VIIL 1684. returned to public worship, from which their BOOK wives, who were unnoticed in the act, abstained; and the earl of Aberdeen, the chancellor, feeling his credit undermined at court, adhered strictly to the laws, which was termed popular moderation in these furious times. But the act comprehended all persons deserting the church; man and wife were the same person; and the conclusion, that the husband should incur the penalties of his wife's transgression, was embraced by Queensberry in order to replenish the treasury, and by Perth from an avowed maxim that the presbyterians were to be governed with an extreme rigour, or rather to be exterminated, as enemies irreconcileable to the duke's succession. When the question was referred to Charles, who had ever despised the conscience of women, as much as he esteemed their persons, he, at the instigation of his brother, determined, most ungallantly, that husbands were responsible for the offences, or the absences of their wives from church. To the presbyterians this decision was of deep importance. Their ladies for many years had withdrawn from church; and their estates were exposed, by an accumulation of penalties, to the mercy of the crown. Within eleven counties, the penalties exacted, of every denomination, amounted to an hundred and eighty thousand pounds sterling; and other shires, to avoid the destructive visitation of the circuit courts, submitted to the land-tax, be VIII. Porterfield's case. contribute a small BOOK yond the period for which it was granted by parliament 59. Nor were the forfeitures for which 1684. numbers compounded, included in this estimation of fines. Gentlemen of probity and rank, accused on the most malicious informations, were convicted without legal evidence, on a strained interpretation of obsolete laws; and were compelled to redeem their fortunes and their lives from some worthless minion or minister of state. Of this iniquitous traffic of justice, some idea may be formed from the example of a gentleman, who had refused, when solicited, to sum for the support of Argyle. When the court of session was consulted on this unknown crime, Perth the chancellor, and the fifteen judges, delivered an opinion, that as Argyle, in the first instance, was a traitor, it was treason, in the second instance, to contribute money to his support; to solicit contributions, in the third instance, was equally treasonable; and in the fourth instance, notwithstanding the refusal to contribute, it was treason to conceal such a treasonable demand. On this infamous, but unanimous opinion of the court of session, Porterfield was condemned to death by the justiciary court; and was obliged to compound with his judge lord Melfort, the chancellor's brother, for his estate and life 6. Perhaps there are few presbyterian families that were not 59 Fount. Dec. 305. 60 Fount. Dec. i. 315. Wodrow's Hist. Pref. 60. VIII. 1684. involved in proscriptions or penalties; few of the BOOK nobility, whose ancestors were neither sufferers nor sharers in the iniquity of the times. But where the prisoners were unable to purchase, or otherwise to deserve their enlargement, the county gaols were disgorged into those of the capital; the mildest fate of whose wretched tenants, was to be transported as soldiers to Flanders, or as slaves to the plantations"1. of fanatics. Amidst the most rapacious extortions to which Execution the prostitution of justice was thus instrumental, the execution of fanatics was never intermitted; but the complexion of government soon assumed a more sanguinary hue. The situation of the presbyterians was truly deplorable; their clergy were ejected, silenced, and driven into exile; the gentlemen were labouring under imprisonment or exorbitant penalties; the peasants were harassed by the army, and oppressed and ruined by itinerants courts. But the fugitives, and the sect of Cameronians, were rendered mad and desperate by the severer vengeance to which they were indiscriminately devoted. The latter, under the name of the united societies of the west, had burnt the test and the act of succession, at Lanerk, and had renewed their declaration against Charles as a tyrant, and against James as a papist unworthy to reign. They were uniformly convicted on the former ensnaring questions; was Sharp's death 61 Wodrow, ii. 339. VIII. 1684. BOOK murder? was the rising at Bothwell rebellion? is Charles the rightful king? and not unfrequently were executed within a few hours after their sentence was pronounced. The father durst not receive his son, nor the wife her husband; the country was prohibited from harbouring the fugitives, and the ports were shut against their escape by sea. When expelled from their homes, they resided in caves, among morasses and mountains, or met by stealth and by night for worship; but ver were discovered, the hue and cry was immedi- At a secret meeting of their united societies, they prepared, in language which moves at once our compassion and horror, an admonitory declaration to their persecutors, which nothing could have suggested, and nothing can extenuate, but the deepest despair. After a temperate disavowal of the royal authority, they express their abhorrence of murder committed from a difference of judgment or of religious persuasion; but admonish their sanguinary persecutors (between whom 62 Wodrow, ii. 429-47-9. VIII. 1684. and the more moderate, they are careful to discri- BOOK minate) that from the common principle of self preservation, they will retaliate according to their power, and the degrees of guilt, on such privy counsellors, lords of justiciary, officers, and soldiers, their abettors and informers, whose hands shall still continue to be embrued in their blood 63. The declaration was affixed to different churches, and appeared the more alarming from the murder of two soldiers, active in persecution, whose mur. der however the societies have ever disclaimed. Every petty oppressor felt or imagined the knife at his throat. But although a pernicious race of informers was intimidated, the government was instigated to atrocities worse than any which the declaration had denounced. The court of session was again consulted, whether the refusal to an swer or to disavow the declaration on oath, could amount to treason; but its prostituted affirmation was insufficient to gratify, and the forms of legal execution were too dilatory to assuage, the desire of revenge. An absolute and undisguised mas- A massacre sacre was appointed by a vote of council; "That council. "whosoever owned, or refused to disown the de"claration on oath, should be put to death, in the presence of two witnesses, though unarmed "when taken." A form of abjuration was prescribed, as the only security from military execu tion. The army was employed to enforce the voted in |