Complete Fictional Works of John Buchan (Illustrated)

by John Buchan

  It is the last we shall see of Argyll. What he thought in that moment we can only guess. In his letter to Lothian, written on the day of the execution, he reflects that Montrose had “got some resolution how to go out of this world, but nothing at all how to enter into another.” But there must have been more in that subtle mind than this pious platitude, for in Montrose he looked upon his stark opposite, and in his enemy’s downfall he could read the presage of his own. If Montrose had failed, so had he, and with a far more complete failure. Of all that he had built nothing had any hope of permanence. The theocracy on which his power was founded was crumbling beneath him. A mind of his calibre cannot have been bemused by the ministerial dreams of Presbyterian dominance in Britain; he had fleeting visions of political moderation and religious tolerance which were denied to his colleagues. But, playing with the skill of the adroit politician for immediate gains, he had been too successful; he had won in the short game only to find that his victory made the larger purpose for ever impossible. The Solemn League hung round his neck like a millstone. He had summoned spirits from the deep which he could not control. He had allied himself with the English Parliament, and discovered too late that he was being ground between rival fanaticisms. That very year he was to call his associates “madmen,” and for the rest of his life, in his intrigues with Charles and his intrigues with Cromwell, he was to be no more than a distracted politician, without creed or comfort. Nothing remained to him but the sombre religion which he had acquired long before at the Glasgow Assembly, and which at any rate taught him how to die.

  As Montrose passed the cross he saw the new gallows standing ready to receive him — that gallows which was to earn the name of the “Ministers’ Altar.” About seven o’clock he reached the Tolbooth. His bonds were cut, and as he descended from the cart he gave the hangman the customary drink-money. Scarcely was he inside the prison when a deputation from the Estates, with its retinue of ministers, arrived to interrogate him. He refused to answer, for indeed he was very weary with travel and sickness, and at last his tormentors withdrew. His parting words to them were a jest. “The compliments they had put upon him that day,” he said, “had proved something tedious.” He was still young — not yet thirty-eight.

  II

  Next day, being the Sabbath, there was a great preaching. From every pulpit in the city the clergy thundered against the excommunicate, James Graham, and no less against the mob which had refused to stone him. The prisoner was visited by a deputation of ministers and members of Parliament, among them Sir James Stewart of Coltness, the Provost of Edinburgh, who was responsible for the details of the execution, and who, though a staunch Covenanter, had protested against its barbarity—”so much butchery and dismembering.” They got no satisfaction. He told them, in the words of the Wigton Papers, that “if they thought they had affronted him the day before by carrying him in a cart they were much mistaken, for he thought it the most honourable and joyful journey ever he made; God having all the while most comfortably manifested Himself to him, and furnished him with resolution to overlook the reproaches of men, and to behold Him for whose cause he suffered.”

  He was given no peace. At eight o’clock on the Monday morning his persecutors returned to the attack. Mr. James Guthrie, Mr. Mungo Law, Mr. Robert Traill, and others were no doubt bound in duty to visit an erring member of their own communion, and they hoped to extract some confession from him which could be used to efface the profound impression that his appearance had made on the people of Edinburgh. They charged him at a venture with imaginary personal vices, of which he had none. Then they accused him of taking up arms against his country, of using Irish troops, and of shedding Scottish blood. He replied, as Wodrow’s informant told him, in a manner “too airy and volage, not so much suiting the gravity of a nobleman.” Using their own armoury, he reminded them that David, in the cave of Adullam, had gathered together an odd fighting force; and as for bloodshed, he declared “if it could have been thereby prevented, he would rather it had all come out of his own veins.” Lastly, they charged him with a breach of the Covenant, and his answer was ready. “The Covenant which I took I own it and adhere to it. Bishops, I care not for them. I never intended to advance their interests. But when the king had granted you all your desires, and you were every one sitting under his vine and his fig tree — that then you should have taken a party in England by the hand, and entered into a League and Covenant with them against the king, was the thing I judged my duty to oppose to the yondmost.” Mr. James Guthrie then touched on the excommunication, and said that since the prisoner showed himself obdurate it must remain. With the strange arrogance of his kind, he had the “fearful apprehension that what is bound on earth God will bind in heaven.” Montrose replied gently that he would gladly be reconciled to the Church of Scotland, but that he could not call that his sin which he accounted to have been his duty.

