Ringan Gilhaize, or, The Covenanters Read online

  CHAPTER I

  It is a thing past all contesting, that, in the Reformation, there was aspirit of far greater carnality among the champions of the cause thanamong those who in later times so courageously, under the Lord, upheldthe unspotted banners of the Covenant. This I speak of from theremembrance of many aged persons, who either themselves bore a part inthat war with the worshippers of the Beast and his Image, or who hadheard their fathers tell of the heart and mind wherewith it was carriedon, and could thence, with the helps of their own knowledge, discern thespiritual and hallowed difference. But, as I intend mainly to bearwitness to those passages of the late bloody persecution in which I wasmyself both a soldier and a sufferer, it will not become me to brag ofour motives and intents, as higher and holier than those of the greatelder Worthies of "the Congregation." At the same time it is needfulthat I should rehearse as much of what happened in the troubles of theReformation as, in its effects and influences, worked upon the issues ofmy own life. For my father's father was out in the raids of thattempestuous season, and it was by him, and from the stories he was wontto tell of what the Government did when drunken with the sorceries ofthe gorgeous Roman harlot, and rampaging with the wrath of Moloch and ofBelial, it trampled on the hearts and thought to devour the souls of thesubjects that I first was taught to feel, know and understand the divineright of resistance.

  He was come of a stock of bein burghers in Lithgow; but his fatherhaving a profitable traffic in saddle-irons and bridle-rings among thegallants of the court, and being moreover a man who took little heed ofthe truths of religion, he continued with his wife in the delusions ofthe papistical idolatry till the last, by which my grandfather's youngsoul was put in great jeopardy. For the monks of that time were eager toget into their clutches such men-children as appeared to be gifted withany peculiar gift, in order to rear them for stoops and posts to sustaintheir Babylon, in the tower and structure whereof many rents and crackswere daily kithing.

  The Dominican friars, who had a rich howf in the town, seeing that mygrandfather was a shrewd and sharp child, of a comely complexion, andpossessing a studious observance, were fain to wile him into theirpower; but he was happily preserved from all their snares and devices ina manner that shows how wonderfully the Lord worketh out the purposes ofHis will, by ways and means of which no man can fathom the depth of themysteries.

  Besides his traffic in the polished garniture of horse-gear, mygrandfather's father was also a ferrier, and enjoyed a far-spread reputefor his skill in the maladies of horses; by which, and as he dwelt nearthe palace-yett, on the south side of the street, fornent the grandfountain-well, his smiddy was the common haunt of the serving-menbelonging to the nobles frequenting the court, and as often as anynewcomers to the palace were observed in the town, some of the monks andfriars belonging to the different convents were sure to come to thesmiddy to converse with their grooms and to hear the news, which wereall of the controversies raging between the priesthood and the people.

  My grandfather was then a little boy, but he thirsted to hear theirconversations, and many a time, as he was wont to tell, has his veryheart been raspet to the quick by the cruel comments in which thosecormorants of idolatry indulged themselves with respect to the bravespirit of the reformers; and he rejoiced when any retainers of theprotestant lords quarrelled with them, and dealt back to them as hardnames as the odious epithets with which the hot-fed friars reviled thepious challengers of the papal iniquities. Thus it was, in the greenyears of his childhood, that the same sanctified spirit was poured outupon him, which roused so many of the true and faithful to resist andrepel the attempt to quench the relighted lamps of the Gospel, preparinghis young courage to engage in those great first trials and strong tasksof the Lord.

  The tidings and the bickerings to which he was a hearkener in thesmiddy, he was in the practice of relating to his companions, by whichit came to pass that, it might in a manner be said, all the boys in thetown were leagued in spirit with the reformers, and the consequenceswere not long of ripening.

  In those days there was a popish saint, one St Michael, that was held inwonderful love and adoration by all the ranks and hierarchies of theecclesiastical locust then in Lithgow; indeed, for that matter, theyascribed to him power and dominion over the whole town, lauding andworshipping him as their special god and protector. And upon a certainday of the year they were wont to make a great pageant and revel inhonour of this supposed saint, and to come forth from their cloisterswith banners, and with censers burning incense, shouting and singingpaternosters in praise of this their Dagon, walking in procession fromkirk to kirk, as if they were celebrating the triumph of some mightyconqueror.

