Ringan Gilhaize, or, The Covenanters

by John Galt

  CHAPTER LXXIII

  Being wounded, as I have rehearsed, at Drumclog, and carried to my ownhouse, Sarah Lochrig, while she grieved with a mother's grief for theloss of our first-born and the mournful fate of my honest brother,advanced my cure more by her loving ministrations to my aching mind,than by the medicaments that were applied to the bodily wound, in somuch that something like a dawn of comfort was vouchsafed to me.

  Our parish was singularly allowed to remain unmolested when, after thewoful day of Bothwell-brigg, Claverhouse came to ravage the shire ofAyr, and to take revenge for the discomfiture which he had suffered, inhis endeavour to disturb the worship and sacrament at Loudon-hill.Still, however, at times clouds overcame my spirit; and one night mydaughter Margaret had a remarkable dream, which taught us to expect someparticular visitation.

  It was surely a mysterious reservation for the greater calamity whichensued, that while the vial of wrath was pouring out around us, my houseshould have been allowed to remain so unmolested. Often indeed when inour nightly worship I returned thanks for a blessing so wonderful inthat time of general woe, has a strange fear fallen upon me and I havetrembled in thought, as if the thing for which I sent up the incense ofmy thanks to heaven, was a device of the Enemy of man, to make me thinkmyself more deserving of favour than the thousands of covenantedbrethren who then, in Scotland, were drinking of the bitterness of thesuffering. But in proportion as I was then spared, the heavierafterwards was my trial.

  Among the prisoners taken at Bothwell-brigg were many persons from ourparish and neighbourhood, who, after their unheard-of sufferings amongthe tombs and graves of the Greyfriars church-yard at Edinburgh, wereallowed to return home. Though in this there was a show of clemency, itwas yet but a more subtle method of the tyranny to reach new victims.For those honest men were not long home till grievous circuit-courtswere set agoing, to bring to trial not only all those who were atBothwell, or approved of that rising, but likewise those who had been atthe Pentland raid; and the better to ensure condemnation and punishment,sixteen persons were cited from every parish to bear witness as to who,among their neighbours, had been out at Bothwell, or had harboured anyof those who were there. The wicked curates made themselves, in thisgrievous matter, engines of espionage, by giving in the names of those,their parishioners, whom they knew could bear the best testimony.

  Thus it was, that many who had escaped from the slaughter--from thehorrors of the Greyfriars church-yard--and from the drowning in theOrkneys,--and, like myself, had resumed their quiet country labour, weremarked out for destruction. For the witnesses cited to Ayr against uswere persons who had been released from the Greyfriars church-yard, as Ihave said, and who, being honest men, could not, when put to theiroaths, but bear witness to the truth of the matters charged against us.And nothing surely could better show the devilish spirit with whichthose in authority were at that time actuated, nor the unchristiannature of the prelacy, than that the prisoners should thus have been setfree to be made the accusers of their neighbours; and that the curates,men professing to be ministers of the Gospel, should have been such fitinstruments for such unheard-of machinations. But to hasten forward tothe fate and issue of this self-consuming tyranny, I shall leave allgeneralities, and proceed with the events of my own case; and, in doingso, I shall endeavour what is in me to inscribe the particulars with asteady hand; for I dare no longer now trust myself with looking to theright or to the left of the field of my matter. I shall, however, try tonarrate things just as they happened, leaving the courteous reader tojudge what passed at the time in the suffocating throbs wherewith myheart was then affected.

  It was the last day of February, of the year following Bothwell-brigg,that, in consequence of these subtle and wicked devices, I was taken up.I had, from my wound, been in an ailing state for many months, and couldthen do little in the field; but the weather for the season was mild,and I had walked out in the tranquillity of a sunny afternoon to give myson Joseph some instructions in the method of ploughing; for, though hewas then but in his thirteenth year, he was a by-common stripling incapacity and sense. He was indeed a goodly plant; and I had hoped, in myold age, to have sat beneath the shelter of his branches; but the axe ofthe feller was untimely laid to the root, and it was too soon, with allthe blossoms of the fairest promise, cast down into the dust. But mytask now is of vengeance and justice, not of sorrowing, and I must moresternly grasp the iron pen.

  A party of soldiers, who had been that afternoon sent out to bring incertain persons (among whom I was one) in a list malignantly transmittedto the Archbishop of Glasgow, by Andrew Dornoch, the prelatic usurper ofour minister's place, as I was leaving the field where my son wasploughing, saw me from the road, and ordered me to halt till they cameup, or they would fire at me.

  It would have been unavailing of me, in the state I then was, to haveattempted to flee, so I halted; and, after some entreaty with thesoldiers, got permission from them to have my horse and cart yoket, as Iwas not very well, and so to be carried to Ayr. And here I should notedown that, although there was in general a coarse spirit among theKing's forces, yet in these men there was a touch of common humanity.This was no doubt partly owing to their having been some monthsquartered in Irvine, where they became naturally softened by thefriendly spirit of the place. It was not, however, ordained that men somerciful should be permitted to remain long there.

  As it was an understood thing that the object of the trials to which theCovenanters were in this manner subjected was chiefly to raise money andforfeitures for the rapacious Duke of Lauderdale, then in the rule andpower of the council at Edinburgh, my being carried away prisoner to Ayrawakened less grief and consternation in my family than might have beenexpected from the event. Through the humane permission of my guard,having a little time to confer with Sarah Lochrig before going away, itwas settled between us that she should gather together what money shecould procure, either by loan or by selling our corn and cattle, inorder to provide for the payment of the fine that we counted would belaid upon us. I was then taken to the tolbooth of Ayr, where many othercovenanted brethren were lying to await the proceedings of thecircuit-court, which was to be opened by the Lord Kelburne from Glasgow,on the second day after I had been carried thither.

  Among the prisoners were several who knew me well, and who condoled asChristians with me for the loss I had sustained at Bothwell; so, but forthe denial of the fresh and heavenly air, and the freedom of the fields,the time of our captivity might have been a season of much solace: forthey were all devout men, and the tolbooth, instead of resounding withthe imprecations of malefactors, became melodious with the voice ofpsalms and of holy communion, and the sweet intercourse of spirits thatdelighted in one another for the constancy with which they had bornetheir testimony.

  When the Lord Kelburne arrived, on the first day that the court opened,I was summoned to respond to the offences laid to my charge, if anycharge of offence it may be called, wherein the purpose of the court wasseemingly to search out opinions that might serve as matter to justifythe infliction of the fines,--the whole end and intent of those circuitsnot being to award justice, but to find the means of extorting money. Insome respects, however, I was more mercifully dealt by than many of myfellow-sufferers; but in order to show how, even in my case, the lawswere perverted, I will here set down a brief record of my examination ortrial, as it was called.