  When the ministers left him he was given a little bread dipped in ale for his breakfast, but he was not allowed a barber to shave him. At ten o’clock he was taken before the bar of Parliament to hear his sentence. It was common knowledge that he had acted under the king’s credentials, and therefore nothing in the nature of a trial could be allowed on the question of the Carbisdale campaign, since it was difficult for Loudoun and Argyll to deny a mandate for which they had the royal evidence. The Chancellor seems to have harped on the incidents of the Highland wars, mingled with violent denunciations of the viceroy’s person. Since his arrival in Edinburgh Montrose had been provided, probably by the Napier ladies, with clothes worthy of his rank. When he stood up before his accusers in Parliament, he wore a suit of fine black cloth, with a richly laced scarlet cloak to his knee; on his head was a black beaver hat with a silver band; and on his legs stockings of carnation silk. His bearing was modest but “unmoved and undaunted”; his face was haggard, unshaven, and very pale, and he often sighed. He replied to his accusers in a speech, happily preserved, in which he repeated the substance of his many declarations — his loyalty to the true Covenant, his abhorrence of the Solemn League. “How far religion has been advanced by it this poor distressed kingdom can witness.” War could not be waged without the shedding of blood, but he had repressed all disorders as soon as they were discovered. “Never was any man’s blood spilt but in battle; and even then, many thousand lives have I preserved. And I dare here avow, in the presence of God, that never a hair of Scotsman’s head that I could save fell to the ground.” His last campaign had been “by his Majesty’s just commands, in order to accelerate the treaty betwixt him and you: his Majesty knowing that, whenever he had ended with you, I was ready to retire upon his call.” He asked to be judged “by the laws of God, the laws of Nature and nations, and the laws of this land.” But he knew that the plea was vain, so he appealed to a higher tribunal—”to the righteous Judge of the world, who one day must be your Judge and mine, and who always gives out righteous judgments.” He had said his say; he had fulfilled the proud boast which he had made to Parliament nine years before: “My resolution is to carry along fidelity and honour to the grave.” His judges had no answer. Loudoun replied with abuse, and Wariston read the sentence, which Montrose heard on his knees. We are told that he lifted up his head as the grim words were uttered, and looked Wariston calmly in the face.

  He was taken back to the Tolbooth, where all day he was tormented by ministers. According to one account, he had a talk apart with Mr. Robert Baillie; if so, that honest and perplexed soul can scarcely have been happy about the business, and it is remarkable that in his voluminous writings he never mentions this final scene. To the magistrates who visited him he said: “I think it a greater honour to have my head standing on the ports of this town for this quarrel, than to have my picture in the king’s bedchamber. I am beholden to you that, lest my loyalty should be forgotten, you have appointed five of the most eminent towns to bear witness of it to posterity.” The captain of the town guard was the famous Major Weir, the warlock of Edinburgh legend, who a
fterwards expiated his many crimes at the stake. By his orders the guard were always in the prisoner’s room, and filled it with tobacco smoke, which Montrose, unlike his father, could not abide. None of his friends were allowed to come near him. Nevertheless, we are told, in spite of fever and wounds and the imminence of death, he continued his devotions unperturbed, and slept as peacefully as a child. That last night, like Sir Walter Raleigh, and much in the same strain, he, who had so long forsaken the Muse, returned to his old love. These lines were written amid the smoke and wrangling of the guards:

  “Let them bestow on every airth a limb,

  Then open all my veins, that I may swim

  To Thee, my Maker, in that crimson lake;

  Then place my parboiled head upon a stake,

  Scatter my ashes, strew them in the air. —

  Lord! Since Thou knowest where all these atoms are,

  I’m hopeful Thou’lt recover once my dust,

  And confident Thou’lt raise me with the just.”

