Johnston of Warriston by William Morison
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JOHNSTON OF WARRISTON BY WILLIAM MORISON FAMOUS SCOTS: SERIES PUBLISHED BY OLIPHANT ANDERSON UTERRIER'EDINBVRGH AND LONDON <& <5> The designs and ornaments of this volume are by Mr. Joseph Brown, and the printing is from the press of Morrison & Gibb Limited, Edinburgh. Dft SOB.7 TO THE MEMORY WILLIAM SYME MACKIE VESTRl NUNQUAM MEMINISSE PIGEBIT PREFACE IT is a matter of surprise to me that the life and work of one who took such an influential part as Warriston in the public affairs of so important a period in our history have remained so long without separate treatment. The present volume is an attempt to fill this gap in our national biography. If I have allowed the historical part of my subject to overbalance the biographical, the reason is that Warriston's character is almost entirely shown and the interest of his life almost exclusively found in his public acts. I need not enumerate my sources they are all well known to students of the period of which I have written. The most recent of these is the Fragment of the Diary Archibald Lord 21si- of Sir Johnston , Warriston, May in the Scottish June 2$th t 1639, printed 1896 by History Society, and edited with Introduction and notes by George Morison Paul, M.A., F.S.A. Scot. This publication has thrown open an incomparable source of information regarding the brief but critical period which it covers. I desire to acknowledge my indebtedness to the Editor for so interesting a historical relic from the pen of War- riston, as well as for much valuable biographical material 8 PREFACE supplied in his Introduction. I may also say in regard to another source, which Carlyle in his CromwelFs Letters and Speeches commends to anyone who might write on Warriston, viz., Hailes' Memorials and Letters, vol. ii., that I have given all in that volume that is relevant to my subject. EDINBURGH, May 1901. CONTENTS CHAP. PAGE PREFACE ...... 7 I. INTRODUCTORY . u II. FAMILY STOCK . .14 III. THE LETTING OUT OF WATERS : LAUD'S SERVICE BOOK ...... 18 IV. FIRST STAGE OF THE STRUGGLE : SUPPLICATIONS AND PROTESTATIONS : THE TABLES . 21 V. THE NATIONAL COVENANT . .27 VI. THE GLASGOW ASSEMBLY : WARRISTON ELECTED CLERK . .36 VII. FIRST BISHOPS' WAR : DUNS LAW . .44 VIII. FIRST BISHOPS' WAR, CONTINUED : THE PACIFICA- TION OF BERWICK . .52 IX. BETWEEN FIRST AND SECOND BISHOPS' WARS . 64 X. THE SECOND BISHOPS' WAR . .71 XI. THE KING'S VISIT OF RECONCILIATION TO SCOTLAND 80 XII. THE SOLEMN LEAGUE AND COVENANT . 86 XIII. THE WESTMINSTER ASSEMBLY . .93 XIV. THE ANGLO-SCOTTISH ALLIANCE IN THE FIRST CIVIL WAR ..... 104 XV. THE ENGAGEMENT . .no XVI. CROMWELL'S INVASION OF SCOTLAND . .118 XVII. THE RESOLUTIONERS AND PROTESTERS : WARRIS- TON'S ADHESION TO CROMWELL. 132 XVIII. THE RESTORATION : WARRISTON'S DEATH . 145 9 ' Archibald Johnston of Warriston ; . a Lord Register of whom all the world has heard. The redactor of the Covenanters' protests, in 1637 and onwards ; redactor, perhaps, of the Covenant itself; canny, lynx-eyed lawyer, and of of austere Presbyterian zealot ; full fire, heavy energy and : of gloom in fact, a very notable character ; whom our Scotch friends might do well to give us farther elucida- tions.' CARLYLE'S Oliver CromwelTs Letters and Speeches. JOHNSTON OF WARRISTON CHAPTER I INTRODUCTORY WE may justly claim for Sir Archibald Johnston, Lord Warriston, a place in the front rank of those Scottish patriots who, by their resistance to the absolutism of Charles i., saved the liberties of their own nation and largely helped to secure those of the whole kingdom. He did not reach the stature of the most eminent men who took part in what was virtually the same struggle under the two previous monarchs. He did not, like Knox and Melville, focus in his own life the history of his age. He lacked their commanding genius and personal magnetism. Nor had he the same vantage-ground for captivating the heart of the nation. Knox had the pulpit and Melville the floor of the Assembly : Warriston's services to liberty were rendered for the most part in the inconspicuous labours of committees of Church and State. Neither has his career that melo- dramatic interest which attaches to many of his contem- poraries who, as regards all high and honourable qualities of character, are not worthy to be named with him. A dashing soldier and brilliant renegade like Montrose makes a purple patch on the page of history beside which the figure of the ecclesiastical and constitutional lawyer, supreme though he was in his own sphere, is but a dull grey. But when all deductions have been made, Warriston remains 12 FAMOUS SCOTS one of the most