Welcome glory!Welcome eternal life!Welcome Death!'(30)At Glasgow,too,where some were executed,they caused the soldiers to beat the drums and blow the trumpets on their closing ears.Hideous refinement of revenge!Even the last words which drop from the lips of a dying man -words surely the most sincere and the most unbiassed which mortal mouth can utter -even these were looked upon as poisoned and as poisonous.'Drown their last accents,'was the cry,'lest they should lead the crowd to take their part,or at the least to mourn their doom!'(31)But,after all,perhaps it was more merciful than one would think -unintentionally so,of course;perhaps the storm of harsh and fiercely jubilant noises,the clanging of trumpets,the rattling of drums,and the hootings and jeerings of an unfeeling mob,which were the last they heard on earth,might,when the mortal fight was over,when the river of death was passed,add tenfold sweetness to the hymning of the angels,tenfold peacefulness to the shores which they had reached.
Not content with the cruelty of these executions,some even of the peasantry,though these were confined to the shire of Mid-Lothian,pursued,captured,plundered,and murdered the miserable fugitives who fell in their way.One strange story have we of these times of blood and persecution:Kirkton the historian and popular tradition tell us alike of a flame which often would arise from the grave,in a moss near Carnwath,of some of those poor rebels:of how it crept along the ground;of how it covered the house of their murderer;and of how it scared him with its lurid glare.
Hear Daniel Defoe:(32)
'If the poor people were by these insupportable violences made desperate,and driven to all the extremities of a wild despair,who can justly reflect on them when they read in the Word of God "That oppression makes a wise man mad"?And therefore were there no other original of the insurrection known by the name of the Rising of Pentland,it was nothing but what the intolerable oppressions of those times might have justified to all the world,nature having dictated to all people a right of defence when illegally and arbitrarily attacked in a manner not justifiable either by laws of nature,the laws of God,or the laws of the country.'
Bear this remonstrance of Defoe's in mind,and though it is the fashion of the day to jeer and to mock,to execrate and to contemn,the noble band of Covenanters -though the bitter laugh at their old-world religious views,the curl of the lip at their merits,and the chilling silence on their bravery and their determination,are but too rife through all society -be charitable to what was evil and honest to what was good about the Pentland insurgents,who fought for life and liberty,for country and religion,on the 28th of November 1666,now just two hundred years ago.
EDINBURGH,28TH NOVEMBER 1866.
(1)THEATER of MORTALITY,p.10;Edin.1713.
(2)HISTORY OF MY OWN TIMES,beginning 1660,by Bishop Gilbert Burnet,p.158.
(3)Wodrow's CHURCH HISTORY,Book II.chap.i.sect.I.
(4)Crookshank's CHURCH HISTORY,1751,second ed.p.202.
(5)Burnet,p.348.
(6)FULLER'S HISTORIE OF THE HOLY WARRE,fourth ed.1651.
(7)Wodrow,vol.ii.p.17.
(8)Sir J.Turner's MEMOIRS,pp.148-50.
(9)A CLOUD OF WITNESSES,p.376.
(10)Wodrow,pp.19,20.
(11)A HIND LET LOOSE,p.123.
(12)Turner,p.163.
(13)Turner,p.198.
(14)IBID.p.167.
(15)Wodrow,p.29.
(16)Turner,Wodrow,and CHURCH HISTORY by James Kirkton,an outed minister of the period.
(17)Kirkton,p.244.
(18)Kirkton.
(19)Turner.
(20)Kirkton.
(21)Kirkton.
(22)CLOUD OF WITNESSES,p.389;Edin.1765.
(23)Kirkton,p.247.
(24)Ibid.p.254.
(25)IBID.p.247.
(26)IBID.pp.247,248.
(27)Kirkton,p.248.
(28)Kirkton,p.249.
(29)NAPHTALI,p.205;Glasgow,1721.
(30)Wodrow,p.59.
(31)Kirkton,p.246.
(32)Defoe's HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND.