Ringan Gilhaize, or, The Covenanters
by John Galt · English · Gutenberg #30749 · 948,583 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Ringan Gilhaize, or, The Covenanters
Author: John Galt
Release date: December 24, 2009 [eBook #30749]
Most recently updated: January 5, 2021
Language: English
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RINGAN GILHAIZE
Their constancy in torture and in death--
These on Tradition's tongue still live, these shall
On History's honest page be pictured bright
To latest times.
GRAHAME'S SABBATH.
Ringan
Gilhaize
OR
_THE COVENANTERS_
BY
JOHN GALT
AUTHOR OF
"_Annals of the Parish_," "_Sir Andrew Wylie_," "_The Entail_," _Etc._
EDITED, WITH AN INTRODUCTION, BY
Sir GEORGE DOUGLAS, Bart.
London
GREENING & CO., LTD.
20 Cecil Court, Charing Cross Road
1899
INTRODUCTION
A NEGLECTED MASTERPIECE
There have, of course, been many men of genius who have united with
great laxity and waywardness in their lives a high and perfect respect
for their art; but instances of the directly contrary practice are much
rarer, and among these there is probably none more prominent than that
of the author of _Ringan Gilhaize_. Gifted by nature with a faculty
which was at once brilliant, powerful and genial, he led an industrious
life, the upright and generally exemplary character of which has never
for a moment been called in question. But, in the sphere of his art, it
is as undeniable as unaccountable that he cared little or nothing to do
his best. The haps or whims of the moment seem, indeed, to have governed
his production with an influence as of stars malign or fortunate.
Furthermore, we know that the profession of authorship--that most
distinguished of all professions, as, speaking in sober sadness without
arrogance, we cannot but be bold to call it--that profession from which
he was himself so well equipt to derive honour--was held by him in low
esteem. So that, speaking of the time of his residence in Upper Canada,
he thinks no shame to observe that he did _then_ consider himself
qualified to do something more useful than "stringing blethers[1] into
rhyme," or "writing 'clishmaclavers' in a closet." And again says he,
"to tell the truth, I have sometimes felt a little shamefaced in
thinking myself so much an author, in consequence of the estimation in
which I view the profession of book-making in general. A mere literary
man--an author by profession--stands low in my opinion." Such remarks as
these from a man of commanding literary talent are the reverse of
pleasant reading. But let us deal with the speaker, as we would
ourselves be dealt by--mercifully, and regard these petulant utterances
as a mere expression of bitterness or perversity in one much tried and
sorely disappointed. Even so, the fact remains that the sum of Galt's
immense and varied production exhibits inequalities of execution for
which only carelessness or contempt in the worker for his task can
adequately account. We shall presently have occasion to speak of him in
his relation to the great contemporary writer to whose life and work his
own work and life present so many interesting points of similarity and
diversity; but we may here note that, in the glaringly disparate
character of his output, the author of _The Provost_ is in absolute
contrast to the author of _The Antiquary_. For, if Scott's work viewed
as a whole be rarely of the very finest literary quality, its evenness
within its own limits is on the other hand very striking indeed. For, of
his twenty-seven novels, there are perhaps but three which fall
perceptibly below the general level of excellence; whilst probably any
one of at least as many as six or eight might by a quorum of competent
judges be selected as the best of all. And hence, where in the case of
other authors we are called on to read this masterpiece or those
specimens, and, having done so, are held to have acquitted ourselves,
in the case of Scott we cannot feel that we have done our duty till we
have read through the Waverley Novels. How entirely different is it with
Galt--where we find _The Omen_ occupying one shelf with _The Radical_,
_The Annals of the Parish_ catalogued with _Lawrie Todd_, and _The
Spaewife_ side by side with _The Covenanters_! And obviously it is in
this inequality in its author's work--in the magnitude, that is, of the
rubbish-heap in which he chose to secrete his jewels--that the
explanation of the neglect, if not rather oblivion, into which the work
last-named has fallen can alone be sought and found. For, once in the
threescore years of his busy life, Galt did his best, consistently and
on a large scale, with the pen; and that once was in the novel of
_Ringan Gilhaize, or the Covenanters_. What is more--however lamentably
he may appear in general to lack the faculty of self-criticism--he knew
when he had done his best, and among all his books this one remained his
favourite. But a man has to pay for artistic as he has for moral
delinquencies, and it would seem that the penalty of many a careless
tome has been exacted in the obscuration of one of the finest and truest
of historical romances in our language.[2] A word or two as to the
genesis and character of the book which we have ventured thus to
describe may not be out of place as preface to our endeavour to obtain
for it a second hearing.
It was in the year 1822 or 1823 that Galt, aged then about forty-three,
and having already seen much of life in various countries and
capacities, settled at Esk Grove, Musselburgh, to apply himself to
writing historical fiction. He was for the moment elated--carried away,
perhaps, for his temper was enthusiastic even to a fault--by the recent
and deserved success of his novels of Scottish manners, _Sir Andrew
Wylie_ and _The Entail_; and the soaring idea appears to have entered
his head of deliberately attempting to rival Scott in the very field
which "the Wizard" had made peculiarly his own. From the point of view
of prudence, though not from that of art or of sport, this enterprise
was a mistake. For an author, serving as he does the public, shows no
more than common sense if he endeavour to study, in the proper degree,
the idiosyncrasies of that employer on whose favour his reputation, nay,
perhaps the payment of his butcher's bill, depends. And it has long been
observed that when the public has once made up its mind that one man is
supreme in his own line, it has generally little attention to spare for
those who seek to have it reconsider its decision. (This, by the way,
was amply illustrated in the sequel of the very case now under
discussion.) But the names of Galt and Prudence do not naturally go
together: indeed, the two were never well or for any length of time
acquainted. At Esk Grove, either in earnest, or, as seems more likely,
in banter of the architectural incongruities of Abbotsford, Galt
announced his intention of building a "veritable fortress," exactly in
the fashion of the oldest times of rude warfare. _En attendant_, he
worked hard with his pen, the first fruits of his industry appearing in
the novel which is here reprinted after some six-and-seventy years.
What of the merits of this first attempt in a line that was new to him?
In the first place, he had at least been guided in his choice of subject
by an unerring historical instinct. For, surpassingly rich as is
Scottish history in the elements both of picturesque and romantic
incident and of wild and fascinating character, it is none the less a
fact that there is but one period during which that history rises to the
dignity of a really wide and permanent interest. And that period is of
course the century, or century and a half, of the national struggle for
religious liberty. It is not necessary to remind the reader that upon
that struggle, and on those who maintained it, much has been written as
well in the terms of undiscriminating eulogy as in those of
uncomprehending condemnation. Nor is it more to the purpose to add that
the truth lies neither entirely on one side nor the other. For--as in
the earlier struggle for political independence, and, indeed, more or
less in all other great national movements--the motives of most of those
who took part were mixed, and varied with the individual. Thus it is
undeniable that in the breast of many a reforming Scottish laird of the
sixteenth century, mistrust of Rome was a subordinate feeling to the
covetousness excited by the sight of extensive and well-cultivated
Church lands; whilst, again, there are, on the other hand, probably few
persons now in existence who would be prepared to justify the
intolerance embodied even by the martyr Guthrie in his celebrated
Remonstrance--to say nothing of that which made the mere hearing of the
mass, under certain circumstances, a capital offence. These things are,
however, more or less accidental, and supply no criterion by which the
true character of the reforming movement may be tested; for during the
Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, the very nature of tolerance, if
understood by one here and there, was beyond the comprehension of the
masses of the people. And yet we believe that, notwithstanding the
intolerant and implacable spirit too often manifested by the
Covenanters, no candid reader will read this book to the end without
acknowledging (what is, indeed, the truth) that the soul of the
Covenanting movement was a great and noble one. And that soul we here
find personified in the younger Gilhaize--a type, if there be one in
literature, of the Covenanter of the best kind.
For, whatever may have been the temper of his associates in the
aggregate, the hero of the book holds the scales between the rival
parties with admirable evenness--and this notwithstanding the strong
bias of his temper and upbringing. Indeed, until the time when he has
become, not metaphorically, but literally maddened by the wrongs and
outrages to which he has been subjected, the book, in so far as it
constitutes an expression of his personal sentiments, is a perfect
homily on fairness. And how much such fairness has to do with the
winning and retaining of sympathy, perhaps only a modern reader is
qualified to say. Gifted with the saving graces of humour and of
fellow-feeling, the supposed annalist of our chronicle is no less
prepared to make allowance for the faults of the other side than to
acknowledge the shortcomings of his own. In fact he is the pattern of a
spirit at once upright, humble, and self-respecting, whose ruling
passion is an earnest piety, and who asks no more of those set over him
than freedom to worship God according to the dictates of his conscience.
And for this little boon, so harshly and unjustly withheld, we see him
called upon to sacrifice home, kindred and estate, to know his wife and
daughters given over to death and worse than death, and finally to
surrender his liberty and his last remaining child. Unless pity and
terror in a master's hand have lost their power, surely this spectacle
is a moving one! Nor must we forget that, even in the culminating scene
of the tragedy--where Ringan makes his bold and inspired oration at the
meeting of the Cameronian leaders with Renwick in a dell near
Lasswade--the hero, for all his wrongs, remains unembittered, and
retains unimpaired the gentleness and the manliness which are his
characteristics. That there were such men as this among the Covenanters,
or that they constituted the salt which gave its savour to the movement,
we are forbidden to doubt. But, saving in the pages which follow, we
know not where to seek for the ideal presentment of one such. This is
what we mean by saying, as we have said above, that Galt has in this
romance laid bare the soul of the Covenanting movement. And this, we may
add, is what Scott in _Old Mortality_ most signally failed to do. For in
that novel--in place of Galt's subtle and penetrating analysis of the
motives which animated the Covenanters nobly to dare and nobly to
endure--we find the author content himself with using the
characteristics and the disturbances of the time for the mere purpose of
providing incident and adventure, and a strong local colour for his
puppets--in a word, for the most ordinary and conventional purposes of
the romantic novelist. Nor is this the only instance of such
psychological obtuseness in his work. That, in spite of this initial and
damning defect, he does succeed in producing a fine novel, is but one
more proof of the amazing fecundity of his genius. None the less does
the fact remain that it is a novel, so to speak, without a soul--that,
so far from being of the essence of the Covenant, the Burleys,
Mucklewraths, Mauses and Macbrairs are but so many of its accidents, and
that thus the main issues of the historical drama are not involved in
the romance. In other words, it is as though the tragedy of _Hamlet_
had been performed with great skill and _éclat_, only without the
appearance of the Prince of Denmark upon the stage. And thus, if the
historical novel is to play a part of any dignity in our literature, we
may safely predict that it is upon the stock here supplied by Galt,
rather than upon that supplied by Scott in _Old Mortality_, that it will
have to be grafted.
Having now assigned to our author the credit due to him for his choice
and general treatment of a fine subject, it remains to touch briefly
upon the technical skill which he has brought to bear upon the handling
of its details. By resorting, then, to an ingenious and yet perfectly
natural and legitimate device, he has contrived to extend his "household
memorial" (for it is thus that he describes the story) so as to make it
embrace the entire period of the religious struggle--from its inception
under the regency of Marie of Lorraine to its close, or practical close,
under the rule of the enlightened and tolerant William of Orange,--a
period in all of full one hundred and thirty years. For the narrative,
opening with the martyrdom of Walter Mill at St Andrews in 1558, is
continued to the death of Claverhouse at Killiecrankie in 1689. And by
this means the varying phases of the struggle are traced almost step by
step, through the preachings of John Knox and the early image-breaking
outrages, to the comparative lull of the reign of James the First of
England, and thence again from the renewed exasperating of opposition by
the shifty and infatuated Martyr King to the climax of the "Killing
Time" under the younger of his sons. Few incidents of really primary or
representative importance are omitted, and the skill shown by the Author
in stringing the pearls of history upon the thread of his narrative is
not the least of the merits he displays. But, as should be in a novel,
the historical never overweights the human or fictitious interest, but
is always properly subordinated to it.
We have spoken elsewhere[3] of Galt the novelist as being "in advance of
his time"--a facile phrase which it is expedient to use with due reserve
and after due consideration. But the fact that the author with whose
work we are instinctively impelled to compare the novel of _Ringan
Gilhaize_ is the great chief of the French "Naturalistic" School would
appear, at least so far, to support that characterisation. It is, of
course, undeniable that, at the outset, there confront us several
striking points of contrast or divergence between the two authors. For
example, of that _triste amour du laid_, which, with its concomitants,
was for so long, and perhaps is even yet, regarded by the general public
as Zola's one prominent characteristic--of this, Galt has absolutely
nothing, his preoccupation being uniformly with beauty in one form or
another, whether of matter or of spirit. With him, a gloom which, did we
not fear to be less than just to Galt we might denominate Byronic, fills
perhaps the place of Zola's pessimism. Next, of that misbegotten passion
for the painter's brush which has vitiated so much of modern French
writing, and of which Zola in inferior works has even more than his due
share, the novel of _Ringan Gilhaize_ shows equally no trace. On the
contrary, its brief descriptive passages, of which it is noticeable how
many are nocturnal or crepuscular, or paint effects of mist or
rain-cloud--these might serve as models, at once in their breadth of
execution, their aptness and their pregnancy, or quality of
moral suggestiveness, of what descriptions in literature
should be. How different from those laboured outlines, laboriously
filled in, of such a piece of writing as _La Curée_!
So much, then, for the divergence of the two authors; and now as to
their relationship. It is, perhaps, in their power of putting their
sense of a multitude before the reader, of exhibiting the passions by
which that multitude is animated, and of tracing the phases and
fluctuations of that passion, that the Frenchman or Italian and the Scot
come first and most strikingly together. Witness in this book the scene
of the advance of the congregations to the trial of the Ministers, or
that of the return of the Reformer, Knox, to Scotland. This of itself,
however, is not much; nor should we have felt justified in drawing
special attention to it, but for the fact that it seems to us to be an
outward and visible sign of what is a vital, perhaps _the_ vital
characteristic of either writer--or, at least, that of Galt in this
book, and of Zola in his masterwork. It is associated, then, as we read
it, with a desire to rise in art above the limitation of the merely
individual, and the springs of this desire we take to lie in that noble
and abounding pity which is the dominant passion of either author, or of
either book. In either case it is an "objective" or artistic pity,
called into being by the spectacle of human suffering as specific as it
is intolerable to contemplate. Only that with Galt it is felt for a
particular historical group of men, with Zola for a particular section
of his contemporaries. And from this characteristic there naturally
results a gain of the quality of artistic grandeur in the books. For it
is less the fortunes of the individual colliers than the Rights of
Labour and their chances of recognition which form the true theme of
_Germinal_; whilst in _Ringan Gilhaize_ we are called to gaze upon
nothing less than the grandiose spectacle of a nation in death-grips
with a race of mansworn sovereigns. Hence, in either case, the
individual characters, measured by the greatness of the issues at stake,
sink into comparative insignificance. But this very insignificance
serves to illustrate a fundamental truth. For, to quote the words of a
great modern thinker, "This is the law which governs humanity: an
immense prodigality in regard to the mere individual, a contemptuous
heaping together of the unit of human life." He continues, "I can
picture to myself the artificer letting great quantities of his material
go to waste--undisturbed, indeed, although three parts of it fall
useless to the ground. For it is the fate of the vast majority of the
human race to serve as a mere floor-cloth on which Destiny may celebrate
her revel, or, rather, to contribute towards the making up of one of
those numerous persons who were known to the classical drama as the
Chorus."[4] Impressively to exhibit this truth in art is of itself to
accomplish much; but in the infinite pathos of the individual lot there
is a converse side to every great drama too, and to this neither of our
writers is insensible. Hence it is that, against the shadowy curtain or
background formed by the crowded and suffering masses of humanity, are
relieved and detached such tragic silhouettes as those of Ringan and of
La Maheude. In the nature of the long-drawn unrelenting ordeal to which
each of these is subjected they are identical; for both of them are rich
only in human affection, and of this both live to see themselves
entirely denuded. Gilhaize, who is raised above the struggle for mere
daily bread, is animated by a spiritual and intellectual passion which
would have been altogether beyond the comprehension of the miner's wife
of Montsou; but that he is on that account the nobler or more
interesting figure of the two, we do not take upon us to say. Neither,
of course, must we be understood to insist unduly on the few points of
resemblance in two books which, after all, are in so many respects
radically unlike.
There is a lighter side to Galt's book, too, and this is seen
principally, ere the stress of the action has become intense, in the
adventures of the astute Michael Gilhaize. At this point in his
narrative it is probably with Stevenson that Galt suggests comparison,
nor is it any disparagement to the delightful author of _Kidnapped_ and
_Catriona_ to say that the best of his work is to the best of Galt's as
a clever boy's to that of a clever man. For whilst Galt presents
incident with all, or nearly all, the charm of Stevenson, he is master,
besides, of an adult psychology to which the other, in his short life,
never attained.
GEORGE DOUGLAS.
SPRINGWOOD PARK, _August_ 1899.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 1: Scots expletives, signifying different varieties of
nonsense.]
[Footnote 2: Dismissed in the _Dictionary of National Biography_, _sub
voce_ Galt, as one of "three forgotten novels."]
[Footnote 3: In "The _Blackwood_ Group": Famous Scots' Series; Essay on
Galt.]
[Footnote 4: Ernest Renan in _L'Avenir de la Science_.]
RINGAN GILHAIZE
CHAPTER I
It is a thing past all contesting, that, in the Reformation, there was a
spirit of far greater carnality among the champions of the cause than
among those who in later times so courageously, under the Lord, upheld
the unspotted banners of the Covenant. This I speak of from the
remembrance of many aged persons, who either themselves bore a part in
that war with the worshippers of the Beast and his Image, or who had
heard their fathers tell of the heart and mind wherewith it was carried
on, and could thence, with the helps of their own knowledge, discern the
spiritual and hallowed difference. But, as I intend mainly to bear
witness to those passages of the late bloody persecution in which I was
myself both a soldier and a sufferer, it will not become me to brag of
our motives and intents, as higher and holier than those of the great
elder Worthies of "the Congregation." At the same time it is needful
that I should rehearse as much of what happened in the troubles of the
Reformation as, in its effects and influences, worked upon the issues of
my own life. For my father's father was out in the raids of that
tempestuous season, and it was by him, and from the stories he was wont
to tell of what the Government did when drunken with the sorceries of
the gorgeous Roman harlot, and rampaging with the wrath of Moloch and of
Belial, it trampled on the hearts and thought to devour the souls of the
subjects, that I first was taught to feel, know and understand the divine
right of resistance.
He was come of a stock of bein burghers in Lithgow; but his father
having a profitable traffic in saddle-irons and bridle-rings among the
gallants of the court, and being moreover a man who took little heed of
the truths of religion, he continued with his wife in the delusions of
the papistical idolatry till the last, by which my grandfather's young
soul was put in great jeopardy. For the monks of that time were eager to
get into their clutches such men-children as appeared to be gifted with
any peculiar gift, in order to rear them for stoops and posts to sustain
their Babylon, in the tower and structure whereof many rents and cracks
were daily kithing.
The Dominican friars, who had a rich howf in the town, seeing that my
grandfather was a shrewd and sharp child, of a comely complexion, and
possessing a studious observance, were fain to wile him into their
power; but he was happily preserved from all their snares and devices in
a manner that shows how wonderfully the Lord worketh out the purposes of
His will, by ways and means of which no man can fathom the depth of the
mysteries.
Besides his traffic in the polished garniture of horse-gear, my
grandfather's father was also a ferrier, and enjoyed a far-spread repute
for his skill in the maladies of horses; by which, and as he dwelt near
the palace-yett, on the south side of the street, fornent the grand
fountain-well, his smiddy was the common haunt of the serving-men
belonging to the nobles frequenting the court, and as often as any
newcomers to the palace were observed in the town, some of the monks and
friars belonging to the different convents were sure to come to the
smiddy to converse with their grooms and to hear the news, which were
all of the controversies raging between the priesthood and the people.
My grandfather was then a little boy, but he thirsted to hear their
conversations, and many a time, as he was wont to tell, has his very
heart been raspet to the quick by the cruel comments in which those
cormorants of idolatry indulged themselves with respect to the brave
spirit of the reformers; and he rejoiced when any retainers of the
protestant lords quarrelled with them, and dealt back to them as hard
names as the odious epithets with which the hot-fed friars reviled the
pious challengers of the papal iniquities. Thus it was, in the green
years of his childhood, that the same sanctified spirit was poured out
upon him, which roused so many of the true and faithful to resist and
repel the attempt to quench the relighted lamps of the Gospel, preparing
his young courage to engage in those great first trials and strong tasks
of the Lord.
