THE WHIGS OF SCOTLAND: LAST OF THE STUARTS AN HISTORICAL ROMANCE SCOTTISH PERSECUTION " I tread with reverence, the spot where I trace the footsteps of our suffering fathers : it is to me a classical, yea, a holy land : it is rich in the memoirs of the great, and the good, the martyrs of liberty, and the exiled heralds of truth." IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. I. NEW- YORK: . PRINTED AND PUBLISHED BY J. & J. HARPER, NO. 82, CLIFF-STREET, AND SOLD BY THE BOOKSELLERS GENERALLY THROUGHOUT THE UNITED STATES. 1833. [.Entered according to the act of Congress, in- the year one thousand eight hundred and thirty-three, by J. & J. HARPER, in the Clerk's office, of the District. Court of the United State* for the Southern District of New-York.] Henry Ludwig, Print er. THE OR, THE LAST OF THE STUARTS. DEDICATION, TO THE DESCENDANTS OF THE WHIGS : AND TO THOSE WHO HONOUR THEIR MEMORY. GENTLEMEN, I had formerly dedicated these volumes to SIR WALTER SCOTT, the immor tal honour of Scotland he frank ; who, though ly differed from us in many things, was, never theless, known by all his friends, to admire and applaud the character of the genuine AULD WHIGS OF THE COVENANT. Alas ! Sir Walter is no more ! Scotland mourns her immortal poet and historian. Next to him, whom all Scotland loved and admired, to whom can I dedicate them, so appropriately, as unto you ? Gentlemen : I lay before you a narrative of the deeds of your gallant forebears. It em braces a period of sixteen months in their histo ry, emphatically styled the Killing Times. While the Stuart has been commemorated in the festivals of and no religious England ; pains spared, on the part' of the tories of Bri tain, especially of late, by Sir Walter, the FIRST WRITER of our day, to glorify their an cestors has not been rendered to our ; justice gallant forebears. Much yet remains to be done to set their character and actions in a true and remove the thrown on light ; obloquy them, by malignity or ignorance. Dr. M'Crie taught Sir Walter to think differently of them. VOL. I. A DEDICATION. The character and conduct of the Scottish Whigs are public property. It belongs to the community of nations to vindicate their honour. Like WASHINGTON, they sought no private in terests : they led the van in the revolution of nations. The enemy which they encountered and overthrew, is the same which the American patriots overthrew; and the same which the convulsed nations of Europe, and our Southern continent, are now combatting. The Scottish Whigs achieved, in their nation, what the pa triots of every nation will achieve, in the day when they rise to vindicate their rights. Theirs is the proud honour of having struck the first blow, as the van of the patriotic hosts, who will overthrow tyranny; and give liberty to the world! Every incident respecting them is, therefore, of public interest. One thing is peculiar to the Scottish strug gle : it was for their religion, as well as their liberty. This was not of the Covenanter's choice. It was a necessity imposed on them, by the intolerant claimants of Divine rights, and absolute supremacy over the human con science ! And this very circumstance throws an air of higher grandeur and sublimity over our forefathers' toils and sufferings. Our sym pathies are intensely excited for the men who perilled their lives for the altars of their God, and the liberties of their country ! THE AUTHOR. TORFOOT HALL, ) April, 1833. \ INTRODUCTION. " Pleasant to is the soul, the remembrance of the days of other years*" HISTORY can lay before us only a general detail. Events, their causes and consequences, are the legitimate, and almost only attainable objects of the historian. Mor e than this it would be impossible for him to accomplish. Materials for minute details, are not usually preserved. And it would be utterly impolitic to attempt more. The tedious delineations would render his voluminous history inaccessible to the great majority of his readers. How much is thereby lost to posterity, both of profit and enjoyment ! The family picture, the fire-side seen e s to which we long to be introduced, the smiling inno cence, the unalloyed enjoyments which virtue and love bestow the throbs of the and bosom ; patriot martyr's ; the heart-rending sorrows spread over a whole circle o and innocent the of helpless beings, by cruelty tyrants , and the of fanatics the sufferers' and bigotry ; firmness, patience, and meek-spirited forgiveness, are all lost to us, with the instructive lessons of their minute detail. Every one has felt how delightful history becomes IT INTRODUCTION. when, occasionally, it condescends to enter into minute and personal narrative. And it is