Hunted and Harried

“The auld story,” said the shepherd in a low sad voice. “What was their crime?” he inquired of a bystander.

“They tried to serve the Lord, that was a’,” replied the man bitterly. “But they ended their coorse bravely. Ane sang the 84th Psalm and the ither spake of God’s great love an’ free grace to her and to sinfu’ man.”

“Puir things!” exclaimed Quentin with tremulous voice. “It’s ower noo. They’re fairly inside o’ the celestial gates.”

The sight was all too common in those dark days to induce delay, but the two friends had to pass near the gallows, and naturally looked up in passing.

“Quentin!” gasped Peter, stretching out both hands towards the martyrs, whose now soulless frames were hanging there, “it’s—it’s Marion an’—”

A low wail followed, as the poor boy fell over in a swoon.

The shepherd’s heart almost stood still, and his great chest quivered for a moment as he gazed, but he was a man of strong will and iron mould. Stooping, he picked up his little friend and carried him silently away.

Their grief was, however, diverted to other channels on reaching the abode of Mrs Black, for there they found her and Mrs Wallace and Jean in deepest sorrow over the terrible news just brought to them by Jock Bruce.

Andrew Black, he told them, had been sent a prisoner to the Bass Rock, and Will Wallace, with two hundred others, had been banished to the plantations in Barbadoes, where they were to be sold as slaves.

Quentin sat down, covered his face with both hands, and groaned aloud on hearing this. Peter, who had recovered by that time, looked about him with the expressionless face of one whose reason has been unseated. Observing that Jean was sitting apart, sobbing as if her heart would break, he went quietly to her, and, taking one of her hands, began to stroke it gently. “Dinna greet, Jean,” he said; “the Lord will deliver them. Marion aye telt me that, an’ I believe she was richt.”

Truly these unfortunate people needed all the consolation that the Word could give them, for banishment to the plantations usually meant banishment for life, and as to the hundreds who found a prison on the bleak and rugged Bass Rock at the mouth of the Forth, many of these also found a grave.

After the battle of Bothwell Bridge the persecutions which had been so severe for so many years were continued with intensified bitterness. Not only were all the old tyrannical laws carried into force with increased severity, but new and harsher laws were enacted. Among other things the common soldiers were given the right to carry these laws into effect—in other words, to murder and plunder according to their own will and pleasure. And now, in 1680, began what has been termed the killing-time; in which Graham of Claverhouse (afterwards Viscount Dundee), Grierson of Lagg, Dalziel, and others, became pre-eminently notorious for their wanton cruelty in slaughtering men, women, and even children.

On 22nd June 1680 twenty armed horsemen rode up the main street of the burgh of Sanquhar. The troop was headed by Richard Cameron and his brother Michael, who, dismounting, nailed to the cross a paper which the latter read aloud. It was the famous “Declaration of Sanquhar,” in which Charles Stuart was publicly disowned.

While the fields of Scotland were being traversed and devastated by a lawless banditti, authorised by a lawless and covenant-breaking king and Government, those indomitable men who held with Cameron and Cargill united themselves more closely together, and thus entered into a new bond pledging themselves to be faithful to God and to each other in asserting their civil and religious rights, which they believed could only be secured by driving from the throne that “perfidious covenant-breaking race, untrue both to the most high God and to the people over whom for their sins they were set.”

If the Cameronians were wrong in this opinion then must the whole nation have been wrong, when, a few years later, it came to hold the same opinion, and acted in accordance therewith! As well might we find fault with Bruce and Wallace as with our covenanting patriots.

Be this as it may, Richard Cameron with his followers asserted the principle which afterwards became law—namely, that the House of Stuart should no longer desecrate the throne. He did not, however, live to see his desire accomplished.

At Airsmoss—in the district of Kyle—with a band of his followers, numbering twenty-six horse and forty foot, he was surprised by a party of upwards of one hundred and twenty dragoons under command of Bruce of Earlshall. The Cameronians were headed by Hackston of Rathillet, who had been present at the murder of Sharp, though not an active participator. Knowing that no mercy was to be expected they resolved to fight. Before the battle Cameron, engaging in a brief prayer, used the remarkable words: “Lord, take the ripe, but spare the green.” The issue against such odds was what might have been expected. Nearly all the Covenanters were slain. Richard Cameron fell, fighting back to back with his brother. Some of the foot-men escaped into the moss. Hackston was severely wounded and taken prisoner. Cameron’s head and hands were cut off and taken to Edinburgh, where they were cruelly exhibited to his father—a prisoner at the time. “Do ye know them?” asked the wretch who brought them. The old man, kissing them, replied, “Ay, I know them! They are my son’s—my own dear son’s! It is the Lord; good is the will of the Lord, who cannot wrong me nor mine, but has made goodness and mercy to follow us all our days.” A wonderful speech this from one suffering under, perhaps, the severest trial to which poor human nature can be subjected. Well might be applied to him the words—slightly paraphrased—“O man, great was thy faith!”

