by John Buchan
For these barbarities, sanctioned and inspired by the Kirk, there can be no defence. It is hard to understand the view taken by some apologists that the Irish were nameless savages, who by their crimes had forfeited all consideration from mankind. It is a royalist historian who has left the most hostile account of them. “The Irish in particular were too cruel; for it was everywhere observed they did ordinarily kill all they could be master of, without any motion of pity, or any consideration of humanity. Nay, it seemed to them there were no distinctions between a man and a beast, for they killed men ordinarily with no more feeling of compassion, and with the same careless neglect that they kill a hare or capon for their supper. And they were also without all shame, most brutally given to uncleanness and filthy lust; as for excessive drinking, when they came where it might be had there were no limits to their beastly appetites, as for godless avarice and merciless oppression and plundering of the poor labourer. Of these two crying sins the Scots were as guilty as they.” It is a grave indictment, but it could be written of most armies of the time, and Patrick Gordon, who, as a decent Aberdonian, disliked the rude western clans, was a stern critic. No doubt it was brutal warfare, and in an army of volunteers discipline must have been hard to enforce. The Irish, who were mainly Scottish Macdonalds, slew fiercely in battle, but so did the Covenant troops at Philiphaugh and Carbisdale, so did the Campbells when Argyll carried fire and sword through the north, and so would have the Covenanters in the first Bishops’ War if Montrose had not restrained them. On at least two occasions, Aberdeen and Inverlochy, they gave little or no quarter, but there is no evidence that they murdered in cold blood prisoners who surrendered after an action. Nor is there any record, except for the sack of Aberdeen, of the slaughter of women which stains the fair fame of their opponents, both Covenanters and Cromwellians. Our evidence shows that they were cheerful ruffians, who loved fighting for fighting’s sake, and cracked jokes in the thick of a battle. As for the women, no doubt they were often concubines rather than wives, and no doubt they stole; but marriage lines were not universal in the Covenant’s armies, and Leven’s female followers thieved like daws. Nor can we place the two sets of outrages in different moral categories, because the Covenanters were inspired by a religious creed. It makes small difference in the guilt of murder whether the murderer slays because his blood is hot in battle and he likes it, or whether he massacres at leisure because he is playing at being an early Israelite. The motive of both clergy and laity — and their only defence — was naked fear, and there is no such begetter of cruelty. Legends, born partly of the Irish rebellion and partly of rumours from the north, had magnified the Irish into monsters of terror; the same rumours were to be rife later about Cromwell’s English soldiers — with more reason, perhaps, for some of them had been at Wexford and Drogheda. Also the theocracy knew that it was fighting for its life.
1645-46 Oct.-Jan.
The roll of captives was long. Some of Montrose’s closest friends, like Lord Ogilvy, Sir Robert Spottiswoode, Sir William Rollo, and Nathaniel Gordon, were in enemy hands, having surrendered on promise of quarter. Leslie marched slowly through the Lothians towards Glasgow, where a provisional committee dealt with the prisoners. Meantime the two Irish officers, O’Cahan and Lachlan, had been hanged on the castle hill of Edinburgh — the last we shall hear of two very gallant gentlemen. The royalist leaders were all reserved for death, though the lay members of the court were disposed to be merciful. On the 20th of October, on the date and in the place which Montrose had appointed for the Parliament, the Committee of the Estates sat in judgment. The first to be dealt with was Sir William Rollo, whose brother had married Argyll’s sister. For all his lameness he had never left Montrose’s side, and he had been one of his most trusted brigadiers. He was beheaded at the Mercat Cross on the 28th. On the following day there died Sir Philip Nisbet, who had fought with Rupert and with Montrose on the English Borders, and young Ogilvy of Inverquharity, a boy in his teens, a “lovely young youth,” said the Glasgow bailie who presided at his execution. The lay Covenanters had their scruples over these executions, and Mr. Robert Baillie remembered with disquiet that “to this day no man in England has been executed for bearing arms against the Parliament.” But the ministers were inexorable. “The work gangs bonnily on,” was their comment. Only by blood could the wrath of the strange deity they worshipped be appeased.