The tidings and the bickerings to which he was a hearkener in the
smiddy, he was in the practice of relating to his companions, by which
it came to pass that, it might in a manner be said, all the boys in the
town were leagued in spirit with the reformers, and the consequences
were not long of ripening.
In those days there was a popish saint, one St Michael, that was held in
wonderful love and adoration by all the ranks and hierarchies of the
ecclesiastical locust then in Lithgow; indeed, for that matter, they
ascribed to him power and dominion over the whole town, lauding and
worshipping him as their special god and protector. And upon a certain
day of the year they were wont to make a great pageant and revel in
honour of this supposed saint, and to come forth from their cloisters
with banners, and with censers burning incense, shouting and singing
paternosters in praise of this their Dagon, walking in procession from
kirk to kirk, as if they were celebrating the triumph of some mighty
conqueror.
This annual abomination happening to take place shortly after the
martyrdom of that true saint and gospel preacher Mr George Wishart, and
while kirk and quire were resounding, to the great indignation of all
Christians, with lamentations for the well-earned death of the cruel
Cardinal Beaton, his ravenous persecutor, the monks and friars received
but little homage as they passed along triumphing, though the streets
were, as usual, filled with the multitude to see their fine show. They
suffered, however, no molestation nor contempt till they were passing
the Earl of Angus' house, on the outside stair of which my grandfather,
with some two or three score of other innocent children, was standing;
and even there they might, perhaps, have been suffered to go by
scaithless, but for an accident that befel the bearer of a banner, on
which was depicted a blasphemous type of the Holy Ghost in the shape and
lineaments of a cushy-doo.
It chanced that the bearer of this blazon of iniquity was a particular
fat monk, of an arrogant nature, with the crimson complexion of surfeit
and constipation, who for many causes and reasons was held in greater
aversion than all the rest, especially by the boys, that never lost an
opportunity of making him a scoff and a scorn; and it so fell out, as he
was coming proudly along, turning his Babylonish banner to pleasure the
women at the windows, to whom he kept nodding and winking as he passed,
that his foot slipped and down he fell as it were with a gludder, at
which all the thoughtless innocents on the Earl of Angus' stair set up a
loud shout of triumphant laughter, and from less to more began to hoot
and yell at the whole pageant, and to pelt some of the performers with
unsavoury missiles.
This, by those inordinate ministers of oppression, was deemed a horrible
sacrilege, and the parents of all the poor children were obligated to
give them up to punishment, of which none suffered more than did my
grandfather, who was not only persecuted with stripes till his loins
were black and blue, but cast into a dungeon in the Blackfriars' den,
where for three days and three nights he was allowed no sustenance but
gnawed crusts and foul water. The stripes and terrors of the oppressor
are, however, the seeds which Providence sows in its mercy to grow into
the means that shall work his own overthrow.
The persecutions which from that day the monks waged, in their conclaves
of sloth and sosherie, against the children of the town, denouncing them
to their parents as worms of the great serpent and heirs of perdition,
only served to make their young spirits burn fiercer. As their joints
hardened and their sinews were knit, their hearts grew manful, and
yearned, as my grandfather said, with the zealous longings of a
righteous revenge, to sweep them away from the land as with a whirlwind.
After enduring for several years great affliction in his father's house
from his mother, a termagant woman, who was entirely under the dominion
of her confessor, my grandfather entered into a paction with two other
young lads to quit their homes for ever, and to enter the service of
some of those pious noblemen who were then active in procuring adherents
to the protestant cause, as set forth in the first covenant.
Accordingly, one morning in the spring of 1558, they bade adieu to their
fathers' doors, and set forward on foot towards Edinburgh.
"We had light hearts," said my grandfather, "for our trust was in
Heaven; we had girded ourselves for a holy enterprise, and the
confidence of our souls broke forth into songs of battle, the melodious
breathings of that unison of spirit which is alone known to the soldiers
of the great Captain of Salvation."
About noon they arrived at the Cross of Edinburgh, where they found a
crowd assembled round the Luckenbooths, waiting for the breaking up of
the States, which were then deliberating anent the proposal from the
French king that the Prince Dolphin, his son, should marry our young
queen, the fair and faulty Mary, whose doleful captivity and woful end
scarcely expiated the sins and sorrows that she caused to her ill-used
and poor misgoverned native realm of Scotland.
While they were standing in this crowd, my grandfather happened to see
one Icener Cunningham, a servant in the household of the Earl of
Glencairn, and having some acquaintance of the man before at Lithgow, he
went towards him, and after some common talk, told on what errand he and
his two companions had come to Edinburgh. It was in consequence agreed
between them that this Icener should speak to his master concerning
them, the which he did as soon as my Lord came out from the Parliament;
and the Earl was so well pleased with the looks of the three young men
that he retained them for his service on the spot, and they were
conducted by Icener Cunningham home to his Lordship's lodgings in St
Mary's Wynd.
Thus was my grandfather enlisted into the cause of the Lords of the
Congregation, and in the service of that great champion of the
Reformation, the renowned, valiant and pious Earl of Glencairn, he saw
many of those things, the recital of which kindled my young mind to
flame up with no less ardour than his against the cruel attempt that was
made, in our own day and generation, to load the neck of Scotland with
the grievous chains of prelatic tyranny.
CHAPTER II
The Earl of Glencairn, having much to do with the other Lords of the
Congregation, did not come to his lodging till late in the afternoon,
when, as soon as he had passed into his privy chamber, he sent for his
three new men, and entered into some conversation with them concerning
what the people at Lithgow said and thought of the Queen-dowager's
government, and the proceedings at that time afoot on behalf of the
reformed religion. But my grandfather jealoused that in this he was less
swayed by the expectation of gathering knowledge from them, than by a
wish to inspect their discretion and capacities; for, after conversing
with them for the space of half an hour or thereby, he dismissed them
courteously from his presence, without intimating that he had any
special service for them to perform.
One evening as the Earl sat alone at supper, he ordered my grandfather
to be brought again before him, and desired him to be cup-bearer for
that night. In this situation, as my grandfather stood holding the
chalice and flagon at his left elbow, the Earl, as was his wonted custom
with such of the household as he from time to time so honoured, entered
into familiar conversation with him; and when the servitude and homages
of the supper were over, and the servants were removing the plate and
trenchers, he signified, by a look and a whisper, that he wished him to
linger in the room till after they were gone.
"Gilhaize," said he, when the serving-men had retired, and they were by
themselves, "I am well content with your prudence, and therefore, before
you are known to belong to my train, I would send you on a confidential
errand, for which you must be ready to set forth this very night."
My grandfather made no reply in words to this mark of trust, but bowed
his head in token of his obedience to the commands of the Earl.
"I need not tell you," resumed his master, "that among the friends of
the reformed cause there are some for policy and many for gain, and that
our adversaries, knowing this, leave no device or stratagem untried to
sow sedition among the Lords and Leaders of the Congregation. This very
day the Earl of Argyle has received a mealy-mouthed letter from that
dissolute papist, the Archbishop of St Andrews, entreating him, with
many sweet words, concerning the ancient friendship subsisting between
their families, to banish from his protection that good and pious
proselyte, Douglas, his chaplain, evidently presuming, from the easy
temper of the aged Earl, that he may be wrought into compliance. But
Argyle is an honest man, and is this night to return, by the
Archbishop's messenger and kinsman, Sir David Hamilton, a fitting and
proper reply. It is not, however, to be thought that this attempt to
tamper with Argyle is the sole trial which the treacherous priest is at
this time making to breed distrust and dissension among us, though as
yet we have heard of none other. Now, Gilhaize, what I wish you to do,
and I think you can do it well, is to throw yourself in Sir David's way,
and, by hook or crook, get with him to St Andrews, and there try by all
expedient means to gain a knowledge of what the Archbishop is at this
time plotting--for plotting we are assured from this symptom he is--and
it is needful to the cause of Christ that his wiles should be
circumvented."
In saying these words the Earl rose, and, taking a key from his belt,
opened a coffer that stood in the corner of the room, and took out two
pieces of gold, which he delivered to my grandfather, to bear the
expenses of his journey.
"I give you, Gilhaize," said he, "no farther instructions; for, unless I
am mistaken in my man, you lack no better guide than your own
discernment. So God be with you, and His blessing prosper the
undertaking."
My grandfather was much moved at being so trusted, and doubted in his
own breast if he was qualified for the duty which his master had thus
put upon him. Nevertheless he took heart from the Earl's confidence,
and, without saying anything either to his two companions or to Icener
Cunningham, he immediately, on parting from his master, left the house,
leaving his absence to be accounted for to the servants according to his
lord's pleasure.
Having been several times on errands of his father in Edinburgh before,
he was not ill-acquainted with the town, and the moon being up, he had
no difficulty in finding his way to Habby Bridle's, a noted stabler's at
the foot of Leith Wynd, nigh the mouth of the North Loch, where gallants
and other travellers of gentle condition commonly put up their horses.
There he thought it was likely Sir David Hamilton had stabled his steed,
and he divined that, by going thither, he would learn whether that
knight had set forward to Fife, or when he was expected so to do; the
which movement, he always said, was nothing short of an instinct from
Heaven; for just on entering the stabler's yard, a groom came shouting
to the hostler to get Sir David Hamilton's horses saddled outright, as
his master was coming.
Thus, without the exposure of any inquiry, he gained the tidings that he
wanted, and with what speed he could put into his heels, he went forward
to the pier of Leith, where he found a bark, with many passengers on
board, ready to set sail for Kirkcaldy, waiting only for the arrival of
Sir David, to whom, as the Archbishop's kinsman, the boatmen were fain
to pretend a great outward respect; but many a bitter ban, my
grandfather said, they gave him for taigling them so long, while wind
and tide both served--all which was proof and evidence how much the
hearts of the common people were then alienated from the papistical
churchmen.
Sir David having arrived, and his horses being taken aboard, the bark
set sail, and about daybreak next morning she came to anchor at
Kirkcaldy. During the voyage, my grandfather, who was of a mild and
comely aspect, observed that the knight was more affable towards him
than to the lave of the passengers, the most part of whom were coopers
going to Dundee to prepare for the summer fishing. Among them was one
Patrick Girdwood, the deacon of the craft, a most comical character, so
vogie of his honours and dignities in the town council that he could not
get the knight told often enough what a load aboon the burden he had in
keeping a' things douce and in right regulation amang the bailies. But
Sir David, fashed at his clatter, and to be quit of him, came across the
vessel and began to talk to my grandfather, although, by his apparel, he
was no meet companion for one of a knight's degree.
It happened that Sir David was pleased with his conversation, which was
not to be wondered at, for in his old age, when I knew him, he was a man
of a most enticing mildness of manner, and withal so discreet in his
sentences that he could not be heard without begetting respect for his
observance and judgment. So out of the vanity of that vogie tod of the
town council was a mean thus made by Providence to further the ends and
objects of the Reformation in so far as my grandfather was concerned;
for the knight took a liking to him, and being told, as it was
expedient to give a reason for his journey to St Andrews, that he was
going thither to work as a ferrier, Sir David promised him not only his
own countenance, but to commend him to the Archbishop.
There was at that time in Kirkcaldy one Tobit Balmutto, a horse-setter,
of whom my grandfather had some knowledge by report. This Tobit being
much resorted to by the courtiers going to and coming from Falkland, and
well known to their serving-men, who were wont to speak of him in the
smiddy at Lithgow as a zealous reformer--chiefly, as the prodigals among
them used to jeer and say, because the priests and friars in their
journeyings atween St Andrews and Edinburgh took the use of his beasts
without paying for them, giving him only their feckless benisons instead
of white money.
To this man my grandfather resolved to apply for a horse, and such a
one, if possible, as would be able to carry him as fast as Sir David
Hamilton's. Accordingly, on getting to the land, he inquired for Tobit
Balmutto, and several of his striplings and hostlers being on the shore,
having, on seeing the bark arrive, come down to look out for travellers
that might want horses, he was conducted by one of them to their
employer, whom he found an elderly man of the corpulent order, sitting
in an elbow-chair by the fireside, toasting an oaten bannock on a pair
of tormentors, with a blue puddock-stool bonnet on his head, and his
grey hose undrawn up, whereby his hairy legs were bare, showing a power
and girth such as my grandfather had seen few like before, testifying to
what had been the deadly strength of their possessor in his younger
years. He was thought to have been an off-gett of the Boswells of
Balmutto.
When he had made known his want to Tobit, and that he was in a manner
obligated to be at St Andrews as soon as Sir David Hamilton, the
horse-setter withdrew the bannock from before the ribs, and seeing it
somewhat scowthert and blackent on the one cheek, he took it off the
tormentors and scraped it with them, and blew away the brown burning
before he made any response; then he turned round to my grandfather, and
looking at him with the tail of his eye from aneath his broad bonnet,
said,--
"Then ye're no in the service of his Grace, my Lord the Archbishop? And
yet, frien', I think na ye're just a peer to Sir Davie, that you need to
ettle at coping with his braw mare, Skelp-the-dub, whilk I selt to him
mysel'; but the de'il a bawbee hae I yet han'let o' the price; howsever,
that's neither here nor there, a day of reckoning will come at last."
My grandfather assured Tobit Balmutto it was indeed very true he was not
in the service of the Archbishop, and that he would not have been so
instant about getting to St Andrews with the knight had he not a dread
and fear that Sir David was the bearer of something that might be sore
news to the flock o' Christ, and he was fain to be there as soon as him
to speak in time of what he jealoused, that any of those in the town who
stood within the reverence of the Archbishop's aversion, on account of
their religion, might get an inkling and provide for themselves.
"If that's your errand," said the horse-setter, "ye s'all hae the
swiftest foot in my aught to help you on, and I redde you no to spare
the spur, for I'm troubled to think ye may be owre late--Satan, or they
lie upon him, has been heating his cauldrons yonder for a brewing, and
the Archbishop's thrang providing the malt. Nae farther gane than
yesterday, auld worthy Mr Mill of Lunan, being discovered hidden in a
kiln at Dysart, was ta'en, they say, in a cart, like a malefactor, by
twa uncircumcised loons, servitors to his Grace, and it's thought it
will go hard wi' him on account of his great godliness; so mak what
haste ye dow, and the Lord put mettle in the beast that bears you."
With that Tobit Balmutto ordered the lad who brought my grandfather to
the house to saddle a horse that he called Spunkie; and in a trice he
was mounted and on the road after Sir David, whom he overtook
notwithstanding the spirit of his mare, Skelp-the-dub, before he had
cleared the town of Pathhead, and they travelled onward at a brisk trot
together, the knight waxing more and more pleased with his companion, in
so much that by the time they had reached Cupar, where they stopped to
corn, he lamented that a young man of his parts should think of
following the slavery of a ferrier's life, when he might rise to trusts
and fortune in the house of some of the great men of the time, kindly
offering to procure for him, on their arrival at St Andrews, the favour
and patronage of his kinsman, the Archbishop.
CHAPTER III
It was the afternoon when my grandfather and Sir David Hamilton came in
sight of St Andrews, and the day being loun and bright, the sky clear,
and the sea calm, he told me that when he saw the many lofty spires and
towers and glittering pinnacles of the town rising before him, he verily
thought he was approaching the city of Jerusalem, so grand and glorious
was the apparition which they made in the sunshine, and he approached
the barricaded gate with a strange movement of awe and wonder rushing
through the depths of his spirit.
They, however, entered not into the city at that time, but, passing
along the wall leftward, came to a road which led to the gate of the
castle where the Archbishop then dwelt; and as they were approaching
towards it, Sir David pointed out the window where Cardinal Beaton sat
in the pomp of his scarlet and fine linen to witness the heretic
Wishart, as the knight called that holy man, burnt for his sins and
abominations.
My grandfather, on hearing this, drew his bridle in, and falling behind
Sir David, raised his cap in reverence and in sorrow at the thought of
passing over the ground that had been so hallowed by martyrdom, but he
said nothing, for he knew that his thoughts were full of offence to
those who were wrapt in the errors and delusions of popery like Sir
David Hamilton; and, moreover, he had thanked the Lord thrice in the
course of their journey for the favour which it had pleased Him he
should find in the sight of the kinsman of so great an adversary to the
truth as was the Archbishop of St Andrews, whose treasons and
treacheries against the Church of Christ he was then travelling to
discover and waylay.
On reaching the castle-yett they alighted; my grandfather, springing
lightly from the saddle, took hold of Sir David's mare by the
bridle-rings, while the knight went forward, and whispered something
concerning his Grace to a stalwart, hard-favoured, grey-haired
man-at-arms, that stood warder of the port, leaning on his sword, the
blade of whilk could not be shorter than an ell. What answer he got was
brief, the ancient warrior pointing at the same time with his right hand
towards a certain part of the city, and giving a Belial smile of
significance; whereupon Sir David turned round without going into the
court of the castle, and bidding my grandfather give the man the beasts
and follow, which he did, they walked together under the town wall
towards the east till they came to a narrow sallyport in the rampart,
wherewith the priory and cathedral had of old been fenced about with
turrets and bastions of great strength against the lawless kerns of the
Highlands, and especially the ships of the English, who have in all ages
been of a nature gleg and glad to mulct and molest the sea-harbour towns
of Scotland.
On coming to the sallyport, Sir David chapped with his whip twice, and
from within a wicket was opened in the doors, ribbed with iron
stainchers on the outside, and a man with the sound of corpulency in his
voice looked through and inquired what they wanted. Seeing, however, who
it was that had knocked, he forthwith drew the bar and allowed them to
enter, which was into a pleasant policy adorned with jonquils and
jelly-flowers, and all manner of blooming and odoriferous plants, most
voluptuous to the smell and ravishing to behold, the scents and
fragrancies whereof smote my grandfather for a time, as he said, with
the very anguish of delight. But, on looking behind to see who had given
them admittance, he was astounded when, instead of an armed and mailed
soldier, as he had thought the drumly-voiced sentinel there placed was,
he saw a large, elderly monk, sitting on a bench with a broken pasty
smoking on a platter beside him, and a Rotterdam greybeard jug standing
by, no doubt plenished with cordial drink.
Sir David held no parlance with the feeding friar, but going straight up
the walk to the door of a lodging, to the which this was the parterre
and garden, he laid his hand on the sneck, and opening it, bade my
grandfather come in.
They then went along the trance towards an open room, and on entering it
they met a fair damsel in the garb of a handmaid, to whom the knight
spoke in familiarity, and kittling her under the chin, made her giggle
in a wanton manner. By her he was informed that the Archbishop was in
the inner chamber at dinner with her mistress, upon which he desired my
grandfather to sit down, while he went ben to his Grace.
The room where my grandfather took his seat was parted from the inner
chamber, in which the Archbishop and his lemane were at their
festivities, by an arras partition, so that he could hear all that
passed within, and the first words his Grace said on his kinsman going
ben was,--
"Aweel, Davie, and what says that auld doddard Argyle, will he send me
the apostate to mak a benfire?"
"He has sent your Grace a letter," replied Sir David, "wherein he told
me he had expounded the reasons and causes of his protecting Douglas,
hoping your Grace will approve the same."
"Approve heresy and reprobacy!" exclaimed the Archbishop; "but gi'e me
the letter, and sit ye down, Davie. Mistress Kilspinnie, my dauty, fill
him a cup of wine, the malvesie, to put smeddam in his marrow; he'll no
be the waur o't, after his gallanting at Enbro. Stay! what's this? the
auld man's been at school since him and me hae swappit paper. My word,
Argyle, thou's got a tongue in thy pen neb! but this was ne'er indited
by him; the cloven foot of the heretical Carmelite is manifest in every
line. Honour and conscience truly!--braw words for a Hielant schore,
that bigs his bield wi' other folks' gear!"
"Be composed, your sweet Grace, and dinna be so fashed," cried a
silver-tongued madam, the which my grandfather afterwards found, as I
shall have to rehearse, was his concubine, the Mrs Kilspinnie. "What
does he say?"
"Say? Why, that Douglas preaches against idolatry, and he remits to my
conscience forsooth, gif that be heresy--and he preaches against
adulteries and fornications too--was ever sic varlet terms written in
ony nobleman's letter afore this apostate's time--and he refers that to
my conscience likewise."
"A faggot to his tail would be ower gude for him," cried Mrs Kilspinnie.
"He preaches against hypocrisy," said his Grace, "the which he also
refers to my conscience--conscience again! Hae, Davie, tak thir
clishmaclavers to Andrew Oliphant. It'll be spunk to his zeal. We maun
strike our adversaries wi' terror, and if we canna wile them back to the
fold, we'll e'en set the dogs on them. Kind Mistress Kilspinnie, help me
frae the stoup o' sherries, for I canna but say that this scalded heart
I hae gotten frae that auld shavling-gabbit Hielander has raised my
corruption, and I stand in need, my lambie, o' a' your winsome
comforting."
At which words Sir David came forth the chamber with the letter in his
hand; but seeing my grandfather, whom it would seem he had forgotten, he
went suddenly back and said to his Grace,--
"Please you, my Lord, I hae brought with me a young man of a good
capacity and a ripe understanding that I would commend to your Grace's
service. He is here in the outer room waiting your Grace's pleasure."
"Davie Hamilton," replied the Archbishop, "ye sometimes lack discretion.
What for did ye bring a stranger into this house--knowing, as ye ought
to do, that I ne'er come hither but when I'm o' a sickly frame, in need
o' solace and repose? Howsever, since the lad's there, bid him come
ben."
Upon this, Sir David came out and beckoned my grandfather to go in; and
when he went forward, he saw none in that inner chamber but his Grace
and the Mrs Kilspinnie, with whom he was sitting on a bedside before a
well-garnished table, whereon was divers silver flagons, canisters of
comfits, and goblets of the crystal of Venetia.
He looked sharp at my grandfather, perusing him from head to foot, who
put on for the occasion a face of modesty and reverence, but he was none
daunted, for all his eyes were awake, and he took such a cognition of
his Grace as he never afterwards forgot. Indeed, I have often heard him
say that he saw more of the man in the brief space of that interview
than of others in many intromissions, and he used to depict him to me as
a hale, black-avised carl, of an o'ersea look, with a long dark beard
inclining to grey; his abundant hair, flowing down from his cowl, was
also clouded and streaked with the kithings of the cranreuch of age.
There was, however, a youthy and luscious twinkling in his eyes, that
showed how little the passage of three-and-fifty winters had cooled the
rampant sensuality of his nature. His right leg, which was naked, though
on the foot was a slipper of Spanish leather, he laid o'er Mistress
Kilspinnie's knees as he threw himself back against the pillar of the
bed, the better to observe and converse with my grandfather; and she,
like another Delilah, began to prattle it with her fingers, casting at
the same time glances, unseen by her papistical paramour, towards my
grandfather, who, as I have said, was a comely and well-favoured young
man.
After some few questions as to his name and parentage, the prelate said
he would give him his livery, being then anxious, on account of the
signs of the times, to fortify his household with stout and valiant
youngsters; and bidding him draw near and to kneel down, he laid his
hand on his head and mumbled a benedicite; the which, my grandfather
said, was as the smell of rottenness to his spirit, the lascivious
hirkos, then wantoning so openly with his adulterous concubine, for no
better was Mistress Kilspinnie, her husband, a creditable man, being
then living, and one of the bailies of Crail. Nor is it to be debated
that the scene was such as ought not to have been seen in a Christian
land; but in those days the blasphemous progeny of the Roman harlot were
bold with the audacious sinfulness of their parent, and set little store
by the fear of God or the contempt of man. It was a sore trial and a
struggle in the bosom of my grandfather that day to think of making a
show of homage and service towards the mitred Belial and high priest of
the abominations wherewith the realm was polluted, and when he rose from
under his paw he shuddered, and felt as if he had received the foul erls
of perdition from the Evil One. Many a bitter tear he long after shed in
secret for the hypocrisy of that hour, the guilt of which was never
sweetened to his conscience, even by the thought that he maybe thereby
helped to further the great redemption of his native land in the blessed
cleansing of the Reformation.
CHAPTER IV
Sir David Hamilton conducted my grandfather back through the garden and
the sallyport to the castle, where he made him acquainted with his
Grace's seneschal, by whom he was hospitably entertained when the knight
had left them together, receiving from him a cup of hippocras and a
plentiful repast, the like of which, for the savouriness of the viands,
was seldom seen out of the howfs of the monks.
The seneschal was called by name Leonard Meldrum, and was a most douce
and composed character, well stricken in years, and though engrained
with the errors of papistry, as was natural for one bred and cherished
in the house of the speaking horn of the Beast, for such the high priest
of St Andrews was well likened to, he was nevertheless a man of a humane
heart and great tenderness of conscience.
The while my grandfather was sitting with him at the board, he lamented
that the Church, so he denominated the papal abomination, was so far
gone with the spirit of punishment and of cruelty as rather to shock
men's minds into schism and rebellion than to allure them back into
worship and reverence, and to a repentance of their heresies--a strain
of discourse which my grandfather so little expected to hear within the
gates and precincts of the guilty castle of St Andrews that it made him
for a time distrust the sincerity of the old man, and he was very
guarded in what he himself answered thereto. Leonard Meldrum was,
however, honest in his way, and rehearsed many things which had been
done within his own knowledge against the reformers that, as he said,
human nature could not abide, nor the just and merciful Heavens well
pardon.
Thus, from less to more, my grandfather and he fell into frank
communion, and he gave him such an account of the bloody Cardinal Beaton
as was most awful to hear, saying that his then present master, with all
his faults and prodigalities, was a saint of purity compared to that
rampagious cardinal, the which to hear, my grandfather thinking of what
he had seen in the lodging of Madam Kilspinnie, was seized with such a
horror thereat that he could partake no more of the repast before him,
and he was likewise moved into a great awe and wonder of spirit that the
Lord should thus, in the very chief sanctuary of papistry in all
Scotland, be alienating the affections of the servants from their
master, preparing the way, as it were, for an utter desertion and
desolation to ensue.
They afterwards talked of the latter end of that great martyr, Mr George
Wishart, and the seneschal informed him of several things concerning the
same that were most edifying, though sorrowful to hear.
"He was," said he, "placed under my care, and methinks I shall ever see
him before me, so meek, so holy, and so goodly was his aspect. He was of
tall stature, black haired, long bearded, of a graceful carriage,
elegant, courteous, and ready to teach. In his apparel he was most
comely, and in his diet of an abstemious temperance. On the morning of
his execution, when I gave him notice that he was not to be allowed to
have the sacrament, he smiled with a holiness of resignation that almost
melted me to weep. I then invited him to partake of my breakfast, which
he accepted with cheerfulness, saying,--
"'I will do it very willingly, and so much the rather, because I
perceive you to be a good Christian, and a man fearing God.'
"I then ordered in the breakfast, and he said,--
"'I beseech you, for the love you bear to our Saviour, to be silent a
little while, till I have made a short exhortation, and blessed this
bread we are to eat.'
"He then spoke about the space of half an hour of our Saviour's death
and passion, exhorting me, and those who were present with me, to mutual
love and holiness of life; and giving thanks, brake the bread,
distributing a part to those about him; then taking a cup, he bade us
remember that Christ's blood was shed to wash away our sins, and,
tasting it himself, he handed it to me, and I likewise partook of it:
then he concluded with another prayer, at the end of which he said, 'I
will neither drink nor eat any more in this world,' and he forthwith
entered into an inner chamber where his bed was, leaving us filled with
admiration and sorrow, and our eyes flowing with tears."
To this the seneschal added, "I fear, I fear, we are soon to have
another scene of the same sort, for to-morrow the Bishops of Murray, and
Brechin, and Caithness, with other dignitaries, are summoned to the
cathedral to sit in judgment on the aged priest of Lunan, that was
brought hither from Dysart yestereen, and from the head the newfangled
heresies are making, there's little doubt that the poor auld man will be
made an example. Woes me! far better would it be an they would make an
example of the like of the Earls of Argyle and Glencairn, by whom the
reprobates are so encouraged."
"And is this Mill," inquired my grandfather with diffidence, for his
heart was so stung with what he heard, that he could scarcely feign the
necessary hypocrisy which the peril he stood in required--"Is this Mill
in the castle?"
"Sorry am I to say it," replied the seneschal, "and under my keeping;
but I darena show him the pity that I would fain do to his grey hairs
and aged limbs. Some of the monks of the priory are with him just now,
trying to get him to recant his errors, with the promise of a bein
provision for the remainder of his days in the abbey of Dunfermline, the
whilk I hope our blessed Lady will put it into his heart to accept."
"I trust," said my grandfather in the core of his bosom, "that the Lord
will fortify him to resist the temptation."
This, however, the seneschal heard not, for it was ejaculated inwardly,
and he subjoined,--
"When the monks go away, I will take you in to see him, for truly he is
a sight far more moving to compassion than displeasure, whatsoever his
sins and heresies may be."
In this manner, for the space of more than an hour, did my grandfather
hold converse and communion with Leonard Meldrum, in whom, he was often
heard to say, there was more of the leaven of a sanctified nature than
in the disposition of many zealous and professing Christians.
When the two shavlings that had been afflicting Master Mill with the
offer of the wages of Satan were departed from the castle, the seneschal
rose, and bidding my grandfather to come after him, they went out of the
room, and traversing a narrow dark passage with many windings, came to
the foot of a turnpike stair which led up into the sea-tower, so called
because it stood farthermost of all the castle in the sea, and in the
chamber thereof they found Master Mill alone, sitting at the window,
with his ancient and shrivelled lean hand resting on the sole and
supporting his chin, as he looked through the iron stainchers abroad on
the ocean that was sleeping in a blessed tranquillity around, all
glowing and golden with the shimmer of the setting sun.
"How fares it with you?" said the seneschal with a kindly accent;
whereupon the old man, who had not heard them enter, being tranced in
his own holy meditations, turned round, and my grandfather said he felt
himself, when he beheld his countenance, so smitten with awe and
admiration, that he could not for some time advance a step.
"Come in, Master Meldrum, and sit ye down by me!" said the godly man.
"Draw near unto me, for I am a thought hard of hearing. The Lord has of
late, by steeking the doors and windows of my earthly tabernacle, been
admonishing me that the gloaming is come, and the hour of rest cannot be
far off."
His voice, said my grandfather, was as the sound of a mournful melody,
but his countenance was brightened with a solemn joyfulness. He was of a
pale and spiritual complexion; his eyes beamed, as it were, with a
living light, and often glanced thoughts of heavenly imaginings, even as
he sat in silence. He was then fourscore and two years old; but his
appearance was more aged, for his life had been full of suffering and
poverty; and his venerable hands and skinny arms were heart-melting
evidences of his ineffectual power to struggle much longer in the
warfare of this world. In sooth, he was a chosen wheat-ear, ripened and
ready for the garnels of salvation.
"I have brought, Master Mill," said the seneschal, "a discreet youth to
see you, not out of a vain curiosity, for he sorrows with an exceeding
grief that such an aged person should be brought into a state of so
great jeopardy; but I hope, Master Mill, it will go well with you yet,
and that ye'll repent and accept the boon that I hae heard was to be
proffered."
To these words the aged saint made no reply for the space of about a
minute; at the end of which he raised his hands, and casting his eyes
heavenward, exclaimed,--
"I thank Thee, O Lord, for the days of sore trial, and want, and hunger,
and thirst, and destitution which Thou hast been pleased to bestow upon
me, for by them have I, even now as I stand on the threshold of life,
been enabled, through Thy merciful heartenings, to set at nought the
temptations wherewith I have been tempted."
And, turning to the seneschal, he added mildly, "But I am bound to you,
Master Meldrum, in great obligations, for I know that in the hope you
have now expressed there is the spirit of much charitableness, albeit
you discern not the deadly malady that the sin of compliance would bring
to my poor soul. No, sir, it would na be worth my while now, for world's
gain, to read a recantation. And, blessed be God, it's no in my power to
yield, so deeply are the truths of His laws engraven upon the tablet of
my heart."
They then fell into more general discourse, and while they were
speaking, a halberdier came into the room with a paper, whereby the
prisoner was summoned to appear in the cathedral next day by ten
o'clock, to answer divers matters of heresy and schism laid to his
charge; and the man having delivered the summons, said to the seneschal
that he was ordered by Sir Andrew Oliphant to bid him refrain from
visiting the prisoner, and to retire to his own lodging.
The seneschal to this command said nothing, but rose, and my grandfather
likewise rose. Fain would he have knelt down to beg the blessing of the
martyr, but the worthy Master Meldrum signified to him with a look to
come at once away; and when they were returned back into his chamber
where the repast had been served, he told him that there was a danger of
falling under the evil thoughts of Oliphant, were he to be seen
evidencing anything like respect towards prisoners accused of the sin of
heresy.
CHAPTER V
The next day was like a cried fair in St. Andrews. All the country from
ayont Cupar, and many reformed and godly persons even from Dundee and
Perth, were gathered into the city to hear the trial of Master Walter
Mill. The streets were filled with horses and men with whips in their
hands and spurs at their heels, and there was a great going to and fro
among the multitude; but, saving in its numbers, the congregation of the
people was in no other complexion either like a fair or a tryst. Every
visage was darkened with doure thoughts; none spoke cheerfully aloud;
but there was whispering and muttering, and ever and anon the auld men
were seen wagging their heads in sorrow, while the young cried often
"Shame! shame!" and with vehement gestures clave the air with their
right hands, grasping their whips and staffs with the vigour of
indignation.
At last the big bell of the cathedral began to jow, at the doleful sound
of which there was, for the space of two or three minutes, a silence and
pause in the multitude as if they had been struck with panic and
consternation, for till then there was a hope among them that the
persecutors would relent; but the din of the bell was as the signal of
death and despair, and the people were soon awakened from their
astonishment by the cry that "the bishops are coming," whereat there
was a great rush towards the gates of the church, which was presently
filled, leaving only a passage up the middle aisle.
In the quire a table was spread with a purple velvet cloth, and at the
upper end, before the high place of the mass, was a stool of state for
the Archbishop; on each side stood chairs for the Bishops of Murray,
Brechin and Caithness and his other suffragans, summoned to sit in
judgment with him.
My grandfather, armed and wearing the Archbishop's livery, was with
those that guarded the way for the cruel prelates, and by the pressure
of the throng in convoying them into their place, he was driven within
the screen of the quire, and saw and heard all that passed.
When they had taken their seats, Master Mill was brought before them
from the prior's chamber, whither he had been secretly conducted early
in the morning, to the end that his great age might not be seen of the
people to work on their compassion. But, notwithstanding the forethought
of this device, when he came in, his white hair and his saintly look and
his feeble, tottering steps softened every heart. Even the very legate
of Antichrist, the Archbishop himself, my grandfather said, was
evidently moved, and for a season looked at the poor infirm old man as
he would have spared him, and a murmur of universal commiseration ran
through the church.
On being taken to the bottom of the table and placed fornent the
Archbishop, Master Mill knelt down and prayed for support in a voice so
firm and clear and eloquent that all present were surprised, for it rung
to the farthest corner of that great edifice, and smote the hearts of
his oppressors as with the dread of a menacing oracle.
Sir Andrew Oliphant, who acted as clerk and chancellor on the occasion,
began to fret as he heard him thus strengthened of the Lord, and cried
peevishly,--
"Sir Walter Mill, get up and answer, for you keep my lords here too
long."
He, however, heeded not this command, but continued undisturbed till he
had finished his devotion, when he rose and said,--
"I am bound to obey God more than man, and I serve a mightier Lord than
yours. You call me Sir Walter, but I am only Walter. Too long was I one
of the Pope's knights; but now say what you have to say."
Oliphant was somewhat cowed by this bold reply, and he bowed down, and
turning over his papers, read a portion of one of them to himself, and
then raising his head, said,--
"What thinkest thou of priests' marriage?"
The old man looked bravely towards the bishops, and answered with an
intrepid voice,--
"I esteem marriage a blessed bond, ordained by God, approved by Christ,
and made free to all sorts of men; but you abhor it, and in the meantime
take other men's wives and daughters; you vow chastity, and keep it
not."
My grandfather at these words looked unawares towards the Archbishop,
thinking of what he had seen in the lodging of Mistress Kilspinnie, and
their eyes chancing to meet, his Grace turned his head suddenly away as
if he had been rebuked.
Divers other questions were then put by Oliphant touching the
sacraments, the idolatry of the mass, and transubstantiation, with other
points concerning bishops and pilgrimages, and the worshipping of God in
unconsecrated places, to all which Master Mill answered in so brave a
manner, contrary to the papists, that even Oliphant himself often looked
reproved and confounded. At last the choler of that sharp weapon of
persecution began to rise, and he said to him sternly,--
"If you will not recant I will pronounce sentence against you."
"I know," replied Master Mill, with an apostolic constancy and
fortitude, "I know that I must die once, and therefore, as Christ said
to Judas, What thou doest do quickly. You shall know that I will not
recant the truth, for I am corn and not chaff. I will neither be blown
away by the wind nor burst with the flail, but will abide both."
At these brave words a sough of admiration sounded through the church,
but, instead of deterring the prelates from proceeding with their wicked
purpose, it only served to harden their hearts and to rouse their anger,
for when they had conferred a few minutes apart, Oliphant was ordered to
condemn him to the fire, and to deliver him over to the temporal
magistrates to see execution done.
No sooner was the sentence known, than a cry like a howl of wrath rose
from all the people, and the provost of the town, who was present with
the bailies, hastily quitted the church and fled, abhorring the task,
and fearful it would be put upon him to see it done, he being also
bailie of the Archbishop's regalities.
When the sentence was pronounced, the session of the court was
adjourned, and the bishops, as they were guarded back to the castle,
heard many a malison from the multitude who were ravenous against them.
The aged martyr being led back to the prior's chamber, was, under cloud
of night, taken to the castle; but my grandfather saw no more of him,
nor of Master Meldrum, the seneschal; for there was a great fear among
the bishops' men that the multitude would rise and attempt a rescue; and
my grandfather, not being inclined to go so far with his disguise as to
fight against that cause, took occasion, in the dusk of the evening, to
slip out of the castle, and to hide himself in the town, being resolved,
after what he had witnessed, no longer to abide, even as a spy, in a
service which his soul loathed.
All the night long there was a great commotion in the streets, and
lights in many houses, and a sound of lamentation mingled with rage. The
noise was as if some dreadful work was going on. There was no shouting,
nor any sound of men united together, but a deep and hoarse murmur rose
at times from the people, like the sound of the bandless waves of the
sea when they are driven by the strong impulses of the tempest. The
spirit of the times was indeed upon them, and it was manifest to my
grandfather that there wanted that night but the voice of a captain to
bid them hurl their wrath and vengeance against the towers and
strongholds of the oppressors.
At the dawn of day the garrison of the castle came forth, and, on the
spot where the martyrdom of Mr George Wishart had been accomplished, a
stake was driven into the ground, and faggots and barrels of tar were
placed around it, piled up almost as high as a man; in the middle, next
to the stake, a place was left for the sufferer.
But when all things were prepared, no rope could be had--no one in all
the town would give or sell a cord to help that sacrifice of iniquity,
nor would any of the magistrates come forth to see the execution done,
so it was thought for a time that the hungry cruelty of the persecutors
would be disappointed of its banquet. One Somerville, however, who was
officer of the Archbishop's guard, bethought himself, in this extremity,
of the ropes wherewith his master's pavilion was fastened, and he went
and took the same; and then his men brought forth the aged martyr, at
the sight of whom the multitude set up a dreadful imprecation, the roar
and growling groan of which was as if a thousand furious tigresses had
been robbed of their young. Many of Somerville's halberdiers looked
cowed, and their faces were aghast with terror; and some cried,
compassionately, as they saw the blessed old man brought, with his hands
tied behind him, to the stake, "Recant, recant!"
The monks and friars of the different monasteries, who were all there
assembled around, took up the word, and bitterly taunting him, cried
likewise, "Recant, recant and save thyself!" He, however, replied to
them with an awful austerity,--
"I marvel at your rage, ye hypocrites, who do so cruelly pursue the
servants of God. As for me, I am now fourscore and two years old, and by
course of nature cannot live long; but hundreds shall rise out of my
ashes who shall scatter you, ye persecutors of God's people."
Sir Andrew Oliphant, who was that day the busiest high priest of the
horrible sacrifice, at these words pushed him forward into the midst of
the faggots and fuel around the stake. But, nothing moved by this
remorseless indignity, the martyr looked for a moment at the pile with a
countenance full of cheerful resignation, and then requested permission
to say a few words to the people.
"You have spoken too much," cried Oliphant, "and the bishops are
exceedingly displeased with what you have said."
But the multitude exclaimed, "Let him be heard! let him speak what he
pleases! Speak, and heed not Oliphant." At which he looked towards them
and said,--
"Dear friends, the cause why I suffer this day is not for any crime laid
to my charge, though I acknowledge myself a miserable sinner, but only
for the defence of the truths of Jesus Christ, as set forth in the Old
and New Testaments."
He then began to pray, and while his eyes were shut, two of Somerville's
men threw a cord with a running loop round his body, and bound him to
the stake. The fire was then kindled, and at the sight of the smoke the
multitude uttered a shriek of anguish, and many ran away, unable to bear
any longer the sight of that woful tragedy. Among others, my grandfather
also ran, nor halted till he was come to a place under the rocks on the
south side of the town, where he could see nothing before him but the
lonely desert of the calm and soundless ocean.
CHAPTER VI
Many a time did my grandfather, in his old age, when all things he spoke
were but remembrances, try to tell what passed in his bosom while he was
sitting alone, under those cliffy rocks, gazing on the silent and
innocent sea, thinking of that dreadful work, more hideous than the
horrors of winds and waves, with which blinded men, in the lusts of
their idolatry, were then blackening the ethereal face of heaven; but he
was ever unable to proceed for the struggles of his spirit and the
gushing of his tears. Verily it was an awful thing to see that
patriarchal man overcome by the recollections of his youth; and the
manner in which he spoke of the papistical cruelties was as the pouring
of the energy of a new life into the very soul, instigating thoughts and
resolutions of an implacable enmity against those ruthless adversaries
to the hopes and redemption of the world, insomuch that, while yet a
child, I was often worked upon by what he said, and felt my young heart
so kindled with the live coals of his godly enthusiasm, that he himself
has stopped in the eloquence of his discourse, wondering at my fervour.
Then he would lay his hand upon my head, and say, the Lord had not
gifted me with such zeal without having a task in store for my riper
years. His words of prophecy, as shall hereafter appear, have greatly
and wonderfully come to pass. But it is meet that for a season I should
rehearse what ensued to him, for his story is full of solemnities and
strange accidents.
Having rested some time on the sea-shore, he rose and walked along the
toilsome shingle, scarcely noting which way he went--his thoughts being
busy with the martyrdom he had witnessed, flushing one moment with a
glorious indignation, and fainting the next with despondent reflections
on his own friendless state. For he looked upon himself as adrift on the
tides of the world, believing that his patron, the Earl of Glencairn,
would to a surety condemn his lack of fortitude in not enduring the
servitude of the Archbishop, after having been in so miraculous a manner
accepted into it, even as if Providence had made him a special
instrument to achieve the discoveries which the Lords of the
Congregation had then so much at heart. And while he was walking along
in this fluctuating mood, he came suddenly upon a man who was sitting,
as he had so shortly before been himself, sad and solitary, gazing on
the sea. The stranger, on hearing him approach, rose hastily, and was
moving quickly away; but my grandfather called to him to stop and not to
be afraid, for he would harm no one.
"I thought," said the melancholy man, "that all his Grace's retainers
were at the execution of the heretic."
There was something in the way in which he uttered the latter clause of
the sentence that seemed to my grandfather as if he would have made use
of better and fitter words, and therefore, to encourage him into
confidence, he replied,--
"I belong not to his Grace."
"How is it, then, that you wear his livery, and that I saw you, with Sir
David Hamilton, enter the garden of that misguided woman?"
He could proceed no farther, for his heart swelled, and his utterance
was for a while stifled, he being no other than the misfortunate Bailie
of Crail, whose light wife had sunk into the depravity of the
Archbishop's lemane. She had been beguiled away from him and her five
babies, their children, by the temptations of a Dominican, who, by habit
and repute, was pandarus to his Grace, and the poor man had come to try
if it was possible to wile her back.
My grandfather was melted with sorrow to see his great affection for the
unworthy concubine, calling to mind the scene of her harlotry and wanton
glances, and he reasoned with him on the great folly of vexing his
spirit for a woman so far lost to all shame and given over to iniquity.
But still the good man of Crail would not be persuaded, but used many
earnest entreaties that my grandfather would assist him to see his wife,
in order that he might remonstrate with her on the eternal perils in
which she had placed her precious soul.
My grandfather, though much moved by the importunity of that weak,
honest man, nevertheless withstood his entreaties, telling him that he
was minded to depart forthwith from St Andrews, and make the best of his
way back to Edinburgh, and so could embark in no undertaking whatever.
Discoursing on that subject in this manner, they strayed into the
fields, and being wrapt up in their conversation, they heeded not which
way they went, till, turning suddenly round the corner of an orchard,
they saw the castle full before them, about half a mile off, and a dim
white vapour mounting at times from the spot, still surrounded by many
spectators, where the fires of martyrdom had burnt so fiercely.
Shuddering and filled with dread, my grandfather turned away, and seeing
several countrymen passing, he inquired if all was over.
"Yes," said they, "and the soldiers are slockening the ashes; but a' the
waters of the ocean-sea will never quench in Scotland the flame that was
kindled yonder this day."
The which words they said with a proud look, thinking my grandfather, by
his arms and gabardine, belonged to the Archbishop's household; but the
words were as manna to his religious soul, and he gave inward praise and
thanks that the selfsame tragical means which had been devised to
terrify the reformers was thus, through the mysterious wisdom of
Providence, made more emboldening than courageous wine to fortify their
hearts for the great work that was before them.
Nothing, however, farther passed; but, changing the course of their
walk, my grandfather and the sorrowful Master Kilspinnie--for so the
poor man of Crail was called--went back, and, entering the bow at the
Shoegate, passed on towards a vintner's that dwelt opposite to the
convent of the Blackfriars; for the day was by this time far advanced,
and they both felt themselves in need of some refreshment.
While they were sitting together in the vintner's apartment, a stripling
came several times into the room, and looked hard at my grandfather, and
then went away without speaking. This was divers times repeated, and at
last it was so remarkable that even Master Kilspinnie took notice of
him, observing, that he seemed as if he had something very particular to
communicate, if an opportunity served, offering at the same time to
withdraw, to leave the room clear for the youth to tell his errand.
My grandfather's curiosity was, by this strange and new adventure to
him, so awakened, that he thought what his companion proposed a discreet
thing; so the honest Bailie of Crail withdrew himself, and, going into
the street, left my grandfather alone.
No sooner was he gone out of the house than the stripling, who had been
sorning about the door, again came in, and, coming close up to my
grandfather's ear, said, with a significance not to be misconstrued,
that if he would follow him he would take him to free quarters, where he
would be more kindly entertained.
My grandfather, though naturally of a quiet temperament, was
nevertheless a bold and brave youth, and there was something in the
mystery of this message--for such he rightly deemed it--that made him
fain to see the end thereof. So he called in the vintner's wife and paid
her the lawin', telling her to say to the friend who had been with him,
when he came back, that he would soon return.
The vintner's wife was a buxom and jolly dame, and before taking up the
money, she gave a pawkie look at the stripling, and as my grandfather
and he were going out at the door, she hit the gilly a bilf on the back,
saying it was a ne'er-do-weel trade he had ta'en up, and that he wasna
blate to wile awa' her customers, crying after him, "I redde ye warn
your madam that gin she sends you here again, I'll maybe let his Grace
ken that her cauldron needs clouting." However, the graceless gilly but
laughed at the vintner's wife, winking as he patted the side of his nose
with his fore-finger, which testified that he held her vows of vengeance
in very little reverence; and then he went on, my grandfather following.
They walked up the street till they came to the priory yett, when,
turning down a wynd to the left, he led my grandfather along between two
dykes, till they were come to a house that stood by itself within a fair
garden. But instead of going to the door in an honest manner, he bade
him stop, and going forward he whistled shrilly, and then flung three
stones against a butt, that was standing at the corner of the house on a
gauntrees to kep rain water from the spouting image of a stone puddock
that vomited what was gathered from the roof in the rones, and soon
after an upper casement was opened, and a damsel looked forth; she
however said nothing to the stripling, but she made certain signs which
he understood, and then she drew in her head, shutting the casement
softly, and he came back to my grandfather, to whom he said it was not
commodious at that time for him to be received into the house, but if he
would come back in the dark, at eight o'clock, all things would be ready
for his reception.
To this suggestion my grandfather made no scruple to assent, but
promised to be there; and he bargained with the lad to come for him,
giving him at the same time three placks for a largess. He then returned
to the vintner's, where he found the Crail man sitting waiting for him;
and the vintner's wife, when she saw him so soon back, jeered him, and
would fain have been jocose, which he often after thought a woful
immorality, considering the dreadful martyrdom of a godly man that had
been done that day in the town; but at the time he was not so over
strait-laced as to take offence at what she said; indeed, as he used to
say, sins were not so heinous in those papistical days as they
afterwards became, when men lost faith in penance, and found out the
perils of purchased pardons.
CHAPTER VII
My grandfather having, as I have told, a compassion for the silly
affection wherewith the honest man of Crail still regarded his wanton
wife, told him the circumstantials of his adventure with the stripling;
without, however, letting wot he had discovered that the invitation was
from her; the which was the case, for the damsel who looked out at the
window was no other than the giglet he had seen in her lodging when he
went thither with Sir David Hamilton, and he proposed to the
disconsolate husband that he should be his friend in the adventure;
meaning thereby to convince the unhappy man, by the evidence of his own
eyes and ears, that her concubinage with the Antichrist was a blessed
riddance to him and his family.
At first Master Kilspinnie had no zest for any such frolic, for so it
seemed to him, and he began to think my grandfather's horror at the
martyrdom of the aged saint but a long-fac't hypocrisy; nevertheless he
was wrought upon to consent; and they sat plotting and contriving in
what manner they should act their several parts, my grandfather
pretending great fear and apprehension at the thoughts of himself, a
stranger, going alone into the traps of a house where there were sic
forerunners of shame and signs of danger. At last he proposed that they
should go together and spy about the precincts of the place, and try to
discover if there was no other entrance or outgate to the house than the
way by which the stripling conducted him, though well he remembered the
sallyport, where the fat friar kept watch, eating the pasty.
Accordingly they went forth from the vintner's, and my grandfather, as
if he knew not the way, led his companion round between the priory and
the sea, till they came near the aforesaid sallyport, when, mounting
upon a stone, he affected to discover that the house of the madam stood
in the garden within, and that the sallyport could be no less than a
back yett thereto.
While they were speaking concerning the same, my grandfather observed
the wicket open in the gate, and guessing therefrom that it was one
spying to forewarn somebody within who wanted to come out unremarked, he
made a sign to his companion, and they both threw themselves flat on the
ground, and hirsled down the rocks to conceal themselves. Presently the
gate was opened, and then out came the fat friar, and looked east and
west, holding the door in his hand; and anon out came his Grace the
Antichrist, hirpling with a staff in his hand, for he was lame with that
monkish malady called the gout. The friar then drew the yett to, and
walked on towards the castle, with his Grace leaning on his arm. In the
meantime the poor man of Crail was grinding the teeth of his rage at the
sight of the cause of his sorrow, and my grandfather had a sore struggle
to keep him down, and prevent him from running wud and furious at the
two sacerdotal reprobates, for no lightlier could they be called.
Thus, without any disclosure on my grandfather's part, did Master
Kilspinnie come to jealouse that the lemane who had trysted him was no
other than his own faithless wife, and he smote his forehead and wept
bitterly, to think how she was become so dreadless in sin. But he vowed
to put her to shame; so it was covenanted between them, that in the
dusk of the evening the afflicted husband should post himself near to
where they then stood, and that when my grandfather was admitted by the
other entrance to the house, he should devise some reason for walking
forth into the garden, and while there admit Master Kilspinnie.
Accordingly, betimes my grandfather was ready, and the stripling, as had
been bargained, came for him to the vintner's, and conducted him to the
house, where, after giving the signals before enumerated, the damsel
came to the door and gave him admittance, leading him straight to the
inner chamber before described, where her mistress was sitting in a
languishing posture, with the table spread for a banquet.
She embraced my grandfather with many fond protestations, and filled him
a cup of hot malvesie, while her handmaid brought in divers savoury
dishes; but he, though a valiant young man, was not at his ease, and he
thought of the poor husband and the five babies that the adultress had
left for the foul love of the papist high-priest, and it was a chaste
spell and a restraining grace. Still he partook a little of the rich
repast which had been prepared, and feigned so long a false pleasance,
that he almost became pleased in reality. The dame, however, was herself
at times fearful, and seemed to listen if there was any knocking at the
door, telling my grandfather that his Grace was to be back after he had
supped at the castle. "I thought," said she, "to have had you here when
he was at the burning of the heretic, but my gilly could not find you
among the troopers till it was owre late; for when he brought you my
Lord had come to solace himself after the execution. But I was so
nettled to be so baulked, that I acted myself into an anger till I got
him away, not, however, without a threat of being troubled with him
again at night."
Scarcely had madam said this, when my grandfather started up and feigned
to be in great terror, begging her to let him hide himself in the garden
till his Grace was come and gone. To this, with all her blandishments,
the guilty woman made many obstacles, but he was fortified of the Lord
with the thoughts of her injured children, and would not be entreated,
but insisted on scogging himself in the garden till the Archbishop was
sent away, the hour of his coming being then near at hand. Seeing him
thus peremptory, Madam Kilspinnie was obligated to conform; so he was
permitted to go into the garden, and no sooner was he there than he went
to the sallyport and admitted her husband; and well it was that he had
been so steadfast in his purpose, for scarcely were they moved from the
yett into a honeysuckle bower hard by when they heard it again open, and
in came his Grace with his corpulent pandarus, who took his seat on the
bench before spoken of, to watch, while his master went into the house.
The good Bailie of Crail breathed thickly, and he took my grandfather by
the hand, his whole frame trembling with a passion of grief and rage. In
the lapse of some four or five minutes, the giglet damsel came out of
the house, and by the glimpse of a light from a window as she passed
they saw she had a tankard of smoking drink in her hand, with which she
went to the friar; and my grandfather and his companion, taking
advantage of this, slipped out of their hiding-place and stole softly
into the house and reached the outer chamber that was parted from
madam's banquet bower by the arras partition. There they stopped to
listen, and heard her complaining in a most dolorous manner of great
heart-sickness, ever and anon begging the deluded prelate Hamilton to
taste the feast she had prepared for him, in the hope of being able to
share it with him and the caresses of his sweet love, to which his Grace
as often replied, with great condolence and sympathy, how very grieved
he was to find her in that sad and sore estate, with many other fond
cajoleries, most odious to my grandfather to hear from a man so far
advanced in years, and who, by reason of the reverence of his office,
ought to have had his tongue schooled to terms of piety and temperance.
The poor husband meanwhile said nothing, but my grandfather heard his
heart panting audibly, and three or four times he was obligated to brush
away his hand, for, having no arms himself, the bailie clutched at the
hilt of his sword and would have drawn it from the scabbard.
The Antichrist, seeing his lemane in such great malady as she so well
feigned, he at last, to her very earnest supplication, consented to
leave her that night, and kissed her as he came away; but her husband
broke in upon them with the rage of a hungry lion, and seizing his
Grace by the cuff of the neck, swung him away from her with such
vehemence that he fell into the corner of the room like a sack of duds.
As for madam, she uttered a wild cry, and threw herself back on the
couch where she was sitting and seemed as if she had swooned, having no
other device so ready to avoid the upbraidings and just reproaches of
her spouse. But she was soon roused from that fraudulent dwam by my
grandfather, who, seizing a flagon of wine, dashed it upon her face.
CHAPTER VIII
Mrs Kilspinnie uttered a frightful screech, and, starting up, attempted
to run out of the room, but her husband caught her by the arm, and my
grandfather was empowered, by a signal grant of great presence of mind
to think that the noise might cause alarm, whereupon he sprang instanter
to the door that led into the garden just as the damsel was coming up,
and the fat friar hobbling as fast as he could behind her; and he had
but time to say to her, as it was with an inspiration, to keep all quiet
in the garden and he would make his escape by the other door. She, on
hearing this, ran back to stop the pandarus, and my grandfather closed
and bolted fast that back door, going forthwith to the one by which he
had been himself admitted, and which, having opened wide to the wall, he
returned to the scene of commotion.
In the meantime the prelatic dragon that was so ravished from the woman
had hastily risen upon his legs, and, red with a dreadful wrath, raged
as if he would have devoured her husband. In sooth, to do his Grace
justice, he lacked not the spirit of a courageous gentleman, and he
could not, my grandfather often said, have borne himself more proudly
and valiantly had he been a belted knight, bred in camps and fields of
war, so that a discreet retreat and evasion of the house was the best
course they could take. But Master Kilspinnie fain would have continued
his biting taunts to the mistress, who was enacting a most tragical
extravagance of affliction and terror. My grandfather, however, suddenly
cut him short, crying, "Come, come, no more of this; an alarm is given,
and we must save ourselves." With that he seized him firmly by the arm,
and in a manner harled him out of the house and into the lane between
the dykes, along which they ran with nimble heels. On reaching the
Showgate they slackened their speed, still, however, walking as fast as
they could till they came near the port, when they again drew in the
bridle of their haste, going through among the guards that were
loitering around the door of the wardroom, and passed out into the
fields as if they had been indifferent persons.
On escaping the gate they fell in with divers persons going along the
road, who, by their discourse, were returning home to Cupar, and they
walked leisurely with them till they came to a cross-road, where my
grandfather, giving Master Kilspinnie a nodge, turned down the one that
went to the left, followed by him, and it happened to be the road to
Dysart and Crail.
"This will ne'er do," said Master Kilspinnie, "they will pursue us this
gait."
Upon hearing this reasonable apprehension, my grandfather stopped and
conferred with himself, and received on that spot a blessed experience
and foretaste of the protection wherewith, to a great age, he was all
his days protected. For it was in a manner revealed to him that he
should throw away the garbardine and sword which he had received in the
castle, and thereby appear in his simple craftsman's garb, and that they
should turn back and cross the Cupar road, and go along the other, which
led to the Dundee waterside ferry. This he told to his fearful
companion, and likewise, that as often as they fell in with or heard
anybody coming up, the bailie should hasten on before or den himself
among the brechans by the roadside, to the end that it might appear they
were not two persons in company together.
But they had not long crossed the Cupar road and travelled the one
leading to the ferry when they heard the whirlwind sound of horsemen
coming after them, at which the honest man of Crail darted aside and lay
flat on his grouff ayont a bramble bush, while my grandfather began to
lilt as blithely as he could, "The Bonny Lass of Livingston," and the
spring was ever after to him as a hymn of thanksgiving, but the words he
then sang was an auld, ranting, godless and graceless ditty of the
grooms and serving-men that sorned about his father's smiddy, and the
closer that the horsemen came he was strengthened to sing the louder and
the clearer.
"Saw ye twa fellows ganging this gait?" cried the foremost of the
pursuers, pulling up.
"What like were they?" said my grandfather, in a simple manner.
"Ane of them was o' his Grace's guard," replied the man, "but the other,
curse tak me gin I ken what he was like, but he's the bailie or provost
of a burrough's town, and should by rights hae a big belly."
To this my grandfather answered briskly, "Nae sic twa ha'e past me, but
as I was coming along whistling, thinking o' naething, twa sturdy loons,
ane o' them no unlike the hempies o' the castle, ran skirring along, and
I hae a thought that they took the road to Crail or Dysart."
"That was my thought, too," cried the horseman, as he turned his beast,
and the rest that were with him doing the same, bidding my grandfather
good-night, away they scampered back; by which a blessed deliverance was
there wrought to him and his companion on that spot, in that night.