Hackston was taken to Edinburgh, which he entered on a horse with his head bare and his face to the tail, the hangman carrying Cameron’s head on a halter before him. The indignities and cruelties which were perpetrated on this man had been minutely pre-arranged by the Privy Council. We mention a few in order that the reader may the better understand the inconceivable brutality of the Government against which the Scottish Covenanters had to contend. Besides the barbarities connected with poor Cameron’s head and hands, it was arranged that Hackston’s body was to be drawn backward on a hurdle to the cross of Edinburgh, where, in the first place, his right hand was to be struck off, and after some time his left hand. Thereafter he was to be hanged up and cut down alive; his bowels to be taken out and his heart shown to the people by the hangman, and then to be burnt in a fire on the scaffold. Afterwards his head was to be cut off, and his body, divided into four quarters, to be sent respectively to Saint Andrews, Glasgow, Leith, and Burntisland.

In carrying out his fiendish instructions the bungling executioner was a long time mangling the wrist of Hackston’s right arm before he succeeded in separating the hand. Hackston quietly advised him to be more careful to strike in the joint of the left. Having been drawn up and let fall with a jerk, three times, life was not extinct, for it is said that when the heart was torn out it moved after falling on the scaffold.

Several others who had been with Cameron were betrayed at this time, by apostate comrades, tried under torture, and executed; and the persecution became so hot that field-preaching was almost extinguished. The veteran Donald Cargill, however still maintained his ground.

This able, uncompromising, yet affectionate and charitable man had prepared a famous document called the “Queensferry Paper,” of which it has been said that it contains “the very pith of sound constitutional doctrine regarding both civil and ecclesiastical rights.” Once, however, he mistook his mission. In the presence of a large congregation at Torwood he went so far as to excommunicate Charles the Second; the Dukes of York, Lauderdale, and Rothes; Sir C. McKenzie and Dalziel of Binns. That these despots richly deserved whatever excommunication might imply can hardly be denied, but it is equally certain that prolonged and severe persecution had stirred up poor Cargill upon this occasion to overstep his duty as a teacher of love to God and man.

Heavily did Cargill pay for his errors—as well as for his long and conscientious adherence to duty. Five thousand merks were offered for him, dead or alive. Being captured, he was taken to Edinburgh on the 15th of July, and examined by the Council. On the 26th he was tried and condemned, and on the 27th he was hanged, after having witnessed a good confession, which he wound up with the words: “I forgive all men the wrongs they have done against me. I pray that the sufferers may be kept from sin and helped to know their duty.”

About this time a test oath was ordered to be administered to all men in position or authority. The gist of it was that King Charles the Second was the only supreme governor in the realm over all causes, as well ecclesiastical as civil, and that it was unlawful for any subject upon pretence of reformation, or any pretence whatever, to enter into covenants or leagues, or to assemble in any councils, conventicles, assemblies, etcetera, ecclesiastical or civil, without his special permission.

Pretty well this for a king who had himself signed the covenant—without which signing the Scottish nation would never have consented to assist in putting him on the throne! The greater number of the men in office in Scotland took the oath, though there were several exceptions—the Duke of Argyll, the Duke of Hamilton, John Hope of Hopetoun, the Duchess of Rothes, and others—among whom were eighty of the conforming clergy whose loyalty could not carry them so far, and who surrendered their livings rather than their consciences.

It would require a volume to record even a bare outline of the deeds of darkness that were perpetrated at this time. We must dismiss it all and return to the actors in our tale.

Will Wallace, after being recaptured, as already stated, was sent off to the plantations in a vessel with about two hundred and fifty other unfortunates, many of whom were seriously ill, if not dying, in consequence of their long exposure in the Greyfriars’ Churchyard. Packed in the hold of the ship so closely that they had not room to lie down, and almost suffocated with foul air and stench, the sufferings which they endured were far more terrible than those they experienced when lying among the tombs; but God sent most of them speedy deliverance. They were wrecked on the coast of Orkney. At night they were dashed on the rocks. The prisoners entreated to be let out of their prison, but the brutal captain ordered the hatches to be chained down. A tremendous wave cleft the deck, and a few of the more energetic managed to escape and reach the shore. The remainder—at least two hundred—were drowned in the hold. Will Wallace was among the saved, but was taken to Leith and transferred to another vessel. After several months of tossings on the deep he reached his destination and was sold into slavery.