1646 January
Owing to a raid threatened by Montrose the rest of the executions were postponed. They began again in St. Andrews after Christmas. The Kirk was in terror lest Parliament should be too merciful, and appeals flowed in from synods and presbyteries. Galloway prayed that the “sword of justice may be impartially drawn against those persons now in bonds who have lifted up their hands against the Lord, the sworn Covenant, and this afflicted Kirk.” “We need not lay before your honours,” said the voice of Dumfries, “what the Lord calls for at your hands in the point of justice, nor what you owe unto the many thousands of His people.” “We are confident,” wrote the gentle ministers of the Merse, “that your hearts will not faint nor your hands fail until you have cut off the horns of the wicked.” Wariston excelled himself, for he proved to his own satisfaction that past lukewarmness in bringing malefactors to justice” had provoked God’s two great servants against them, the sword and the pestilence, which has ploughed up the land with deep furrows.” The delay, according to the Commission of the General Assembly, was “displeasing unto the supreme judge of the world, and grievous unto the hearts of the Lord’s people.”
The Lord’s people were soon to be comforted, for the Estates set to work in earnest. But meantime one of their chief victims escaped. Lord Ogilvy could look for no mercy, for his family were the pet aversion of Argyll, and during his short three weeks of liberty he had been the right hand of the king’s captain-general. But he was a cousin of Lindsay and akin, on the maternal side, to the Hamiltons, so he was permitted the last consolation of a visit from his mother, his wife, and his sister. He was sick in bed when the ladies were admitted in the dusk of a December evening. Adopting Lady Nithsdale’s device of a later day, his sister put on his nightcap and got into his bed, while he dressed himself in her clothes. When the guards entered, they found three tearful women taking farewell of the doomed prisoner, and conducted them to the prison gate. Horses were waiting close at hand, and Ogilvy galloped across Fife to join Inchbrakie in Menteith. Argyll would have visited his wrath on the heroic lady, but the Hamilton influence was strong enough to save her from punishment.
There was no hope for the others. They were tried, not as the law enjoined by their peers or by the whole Parliament, but by a self-appointed committee. Some of the judges voted with qualifications, but the verdict was certain. Hartfell indeed was pardoned. He was disliked by the Hamiltons, and Argyll owed them a tit-for-tat for their clemency towards the Ogilvys. On January 20, 1646, the “Maiden,” which had been brought from Dundee, was set up at the cross of St. Andrews, and the ancient city saw again “the auld rusty lass linking at a bluidy hairst.” That day Nathaniel Gordon, Andrew Guthrie — a son of the Bishop of Moray — and Sir Robert Spottiswoode paid the last penalty. Three days later died William Murray, a boy of nineteen, whom the half-hearted pleas of his Covenanting brother, Tullibardine, could not save. Mr. Andrew Cant and Mr. Robert Blair attended the prisoners in their last hours, and found a penitent in Nathaniel Gordon, who was accordingly released on the scaffold from an old sentence of excommunication; for that stout adventurer had a good many dark patches in his career. But with the others the ministers did not succeed. Andrew Guthrie declared that he could not conceive a greater honour than to meet an honourable death in so just a cause. The boy, William Murray, confessed his private sins, but denied that he was a traitor; his death, he said, was a new distinction for the house of Tullibardine.
The case of Sir Robert Spottiswoode had given qualms to many of his judges. He was an old man; he was a learned lawyer and a ripe scholar; he had been Lord Presiden
t of the Court of Session; he was a non-combatant, and had surrendered on a promise of quarter to Lanark, whom he had succeeded as the king’s secretary for Scotland. There was nothing in his life which his enemies could cavil at. While the Covenant still kept up a pretence of royalism and legality, his execution was plain murder. He was not permitted to read an address from the scaffold, and replied to the importunities of Mr. Robert Blair that his blasphemous outpourings were abominable to God. His last words were: “Merciful Jesus, gather my soul unto Thy saints and martyrs, who have run before me in this race.”