  This annual abomination happening to take place shortly after themartyrdom of that true saint and gospel preacher Mr George Wishart, andwhile kirk and quire were resounding, to the great indignation of allChristians, with lamentations for the well-earned death of the cruelCardinal Beaton, his ravenous persecutor, the monks and friars receivedbut little homage as they passed along triumphing, though the streetswere, as usual, filled with the multitude to see their fine show. Theysuffered, however, no molestation nor contempt till they were passingthe Earl of Angus' house, on the outside stair of which my grandfather,with some two or three score of other innocent children, was standing;and even there they might, perhaps, have been suffered to go byscaithless, but for an accident that befel the bearer of a banner, onwhich was depicted a blasphemous type of the Holy Ghost in the shape andlineaments of a cushy-doo.

  It chanced that the bearer of this blazon of iniquity was a particularfat monk, of an arrogant nature, with the crimson complexion of surfeitand constipation, who for many causes and reasons was held in greateraversion than all the rest, especially by the boys, that never lost anopportunity of making him a scoff and a scorn; and it so fell out, as hewas coming proudly along, turning his Babylonish banner to pleasure thewomen at the windows, to whom he kept nodding and winking as he passed,that his foot slipped and down he fell as it were with a gludder, atwhich all the thoughtless innocents on the Earl of Angus' stair set up aloud shout of triumphant laughter, and from less to more began to hootand yell at the whole pageant, and to pelt some of the performers withunsavoury missiles.

  This, by those inordinate ministers of oppression, was deemed a horriblesacrilege, and the parents of all the poor children were obligated togive them up to punishment, of which none suffered more than did mygrandfather, who was not only persecuted with stripes till his loinswere black and blue, but cast into a dungeon in the Blackfriars' den,where for three days and three nights he was allowed no sustenance butgnawed crusts and foul water. The stripes and terrors of the oppressorare, however, the seeds which Providence sows in its mercy to grow intothe means that shall work his own overthrow.

  The persecutions which from that day the monks waged, in their conclavesof sloth and sosherie, against the children of the town, denouncing themto their parents as worms of the great serpent and heirs of perdition,only served to make their young spirits burn fiercer. As their jointshardened and their sinews were knit, their hearts grew manful, andyearned, as my grandfather said, with the zealous longings of arighteous revenge, to sweep them away from the land as with a whirlwind.

  After enduring for several years great affliction in his father's housefrom his mother, a termagant woman, who was entirely under the dominionof her confessor, my grandfather entered into a paction with two otheryoung lads to quit their homes for ever, and to enter the service ofsome of those pious noblemen who were then active in procuring adherentsto the protestant cause, as set forth in the first covenant.Accordingly, one morning in the spring of 1558, they bade adieu to theirfathers' doors, and set forward on foot towards Edinburgh.

  "We had light hearts," said my grandfather, "for our trust was inHeaven; we had girded ourselves for a holy enterprise, and theconfidence of our souls broke forth into songs of battle, the melodiousbreathings of that unison of spirit which is alone known to the soldiersof the great Captain
of Salvation."

  About noon they arrived at the Cross of Edinburgh, where they found acrowd assembled round the Luckenbooths, waiting for the breaking up ofthe States, which were then deliberating anent the proposal from theFrench king that the Prince Dolphin, his son, should marry our youngqueen, the fair and faulty Mary, whose doleful captivity and woful endscarcely expiated the sins and sorrows that she caused to her ill-usedand poor misgoverned native realm of Scotland.

  While they were standing in this crowd, my grandfather happened to seeone Icener Cunningham, a servant in the household of the Earl ofGlencairn, and having some acquaintance of the man before at Lithgow, hewent towards him, and after some common talk, told on what errand he andhis two companions had come to Edinburgh. It was in consequence agreedbetween them that this Icener should speak to his master concerningthem, the which he did as soon as my Lord came out from the Parliament;and the Earl was so well pleased with the looks of the three young menthat he retained them for his service on the spot, and they wereconducted by Icener Cunningham home to his Lordship's lodgings in StMary's Wynd.

  Thus was my grandfather enlisted into the cause of the Lords of theCongregation, and in the service of that great champion of theReformation, the renowned, valiant and pious Earl of Glencairn, he sawmany of those things, the recital of which kindled my young mind toflame up with no less ardour than his against the cruel attempt that wasmade, in our own day and generation, to load the neck of Scotland withthe grievous chains of prelatic tyranny.