Short History of Scotland — 38 - Ch. 26: The Restoration, pt 1

CHAPTER XXVI. THE RESTORATION.

There was "dancing and derray" in Scotland among the laity when the king came to his own again.

The darkest page in the national history seemed to have been turned; the conquering English were gone with their abominable tolerance, their craze for soap and water, their aversion to witch-burnings.

The nobles and gentry would recover their lands and compensation for their losses; there would be offices to win, and "the spoils of office."

It seems that in Scotland none of the lessons of misfortune had been learned.

Since January the chiefs of the milder party of preachers, the Resolutioners,--they who had been reconciled with the Engagers,--were employing the Rev. James Sharp, who had been a prisoner in England, as their agent with Monk, with Lauderdale, in April, with Charles in Holland, and, again, in London.

Sharp was no fanatic.

From the first he assured his brethren, Douglas of Edinburgh, Baillie, and the rest, that there was no chance for "rigid Presbyterianism."

They could conceive of no Presbyterianism which was not rigid, in the manner of Andrew Melville, to whom his king was "Christ's silly vassal."

Sharp warned them early that in face of the irreconcilable Protesters, "moderate Episcopacy" would be preferred; and Douglas himself assured Sharp that the new generation in Scotland "bore a heart-hatred to the Covenant," and are "wearied of the yoke of presbyterial government."

This was true: the ruling classes had seen too much of presbyterial government, and would prefer bishops as long as they were not pampered and all-powerful.

On the other hand the lesser gentry, still more their godly wives, the farmers and burgesses, and the preachers, regarded the very shadow of Episcopacy as a breach of the Covenant and an insult to the Almighty.

The Covenanters had forced the Covenant on the consciences of thousands, from the king downwards, who in soul and conscience loathed it.

They were to drink of the same cup--Episcopacy was to be forced on them by fines and imprisonments.

Scotland, her people and rulers were moving in a vicious circle.

The Resolutioners admitted that to allow the Protesters to have any hand in affairs was "to breed continual distemper and disorders," and Baillie was for banishing the leaders of the Protesters, irreconcilables like the Rev. James Guthrie, to the Orkney islands.

But the Resolutioners, on the other hand, were no less eager to stop the use of the liturgy in Charles's own household, and to persecute every sort of Catholic, Dissenter, Sectary, and Quaker in Scotland.

Meanwhile Argyll, in debt, despised on all sides, and yet dreaded, was holding a great open-air Communion meeting of Protesters at Paisley, in the heart of the wildest Covenanting region (May 27, 1660).

He was still dangerous; he was trying to make himself trusted by the Protesters, who were opposed to Charles.

It may be doubted if any great potentate in Scotland except the Marquis wished to revive the constitutional triumphs of Argyll's party in the last Parliament of Charles I. Charles now named his Privy Council and Ministers without waiting for parliamentary assent--though his first Parliament would have assented to anything.

He chose only his late supporters: Glencairn who raised his standard in 1653; Rothes, a humorous and not a cruel voluptuary; and, as Secretary for Scotland in London, Lauderdale, who had urged him to take the Covenant, and who for twenty years was to be his buffoon, his favourite, and his wavering and unscrupulous adviser.

Among these greedy and treacherous profligates there would, had he survived, have been no place for Montrose.

In defiance of warnings from omens, second-sighted men, and sensible men, Argyll left the safe sanctuary of his mountains and sea-straits, and betook himself to London, "a fey man."

Most of his past was covered by an Act of Indemnity, but not his doings in 1653. He was arrested before he saw the king's face (July 8, 1660), and lay in the Tower till, in December, he was taken to be tried for treason in Scotland.

Sharp's friends were anxious to interfere in favour of establishing Presbyterianism in England; he told them that the hope was vain; he repeatedly asked for leave to return home, and, while an English preacher assured Charles that the rout of Worcester had been God's vengeance for his taking of the Covenant, Sharp (June 25) told his Resolutioners that "the Protesters' doom is dight."

Administration in Scotland was intrusted to the Committee of Estates whom Monk (1650) had captured at Alyth, and with them Glencairn, as Chancellor, entered Edinburgh on August 22. Next day, while the Committee was busy, James Guthrie and some Protester preachers met, and, in the old way, drew up a "supplication."

They denounced religious toleration, and asked for the establishment of Presbytery in England, and the filling of all offices with Covenanters.

They were all arrested and accused of attempting to "rekindle civil war," which would assuredly have followed had their prayer been accepted.

Next year Guthrie was hanged.

But ten days after his arrest Sharp had brought down a letter of Charles to the Edinburgh Presbytery, promising to "protect and preserve the government of the Church of Scotland as it is established by law."

Had the words run "as it may be established by law" (in Parliament) it would not have been a dishonourable quibble--as it was.

Parliament opened on New Year's Day 1661, with Middleton as Commissioner.

In the words of Sir George Mackenzie, then a very young advocate and man of letters, "never was Parliament so obsequious."

The king was declared "supreme Governor over all persons and in all causes" (a blow at Kirk judicature), and all Acts between 1633 and 1661 were rescinded, just as thirty years of ecclesiastical legislation had been rescinded by the Covenanters.

A sum of 40,000 pounds yearly was settled on the king.

Argyll was tried, was defended by young George Mackenzie, and, when he seemed safe, his doom was fixed by the arrival of a Campbell from London bearing some of his letters to Lilburne and Monk (1653-1655) which the Indemnity of 1651 did not cover.

He died, by the axe (not the rope, like Montrose), with dignity and courage.

The question of Church government in Scotland was left to Charles and his advisers.

The problem presented to the Government of the Restoration by the Kirk was much more difficult and complicated than historians usually suppose.

The pretensions which the preachers had inherited from Knox and Andrew Melville were practically incompatible, as had been proved, with the existence of the State.

In the southern and western shires,--such as those of Dumfries, Galloway, Ayr, Renfrew, and Lanark,--the forces which attacked the Engagers had been mustered; these shires had backed Strachan and Ker and Guthrie in the agitation against the king, the Estates, and the less violent clergy, after Dunbar.

But without Argyll, and with no probable noble leaders, they could do little harm; they had done none under the English occupation, which abolished the General Assembly.

To have restored the Assembly, or rather two Assemblies--that of the Protesters and that of the Resolutionists,--would certainly have been perilous.

Probably the wisest plan would have been to grant a General Assembly, to meet _after_ the session of Parliament; not, as had been the custom, to meet before it and influence or coerce the Estates.

Had that measure proved perilous to peace it need not have been repeated,--the Kirk might have been left in the state to which the English had reduced it.

This measure would not have so much infuriated the devout as did the introduction of "black prelacy," and the ejection of some 300 adored ministers, chiefly in the south-west, and "the making of a desert first, and then peopling it with owls and satyrs" (the curates), as Archbishop Leighton described the action of 1663. There ensued the finings of all who would not attend the ministrations of "owls and satyrs,"--a grievance which produced two rebellions (1666 and 1679) and a doctrine of anarchism, and was only worn down by eternal and cruel persecutions.

By violence the Restoration achieved its aim: the Revolution of 1688 entered into the results; it was a bitter moment in the evolution of Scotland--a moment that need never have existed.

Episcopacy was restored, four bishops were consecrated, and Sharp accepted (as might have long been foreseen) the See of St Andrews.

He was henceforth reckoned a Judas, and assuredly he had ruined his character for honour: he became a puppet of Government, despised by his masters, loathed by the rest of Scotland.