Claverhouse | Page 8

England ratified the
Solemn League and Covenant of Scotland. Over the wild time which
followed it will be unnecessary for our purpose to linger. The work was
done: then followed the reaction. In both countries the oppressed
became in turn the oppressors. The champions of religious liberty
became as bigoted and intolerant as those whose intolerance and
bigotry had first goaded them into rebellion. The old Presbyterian saw
the rise of new modes of worship 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