The night before his death Sir Robert wrote a letter of farewell to Montrose, which breathes a spirit of Christian forbearance unhappily lacking in those who had the name of religion always on their lips. He commends to the viceroy’s care his orphan children and nephews, and hopes to do more for the king’s cause by his death than by his life. “One thing I most humbly recommend to your Excellence that, as you have always done hitherto, so you will continue by fair and gentle carriage to win the people’s affection for their prince, rather than to imitate the barbarous inhumanity of your adversaries.” The advice was nobly followed. There were no reprisals on the Covenant prisoners confined in the castle of Blair. “Never,” ran Montrose’s address to his troops, “shall they induce us to rival their crimes, or seek to outdo them except in valour and renown.” In a great civil struggle neither side has a monopoly of the virtues. There were many in the Covenant ranks in whom the fire of religious faith had burned up all human fears, and who were to give honourable proof of the manhood which was in them. It was a time of darkness and suffering, when men’s minds were turning from the bleak world of sense to the dream of a better world beyond the grave, and in such seasons the homely virtues on which depends the conduct of our mortal life are apt to be forgotten. This forgetfulness was most marked in those who lived most constantly in the contemplation of a promised immortality; and in the matter of human charity and mercy there can be little comparison for the unbiased historian between the two parties. Montrose’s army was guilty of acts of cruelty in hot blood, but never at its worst did it approach the consistent, deadly barbarity of the Kirk and the Estates. Twenty years later, when the Covenant was the losing side, and the fanatics who now ruled in Scotland had been driven to the mosses, there must have been many quiet, old-fashioned folk in the land, who, casting back their memories to the days after Philiphaugh, saw in the change the slow grinding of the mills of God. In one respect the later persecution, bad and indefensible as it was, fell short in grossness of the earlier, for its perpetrators in their evil work did not profane the name of the meek gospel of Christ.
1645 October
II
For Montrose defeat was only a spur to fresh effort. The flexible steel of his courage could not be bent or broken. From his refuge in Atholl he sent Erskine to recruit in Mar, and Douglas and Airlie to raise the royalists of Angus. He made a further effort to get into touch with Alasdair, and wrote again to Digby, begging for horse. In Atholl the country-folk were busy with the late harvest, but the name of the viceroy was a spell, and 400 followed him. But his principal aim, as ever, was the Gordon cavalry. He hastened over the Grampians, and early in October was at Drumminor castle, near Strathbogie, where Aboyne, his late grievances apparently forgotten, joined him with 1,500 foot and 300 horse. A less welcome recruit appeared in the person of the mischievous Lord Lewis. There followed news of the father. After Kilsyth Huntly had removed himself from the Strathnaver bogs, and was now at his castle of Gight. He sent Montrose a tepid message of good wishes, and spoke nobly of what he and his clan would still do for the king. For the moment it looked as if the chief of the Gordons had learned wisdom in exile.
Meanwhile Middleton, with 800 of Leslie’s horse, had marched north to the Aberdeenshire lowlands, and was now lying at Turriff. Montrose had two alternatives before him. He could attack Middleton with his new army and settle with him before turning to Leslie. Such a course would protect the Gordon lands, and might keep Huntly in good humour. On the other hand, his friends were prisoners in Glasgow, and unless he rescued them forthwith they would perish. Leslie, too, was the more formidable foe, and it was always Montrose’s habit to take the greater danger first. Besides, Leslie lay between him and the Border, and on the Border he still cherished vain dreams of meeting the king. Accordingly he gave marching orders for the south.
Lewis Gordon, with such of his clan as he could induce to follow him, deserted on the second morning. Aboyne remained for another day’s march, but peremptory letters arrived from his father to recall him. Huntly’s insane jealousy had revived, and he would neither fight himself nor permit his men to fight under another leader. Montrose sent Lord Reay and young Irvine of Drum to reason with him, but they were unable to shake his purpose. The precious days were slipping past in this barren diplomacy, and on the 22nd of October Montrose, then at the Castleton of Braemar, decided to advance without the Gordons. That night he lay in Glenshee, and on the 23rd was on Lochearnside, where he may have heard that the first executions of his friends had taken place. He was momentarily cheered by a message from Aboyne that he hoped soon to join him, and, as he waited for the Gordons, Ogilvy of Powrie appeared with other news. The king had at last made a desperate effort to fulfil his promise, and on the 14th of October Digby and Langdale had set out from Welbeck with 1,500 horse. Montrose was summoned to join hands with them on the Border, and he at once sent off word to Huntly and Aboyne. But, as he waited, there presently arrived melancholy tidings. On the 15th Digby and Langdale had scattered Poyntz’s infantry at Sherburn, but were in turn surprised and driven north in confusion to Skipton. Digby himself, with Nithsdale and Carnwath, resolved to make a wild dash for the Border, and, in spite of a defeat at Carlisle, pushed on across Esk with a small party of horse. On the 22nd or 23rd he was as far north as Dumfries, but he could not stay. He had no news of Montrose, and far too much news of Leslie; he began his retreat, his men deserted into the Cumberland hills, and he himself was compelled to flee to the Isle of Man. On the day that Montrose left Braemar, Digby’s raid had come to an inglorious end.