this very thing which renders works of imagination, the party tales, and parti cularly the historical romance, so delightful to the young, to the and to the studious and even to gay, ; acceptable the philosopher and the divine. They supply, in a natu ral manner, the thing we long after. The minute detail, the family scenes, the mental labours, the gradual forma tion of character, the shadings, the frailties of those whose deeds and actings on the grand arena of human life, we contemplate on the sober and chastened pages of history. History exhibits them in the dimness and ob scurity of distance. In the minute and personal narra we are near to the actors we are introduced tive, brought ; to them, and hold communion with their souls and feel ings. he who has studied the human heart and the And ; various forms of character brought out on the arena of a delineation of the the life, may give character of patriot- martyr, his sorrows, and enjoyments, and motives, in a manner, we doubt not, quite as faithfully according to the truth, as are most of the historian's details of the events, and personages, of what he is pleased to call the history of real life. There is a period in the Scottish History to which my mind turns always with an irrepressible and holy enthu siasm a when mofle of the Scottish character ; period was brought out and set in bold relief, than in any other period before it or since. The bright days of happiness and peace, the singular prosperity of the nation, and unparalleled progress of the sciences, have changed the face of Scotland, since her union with England. Every body now, is content with INTRODUCTION. T the sacrifice of the nation's Independence. The sacri fice, merely of feeling or national pride, which made the high-minded Scottish patriot sigh for a season, has been amply rewarded by its Union with England. But those bright days were immediately preceded by a wintry storm, which has not its equal in the records of Scot land, or perhaps any other nation's story. During that winter of her year, the boldest, and the best, and the worst of her characters were exhibited in their full-length portraits. The enthusiasm of the WHIG came into fierce collision with the enthusiasm of the TORY. In the present enlightened and liberal-minded age, when charity throws, playfully, around each rival, a chivalrous the more liberal renders generosity ; Tory justice to the fierce rival of his forefathers. And even the Whig lets down the stern features of olden times, and is softened down into a smile of forbearance and even gra- tulation. And, side by side, they look back over the KILLING TIMES with a rare combination of pity, good will, and forgiveness ! But no patriot, no politician, will permit the remembrance of these times to pass away from his heart. Nor can they : that dignity in the hour of that of and of Christian sufferings ; purity sentiment, doctrine that enthusiastic love of and of truth ; liberty, ; that spirit of fearless investigation, and manly resistance, which raised its voice and its hand, in the palaces of the great, and the thatched cottages of the peasantry of Scot- bind, against the gigantic efforts of a civil and religious fanaticism, which aimed at no less than the dragooning of a nation into the belief of the divine right of kings, and the divine right of prelates, to rule in absolute supremacy over men's souls and estates; that effec tual and glorious overthrow of this tyranny and priest- Yl INTRODUCTION. craft and that in of the and ; ushering happiest brightest days of Scotland, can never be forgotten. And, more over, it can never be forgotten that these were the fruits of the toils and sufferings of the WHIGS OP SCOTLAND ! Thence does the Christian patriot derive a holy and im pressive lesson which he ceases not to imprint on the memories of his children, that civil and religious liberty will ultimately triumph over every conspiracy to put it down were it a Leo of a Laud ; plotted by Medici, by of and a of Scotland and were it England, by Sharp ; executed by the sword of a Stuart, the bayonet of a Bour bon,, and the scimetar of a Mahomet ! THE WHIGS OF SCOTLAND: OR, THE \ LAST OF THE STUARTS. BOOK I. CHAPTER I. " Ibat ovans, anima et spe sua damna levabat." ON a bright winter evening in February, A.D. 1678, a solitary student was pacing, with hurried step, the stone pavement of the inner court of the College of Glasgow. He had lingered behind his jocund associates, after the close of the serious business of the day, and the amusements of the evening. He was a tall and manly figure, wrapt in the ample foldings of the scarlet cloak, the badge of the studious youth of that ancient and famous University.