Claverhouse | Page 8

with the same horror that he had shown at the ritual of Laud. Milton protested that the "new Presbyter is but old Priest writ large." Within only four years of the outbreak of the civil war no less than sixteen religious sects were found existing in open defiance of the principles of faith which that war was pledged to uphold. One common bond, indeed, united these sects in sympathy: one and all repudiated with equal energy the authority of the Church to prescribe a fixed form of worship: a national Church was, in their eyes, as odious and impossible a tyranny as the divine right of kings. But this common hatred of the interference of a Mother Church could not teach them tolerance for each other. Cardinal Newman has described the enthusiasm of Saint Anthony as calm, manly, and magnanimous, full of affectionate loyalty to the Church and the Truth. "It was not," he says, "vulgar, bustling, imbecile, unstable, undutiful." The religious enthusiasm of the two nations at this time, though at heart sincere and just, was unfortunately in its public aspect the exact opposite of Saint Anthony's. There was the essential great meaning of the matter, to borrow Carlyle's words, but there were also the mean, peddling details. It was the misfortune of many, of three kings of England among the number, that the latter should seem the most vital of the two. Presbyterian and Independent, Leveller and Baptist, Brownist and Fifth Monarchy Man, one and all stood up and made proclamation, crying, "Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth; for I am God, and there is none else." Well might Cromwell adjure them in that war of words which followed the sterner conflict on the heights of Dunbar, "I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken."
Though the number and variety of the dissentients in England were far greater than in Scotland, where the bulk both of the people and the clergy stood firmly within the old Presbyterian lines, yet in the latter country the separation was far more bitter and productive of far more violent results. In the former the strong hand of Cromwell, himself an Independent, but keen to detect a useful man under every masquerade of worship, and prompt to use him, kept the sects from open disruption. Quarrel as they might among themselves, there was one stronger than them all, and they knew it. The old Committee of Estates, originally appointed by the Parliament as a permanent body in 1640, was not strong enough to control the spirit it had helped to raise: it was not even strong enough to keep order within its own house. The new Committee was but a tool in the hands of Argyle. The old Presbyterian viewed with equal dislike the sectaries of Cromwell, the men of the Engagement which had cost Hamilton his head, and the Malignants who had gathered to the standard of Montrose. The Resolutioner, who wished to repeal the Act of Classes, was too lukewarm: the Remonstrant was too violent. It was by this last body that the troubles we have now to examine came upon Scotland.
After the collapse of Hamilton's army at Uttoxeter in August 1648, a body of Covenanters assembled at Mauchline, in Ayrshire, to protest against the leniency with which the Engagement had been treated in the Estates, where, indeed, a considerable minority had been inclined openly to countenance it. Their leader was at first the Earl of Eglinton, a staunch Covenanting lord; but as they gathered strength Argyle joined them with his Highlanders, and the command soon passed into his hands. The Protesters marched upon Edinburgh. In an attempt to take Stirling Castle they were defeated by Sir George Monro with a division of Hamilton's army which had not crossed the border; but Argyle had better tools to work with than the claymores of his Highlanders. He opened negotiations with Cromwell, who led an army in person into Scotland, renewed the Covenant, laid before the Estates (the new Estates of Argyle and his party) certain considerations, as he diplomatically called them, demanding, among other things, that no person accessory to the Engagement should be hereafter employed in any public place or trust. The Committee were only too willing to have the support of Cromwell to what they themselves so vehemently desired. Two Acts were quickly passed: one reversing many of the acts of its predecessors and confirming the considerations: the other, known in history as the Act of Classes, defining the various misdemeanours which were to exclude men from sitting in Parliament or holding any public office, for a period measured by their offences, and practically to be determined by the judicatories of the Kirk.
This Mauchline Convention was popularly