, and to cherish the young lambs thereof with the tender embraces of a holy ministry. Among the rest, that godly and great saint, Mr Swinton of Garnock, our neighbour parish, stood courageously forward in the gap of the broken fence of the vineyard, announcing, after a most weighty discourse, on the same day on which Mr Sundrum preached the erroneous doctrine of passive obedience, that next Sabbath he would administer the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, not knowing how long it might be in the power of his people to partake of it. Every body around accordingly prepared to be present on that occasion, and there was a wonderful congregation. All the adjacent parishes in succession did the same thing Sabbath after Sabbath, and never was there seen, in the memory of living man, such a zealous devotion and strictness of life as then reigned throughout the whole West Country.

At last the news came, that it was resolved among the great and faithful at Edinburgh to renew the Solemn League and Covenant; and the ministers of our neighbourhood having conferred together concerning the same, it was agreed among them, that the people should be invited to come forward on a day set apart for the purpose, and that as the kirk of Irvine was the biggest in the vicinage, the signatures both for the country and that town should be received there. Mr Dickson, the minister, than whom no man of his day was more brave in the Lord's cause, accordingly made the needful preparation, and appointed the time.

In the meanwhile the young men began to gird themselves for war. The swords that had rested for many a day were drawn from their idle places; and the women worked together, that their brothers and their sons might be ready for the field; but at their work, instead of the ancient lilts, they sung psalms and godly ballads. However, as I mean not to enter upon the particulars of that awakening epoch, but only to show forth the pure and the holy earnestness with which the minds of men were then actuated, I shall here refer the courteous reader to the annals and chronicles of the time, – albeit the truth in them has suffered from the alloy of a base servility.

CHAPTER XL

The sixteenth day of June, in the year of our Lord 1638, was appointed for the renewal at Irvine of the Solemn League and Covenant. On the night before, my five elder brothers, who were learning trades at Glasgow and Kilmarnock, came home that they might go up with their father to the house of God, in order to set down their names together; me and my four sisters, the rest of his ten children, were still biding with our mother and him at the mailing.

From my grandfather's time there had been a by-common respect among the neighbours for our family on his account; and that morning my brother Jacob, who happened to be the first that went, at break of day, to the door, was surprised to see many of the cotters and neighbouring farmer lads already assembled on the lone, waiting to walk with us to the town, as a token of their reverence for the principles and the memory of that departed worthy; and they were all belted and armed with swords like men ready for battle.

Seeing such a concourse of the neighbours, instead of making exercise in the house, my father, as the morning was bright and lown, bade me carry the Bible and a stool to the dykeside, that our friends might have room to join us in worship, – which I did accordingly, placing the stool under the ash-tree, at the corner of the stack-yard, and by all those who were present on that occasion the spot was ever afterwards regarded as a hallowed place. Truly there was a scene and a sight there not likely to be soon forgotten; for the awful cause that had brought together that meeting was a thing which no man who had a part therein could ever in all his days forget.

My father chose the seventy-sixth psalm, and when it was sung, he opened the Scriptures in Second Kings, and read aloud, with a strong voice, the twenty-third chapter, and every one likened Josiah to the old King, and Jehoahaz to his son Charles, by whose disregard of the Covenant the spirit of the land was then in such tribulation; and at the conclusion, instead of kneeling to pray, as he was wont, my father stood up, and, as if all temporal things were then of no account, he only supplicated that the work they had in hand for that day might be approved and sanctified.

The worship being over, the family returned into the house, and having partaken of a repast of bread and milk, my father put on his father's sword, and my brothers, who had brought weapons of their own home with them, also belted themselves for the road. I was owre young to be yet trysted for war, so my father led me out by the hand, and walking forward, followed by my brothers, the neighbours, two and two, fell into the rear, and the women, in their plaids, came mournful and in tears at some short distance behind.

As we were thus proceeding towards the main road, we heard the sound of a drum and fife, and saw over the hedge of the lane that leads to the clachan, a white banner waving aloft with the words, "Solemn League and Covenant" painted thereon; at the sight of which my father was much disturbed, saying, – "This is some silly device of Nahum Chapelrig, that, if we allow to proceed, may bring scoff and scorn upon the cause as we enter the town;" and with that, dropping my hand, he ran forward and stopped their vain bravery; for it was, as he had supposed, the work of Nahum, who was marching, like a man of war, at the head of his band. However, on my father's remonstrance, he consented to send away his sounding instruments and idle banner, and to walk composedly along with us.

As we reached the town-end port, we fell in with a vast number of other persons, from different parts of the country, going to sign the Covenant, and, on a cart, worthy Ebenezer Muir and three other aged men like himself, who, being all of our parish, it was agreed that they should alight and walk to the kirk at the head of those who had come with my father. While this was putting in order, other men and lads belonging to the parish came and joined us, so that, to the number of more than a hundred, we went up the town together.

When we arrived at the Tolbooth, we were obligated, with others, to halt for some time, by reason of the great crowd at the Kirkgatefoot waiting to see if the magistrates, who were then sitting in council, would come forth and go to the kirk; and the different crafts and burgesses, with their deacons, were standing at the Cross in order to follow them, if they determined, in their public capacity, to sign the Covenant, according to the pious example which had been set to all in authority by the magistrates and town-council of Edinburgh three days before. We had not, however, occasion to be long detained; for it was resolved, with a unanimous heart, that the provost should sign in the name of the town, and that the bailies and councillors should, in their own names, sign each for himself; so they came out, with the town-officers bearing their battle-axes before them, and the crafts, according to their privilege, followed them to the kirk.

The men of our parish went next; but on reaching the kirk-yard yett, it was manifest that, large as the ancient fabric was, it would not be able to receive a moité of the persons assembled. Godly Mr David Dickson, the minister, had, however, provided for this; and on one of the old tombs, on the south side of the kirk, he had ordered a table and chair to be placed, where that effectual preacher, Mr Livingstone, delivered a great sermon, – around him the multitude from the country parishes were congregated; but my father being well acquainted with Deacon Auld of the wrights, was invited by him to come into his seat in the kirk, where he carried me in with him, and we heard Mr Dickson himself.

Of the strain and substance of his discourse I remember nothing, save only the earnestness of his manner; but well do I remember the awful sough and silence that was in the kirk when, at the conclusion of the sermon, he prepared to read the words of the Covenant.