notable men of a remarkable time. As the Clerk and legal adviser of the Scottish Church, and as the secretary of the principal committees of the Parliament, in one of the most troubled periods of our history, he served the cause of liberty from early manhood to the close of life with an ability and a loyalty that won for him the confidence of all his associates. No one did more to organise the national party, to shape its policy and guide its counsels. There was none who toiled for it with greater constancy, with firmer resolution, with more capacity, or with a purer devotion. He risked all that is dear in life in its interests, and in the end he paid the penalty of his patriotism on the scaffold. The story of his last days is one of the most pathetic of a tragic time. With a mean vindictiveness which even the Stuarts never surpassed, he was hunted down on the Continent, to which he had escaped at the Restoration, and brought home, his strength exhausted by his excessive labours and the anxieties of his months of exile, to receive his death-sentence for treason at the bar of Parliament. Scarcely a quarter of a century after his execution, his son-in-law, the noble Jerviswood, was also brought to the scaffold. Twice had his wife and children to pass through the horrors and bear the anguish of so dread a parting with those to whom they were united by the tenderest ties. Warriston and his house contributed nobly to the price in blood and tears which Scotland paid for her liberty. There is one respect in which Warriston was a pre- eminently representative Scot. To him the religious interest was the deepest, and the Church the prime institu- tion of the nation. If he appear to many to have exagger- ated the value of the Presbyterian constitution of the Church for there was never even among the Scottish people one more passionately attached to it all must for sacrifices honour him the he made to preserve it, and acknowledge the splendid fruit which his sufferings and those of his compatriots bore in history. The immediate object of the Covenanters may have been narrow, but their sincere and honourable purpose, work- JOHNSTON OF WARRISTON 13 ing along the lines of a larger providence than they knew, turned the good which they sought primarily for their own Church and nation into a mighty reinforce- ment of the cause of liberty all time through and all the world over. CHAPTER II FAMILY STOCK WARRISTON sprang from the Johnstons of Annandale an unlikely race, we would say, to produce a Covenanter, if we did not remember in what new directions inherited force of character may break out. The first of his ancestors of whom we have any knowledge was Gavin Johnston, tenant of the Kirkton of Kirkpatrick-Juxta, three miles to the south-west of Moffat, who died in 1555. His heir was James Johnston, tenant of Middlegill a farm a few miles north of the Kirkton in Evan Water. The next in succession, and James Johnston of Middlegill's son, was James Johnston of Beirholm, near the Kirkton, who died December 1622. This James Johnston's brother, Archibald Johnston, was Warriston's grandfather. He left Annandale 1 and settled as a merchant in Edinburgh, where he prospered and amassed a large fortune. His marriage to Rachel Arnot, daughter of Sir John Arnot of Birswick, Lord Provost of Edinburgh 1587-1589, a Mem- ber of the Privy Council and Treasurer Depute of the Kingdom, shows that he early made for himself a good position in the city. Through his father-in-law he more than once procured the personal influence of James vi. in furtherance of his business interests. On 22nd April 1589 the King wrote to Archibald Douglas, thanking him for services rendered to ' the son-in-law of the Lord Provost of 1 That Archibald Johnston retained a kindly feeling for his native parish is shown by one of the provisions of his will, in which he left a ' sum of 100 merks to help the repairing and completing of ye kirk callit Kirkpatrick-Juxta, where my predecessoris' bones lye.' '4 JOHNSTON OF WARRISTON 15 Edinburgh'; and on 3ist May 1595 he conferred a still more distinguished favour on this Edinburgh merchant by writing to Queen Elizabeth on his behalf in connection with a suit in which Johnston was engaged before the English Council. Archibald Johnston's wife, Rachel Arnot, who lived till 1626, was a staunch Presbyterian, and from her Warriston inherited his love of the Kirk. Bishop Burnet, ' who was her great-grandson, writes : Bruce [Robert Bruce, minister of Edinburgh] was concealed in her house for some all years ; and they [the Presbyterian ministers] found such advantage in their submission to her, that she was counted for many years the chief support of her party.