1645 Oct.-Nov.
Montrose’s one object was now to prevent further executions, so he marched south into the Lennox, where lay his own lands of Mugdock, now transferred by Parliament to Argyll. He had a force of some 1,500, mostly Atholl men and Farquharsons, including 300 horse raised by Erskine and Ogilvy, and his appearance so near Glasgow did indeed procure a postponement of the bloody work at the Mercat Cross. He took up his quarters at Buchanan on Lochlomondside — then the seat of the Covenanting Sir George Buchanan, but now the home of Montrose’s descendants — and for a week or so threatened Glasgow. Leslie had 3,000 troops in or about the city, and Montrose, with his raw levies, did not dare to meet that veteran horse in open battle. It was a hopeless form of war, as he soon realized, and early in November he passed into Menteith. Presently he made a journey into Angus, from which he was hunted back by Middleton’s dragoons. Historians have assumed that he went to attend his wife’s funeral, but, since Lady Montrose lived till 1648, that explanation must be abandoned.
He returned to Atholl to find that his brother-in-law and most trusted adviser, the old Lord Napier, had died at Fincastle in his absence. Napier was over seventy years of age, and had spent his long and blameless life in the pursuit of the liberal arts and the service of his fellow-men. He was the wisest head in the Scotland of his day, a staunch Presbyterian, an upholder of popular liberties, an exponent of the unpopular doctrine of toleration — the type of what the Covenanters might have been in happier circumstances. About the same time Montrose received a letter from Charles, written from Newark on 3rd November, which may have done something to sweeten his memory of Digby’s failure. “As it hath been none of my least afflictions and misfortunes,” the king wrote, “that you have had hitherto no assistance from me, so I conjure you to believe that nothing but impossibility hath been the cause of it. . . . Be assured that your less p
rosperous fortune is so far from lowering my estimation of you, that it will rather cause my affection to kythe (show) the clearlier to you. . . . Upon all occasions, and in all fortunes, you shall ever find me your most assured, faithful, constant friend.”
1645 December
From his old friend’s grave Montrose turned again to the weary business of chaffering with Huntly. He sent Sir John Dalziel to him to ask for a conference; but Huntly, as shy as he was vain, seemed to fear to meet his rival and declined. Montrose resolved to see him at all costs, and early in December set off again from Atholl across the hills. It was now midwinter — a worse cold, says Wishart, than his generation had ever known. A bitter frost coated everything with ice, but did not make the streams the easier to cross, and that December passage of the barrier mountains of Esk and Dee lived in the memory of men who were no strangers to hardships. The feet of the infantry were clogged with snow, the horses floundered in half-frozen bogs, or crashed through the ice of mountain pools. Christmas that year, which saw the death sentences of his friends at St. Andrews, found Montrose pursuing the evasive Huntly from one refuge to another. He looked for him in Strathbogie, but Huntly fled to the Bog of Gight. Thither Montrose followed, and the Gordon, at bay, was obliged to receive him. Under the spell of the viceroy’s grace and courtesy the cloud of suspicion seemed to lift. Huntly was roused to interest. He had 1,400 foot and 600 horse. These, combined with Montrose’s 800 foot and 200 horse, would make a formidable army. He promised his support in the northern war, and offered to lead his men through the lowlands of Moray to the siege of Inverness, while Montrose marched down Strathspey. The capture of that town might fix Seaforth’s loyalty, which once more was up for auction. Aboyne and Lord Lewis wished, in Wishart’s phrase, “damnation to themselves” if they failed the king in the future. They were to do their best to earn it.