As soon as the horsemen had gone by, Bailie Kilspinnie came from his
hiding-place, and both he and my grandfather proved that no bird-lime
was on their feet till they got to the ferry-house at the waterside,
where they found two boats taking passengers on board, one for Dundee
and the other for Perth. Here my grandfather's great gift of
foreknowledge was again proven, for he proposed that they should bargain
with the skipper of the Dundee boat to take them to that town and pay
him like the other passengers, at once, in an open manner, but that, as
the night was cloudy and dark, they should go cannily aboard the boat
for Perth, as it were in mistake, and feign not to discover their error
till they were far up the river when they should proceed to the town,
letting wot that by the return of the tide they would go in the morning
by the Perth boat to Dundee, with which Master Kilspinnie was well
acquainted, he having had many times, in the way of his traffic as a
plaiding merchant, cause to use the same, and thereby knew it went twice
a week, and that the morrow was one of the days. All this they were
enabled to do with such fortitude and decorum that no one aboard the
Perth boat could have divined that they were not honest men in great
trouble of mind at discovering they had come into the wrong boat.
But nothing showed more that Providence had a hand in all this than what
ensued, for all the passengers in the boat had been at St Andrews to
hear the trial and see the martyrdom, and they were sharp and vehement
not only in their condemnation of the mitred Antichrist, but grieved
with a sincere sorrow that none of the nobles of Scotland would stand
forth in their ancient bravery to resist and overthrow a race of
oppressors more grievous than the Southrons that trode on the neck of
their fathers in the hero-stirring times of the Wallace wight and King
Robert the Bruce. Truly, there was a spirit of unison and indignation in
the company on board that boat, everyone thirsting with a holy ardour to
avenge the cruelties of which the papistical priesthood were daily
growing more and more crouse in the perpetration, and they made the
shores ring with the olden song of--
"O for my ain king, quo' gude Wallace,
The rightfu' king of fair Scotlan';
Between me and my sovereign dear
I think I see some ill seed sawn."
It was the grey of the morning before they reached Perth, and as soon as
they were put on the land the bailie took my grandfather with him to the
house of one Sawners Ruthven, a blanket-weaver with whom he had
dealings, a staid and discreet man, who, when he had supplied them with
breakfast, exhorted them not to tarry in the town, then a place that had
fallen under the suspicion of the clergy, the lordly monks of Scoone
taking great power and authority, in despite of the magistrates, against
all that fell under their evil thoughts anent heresy. And he counselled
them not to proceed, as my grandfather had proposed, straight on to
Edinburgh by the Queensferry, but to hasten up the country to Crieff and
thence take the road to Stirling. In this there was much prudence, but
Bailie Kilspinnie was in sore tribulation on account of his children,
whom he had left at his home in Crail, fearing that the talons of
Antichrist would lay hold of them and keep them as hostages till he was
given up to suffer for what he had done, none doubting that Baal, for so
he nicknamed the prelatic Hamilton, would impute to him the
unpardonable sin of heresy and schism, and leave no stone unturned to
bring him to the stake.
But Sawners Ruthven comforted him with the assurance that his Grace
would not venture to act in that manner, for it was known how Mistress
Kilspinnie then lived at St Andrews as his concubine. Nevertheless, the
poor man was in sore affliction, and as he and my grandfather travelled
towards Crieff, many a bitter prayer did his vexed spirit pour forth in
its grief that the right arm of the Lord might soon be manifested
against the Roman locust that consumed the land and made its corruption
naught in the nostrils of Heaven.
Thus was it manifest that there was much of the ire of a selfish revenge
mixt up with the rage which was at that time kindled in so unquenchable
a manner against the Beast and its worshippers, for in the history of
the honest man of Crail there was a great similitude to other foul and
worse things which the Roman idolaters seemed to regard among their
pestiferous immunities, and counted themselves free to do without dread
of any earthly retribution.
CHAPTER IX
My grandfather and his companion hastened on in their journey, but
instead of going to Stirling they crossed the river at Alloa, and so
passed by the water-side way to Edinburgh, where, on entering the
West-port, they separated. The bailie, who was a fearful man and in
constant dread and terror of being burned as a heretic for having broke
in upon the dalliance of his incontinent wife and the carnal-minded
primate of St Andrews, went to a cousin of his own, a dealer in serge
and temming in the Lawnmarket, with whom he concealed himself for some
weeks, but my grandfather proceeded straight towards the lodging of the
Earl of Glencairn to recount to his lordship the whole passages of what
he had been concerned in, from the night that he departed from his
presence.
It was by this time the mirkest of the gloaming, for they had purposely
tarried on their journey that they might enter Edinburgh at dusk. The
shops of the traders were shut, for in those days there was such a
resort of sorners and lawless men among the trains of the nobles and
gentry that it was not safe for honest merchants to keep their shops
open after nightfall. Nevertheless the streets were not darkened, for
there were then many begging-boxes, with images of the saints, and
cruisies burning afore them, in divers parts of the High Street and
corners of the wynds, insomuch that it was easy, as I have heard my
grandfather tell, to see and know anyone passing in the light thereof.
And, indeed, what befel himself was proof of it, for as he was coming
through St Giles' Kirkyard, which is now the Parliament Close, and
through which at that time there was a style and path for passengers, a
young man, whom he had observed following him, came close up just as he
reached a begging image of the Virgin Mary with its lamp that stood on a
pillar at the south-east corner of the cathedral, and touching him on
the left shoulder at that spot made him look round in such a manner that
the light of the Virgin's lamp fell full on his face.
"Dinna be frighted," said the stranger, "I ken you, and I'm in Lord
Glencairn's service; but follow me and say nothing."
My grandfather was not a little startled by this salutation; he,
however, made no observe, but replied, "Go on, then."
So the stranger went forward, and, after various turnings and windings,
led him down into the Cowgate and up a close on the south side thereof,
and then to a dark timber stair that was so frail and creaking and
narrow that his guide bade him haul himself up with the help of a rope
that hung down dangling for that purpose.
When they had raised themselves to the stairhead, the stranger opened a
door and they went together into a small and lonesome chamber, in the
chimla-nook of which an old iron cruisie was burning with a winking and
wizard light.
"I hae brought you here," said his conductor, "for secrecy, for my Lord
disna want that ye should be seen about his lodging. I'm ane of three
that hae been lang seeking you, and, as a token that ye're no deceived,
I was bade to tell you that before parting from my lord he gi'ed you two
pieces of gold out of his coffer in the chamber where he supped."
My grandfather thought this very like a proof that he had been so
informed by the Earl himself, but happening to remark that he sat with
his back to the light and kept his face hidden in the shadow of the
darkness, Providence put it into his head to jealouse that he might
nevertheless be a spy, one perhaps that had been trusted in like manner
as he had himself been trusted, and who had afterwards sold himself to
the perdition of the adversaries' cause; he was, accordingly, on his
guard, but replied with seeming frankness that it was very true he had
received two pieces of gold from the Earl at his departure.
"Then," said the young man, "by that token ye may know that I am in the
private service of the Earl, who, for reasons best known to himsel',
hath willed that you should tell me, that I may report the same secretly
to him, what espionage you have made."
My grandfather was perplexed by this speech, but distrust having crept
into his thoughts, instead of replying with a full recital of all his
adventures, he briefly said that he had indeed effected nothing, for his
soul was sickened by the woful martyrdom of the godly Master Mill to so
great a disease that he could not endure to abide in St Andrews, and
therefore he had come back.
"But you have been long on the way--how is that?--it is now many days
since the burning," replied the stranger.
"You say truly," was my grandfather's answer, "for I came round by
Perth, but I tarried at no place longer than was needful to repair and
refresh nature."
"Perth was a wide bout gait to take frae St Andrews to come to
Edinburgh. I marvel how ye went so far astray," said the young man,
curiously.
"In sooth it was, but being sorely demented with the tragical end of the
godly old man," replied my grandfather, "and seeing that I could do the
Earl no manner of service, I wist not well what course to take, so after
meickle tribulation of thought and great uncertainty of purpose I e'en
resolved to come hither."
Little more passed; the young man rose and said to my grandfather he
feared the Earl would be so little content with him that he had better
not go near him but seek some other master. And when they had descended
the stair and were come into the street he advised him to go to the
house of a certain Widow Rippet, that let dry lodgings in the
Grass-market, and roost there for that night. The which my grandfather
in a manner signified he would do, and so they parted.
The stranger at first walked soberly away, but he had not gone many
paces when he suddenly turned into a close leading up to the
High-street, and my grandfather heard the pattering of his feet running
as swiftly as possible, which confirmed to him what he suspected; and
so, instead of going towards the Widow Rippet's house he turned back and
went straight on to St Mary's Wynd, where the Earl's lodging was, and
knocking at the yett was speedily admitted and conducted instanter to my
Lord's presence, whom he found alone reading many papers which lay on a
table before him.
"Gilhaize," said the Earl, "how is this? why have you come back? and
wherefore is it that I have heard no tidings from you?"
Whereupon my grandfather recounted to him all the circumstantials which
I have rehearsed, from the hour of his departure from Edinburgh up till
the very time when he then stood in his master's presence. The Earl made
no inroad on his narrative while he was telling it, but his countenance
often changed and he was much moved at different passages--sometimes
with sorrow and sometimes with anger; and he laughed vehemently at the
mishap which had befallen the grand adversary of the Congregation and
his concubine. The adventure, however, with the unknown varlet in the
street appeared to make his Lordship very thoughtful, and no less than
thrice did he question my grandfather if he had indeed given but those
barren answers which I have already recited; to all which he received
the most solemn asseverations that no more was said. His Lordship then
sat some time cogitating with his hands resting on his thighs, his brows
bent, and his lips pursed as with sharp thought. At last he said,--
"Gilhaize, you have done better in this than I ought to have expected of
one so young and unpractised. The favour you won with Sir David Hamilton
was no more than I thought your looks and manners would beget. But you
are not only well-favoured but well-fortuned; and had you not found
yourself worthily bound to your duty I doubt not you might have
prospered in the Archbishop's household. The affair with Madam
Kilspinnie was a thing I reckoned not of, yet therein you have proved
yourself not only a very Joseph, but so ripe in wit beyond your years
that your merits deserve more commendation than I can afford to give,
for I have not sufficient to bestow on the singular prudence and
discernment wherewith you have parried the treacherous thrusts of that
Judas Iscariot, Winterton, for so I doubt not is the traitor who waylaid
you. He was once in my service and is now in the Queen Regent's. In
sending off my men on errands similar to yours, I was wont to give them
two pieces of gold, and this the false loon has gathered to be a custom
from others as well as by his own knowledge, and he has made it the key
to open the breasts of my servants. To know this, however, is a great
discovery. But, Gilhaize, not to waste words, you have your master's
confidence. Go, therefore, I pray you, with all speed to the Widow
Rippet's and do as Winterton bade you and as chance may require. In the
morning come again hither, for I have this night many weighty affairs,
and you have shown yourself possessed of a discerning spirit, that may,
in these times of peril and perjury, help the great cause of all good
Scotchmen."
In saying these most acceptable words, he clapped my grandfather on the
shoulder, and encouraged him to be as true-hearted as he was
sharp-witted, and he could not fail to earn both treasure and trusts. So
my grand-father left him, and went to the Widow Rippet's in the
Grass-market; and around her kitchen fire he found some four or five
discarded knaves that were bargaining with her for beds, or for leave to
sleep by the hearth; and he had not been long seated among them when his
heart was grieved with pain to see Winterton come in, and behind him the
two simple lads of Lithgow that had left their homes with him, whom, it
appeared, the varlet had seduced from the Earl of Glencairn's service
and inveigled into the Earl of Seaton's, a rampant papist, by the same
wiles wherewith he thought he had likewise made a conquest of my
grandfather, whom they had all come together to see; for the two Lithgow
lads, like reynard the fox when he had lost his tail, were eager that he
too should make himself like them. He feigned, however, great weariness,
and indeed his heart was heavy to see such skill of wickedness in so
young a man as he saw in Winterton. So, after partaking with them of
some spiced ale which Winterton brought from the Salutation tavern,
opposite the gallow's-stone, he declared himself overcome with sleep,
and perforce thereof obligated to go to bed. But when they were gone,
and he had retired to his sorry couch, no sleep came to his eyelids, but
only hot and salt tears; for he thought that he had been in a measure
concerned in bringing away the two thoughtless lads from their homes,
and he saw that they were not tempered to resist the temptations of the
world, but would soon fall away from their religious integrity, and
become lewd and godless roisters, like the wuddy worthies that paid
half-price for leave to sleep on the widow's hearth.
CHAPTER X
At the first blink of the grey eye of the morning my grandfather rose,
and, quitting the house of the Widow Rippet, went straight to the Earl's
lodgings, and was admitted. The porter at the door told him that their
master, having been up all night, had but just retired to bed; but while
they were speaking, the Earl's page, who slept in the ante-chamber,
called from the stairhead to inquire who it was that had come so early,
and being informed thereof, he went into his master, and afterwards came
again and desired my grandfather to walk up, and conducted him to his
Lordship, whom he found on his couch, but not undressed, and who said to
him on his entering, when the page had retired,--
"I am glad, Gilhaize, that you have come thus early, for I want a trusty
man to go forthwith into the west country. What I wish you to do cannot
be written, but you will take this ring;" and he took one from the
little finger of his right hand, on the gem of which his cipher was
graven, and gave it to my grandfather. "On showing it to Lord Boyd, whom
you will find at the Dean Castle, near Kilmarnock, he will thereby know
that you are specially trusted of me. The message whereof you are the
bearer is to this effect,--That the Lords of the Congregation have, by
their friends in many places, received strong exhortations to step
forward and oppose the headlong fury of the churchmen; and that they
have in consequence deemed it necessary to lose no time in ascertaining
what the strength of the Reformed may be, and to procure declarations
for mutual defence from all who are joined in professing the true
religion of Christ. Should he see meet to employ you in this matter, you
will obey his orders and instructions, whatsoever they may be."
The Earl then put his hand aneath his pillow and drew out a small
leathern purse, which he gave to my grandfather, who, in the doing of
this, observed that he had several other similar purses ready under his
head. In taking it, my grandfather was proceeding to tell him what he
had observed at the Widow Rippet's, but his Lordship interrupted him,
saying,--
"Such things are of no issue now, and your present duty is in a higher
road; therefore make haste, and God be with you."
With these words, his Lordship turned himself on his couch, and composed
himself to sleep, which my grandfather, after looking on for about a
minute or so, observing, came away; and having borrowed a frock and a
trot-cozey for the journey from one of the grooms of the hall, he went
straight to Kenneth Shelty's, a noted horse-setter in those days, who
lived at the West-port, and bargained with him for the hire of a beast
to Glasgow, though Glasgow was not then the nearest road to Kilmarnock;
but he thought it prudent to go that way, in case any of the papistical
emissaries should track his course.
There was, however, a little oversight in this, which did not come to
mind till he was some miles on the road, and that was the obligation it
put him under of passing through Lithgow, where he was so well known,
and where all his kith and kin lived--there being then no immediate
route from Edinburgh to Glasgow but by Lithgow. And he debated with
himself for a space of time whether he ought to proceed, or turn back
and go the other way, and his mind was sorely troubled with doubts and
difficulties. At last he considered that it was never deemed wise or
fortunate to turn back in any undertaking, and besides, having for the
service of the Saviour left his father's house and renounced his
parents, like a bird that taketh wing and knoweth the nest where it was
bred no more, he knit up his ravelled thoughts into resolution, and
clapping spurs to his horse, rode bravely on.
But when he beheld the towers of the palace, and the steeples of his
native town, rising before him, many remembrances came rushing to his
heart, and all the vexations he had suffered there were lost in the
sunny recollections of the morning of life, when everyone was kind, and
the eyes of his parents looked on him with the brightness of delight, in
so much, that his soul yearned within him, and his cheeks were wetted
with fast-flowing tears. Nevertheless, he overcame this thaw of his
fortitude, and went forward in the strength of the Lord, determined to
swerve not in his duty to the Earl of Glencairn, nor in his holier
fealty to a far greater Master. But the softness that he felt in his
nature made him gird himself with a firm purpose to ride through the
town without stopping. Scarcely, however, had he entered the port, when
his horse stumbled and lost a shoe, by which he was not only constrained
to stop, but to take him to his father's smiddy, which was in sight when
the mischance happened.
On going to the door, he found, as was commonly the case, a number of
grooms and flunkies of the courtiers, with certain friars, holding
vehement discourse concerning the tidings of the time, the burden of
which was the burning of the aged Master Mill, a thing that even the
monks durst not, for humanity, venture very strenuously to defend. His
father was not then within; but one of the prentice lads, seeing who it
was that had come with a horse to be shod, ran to tell him; and at the
sight of my grandfather, the friars suspended their controversies with
the serving-men, and gathered round him with many questions. He replied,
however, to them all with few words, bidding the foreman to make haste
and shoe his horse, hoping that he might thereby be off and away before
his father came.
But, while the man was throng with the horse's foot, both father and
mother came rushing in, and his mother was weeping bitterly, and
wringing her hands, chiding him as if he had sold himself to the Evil
One, and beseeching him to stop and repent. His father, however, said
little, but inquired how he had been, what he was doing, and where he
was going; and sent the prentice lad to bring a stoup of spiced ale from
a public hard by, in which he pledged him, kindly hoping he would do
well for himself and he would do well for his parents. The which
fatherliness touched my grandfather more to the quick than all the loud
lament and reproaches of his mother; and he replied that he had entered
into the service of a nobleman, and was then riding on his master's
business to Glasgow; but he mentioned no name, nor did his father
inquire. His mother, however, burst out into clamorous revilings,
declaring her dread that it was some of the apostate heretics; and,
giving vent to her passion, was as one in a frenzy, or possessed of a
devil. The very friars were confounded at her distraction, and tried to
soothe her and remove her forth the smiddy, which only made her more
wild, so that all present compassionated my grandfather, who sat silent
and made no answer, wearying till his horse was ready.
But greatly afflicted as he was by this trial, it was nothing to what
ensued, when, after having mounted, and shaken his father by the hand,
he galloped away to the West-port. There, on the outside, he was met by
two women and an old man, parents of the lads whom he had taken with him
to Edinburgh. Having heard he was at his father's smiddy, instead of
going thither, they had come to that place, in order that they might
speak with him more apart, and free from molestation, concerning their
sons.
One of the women was a poor widow, and she had no other child, nor the
hope of any other bread-winner for her old age. She, however, said
nothing, but stood with the corner of her apron at her eyes, sobbing
very afflictedly, while her friends, on seeing my grandfather coming out
of the port, stepped forward, and the old man caught the horse by the
bridle, and said gravely,--
"Ye maun stop and satisfy three sorrowful parents! What hae ye done with
your twa thoughtless companions?"
My grandfather's heart was as if it would have perished in his bosom;
for the company he had seen the lads with, and the talk they had held,
and above all their recklessness of principle, came upon him like a
withering flash of fire. He, however, replied soberly, that he had seen
them both the night before, and that they were well in health and jocund
in spirit.
The mother that was standing near her husband was blithe to hear this,
and reminded her gudeman, how she had often said, that when they did
hear tidings of their son her words would be found true, for he had ever
been all his days a brisk and a valiant bairn.
But the helpless widow was not content, and she came forward drying her
tears, saying, "And what is my poor fatherless do-na-gude about? I'm
fearfu, fearfu to be particular; for, though he was aye kind-hearted to
me, he was easily wised, and I doubt, I doubt he'll prove a blasting or
a blessing, according to the hands he fa's among."
"I hope and pray," said my grandfather, "that he'll be protected from
scaith, and live to be a comfort to all his friends." And, so saying, he
disengaged his bridle with a gentle violence from the old man's hold,
telling them he could not afford to stop, being timed to reach Glasgow
that night. So he pricked the horse with his rowals, and shot away; but
his heart, all the remainder of his day's journey, was as if it had been
pierced with many barbed arrows, and the sad voice of the poor anxious
widow rung in his ears like the sound of some doleful knell.
Saving this affair at Lithgow, nothing befell him till he came to the
gates of Glasgow; by which time it was dark, and the ward and watch set,
and they questioned him very sharply before giving him admission. For
the Queen Regent was then sojourning in the castle, and her fears and
cares were greatly quickened at that time, by rumours from all parts of
the kingdom concerning the murder, as it was called, of Master Mill. On
this account the French guards, which she had with her, were instructed
to be jealous of all untimeous travellers, and they being joined with a
ward of burghers, but using only their own tongue, caused no small
molestation to every Scotsman that sought admission after the sun was
set: for the burghers, not being well versed in military practices, were
of themselves very propugnacious in their authority, making more ado
than even the Frenchmen. It happened, however, that there was among
those valiant traders and craftsmen of Glasgow one Thomas Sword, the
deacon of the hammermen, and he having the command of those stationed at
the gate, overheard what was passing with my grandfather, and coming out
of the wardroom, inquired his name, which when he heard, and that he was
son to Michael Gilhaize, the Lithgow ferrier, he advised to let him in,
saying he knew his father well, and that they had worked together, when
young men, in the King's armoury at Stirling; and he told him where he
lived, and invited him, when his horse was stabled, to come to supper,
for he was glad to see him for his father's sake.
CHAPTER XI
At this time an ancient controversy between the Archbishops of St
Andrews and of Glasgow, touching their respective jurisdictions, had
been resuscitated with great acrimony, and in the debates concerning the
same the Glasgow people took a deep interest, for they are stouthearted
and of an adventurous spirit, and cannot abide to think that they or
their town should, in anything of public honour, be deemed either slack
or second to the foremost in the realm, and none of all the worthy
burgesses thereof thought more proudly of the superiority and renown of
their city than did Deacon Sword. So it came to pass, as he was sitting
at supper with my grandfather, that he enlarged and expatiated on the
inordinate pretensions of the Archbishop of St Andrews, and took
occasion to diverge from the prelate's political ambition to speak of
the enormities of his ecclesiastical government, and particularly of
that heinous and never-to-be-forgotten act, the burning of an aged man
of fourscore and two years, whose very heresies, as the deacon
mercifully said, ought rather to have been imputed to dotage than
charged as offences.
My grandfather was well pleased to observe such vigour of principle and
bravery of character in one having such sway and weight in so great a
community as to be the chief captain of the crafts who were banded with
the hammermen, namely, the cartwrights, the saddlers, the masons, the
coopers, the mariners, and all whose work required the use of
edge-tools, the hardiest and buirdliest of the trades, and he allowed
himself to run in with the deacon's humour, but without letting wot
either in whose service he was, or on what exploit he was bound, sowing
however, from time to time, hints as to the need that seemed to be
growing of putting a curb on the bold front wherewith the Archbishop of
St Andrews, under the pretext of suppressing heresies, butted with the
horns of oppression against all who stood within the reverence of his
displeasure.
Deacon Sword had himself a leaning to the reformed doctrines, which,
with his public enmity to the challenger of his own Archbishop, made him
take to those hints with so great an affinity, that he vowed to God,
shaking my grandfather by the hand over the table, that if some steps
were not soon taken to stop such inordinate misrule, there were not
wanting five hundred men in Glasgow who would start forward with weapons
in their grip at the first tout of a trump to vindicate the liberties of
the subject, and the wholesome administration by the temporal judges of
the law against all offenders as of old. And, giving scope to his
ardour, he said there was then such a spirit awakened in Glasgow that
men, women and children thirsted to see justice executed on the
churchmen, who were daily waxing more and more wroth and insatiable
against everyone who called their doctrines or polity in question.
Thus out of the very devices which had been devised by those about the
Queen Regent to intercept the free communion of the people with one
another was the means brought about whereby a chosen emissary of the
Congregation came to get at the emboldening knowledge of the sense of
the citizens of Glasgow with regard to the great cause which at that
period troubled the minds and fears of all men.
My grandfather was joyfully heartened by what he heard, and before
coming away from the deacon who, with the hospitality common to his
townsmen, would fain have had him to prolong their sederunt over the
gardevine, he said that if Glasgow were as true and valiant as it was
thought, there could be no doubt that her declaration for the Lords of
the Congregation would work out a great redress of public wrongs. For,
from all he could learn and understand, those high and pious noblemen
had nothing more at heart than to procure for the people the free
exercise of their right to worship God according to their conscience and
the doctrines of the Old and New Testaments.
But though over the liquor-cup the deacon had spoken so dreadless and
like a manly citizen, my grandfather resolved with himself to depart
betimes for Kilmarnock, in case of any change in his temper.
Accordingly, he requested the hostler of the hostel where he had taken
his bed, to which his day's hard journey early inclined him, to have his
horse in readiness before break of day. But this hostel, which was
called the Cross of Rhodes, happened to be situated at the Water-port,
and besides being a tavern and inn, was likewise the great ferryhouse of
the Clyde when the tide was up, or the ford rendered unsafe by the
torrents of the speats and inland rains--the which caused it to be much
frequented by the skippers and mariners of the barks that traded to
France and Genoa with the Renfrew salmon, and by all sorts of travellers
at all times even to the small hours of the morning. In short it was a
boisterous house, the company resorting thereto of a sort little in
unison with the religious frame of my grandfather. As soon, therefore,
as he came from the deacon's, he went to bed without taking off his
clothes, in order that he might be fit for the road as he intended; and
his bed being in the public room, with sliding doors, he drew them upon
him, hoping to shut out some of the din and to win a little repose. But
scarcely had he laid his head on the pillow when he heard the voice of
one entering the room, and listening eagerly, he discovered that it was
no other than the traitor Winterton's, the which so amazed him with
apprehension that he shook as he lay, like the aspen leaf on the tree.
Winterton called like a braggart for supper and hot wine, boasting he
had ridden that day from Edinburgh, and that he must be up and across
his horse by daylight in the morning, as he had need to be in Kilmarnock
by noon. In this, which vanity made him tell in bravado, my grandfather
could not but discern a kind Providence admonishing himself, for he had
no doubt that Winterton was in pursuit of him, and thankful he was that
he had given no inkling to anyone in the house as to whence he had come
and where he was going. But had this thought not at once entered his
head, he would soon have had cause to think it, for while Winterton was
eating his supper he began to converse with their host, and to inquire
what travellers had crossed the river. Twice or thrice, in as it were an
off-hand manner, he spoke of one whom he called a cousin, but, in
describing his garb, he left no doubt in my grandfather's bosom that it
was regarding him he seemed at once both so negligent and so anxious.
Most providential therefore it was that my grandfather had altered his
dress before leaving Edinburgh, for the marks which Winterton gave of
him were chiefly drawn from his ordinary garb, and by them their host in
consequence said he had seen no such person.
When Winterton had finished his repast, and was getting his second
stoup of wine heated, he asked where he was to sleep, to the which
question the host replied that he feared he would, like others, be
obligated to make a bench by the fireside his couch, all the beds in the
house being already bespoke or occupied. "Every one of them is double,"
said the man, "save only one, the which is paid for by a young man that
goes off at break of day and who is already asleep."
At this Winterton swore a dreadful oath that he would not sleep by the
fire after riding fifty miles while there was half a bed in the house,
and commanded the host to go and tell the young man that he must half
blankets with him.
My grandfather knew that this could only refer to him; so, when their
host came and opened the sliding doors of the bed, he feigned himself to
be very fast asleep at the back of the bed, and only groaned in
drowsiness when he was touched.
"O, let him alane," cried Winterton, "I ken what it is to be tired; so,
as there's room enough at the stock, when I have drank my posset I'll
e'en creep in beside him."
My grandfather, weary as he was, lay panting with apprehension, not
doubting that he should be speedily discovered; but when Winterton had
finished his drink and came swaggering and jocose to be his bedfellow,
he kept himself with his face to the wall, and snored like one who was
in haste to sleep more than enough, insomuch that Winterton, when he lay
down, gave him a deg with his elbow and swore at him to be quiet. His
own fatigue, however, soon mastered the disturbance which my grandfather
made, and he began himself to echo the noise in defenceless sincerity.
On hearing him thus fettered by sleep, my grandfather began to consider
with himself what he ought to do, being both afraid and perplexed he
knew not wherefore; and he was prompted by a power that he durst not and
could not reason with to rise and escape from the jeopardy wherein he
then was. But how could this be done, for the house was still open, and
travellers and customers were continually going and coming. Truly his
situation was one of great tribulation, and escape therefrom a thing
seemingly past hope and the unaided wisdom of man.
CHAPTER XII
After lying about the period of an hour in great perturbation, he began
to grow more collected, and the din and resort of strangers in the house
also subsided, by which he was enabled, with help from on high, to
gather his scattered thoughts and to bind them up into the sheaves of
purpose and resolution. Accordingly, when all was still, and several
young men that were sitting by the fire on account of every bed being
occupied, gave note, by their deep breathing, that sleep had descended
upon them, and darkened their senses with her gracious and downy wings,
he rose softly from the side of Winterton, and stepping over him,
slipped to the door, which he unbarred, and the moon shining bright he
went to the stable to take out his horse. It was not his intent to have
done this, but to have gone up into the streets of the city and walked
the walls thereof till he thought his adversary was gone, but seeing the
moon so fair and clear he determined to take his horse and forthwith
proceed on his journey, for the river was low and fordable, and trintled
its waters with a silvery sheen in the stillness of the beautiful light.
Scarcely, however, had he pulled the latch of the stable door--even as
he was just entering in--when he heard Winterton coming from the house
rousing the hostler, whom he profanely rated for allowing him to
oversleep himself. For, wakening just as his bedfellow rose, he thought
the morning was come and that his orders had been neglected.
In this extremity my grandfather saw no chance of evasion. If he went
out into the moonshine he would to a surety be discovered, and in the
stable he would to a certainty be caught. But what could he do and the
danger so pressing? He had hardly a choice; however, he went into the
stable, shut the door, and running up to the horses that were farthest
ben, mounted into the hack, and hid himself among the hay.
In that concealment he was scarcely well down when Winterton, with an
hostler that was half asleep, came with a lantern to the door, banning
the poor knave as if he had been cursing him with bell, book and candle,
the other rubbing his eyes and declaring it was still far from morning,
and saying he was sure the other traveller was not gone. To the which
there was speedy evidence, for on going towards Winterton's horse the
hostler saw my grandfather's in its stall and told him so.
At that moment a glimpse of the lantern fell on the horse's legs, and
its feet being white, "Oho!" cried Winterton, "let us look here--Kenneth
Shelty's Lightfoot--the very beast; and hae I been in the same hole wi'
the tod and no kent it. The deil's black collie worry my soul, but this
is a soople trick. I did nae think the sleekit sinner had art enough to
play't. Nae doubt he's gane to hide himsel in the town till I'm awa, for
he has heard what I said yestreen. But I'll be up sides wi' him. The
de'il a foot will I gang this morning till he comes back for his horse."
And with these words he turned out of the stable with the hostler and
went back to the house.
No sooner were they well gone than my grandfather came from his
hiding-place, and twisting a wisp of straw round his horse's feet, that
they might not dirl or make a din on the stones, he led it cannily out
and down to the river's brink, and, there mounting, took the ford, and
was soon free on the Gorbals side. Riding up the gait at a brisk trot,
he passed on for a short time along the road that he had been told led
to Kilmarnock, but fearing he would be followed, he turned off at the
first wynd he came to on the left, and a blessed thing it was that he
did so, for it led to the Reformation-leavened town of Paisley, where he
arrived an hour before daylight. Winterton, little jealousing what had
happened, went again to bed, as my grandfather afterwards learnt, and
had fallen asleep. In the morning when he awoke and was told that both
man and horse were flown, he flayed the hostler's back and legs in more
than a score of places, believing he had connived at my grandfather's
secret flight.
My grandfather had never before been in the town of Paisley, but he had
often heard from Abercorn's serving-men that were wont to sorn about his
father's smiddy, of a house of jovial entertainment by the water-side,
about a stone-cast from the abbey-yett, the hostess whereof was a
certain canty dame called Maggy Napier, then in great repute with the
shavelings of the abbey. Thither he directed his course, the abbey
towers serving him for her sign, and the moonlight and running river
were guides to her door, at the which he was not blate in chapping. She
was, however, long of giving entrance, for it happened that some nights
before the magistrates of the town had been at a carousal with the abbot
and chapter, the papistical denomination for the seven heads and ten
horns of a monastery, and when they had come away and were going home,
one of them, Bailie Pollock, a gaucy widower, was instigated by the
devil and the wine he had drunk to stravaig towards Maggy Napier's--a
most unseemly thing for a bailie to do--especially a bailie of Paisley,
but it was then the days of popish sinfulness. And when Bailie Pollock
went thither the house was full of riotous swankies, who, being the waur
of drink themselves, had but little reverence for a magistrate in the
same state, so they handled him to such a degree that he was obliged to
keep his bed and put collops to his eyes for three days. The consequence
of which was that the house fell under the displeasure of the Town
Council, and Maggie was admonished to keep it more orderly and
doucely--though the fault came neither from her nor her customers, as
she told my grandfather, for detaining him so long, it being requisite
that she should see he was in a condition of sobriety before letting him
in. But, when admitted, he was in no spirit to enjoy her jocosity
concerning Bailie Pollock's spree, so he told her that he had come far
and had far to go, and that having heard sore tidings of a friend, he
was fain to go to bed and try if he could compose himself with an hour
or two of sleep.
Maggie accordingly refrained from her jocularity, and began to soothe
and comfort him, for she was naturally of a winsome way, and prepared a
bed for him with her best sheets, the which, she said, were gi'en her in
gratus gift frae the Lord Abbot, so that he undressed himself and
enjoyed a pleasant interregnum of anxiety for more than five hours; and
when he awoke and was up, he found a breakfast worthy of the abbot
himself ready, and his hostess was most courtly and kind, praising the
dainties, and pressing him to eat. Nor when he proposed to reckon with
her for the lawin would she touch the money, but made him promise, when
he came back, he would bide another night with her, hoping he would then
be in better spirits, for she was wae to see so braw a gallant sae
casten down, doless and dowie.
When they had settled their contest, and my grandfather had come out to
mount his beast, which a stripling was holding ready for him at a
louping-on-stane near the abbey-yett, as he was going thither, a young
friar, who was taking a morning stroll along the pleasant banks of the
Cart, approached towards him, and, after looking hard at him for some
time, called him by name and took him by both the hands, which he
pressed with a brotherly affection.
This friar was of Lithgow parentage and called Dominick Callender, and
when he and my grandfather were playing-bairns, they had spent many a
merry day of their suspicion-less young years together. As he grew up,
being a lad of shrewd parts, and of a very staid and orderly deportment,
the monks set their snares for him, and before he could well think for
himself he was wiled into their traps, and becoming a novice, in due
season professed himself a monk. But it was some time before my
grandfather knew him again, for the ruddy of youth had fled his cheek,
and he was pale and of a studious countenance; and when the first
sparklings of his pleasure at the sight of his old play-marrow had gone
off, his eyes saddened into thoughtfulness, and he appeared like one
weighed down with care and heavy inward dule.
CHAPTER XIII
After Dominick Callender and my grandfather had conversed some time,
with many interchanges of the kindly remembrances of past pleasures, the
gentle friar began to bewail his sad estate in being a professed monk,
and so mournfully to deplore the rashness with which inexperienced youth
often takes upon itself a yoke it can never lay down, that the
compassion of his friend was sorrowfully awakened, for he saw he was
living a life of bitterness and grief. He heard him, however, without
making any reply or saying anything concerning his own lot of hazard and
adventure; for, considering Dominick to be leagued with the papistical
orders, he did not think him safe to be trusted, notwithstanding the
unchanged freshness of the loving-kindness which he still seemed to bear
in his heart; nor even, had he not felt this jealousy, would he have
thought himself free to speak of his errand, far less to have given to
any stranger aught that might have been an inkling of his noble master's
zealous, but secret, stirrings for the weal of Scotland and the
enfranchisement of the worshippers of the true God.
When my grandfather had arrived at his horse, and prepared to mount,
Dominick Callender said to him if he would ride slowly for a little way
he would walk by his side, adding, "For maybe I'll ne'er see you
again--I'm a-weary of this way of life, and the signs of the times bode
no good to the church. I hae a thought to go into some foreign land
where I may taste the air of a freeman, and I feel myself comforted
before I quit our auld, hard-favoured but warm-hearted Scotland, in
meeting wi' ane that reminds me how I had once sunny mornings and summer
days."
This was said so much in the sincerity of a confiding spirit that my
grandfather could not refrain from observing, in answer, that he feared
his friar's cloak did not sit easy upon him, which led him on to
acknowledge that it was so.
"I am speaking to you, Gilhaize," said he, "with the frank heart of auld
langsyne, and I dinna scruple to confess to one that I hae often thought
of, and weary't to see again, and wondered what had become of, that my
conscience has revolted against the errors of the papacy, and that I am
now upon the eve of fleeing my native land and joining the Reformed at
Geneva. And maybe I'm no ordain'd to spend a' my life in exile, for no
man can deny that the people of Scotland are not inwardly the warm
adversaries of the church. That last and cruellest deed, the sacrifice
of the feckless old man of fourscore and upward, has proven that the
humanity of the world will no longer endure the laws and pretensions of
the church, and there are few in Paisley whom the burning of auld Mill
has not kindled with the spirit of resistance."
The latter portion of these words was as joyous tidings to my
grandfather, and he tightened his reins and entered into a more
particular and inquisitive discourse with his companion, by which he
gathered that the martyrdom of Master Mill had indeed caused great
astonishment and wrath among the pious in and about Paisley, and not
only among them, but had estranged the affections even of the more
worldly from the priesthood, of whom it was openly said that the sense
of pity towards the commonalty of mankind was extinguished within them,
and that they were all in all for themselves.
But as they were proceeding through the town and along the road,
conversing in a familiar but earnest manner on these great concerns,
Dominick Callender began to inveigh against the morals of his brethren,
and to lament again, in a very piteous manner, that he was decreed, by
his monastic profession, from the enjoyment of the dearest and tenderest
pleasures of man. And before they separated, it came out that he had
been for some time touched with the soft enchantments of love for a
young maiden, the daughter of a gentleman of good account in Paisley,
and that her chaste piety was as the precious gum wherewith the
Egyptians of old preserved their dead in everlasting beauty, keeping
from her presence all taint of impurity and of thoughts sullying to
innocence, insomuch that, even were he inclined, as he said many of his
brethren would have been, to have acted the part of a secret canker to
that fair blossom, the gracious and holy embalmment of her virtues would
have proved an incorruptible protection.
"But," he exclaimed, with a sorrowful voice, "that which is her glory
and my admiration and praise is converted by the bondage of my unnatural
vows into a curse to us both. The felicity that we might have enjoyed
together in wedded life is forbidden to us as a great crime. But the
laws of God are above the canons of the church, the voice of Nature is
louder than the fulminations of the Vatican, and I have resolved to obey
the one and give ear to the other despite the horrors that await on
apostacy. Can you, Gilhaize, in aught assist my resolution?"
There was so much vehemence and the passion of grief in these
ejaculations, that my grandfather wist not well what to say. He told
him, however, not to be rash in what he did, nor to disclose his intents
save only to those in whom he could confide, for the times were perilous
to everyone that slackened in reverence to the papacy, particularly to
such as had pastured within the chosen folds of the church.
"Bide," said he, "till you see what issue is ordained to come from this
dreadful deed which so shaketh all the land, making the abbey towers
topple and tremble to their oldest and deepest foundations. Truth is
awakened and gone forth conquering and to conquer. It cannot be that
ancient iniquities will be much longer endured, the arm of Wrath is
raised against them, the sword of Revenge is drawn forth from its
scabbard by Justice, and Nature has burst asunder the cords of the Roman
harlot and stands in her freedom, like Samson, when the Spirit of the
Lord was mightily poured upon him, as he awoke from the lap of Delilah."
The gentle friar, as my grandfather often told, stood for some time
astounded at this speech, and then he said,--
"I dreamt not, Gilhaize, that beneath a countenance so calm and comely,
the zealous fires of a warrior's bravery could have been kindled to so
vehement a heat. But I will vex you with no questions. Heaven is on your
side, and may its redeeming promptings never allow its ministers to rest
till the fetters are broken and the slaves are set free."
With these words he stepped forward to shake my grandfather by the hand
and to bid him farewell, but just as he came to the stirrup he halted
and said,--
"It is not for nothing that the remembrance of you has been preserved so
much brighter and dearer to me than that of all my kin. There was aye
something about you in our heedless days that often made me wonder, I
could not tell wherefore, and now, when I behold you in the prime of
manhood, it fills me with admiration and awe and makes me do homage to
you as a master."
Much more he added to the same effect, which the modesty of my
grandfather would not allow him to repeat; but when they had parted, and
my grandfather had ridden forward some two or three miles, he recalled
to mind what had passed between them, and he used to say that this
discourse with his early friend first opened to him a view of the
grievous captivity which Nature suffered in the monasteries and
convents, notwithstanding the loose lives imputed to their inmates; and
he saw that the Reformation would be hailed by many that languished in
the bondage of their vows as a great and glorious deliverance. But still
he was wont to say, even with such as these, it was overly mingled with
temporal concernments, and that they longed for it less on account of
its immortal issues than for its sensual emancipations.