Many months—even years—passed away, but no news reached Candlemaker Row regarding the fate of the banished people. As to Andrew Black, the only change that took place in his condition during his long captivity was his transference—unknown to his kindred—from the gloomy prison of the Bass Rock to the still gloomier cells of Dunnottar Castle.

During all this time, and for some years after, the persecutions were continued with ever-increasing severity: it seemed as if nothing short of the extirpation of the Covenanters altogether was contemplated. In short, the two parties presented at this period an aspect of human affairs which may well be styled monstrous. On the one hand a people suffering and fighting to the death to uphold law, and on the other a tyrant king and arrogant ecclesiastics and nobles, with their paid slaves and sycophants, deliberately violating the same!

Quentin Dick and Ramblin’ Peter had been drawn closer together by powerful sympathy after the imprisonment of Black and the banishment of Will Wallace. They were like-minded in their aspirations, though very dissimilar in physical and mental endowment. Feeling that Edinburgh was not a safe place in which to hide after his recent escape, Quentin resolved to return to Dumfries to inquire after, and if possible to aid, his friends there.

Peter determined to cast in his lot with him. In size he was still a boy though he had reached manhood.

“We maun dae our best to help the wanderers,” said the shepherd, as they started on their journey.

“Ay,” assented Peter.

Arrived in Galloway they were passing over a wide moorland region one afternoon when a man suddenly appeared before them, as if he had dropped from the clouds, and held out his hand.

“What! McCubine, can that be you?” exclaimed Quentin, grasping the proffered hand. “Man, I am glad to see ye. What brings ye here?”

McCubine explained that he and his friend Gordon, with four comrades, were hiding in the Moss to avoid a party of dragoons who were pursuing them. “Grierson of Lagg is with them, and Captain Bruce is in command,” he said, “so we may expect no mercy if they catch us. Only the other day Bruce and his men dragged puir old Tam McHaffie out o’ his bed, tho’ he was ill wi’ fever, an’ shot him.”

Having conducted Quentin and Peter to the secret place where his friends were hidden, McCubine was asked anxiously, by the former, if he knew anything about the Wilsons.

“Ay, we ken this,” answered Gordon, “that although the auld folk have agreed to attend the curates for the sake o’ peace, the twa lassies have refused, and been driven out o’ hoose an’ hame. They maun hae been wanderin’ amang the hills noo for months—if they’re no catched by this time.”

Hearing this, Quentin sprang up.

“We maun rescue them, Peter,” he said.

“Ay,” returned the boy. “Jean Black will expect that for Aggie’s sake; she’s her bosom freend, ye ken.”

Refusing to delay for even half an hour, the two friends hurried away. They had scarcely left, and the six hunted men were still standing on the road where they had bidden them God-speed, when Bruce with his dragoons suddenly appeared—surprised and captured them all. With the brutal promptitude peculiar to that well-named “killing-time,” four of them were drawn up on the road and instantly shot, and buried where they fell, by Lochenkit Moor, where a monument now marks their resting place.

The two spared men, Gordon and McCubine, were then, without reason assigned, bound and carried away. Next day the party came to the Cluden Water, crossing which they followed the road which leads to Dumfries, until they reached the neighbourhood of Irongray. There is a field there with a mound in it, on which grows a clump of old oak-trees. Here the two friends were doomed without trial to die. It is said that the minister of Irongray at that time was suspected of favourable leanings toward the Covenanters, and that the proprietor of the neighbouring farm of Hallhill betrayed similar symptoms; hence the selection of the particular spot between the two places, in order to intimidate both the minister and the farmer. This may well have been the case, for history shows that a very strong and indomitable covenanting spirit prevailed among the parishioners of Irongray as well as among the people of the South and West of Scotland generally. Indeed Wodrow, the historian, says that the people of Irongray were the first to offer strenuous opposition to the settlement of the curates.

When Gordon and McCubine were standing under the fatal tree with the ropes round their necks, a sorrowing acquaintance asked the latter if he had any word to send to his wife.

“Yes,” answered the martyr; “tell her that I leave her and the two babes upon the Lord, and to his promise: ‘A father to the fatherless and a husband to the widow is the Lord in His holy habitation.’”

Hearing this, the man employed to act the part of executioner seemed touched, and asked forgiveness.

“Poor man!” was the reply, “I forgive thee and all men.”

They died, at peace with God and man. An old tombstone, surrounded by an iron rail, marks to this day the spot among the old oak-trees where the bodies of McCubine and Gordon were laid to rest.

Commenting on this to his friend Selby, the Reverend George Lawless gave it as his opinion that “two more fanatics were well out of the world.”

To which the Reverend Frank replied very quietly:

“Yes, George, well out of it indeed; and, as I would rather die with the fanatics than live with the godless, I intend to join the Covenanters to-night—so my pulpit shall be vacant to-morrow.”