  On Tuesday morning, the 21st of May, he rose for the last time. Like the Spartans before Thermopylæ, he combed his long locks for death. The usual concourse of ministers and politicians was in his cell, and Wariston reproved him for his care of the body. “My head is still my own,” was his answer. “To-night, when it will be yours, treat it as you please.” Presently he heard the drums beating to arms, and was told that the troops were assembling to prevent any attempt at a rescue. He laughed and cried: “What, am I still a terror to them? Let them look to themselves; my ghost will haunt them.”

  He was taken about two in the afternoon by the bailies down the High Street to the Mercat Cross, which stood between the Tolbooth and the Tron Kirk — that dolorous road which Argyll and Wariston and James Guthrie were themselves to travel. He still wore the brave clothes in which he had confronted Parliament; nay, more, he had ribbons on his shoes and fine white gloves on his hands. James Fraser, who saw him, wrote: “He stept along the streets with so great state, and there appeared in his countenance so much beauty, majesty, and gravity as amazed the beholder, and many of his enemies did acknowledge him to be the bravest subject in the world, and in him a gallantry that braced all that crowd.” Another eyewitness, John Nicoll, the notary public, thought him more like a bridegroom than a criminal. An Englishman among the spectators, a Commonwealth agent, wrote an account to his masters. “It is absolutely certain that he hath overcome more men by his death, in Scotland, than he would have done if he had lived. For I never saw a more sweeter carriage in a man in all my life.”

  The scaffold was a great four-square platform, breast-high, and on it a 30-foot gallows had been erected. On the platform stood the ministers, Mr. Robert Traill and Mr. Mungo Law, still bent on getting a word of confession or penitence. They were disappointed, for Montrose did not look at them. He was not allowed to address the mob, which surged up against the edge of the scaffold — a privilege hitherto granted to the meanest criminals; but he spoke apart to the magistrates and to a few of the nearer spectators. A boy called Robert Gordon sat by and took down his words in some kind of shorthand, and the crowd, with that decency which belongs to all simple folk, kept a reverent silence. The Estates were afraid lest he should attack the king and spoil their game, but he spoke no word of bitterness or reproach; rather — splendide mendax — he praised Charles’s justice. It was the testament of a man conscious of his mortal frailty, but confident in the purity of his purpose and the mercy of his God.

  “I am sorry if this manner of my end be scandalous to any good Christian here. Doth it not often happen to the righteous according to the way of the unrighteous? Doth not sometimes a just man perish in his righteousness, and a wicked man prosper in his wickedness and malice? They who know me should not disesteem me for this. Many greater than I have been dealt with in this kind. But I must not say but that all God’s judgments are just, and this measure, for my private sins, I acknowledge to be just with God, and wholly submit myself to Him.

  “But, in regard of man, I may say they are but instruments. God forgive them, and I forgive them. They have oppressed the poor and violently perverted judgment and justice, but He that is higher than they will reward them.

  “What I did in this kingdom was in obedience to the most just commands of my sovereign, and in his defence, in the day of his distress, against those who rose up against him. I acknowledge nothing, but fear God and honour the king, according to the commandments of God and the just laws of Nature and nations. I have not sinned against man, but against God; and with Him there is mercy, which is the ground of my drawing near unto Him.

  “It is objected against me by many, even good people, that I am under the censure of the Church. This is not my fault, seeing it is only for doing my duty, by obeying my prince’s most just commands, for religion, his sacred person, and authority. Yet I am sorry they did excommunicate me; and in that which is according to God’s laws, without wronging my conscience or allegiance, I desire to be relaxed. If they will not do it, I appeal to God, who is the righteous Judge of the world, and will, I hope, be my Judge and Saviour.

  “It is spoken of me that I should blame the king. God forbid! For the late king, he lived a saint and died a martyr. I pray God I may end as he did. If ever I would wish my soul in another man’s stead, it should be in his. For his Majesty now living, never any people, I believe, might be more happy in a king. His commandments to me were most just, and I obeyed them. He deals justly with all men. I pray God he be so dealt withal that he be not betrayed under trust, as his father was.

  “I desire not to be mistaken, as if my carriage at this time, in relation to your ways, were stubborn. I do but follow the light of my conscience, my rule; which is seconded by the working of the Spirit of God that is within me. I thank Him I go to heaven with joy the way He paved for me. If He enable me against the fear of death, and furnish me with courage and confidence to embrace it even in its most ugly shape, let God be glorified in my end, though it were in my damnation. Yet I say not this out of any fear or mistrust, but out of my duty to God, and love to His people.

  “I have no more to say, but that I desire your charity and prayers. I shall pray for you all. I leave my soul to God, my service to my prince, my goodwill to my friends, my love and charity to you all. And thus briefly I have exonerated my conscience.”

  There is a tradition that during the morning there had been lowering thunder-clouds and flashes of lightning, but that as Montrose stood on the scaffold a burst of sunlight flooded the street. When he had finished speaking, he gave money to his executioner, and prayed silently for a little. His arms were pinioned, and he ascended the ladder with that stately carriage which had always marked him. His last words were: “God have mercy on this afflicted land!” Tears ran down the hangman’s face as he pushed him off, and we are told that a great sob broke from the crowd. They had cause to sob, for that day there was done to death such a man as his country has not seen again.

  According to the sentence, the body was cut down after three hours and the limbs distributed among the chief towns. The remains in Aberdeen must have caught the eye of Charles when he arrived a few weeks later. The trunk was buried beside the public gallows on the Boroughmuir. The head was placed on a spike on the west face of the Tolbooth, and eleven years later was taken down to make room for the head of Argyll.

  1661 May

  III

  There was to be another funeral besides that melancholy scene by lantern light among the marshes of the Boroughmuir. After the Restoration, one of Charles’s first acts was to give public burial to the remains of his great captain. On January 4, 1661, the Scots Parliament resolved on “an honourable reparation for that horrid and monstrous barbarity in the person of the great Marquis of Montrose.” The trunk was solemnly taken up from the Boroughmuir, and the limbs gathered from the several towns, a ceremony attended by “the honest people’s loud and joyful acclamations.” The remains, wrapped in fine linen in a noble coffin, lay in state in the Ab
bey Kirk of Holyrood from the 7th of January to the 11th of May. On the latter date took place the great procession to St. Giles’s. First rode Sir Harry Graham, Montrose’s half-brother, carrying the arms of his house. Then followed the Graham kinsmen with their different standards — Duntroon, Morphie, Cairnie, Monzie, Balgowan, Drums, Gorthie; and Black Pate of Inchbrakie, who had been with Montrose on the August afternoon in Atholl when the curtain rose upon his campaign, bore his insignia of the Garter. The body was carried by fourteen earls, including the men, or the sons of the men, who had betrayed him — such as Seaforth, and Home, and Roxburgh, as well as old opponents like Eglinton and Callander. Twelve viscounts and barons bore the pall, among them Strathnaver, the son of the Sutherland who had locked the gates of the north after Carbisdale. The young Montrose and his brother, Lord Robert, followed the coffin, and in the procession were representatives of almost every Scottish house. Argyll’s friend and Montrose’s brother-in-law, Rollo, was there, and Marischal, who had held Dunnottar against him, and Tweeddale, who had voted for his death. There, too, were the faithful friends who had not failed him — Maderty and Frendraught and the Marquis of Douglas, and old Napier’s grandson. The morning had been stormy, but as the procession moved from Holyrood the sun shone out brightly, as it had done at his end. The streets were lined with the trainbands, who fired their volleys, while the cannon thundered in reply from the castle, wherein lay Argyll under sentence of death. The nobles of Scotland, according to their wont, had moved over to the winning side. The pageant was an act of tardy justice, and it pleases by its dramatic contrasts, but it had small relevance to Montrose’s true achievement. He was as little kin to the rabble of the Restoration as to the rabble of the Covenant. The noble monument which now marks his grave in the ancient High Kirk of Scotland is a more fitting testimony, for it has been left to modern days to recognize the greatness of one who had no place in his generation.