And as he was proceeding on his way in this frame of mind, and thinking
on all that he had seen and learnt from the day in which he bade adieu
to his father's house, he came to a place where the road forked off in
two different airts, and not knowing which to take, he stopped his horse
and waited till a man drew nigh whom he observed coming towards him. By
this man he was told that the road leading leftward led to Kilmarnock
and Ayr, and the other on the right to Kilwinning; so, without saying
anything, he turned his horse's head into the latter, the which he was
moved to do by sundry causes and reasons. First, he had remarked that
the chances in his journey had, in a very singular manner, led him to
gain much of that sort of knowledge which the Lords of the Congregation
thirsted for; and second, he had no doubt that Winterton was in pursuit
of him to Kilmarnock, for some purpose of frustration or circumvention,
the which, though he was not able to divine, he could not but consider
important, if it was, as he thought, the prime motive of that varlet's
journey.
But he was chiefly disposed to prefer the Kilwinning road, though it was
several miles more of bout-gait, on account of the rich abbacy in that
town, hoping he might glean and gather some account how the clergy there
stood affected, the meeting with Dominick Callender having afforded him
a vista of friends and auxiliaries in the enemy's camp little thought
of. Besides all this, he reflected, that as it was of consequence he
should reach the Lord Boyd in secrecy, he would be more likely to do so
by stopping at Kilwinning and feeing someone there to guide him to the
Dean Castle by moonlight. I have heard him say, however, the speakable
motives of his deviation from the straight road were at the time far
less effectual in moving him thereto than a something which he could not
tell, that with an invisible hand took his horse, as it were, by the
bridle-rings and constrained him to go into the Kilwinning track. In the
whole of this journey there was indeed a very extraordinary
manifestation of a special providence, not only in the protection
vouchsafed towards himself, but in the remarkable accidents and
occurrences by which he was enabled to enrich himself with the knowledge
so precious at that time to those who were chosen to work the great work
of the Gospel in Scotland.
CHAPTER XIV
As my grandfather came in sight of Kilwinning, and beheld the abbey with
its lofty horned towers and spiky pinnacles and the sands of Cunningham
between it and the sea, it seemed to him as if a huge leviathan had come
up from the depths of the ocean and was devouring the green inland,
having already consumed all the herbage of the wide waste that lay so
bare and yellow for many a mile, desert, and lonely in the silent
sunshine, and he ejaculated to himself that the frugal soil of poor
Scotland could ne'er have been designed to pasture such enormities.
As he rode on, his path descended from the heights into pleasant tracks
along banks feathered with the fragrant plumage of the birch and hazel,
and he forgot, in hearkening to the cheerful prattle of the Garnock
waters, as they swirled among the pebbles by the roadside, the
pageantries of that mere bodily worship which had worked on the
ignorance of the world to raise such costly monuments of the
long-suffering patience of Heaven, while they showed how much the divine
nature of the infinite God and the humility of His eternal Son had been
forgotten in this land among professing Christians.
When he came nigh the town he inquired for an hostel, and a stripling,
the miller's son, who was throwing stones at a flock of geese belonging
to the abbey, then taking their pleasures uninvited in his father's
mill-dam, guided him to the house of Theophilus Lugton, the chief
vintner, horse-setter and stabler in the town, where, on alighting, he
was very kindly received; for the gudewife was of a stirring, household
nature, and Theophilus himself, albeit douce and temperate for a
publican, was a man obliging and hospitable, not only as became him in
his trade but from a disinterested good-will. He was, indeed, as my
grandfather came afterwards to know, really a person holden in great
respect and repute by the visitors and pilgrims who resorted to the
abbey, and by none more than by the worthy wives of Irvine, the most
regular of his customers. For they being then in the darkness of
papistry, were as much given to the idolatry of holidays and masses as,
thanks be and praise! they are now to the hunting out of sound gospel
preachers and sacramental occasions. Many a stoup of burnt wine and
spiced ale they were wont at Pace and Yule and other papistal high times
to partake of together in the house of Theophilus Lugton, happy and well
content when their possets were flavoured with the ghostly conversation
of some gawsie monk well versed in the mysteries of requiems and
purgatory.
Having parted with his horse to be taken to the stable by Theophilus
himself, my grandfather walked into the house, and Dame Lugton set for
him an elbow-chair by the chimla lug, and while she was preparing
something for a repast they fell into conversation, in the course of
which she informed him that a messenger had come to the abbey that
forenoon from Edinburgh, and a rumour had been bruited about soon after
his arrival that there was great cause to dread a rising among the
heretics, for, being ingrained with papistry, she so spoke of the
Reformers.
This news troubled my grandfather not a little, and the more he inquired
concerning the tidings the more reason he got to be alarmed and to
suspect that the bearer was Winterton, who being still in the town, and
then at the abbey--his horse was in Theophilus Lugton's stable--he could
not but think that in coming to Kilwinning instead of going right on to
Kilmarnock he had run into the lion's mouth. But, seeing it was so, and
could not be helped, he put his trust in the Lord and resolved to swerve
in no point from the straight line which he had laid down for himself.
While he was eating of Dame Lugton's fare with the relishing sauce of a
keen appetite, in a manner that no one who saw him could have supposed
he was almost sick with a surfeit of anxieties, one James Coom, a smith,
came in for a mutchkin-cap of ale, and he, seeing a traveller, said,--
"Thir's sair news! The drouth of cauld iron will be slockened in men's
blood ere we hear the end o't."
"'Deed," replied my grandfather, "it's very alarming; Lucky, here, has
just been telling me that there's likely to be a straemash among the
Reformers. Surely they'll ne'er daur to rebel."
"If a' tales be true, that's no to do," said the smith, blowing the
froth from the cap in which Dame Lugton handed him the ale, and taking a
right good-willy waught.
"But what's said?" inquired my grandfather, when the smith had fetched
his breath.
"Naebody can weel tell," was his response; "a' that's come this length
is but the sough afore the storm. Within twa hours there has been a
great riding hither and yon, and a lad straight frae Embro' has come to
bid my Lord Abbot repair to the court; and three chiels hae been at me
frae Eglinton Castle to get their beast shod for a journey. My Lord
there is hyte and fykie; there's a gale in his tail, said they, light
where it may. Now, atween oursels, my Lord has na the heart of a true
bairn to that aged and worthy grannie of the papistry, our leddy the
Virgin Mary--here's her health, poor auld deaf and dumb creature--she
has na, I doubt, the pith to warsle wi' the blast she ance in a day
had."
"Haud that heretical tongue o' thine, Jamie Coom," exclaimed Dame
Lugton. "It's enough to gaur a body's hair stand on end to hear o' your
familiarities wi' the Holy Virgin. I won'er my Lord Abbot has na
langsyne tethert thy tongue to the kirk door wi' a red-het nail for sic
blasphemy. But fools are privileged, and so's seen o' thee."
"And wha made me familiar wi' her, Dame Lugton, tell me that?" replied
James; "was na it my Lord himself at last Marymas, when he sent for me
to make a hoop to mend her leg that sklintered aff as they were dressing
her for the show. Eh! little did I think that I was ever to hae the
honour and glory of ca'ing a nail intil the timber hip o' the Virgin
Mary! Ah, Lucky, ye would na hae tholed the dirl o' the dints o' my
hammer as she did. But she's a saint, and ye'll ne'er deny that ye're a
sinner."
To this Dame Lugton was unable to reply, and the smith, cunningly
winking, dippet his head up to the lugs in the ale-cap.
"But," said my grandfather, "no to speak wi' disrespeck of things
considered wi' reverence, it does na seem to me that there is ony cause
to think the Reformers hae yet rebelled."
"I am sure," replied the smith, "if they hae na they ought, or the de'il
a spunk's amang them. Isna a' the monks frae John o' Groat's to the
Border getting ready their spits and rackses, frying-pans and branders
to cook them like capons and doos for Horney's supper? I never hear my
ain bellows snoring at a gaud o' iron in the fire but I think o' fat
Father Lickladle, the abbey's head kitchener, roasting me o'er the low
like a laverock in his collop-tangs; for, as Dame Lugton there weel
kens, I'm ane o' the Reformed. Heh! but it's a braw thing this
Reformation. It used to cost me as muckle siller for the sin o' getting
fu', no aboon three or four times in the year, as would hae kept ony
honest man blithe and ree frae New'erday to Hogmanæ; but our worthy
hostess has found to her profit that I'm now ane of her best customers.
What say ye, Lucky?"
"Truly," said Dame Lugton, laughing, "thou's no an ill swatch o' the
Reformers; and naebody need be surprised at the growth o' heresy wha
thinks o' the dreadfu' cost the professors o't used to be at for
pardons. But maybe they'll soon find that the de'il's as hard a taxer as
e'er the kirk was; for ever since thou has refraint frae paying penance,
thy weekly calks ahint the door ha'e been on the increase, Jamie, and no
ae plack has thou mair to spare. So muckle gude thy reforming has done
thee."
"Bide awee, Lucky," cried the smith, setting down the ale-cap which he
had just emptied; "bide awee, and ye'll see a change. Surely it was to
be expecket, considering the spark in my hass, that the first use I
would mak' o' the freedom o' the Reformation would be to quench it,
which I never was allowed to do afore; and whenever that's done, ye'll
see me a geizen't keg o' sobriety, tak the word o' a drouthy smith
for't."
At this jink o' their controversy who should come into the house,
ringing ben to the hearth-stane with his iron heels and the rattling
rowels o' his spurs, but Winterton, without observing my grandfather,
who was then sitting with his back to the window light, in the arm-chair
at the chimla lug; and when he had ordered Dame Lugton to spice him a
drink of her best brewing, he began to joke and jibe with the
blacksmith, the which allowing my grandfather time to compose his wits,
which were in a degree startled. He saw that he could not but be
discovered, so he thought it was best to bring himself out. Accordingly,
in as quiet a manner as he was able to put on, he said to Winterton,--
"I hae a notion that we twa ha'e forgathered no lang sincesyne."
At the sound of these words Winterton gave a loup, as if he had tramped
on something no canny, syne a whirring sort of triumphant whistle, and
then a shout, crying,--
"Ha, ha! tod lowrie! hae I yirded you at last?" But instanter he
recollected himsel', and giving my grandfather a significant look, as if
he wished him no to be particular, he said, "I heard o' you, Gilhaize,
on the road, and I was fain to hae come up wi' you, that we might hae
travelled thegither. Howsever, I lost scent at Glasgow." And then he
continued to haver with him, in his loose and profligate manner, anent
the Glasgow damsels, till the ale was ready, when he pressed my
grandfather to taste, never letting wot how they had slept together in
the same bed; and my grandfather, on his part, was no less circumspect,
for he discerned that Winterton intended to come over him, and he was
resolved to be on his guard.
CHAPTER XV
When Winterton had finished his drink, which he did hastily, he proposed
to my grandfather that they should take a stroll through the town; and
my grandfather being eager to throw stour in his eyes, was readily
consenting thereto.
"Weel," said the knave, when he had warily led him into the abbey
kirk-yard, "I didna think ye would hae gane back to my Lord; but it's a'
very weel, since he has looked o'er what's past, and gi'en you a new
dark."
"He's very indulgent," replied my grandfather, "and I would be looth to
wrang so kind a master;" and he looked at Winterton. The varlet,
however, never winced, but rejoined lightly,--
"But I wish you had come back to Widow Rippet's, for ye would hae spar't
me a hard ride. Scarcely had ye ta'en the road when my Lord mindit that
he had neglekit to gie you the sign, by the which ye were to make
yoursel and message kent to his friends, and I was sent after to tell
you."
"I'm glad o' that," replied my grandfather; "what is't?" Winterton was a
thought molested by this thrust of a question, and for the space of
about a minute said nothing, till he had considered with himself, when
he rejoined,--
"Three lads were sent off about the same time wi' you, and the Earl was
nae quite sure, he said, whilk of you a' he had forgotten to gie the
token whereby ye would be known as his men. But the sign for the Earl of
Eglinton, to whom I guess ye hae been sent, by coming to Kilwinning, is
no the same as for the Lord Boyd, to whom I thought ye had been
missioned; for I hae been at the Dean Castle, and finding you not there,
followed you hither."
"I'll be plain wi' you," said my grandfather to this draughty speech.
"I'm bound to the Lord Boyd; but coming through Paisley, when I reached
the place where the twa roads branched, I took the ane that brought me
here, instead of the gate to Kilmarnock; so, as soon as my beast has
eaten his corn, I mean to double back to the Dean Castle."
"How, in the name of the saints and souls, did ye think, in going frae
Glasgow to Kilmarnock, o' taking the road to Paisley?"
"'Deed, an' ye were acquaint," said my grandfather, "wi' how little I
knew o' the country, ye would nae speir that question; but since we hae
fallen in thegither, and are baith, ye ken, in my Lord Glencairn's
service, I hope you'll no objek to ride back wi' me to the Lord Boyd's."
"Then it's no you that was sent to the Earl of Eglinton?" exclaimed
Winterton, pretending more surprise than he felt; "and all my journey
has been for naething. Howsever, I'll go back wi' you to Kilmarnock, and
the sooner we gang the better."
Little farther discourse then passed, for they returned to the hostel,
and ordering out their horses, were soon on the road; and as they
trotted along, Winterton was overly outspoken against the papisticals,
calling them all kinds of ill names, and no sparing the Queen Regent.
But my grandfather kept a calm tongue, and made no reflections.
"Howsever," said Winterton, pulling up his bridle and walking his horse
as they were skirting the moor of Irvine, leaving the town about a mile
off on the right, "you and me, Gilhaize, that are but servants, need nae
fash our heads wi' sic things. The wyte o' wars lie at the doors of
kings, and the soldiers are free o' the sin o' them. But how will ye get
into the presence and confidence of the Lord Boyd?"
"I thought," replied my grandfather, pawkily, "that ye had gotten our
master's token; and I maun trust to you."
"Oh," cried Winterton, "I got but the ane for the lad sent to Eglinton
Castle."
"And ha'e ye been there?" said my grandfather.
Winterton didna let wot that he heard this, but, stooping over on the
off-side of his horse, pretended he was righting something about his
stirrup-leather. My grandfather was, however, resolved to prob him to
the quick; so, when he was again sitting upright, he repeated the
question, if he had been to Eglinton Castle.
"O, ay," cried the false loon; "I was there, but the bird was flown."
"And how got he the ear of the Earl," said my grandfather, "not having
the sign?"
"In for a penny in for a pound," was Winterton's motto, and ae lie with
him was father to a race. "Luckily for him," replied he, "some of the
serving-men kent him as being in Glencairn's service, so they took him
to their master."
My grandfather had no doubt that there was some truth in this, though he
was sure Winterton knew little about it; for it agreed with what James
Coom, the smith, had said about the lads from Eglinton that had been at
his smiddy to get the horses shod, and remembering the leathern purses
under the Earl his master's pillow, he was persuaded that there had been
a messenger sent to the head of the Montgomeries, and likewise to other
lords, friends of the Congregation; but he saw that Winterton went by
guess, and lied at random. Still, though not affecting to notice it, nor
expressing any distrust, he could not help saying to him, that he had
come a long way, and after all it looked like a gowk's errand.
The remark, however, only served to give Winterton inward satisfaction,
and he replied with a laugh, that it made little odds to him where he
was sent, and that he'd as lief ride in Ayrshire as sorn about the
causey of Enbrough.
In this sort of talk and conference they rode on together, the o'ercome
every now and then of Winterton's discourse being concerning the proof
my grandfather carried with him, whereby the Lord Boyd would know he was
one of Glencairn's men. But, notwithstanding all his wiles and devices
to howk the secret out of him, his drift being so clearly discerned, my
grandfather was enabled to play with him till they were arrived at
Kilmarnock, where Winterton proposed to stop till he had delivered his
message to the Lord Boyd, at the Dean Castle.
"That surely cannot be," replied my grandfather; "for ye ken, as there
has been some mistak about the sign whereby I am to make myself known,
ye'll ha'e to come wi' me to expound, in case of need. In trooth, now
that we hae forgatherit, and as I ha'e but this ae message to a' the
shire of Ayr, I would fain ha'e your company till I see the upshot."
Winterton could not very easily make a refusal to this, but he hesitated
and swithered, till my grandfather urged him again;--when, seeing no
help for it, and his companion, as he thought, entertaining no suspicion
of him, he put on a bold face and went forward.
When they had come to the Dean Castle, which stands in a pleasant green
park about a mile aboon the town-head of Kilmarnock, on entering the
gate, my grandfather hastily alighted, and giving his horse a sharp
prick of his spur as he lap off, the beast ran capering out of his hand,
round the court of the castle.
With the well-feigned voice of great anxiety, my grandfather cried to
the servants to shut the gate and keep it in; and Winterton alighting,
ran to catch it, giving his own horse to a stripling to hold. At the
same moment, however, my grandfather sprung upon him, and seizing him by
the throat, cried out for help to master a spy.
Winterton was so confounded that he gasped and looked round like a man
demented, and my grandfather ordered him to be taken by the serving-men
to their master, before whom, when they were all come, he recounted the
story of his adventures with the prisoner, telling his Lordship what his
master, the Earl of Glencairn, suspected of him. To which, when
Winterton was asked what he had to say, he replied bravely, that it was
all true, and he was none ashamed to be so catched, when it was done by
so clever a fellow.
He was then ordered by the Lord Boyd to be immured in the dungeon-room,
the which may be seen to this day; and though his captivity was
afterwards somewhat relaxed, he was kept a prisoner in the castle till
after the death of the Queen Dowager, and the breaking-up of her
two-faced councils. This exploit won my grandfather great favour, and he
scarcely needed to show the signet-ring when he told his message from
the Lords of the Congregation.
CHAPTER XVI
By such devices and missions, as my grandfather was engaged in for the
Earl Glencairn with the Lord Boyd, a thorough understanding was
concerted among the Reformed throughout the kingdom; and encouraged by
their great strength and numbers, which far exceeded what was expected,
the Lords of the Congregation set themselves roundly to work, and the
protestant preachers openly published their doctrines.
Soon after my grandfather had returned from the shire of Ayr, there was
a weighty consultation held at the Earl his patron's lodging in
Edinburgh, whereat, among others present, was that pious youth,
afterwards the good Regent Murray. He was, by office and appointment,
then the head and lord of the priory of St Andrews; but his soul
cleaving to the Reformation and the Gospel, he laid down the use of that
title, and about this time began to be called the Lord James Stuart.
The Lords of the Congregation, feeling themselves strong in the goodness
of their cause and the number of their adherents, resolved at this
council, that they should proceed firmly but considerately to work, and
seek redress as became true lieges, by representation and supplication.
Accordingly a paper was drawn up, wherein they set forth how, for
conscience sake, the Reformed had been long afflicted with banishment,
confiscation of goods, and death in its cruellest forms. That continual
fears darkened their lives till, being no longer able to endure such
calamities, they were compelled to beg a remedy against the oppressions
and tyranny of the Estate Ecclesiastical, which had usurped an unlimited
domination over the minds of men,--the faggot and the sword being the
weapons which the prelates employed to enforce their mandates,--plain
truths that were thus openly stated in order to show that the suppliants
were sincere; and they concluded with a demand, that the original purity
of the Christian religion should be restored, and the government so
improved as to afford them security in their persons, opinions, and
property.
Sir James Calder of Sandilands was the person chosen to present this
memorial to the Queen Regent; and never, said my grandfather, was an
agent more fitly chosen to uphold the dignity of his trust, or to
preserve the respect which, as good subjects, the Reformed desired to
maintain and manifest towards the authority regal. He was a man far
advanced in life; but there was none of the infirmities of age under the
venerable exterior with which time had clothed his appearance. Of great
honour and a pure life, he was reverenced by all parties, and had
acquired both renown and affection, through his services to the realm
and his manifold virtues.
On a day appointed by the Queen Regent, the Lords and leaders of the
Congregation attended Sandilands, each with a stately retinue, to
Holyrood House; my grandfather having leave from the Earl, his master,
to wait on his person on that occasion.
It was a solemn day to the worshippers of the true God, who came in
great multitudes to the town, many from distant parts, to be present,
and to hear the issue of a conference that was to give liberty to the
consciences of all devout Scotchmen. From the house in the Lawnmarket,
where the Lords assembled, down to the very yetts of the palace, the
sight was as if the street had been paved with faces, and windows over
windows, roofs and lum-heads, were clustered with women and children.
All temporal cares and businesses were that day suspended: in the
accents and voices of men there was an awful sobriety, few speaking, and
what was said, sounded as if every one was affected with the sense of
some high and everlasting interest at stake.
When the Lords went down into the street, there was, for a brief
interval, a stir and a murmur in the multitude, which opened to the
right and left as when the waves of the Red Sea were opened, and through
the midst thereof prepared a miraculous road for the children of Israel.
A deep silence succeeded, and Sandilands, with his hoary head uncovered,
bearing in his hand the supplication and remonstrance, walked forward;
and the Lords went after also all bareheaded, and every one with them
followed in like manner as reverentially as their masters. The people,
as they passed along, slowly and devoutly, took off their caps and
bonnets, and bowed their heads as when the ark of the covenant of the
Lord was of old brought back from the Philistines; and many wept, and
others prayed aloud, and there was wonder, and awe, and dread, mingled
with thoughts of unspeakable confidence and glory.
When Sandilands and those with him were conducted into the presence of
the Queen Dowager, she was standing under a canopy of state, surrounded
by many of the nobles and prelates, and by her maidens of honour. My
grandfather had not seen her before, and having often heard her
suspected of double-dealing, and of a superstitious zeal and affection
for the papal abominations and cruelties, he had pictured to himself a
lean and haggard woman, with a pale and fierce countenance, and was
therefore greatly amazed when he beheld a lady of a most sweet and
gracious aspect, with mild dark eyes beaming with a chaste dignity, and
a high and fair forehead, bright and unwrinkled with any care, and lips
formed to speak soft and gentle sentences. In her apparel she was less
gay than her ladies, but nevertheless she was more queenly. Her dress
and mantle were of the richest purple Genoese unadorned with embroidery,
and round her neck she wore a ruff of fine ermine and a string of
princely pearls. A small golden cross of curious graven gold dangled to
her waist from a loup in the vale of her bosom.
Sandilands advanced several paces before the Lords by whom he was
attended, and falling on his knees, read with a loud and firm voice the
memorial of the Reformed; and when he had done so and was risen, the
Queen received a paper that was given to her by her secretary, who stood
behind her right shoulder, and also read an answer which had been
prepared, and in which she was made to deliver many comfortable
assurances, that at the time were received as a great boon with much
thankfulness by all the Reformed, who had too soon reason to prove the
insincerity of those courtly flatteries. For no steps were afterwards
taken to give those indulgences by law that were promised; but the
papists stirring themselves with great activity, and foreign matters and
concerns coming in aid of their stratagems, long before a year passed
the mind of the Queen and government was fomented into hostility against
the protestants. She called into her favour and councils the Archbishop
of St Andrews, with whom she had been at variance; and the devout said,
when they heard thereof, that when our Saviour was condemned, on the
same day Herod and Pilate were made friends, applying the text to this
reconcilation; and boding therefrom woe to the true church. Moved by the
hatred which his Grace bore to the Reformers, the Queen cited the
protestant preachers to appear at Stirling to answer to the charges
which might there be preferred against them.
My grandfather, when this perfidy came to a head, was at
Finlayston-house, in the shire of Renfrew, with the Earl, his master,
who, when he heard of such a breach of faith, smote the table, as he was
then sitting at dinner, with his right hand, and said, "Since the false
woman has done this, there is nothing for us but the banner and the
blade;" and starting from his seat he forthwith ordered horses, and,
attended by my grandfather and ten armed servants, rode to Glasgow,
where Sir Hugh Campbell of Loudon, then sheriff of Ayr, and other
worthies of the time, were assembled on business before the Lords of
Justiciary; and it was instanter agreed, that they should forthwith
proceed to Stirling where the court was, and remonstrate with the Queen.
So, leaving all temporal concerns, Sir Hugh took horse, and they arrived
at Stirling about the time her Highness supped, and going straight to
the castle, they stood in the ante-chamber to speak, if possible, with
her as she passed.
On entering the room to pass to her table she saw them, and looked
somewhat surprised and displeased; but without saying anything
particular she desired the Earl to follow her, and Sir Hugh, unbidden,
went also into the banquet-room. It was seldom that she used state in
her household, and on this occasion, it being a popish fast, her table
was frugally spread, and only herself sat at the board.
"Well, Glencairn," said she, "what has brought you hither from the west
at this time? Is the realm to be forever tossed like the sea by this
tempest of heresies? The royal authority is not always to be insulted
with impunity, and in spite of all their friends the protestant
preachers shall be banished from Scotland, aye, though their doctrines
were as sound as St Paul's."
The Earl, as my grandfather heard him afterwards relate, replied, "Your
Majesty gave your royal promise that the Reformed should be protected,
and they have done nothing since to cause the forfeiture of so gracious
a boon: I implore your Majesty to call that sacred pledge to mind."
"You lack reason, my Lord," she cried, sharply; "it becomes not subjects
to burden their princes with promises which it may be inconvenient to
keep."
"If these, madam, are your sentiments," replied the Earl, proudly, "the
Congregation can no longer acknowledge your authority, and must renounce
their allegiance to your government."
She had, at the moment, lifted the salt-cellar to sprinkle her
salad,--but she was so astonished at the boldness of this speech, that
she dropped it from her hand, and the salt was spilt on the floor,--an
evil omen which all present noted.
"My Lord Glencairn," said she, thoughtfully, "I would execute my great
duties honestly, but your preachers trouble the waters, and I know not
where the ford lies that I may safest ride. Go ye away and try to keep
your friends quiet, and I will consider calmly what is best to be done
for the weal of all."
At these words the Earl and Sir Hugh Campbell bowed, and, retiring, went
to the lodging of the Earl of Monteith, where they were minded to pass
the night, but when they had consulted with that nobleman, my
grandfather was ordered to provide himself with a fresh horse from
Monteith's stable, and to set out for Edinburgh with letters for the
Lord James Stuart.
"Gilhaize," said his master, as he delivered them, "I foresee we must
buckle on our armour; but the cause of the Truth does not require that
the first blow should come from our side. By this time John Knox, who
has been long expected, may be hourly looked for; and as no man stands
higher in the aversion of the papists than that brave, honest man, we
shall know by the reception he meets with what we ought to do."
So my grandfather, putting the letters in his bosom, retired from the
presence of the Earl, and by break of day reached the West-port and went
straight on to the Lord James Stuart's lodging in the Canongate. But,
though the household were astir, it was some time before he got
admittance, for their master was a young man of great method in all
things, and his chaplain was at the time reading the first prayers of
the morning, during which the doors were shut, and no one, however
urgent his business, could gain admission into that house while the
inmates were doing their homage to the King of kings.
CHAPTER XVII
As my grandfather, in the grey of the morning, was waiting in the
Canongate till the worship was over in the house of the Lord James
Stuart, he frequently rode up and down the street as far the
Luckenbooths and the Abbey's sanctuary siver, and his mind was at times
smitten with the remorse of pity when he saw, as the dawn advanced, the
numbers of poor labouring men that came up out of the closes and
gathered round the trone, abiding there to see who would come to hire
them for the day. But his compassion was soon changed into a frame of
thankfulness at the boundless variety of mercies which are dealt out to
the children of Adam, for he remarked, that, for the most part, these
poor men, whose sustenance was as precarious as that of the wild birds
of the air, were cheerful and jocund, many of them singing and whistling
as blithely as the lark, that carries the sweet incense of her melodious
songs in the censer of a sinless breast to the golden gates of the
morning.
Hitherto he had never noted, or much considered, the complicated cares
and trials wherewith the lot of man in every station is chequered and
environed; and when he heard those bondmen of hard labour, jocund after
sound slumbers and light suppers, laughing contemptuously as they beheld
the humiliating sight, which divers gallants and youngsters, courtiers
of the court, degraded with debauch, made of themselves as they stumbled
homeward, he thought there was surely more bliss in the cup that was
earned by the constancy of health and a willing mind, than in all the
possets and malvesia that the hoards of ages could procure. So he
composed his spirit, and inwardly made a vow to the Lord, that as soon
as the mighty work of the redemption of the Gospel from the perdition of
papistry was accomplished, he would retire into the lea of some pleasant
green holm, and take, for the purpose of his life, the attainment of
that happy simplicity which seeks but the supply of the few wants with
which man comes so rich from the hands of his Maker, that all changes in
his natural condition of tilling the ground and herding the flocks only
serve to make him poorer by increasing.
While he was thus ruminating in the street, he observed two strangers
coming up the Canongate. One of them had the appearance of a servant,
but he was of a staider and more thoughtful aspect than belongs to men
of that degree, only he bore on his shoulder a willease, and had in his
hand a small package wrapt in a woollen cover and buckled with a
leathern strap. The other was the master; and my grandfather halted his
horse to look at him as he passed, for he was evidently no common man
nor mean personage, though in stature he was jimp the ordinary size. He
was bent more with infirmities than the load of his years. His hair and
long flowing beard were very grey and venerable, like those of the
ancient patriarchs who enjoyed immediate communion with God. But though
his appearance was thus aged, and though his complexion and countenance
betokened a frail tenement, yet the brightness of youth shone in his
eyes, and they were lighted up by a spirit over which time had no power.
In his steps and gait he was a little hasty and unsteady, and twice or
thrice he was obliged to pause in the steep of the street to draw his
breath; but even in this there was an affecting and great earnestness, a
working of a living soul within, as if it panted to enter on the
performance of some great and solemn hest.
He seemed to be eager and zealous like the apostle Peter in his temper,
and as dauntless as the mighty and courageous Paul. Many in the street
stopped, and looked after him with reverence and marvelling, as he
proceeded with quick and desultory steps, followed by his sedate
attendant. Nor was it surprising, for he was, indeed, one of those who,
in their lives, are vast and wonderful,--special creations that are sent
down from heaven, with authority attested by the glowing impress of the
signet of God on their hearts, to avenge the wrongs done to His truths
and laws in the blasphemies of the earth.--It was John Knox!
When he had passed, my grandfather rode back to the yett of the Lord
James Stuart's lodgings, which by this time was opened, and instanter,
on mentioning to the porter from whom he had come, was admitted to his
master.
That great worthy was at the time sitting alone in a back chamber, which
looked towards Salisbury Crags, and before him, but on the opposite side
of the table, among divers letters and papers of business, lay a large
Bible, with brass clasps thereon, in which, it would seem, some one had
been expounding to him a portion of the Scriptures.
When my grandfather presented to him the letter from the Earl of
Glencairn, he took it from him without much regarding him, and broke
open the seal, and began to peruse it to himself in that calm and
methodical manner for which he was so famed and remarkable. Before,
however, he had read above the half thereof, he gave as it were a sudden
hitch, and turning round, looked my grandfather sharply in the face, and
said,--
"Are you Gilhaize?"
But before any answer could be made, he waved his hand graciously,
pointing to a chair, and desired him to sit down, resuming at the same
time the perusal of the letter; and when he had finished it, he folded
it up for a moment; but, as if recollecting himself, he soon runkled it
up in his hand and put it into the fire.
"Your Lord informs me," said he, "that he has all confidence, not only
in your honesty, Gilhaize, but in your discernment; and says, that in
respect to the high question anent Christ's cause, you may be trusted to
the uttermost. Truly, for so young a man, this is an exceeding renown.
His letter has told me what passed last night with the Queen's Highness.
I am grieved to hear it. She means well; but her feminine fears make her
hearken to counsels that may cause the very evils whereof she is so
afraid. But the sincerity of her favour to the Reformed will soon be
tried, for last night John Knox arrived, and I was with him; and, strong
in the assurances of his faith, he intends to lead on to the battle.
This morning he was minded to depart for Fife.--'Our Captain, Christ
Jesus,' said he, 'and Satan, his adversary, are now at open defiance;
their banners are displayed, and the trumpet is blown on both sides for
assembling their armies.' As soon as it is known that he is within the
kingdom, we shall learn what we may expect, and that presently too; for
this very day the clergy meet in the monastery of the Greyfriars, and
doubtless they will be advertised of his coming. You had as well try if
you can gain admittance among the other auditors, to hear their
deliberations; afterwards come again to me, and report what takes place;
by that time I shall be advised whether to send you back to Glencairn or
elsewhere."
My grandfather, after this and some farther discourse, retired to the
hall, and took breakfast with the household, where he was much edified
with the douce deportment of all present, so unlike that of the lewd and
graceless varlets who rioted in the houses of the other nobles. Verily,
he used to say, the evidences of a reforming spirit were brightly seen
there; and, to rule every one into a chaste sobriety of conversation, a
pious clerk sate at the head of the board, and said grace before and
after the meal, making it manifest how much all things about the Lord
James Stuart were done in order.
Having taken breakfast, and reposed himself some time, for his long ride
had made him very weary, he rose, and, changing his apparel, went to the
Greyfriars church, where the clergy were assembling, and elbowing
himself gently into the heart of the people waiting around for
admission, he got in with the crowd when the doors were opened.
The matter that morning to be considered concerned the means to be
taken, within the local jurisdictions of those there met, to enforce the
process of the summons which had been issued against the reformed
preachers to appear at Stirling.
But while they were busily conversing and contriving how best to aid and
further that iniquitous aggression of perfidious tyranny, there came in
one of the brethren of the monastery, with a frightened look, and cried
aloud, that John Knox was come, and had been all night in the town. At
the news the spectators, as if moved by one spirit, gave a triumphant
shout,--the clergy were thunderstruck,--some started from their seats,
unconscious of what they did,--others threw themselves back where they
sat,--and all appeared as if a judgment had been pronounced upon them.
In the same moment the church began to skail,--the session was
adjourned,--and the people ran in all directions. The cry rose
everywhere, "John Knox is come!" All the town came rushing into the
streets,--the old and the young, the lordly and the lowly, were seen
mingling and marvelling together,--all tasks of duty, and servitude, and
pleasure, were forsaken,--the sick-beds of the dying were deserted,--the
priests abandoned their altars and masses, and stood pale and trembling
at the doors of their churches,--mothers set down their infants on the
floors, and ran to inquire what had come to pass,--funerals were
suspended, and the impious and the guilty stood aghast, as if some
dreadful apocalypse had been made;--travellers, with the bridles in
their hands, lingering in profane discourse with their hosts, suddenly
mounted, and speeded into the country with the tidings. At every cottage
door and wayside bield, the inmates stood in clusters, silent and
wondering, as horseman came following horseman, crying, "John Knox is
come!" Barks that had departed, when they heard the news, bore up to
tell others that they saw afar at sea. The shepherds were called in from
the hills;--the warders on the castle, when, at the sound of many
quickened feet approaching, they challenged the comers, were answered,
"John Knox is come!" Studious men were roused from the spells of their
books;--nuns, at their windows, looked out fearful and inquiring,--and
priests and friars were seen standing by themselves, shunned like
lepers. The whole land was stirred as with the inspiration of some new
element, and the hearts of the persecutors were withered.
"No tongue," often said my grandfather, "could tell the sense of that
great event through all the bounds of Scotland, and the papistical
dominators shrunk as if they had suffered in their powers and
principalities, an awful and irremediable overthrow."
CHAPTER XVIII
When my grandfather left the Greyfriars, he went to the lodging of the
Lord James Stuart, whom he found well instructed of all that had taken
place, which he much marvelled at, having scarcely tarried by the way in
going thither.
"Now, Gilhaize," said my Lord, "the tidings fly like wildfire, and the
Queen Regent, by the spirit that has descended into the hearts of the
people, will be constrained to act one way or another. John Knox, as you
perhaps know, stands under the ban of outlawry for conscience sake. In a
little while we shall see whether he is still to be persecuted. If left
free, the braird of the Lord, that begins to rise so green over all the
land, will grow in peace to a plentiful harvest. But if he is to be
hunted down, there will come such a cloud and storm as never raged
before in Scotland. I speak to you thus freely, that you may report my
frank sentiments to thir noble friends and trusty gentlemen, and say to
them that I am girded for the field, if need be."
He then put a list of several well-known friends of the Reformation
ayont the frith into my grandfather's hands, adding, "I need not say
that it is not fitting now to trust to paper, and therefore much will
depend on yourself. The confidence that my friend the Earl, your master,
has in you, makes me deal thus openly with you; and I may add, that if
there is deceit in you, Gilhaize, I will never again believe the
physiognomy of man--so go your ways; see all these, wheresoever they may
be,--and take this purse for your charges."
My grandfather accepted the paper and the purse; and reading over the
paper, imprinted the names in it on his memory, and then said--
"My Lord, I need not risk the possession of this paper; but it may be
necessary to give me some token by which the lords and lairds therein
mentioned may have assurance that I come from you."
For some time the Lord James made no reply, but stood ruminating, with
the forefinger of his left hand pressing his nether lip; then he
observed,--
"Your request is very needful;" and taking the paper, he mentioned
divers things of each of the persons named in it, which he told my
grandfather had passed between him and them severally, when none other
was present. "By remembering them of these things," said he, "they will
know that you are in verity sent from me."
Being thus instructed, my grandfather left the Lord James, and
proceeding forthwith to the pier of Leith, embarked in the Burntisland
ferry-boat--and considering with himself, that the farthest way of those
whom he was missioned to see ought to be the first informed, as the
nearer had other ways and means of communion, he resolved to go forward
to such of them as dwelt in Angus and Merns; by which resolution he
reached Dundee shortly after the arrival there of the champion of the
Reformation, John Knox.
This resolution proved most wise and fortunate, for, on landing in that
town, he found a great concourse of the Reformed from the two shires
assembled there, and among them many of those to whom he was specially
sent. They had come to go with their ministers before the Queen Regent's
counsel at Stirling, determined to avow their adherence to the doctrines
of which those pious men were accused. And it being foreseen that, as
they went forward others would join, my grandfather thought he could do
no better in his mission than mingle with them, the more especially as
John Knox was also to be of that great company.
On the day following, they accordingly all set forward towards
Perth,--and they were a glorious army, mighty with the strength of their
great ally the Lord of the hosts of heaven. No trumpet sounded in their
march, nor was the courageous drum heard among them,--nor the shouts of
earthly soldiery,--nor the neigh of the war-horse,--nor the voice of any
captain. But they sang hymns of triumph, and psalms of the great things
that Jehovah had of old done for his people; and though no banner was
seen there, nor sword on the thighs of men of might, nor spears in the
grasp of warriors, nor crested helmet, nor aught of the panoply of
battle, yet the eye of faith beheld more than all these, for the hills
and heights of Scotland were to its dazzled vision covered that day with
the mustered armies of the dreadful God: the angels of his wrath in
their burning chariots; the archangels of his omnipotence, calm in their
armour of storms and flaming fires, and the Rider on the white horse,
were all there.
As the people with their ministers advanced, their course was like a
river, which continually groweth in strength and spreadeth its waters as
it rolls onward to the sea. On all sides came streams of new adherents
to their holy cause, in so much that when they arrived at Perth it was
thought best to halt there, lest the approach of so great a multitude,
though without weapons, should alarm the Queen Regent's government.
Accordingly they made a pause, and Erskine of Dun, one of the Lord James
Stuart's friends, taking my grandfather with him, and only two other
servants, rode forward to Stirling to represent to her Highness the
faith and the firmness of the people.
When they arrived, they found the town in consternation. Busy were the
bailies, marshalling such of the burgesses as could be persuaded to take
up arms, but all who joined them were feckless aged men, dealers and
traffickers in commodities for the courtiers. Proud was the provost that
day, and a type of the cause for which he was gathering his papistical
remnants. At the sight of Dun and his three followers riding up the
street to the castle, he was fain to draw out his sword and make a
salutation; but it stuck sae dourly in that he was obligated to gar ane
of the town-officers hold the scabbard, while he pulled with such might
and main at the hilt, that the blade suddenly broke off, and back he
stumbled, and up flew his heels, so that even my grandfather was
constrained, notwithstanding the solemnity of the occasion, to join in
the shout of laughter that rose thereat from all present. But provosts
and bailies, not being men of war, should not expose themselves to such
adversities.
Nor was the fyke of impotent preparation within the walls of the castle
better. The Queen had been in a manner lanerly with her ladies when the
sough of the coming multitude reached her. The French guards had not
come from Glasgow, and there was none of the warlike nobles of the
papistical sect at that time at Stirling. She had therefore reason both
for dread and pani
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