SHOEMAKER, POET, AND PREACHER.
THERE are several families bearing the name M’Lugas, in the Session Records of Kilmodan, from their commencement in 1737 till 1786, after this the name is recorded Douglas, but in Gaelic it is still termed MacLugais. MacLugais, Maclucas, and Luten, is a common name met with over a great part of Argyleshire.
Niel Douglas, the subject of this notice, is said to have been born at Moybeg, in Glendaruel, in the year 1750. This cannot be directly verified as there is a blank in the “Birth Records,” between the years 1749 and 1761. But there are several circumstances to shew that this was the time and place of his birth. He tells us himself in his “Journal” that Glendaruel was his native place, and we also learn that he died at Glasgow, 9th January, 1823, aged 73 years, this shews that he was born in 1750. Although the “Birth Records” are wanting in the parish during
this era, the meetings of Session are regularly recorded, and one of its number was Niel M’Lugas, Moybeg, who was elder, treasurer, and apparently Session-clerk for the parish from 1745 to 1755. There is a son born to this Niel and Elizabeth Cowan in 1748, and the birth of our subject, would be in order, as said, in 1750. The father is said to have been also miller at Eskechlachan in the vicinity.
Young Douglas learned shoemaking, and in order to push his trade he went to Greenock, where he evinced such a thirst for learning, that he wrought at his craft during the day, and attended classes in the evening, when he made extraordinary progress at the languages. This was brought to the notice of the minister of the Mid Parish, likely Dr. Adam, who befriended Highlanders, and assisted Douglas to go through a college curriculum in the University of Glasgow.
When a student, we learn his mind gave way, and he was ever afterwards far more the child of impressions than those who have always been sane. This failing evidently did not originate with him, as a vein of insanity manifested itself in many of his relations.
After passing college, he does not seem to have ever been connected with the Church of Scotland. As an author, he first appears in the character of a minister of the Relief Church at Cupar-Fife, in “Sermons on important subjects with some essays on Poetry,” pp. 588, 12 mo., Edinburgh, 1780.
For the next thirty years he laboured incessantly with pen and speech as a preacher, commentator, poet, social and political Reformer, ending as a Universal Restorationist. In all of which he is aptly described as “a wavering Non-Conformist.”
An octavo vol. of 508 pages, he printed in Edinburgh in 1789, consisting of twelve discourses, new versions of twelve of the Psalms of David in different kinds of metre, and twenty-four pieces of poetry on various subjects, among the latter are two long poems dedicated to his congregation on the death of a son a year old. Among his early poems are two loyal odes on King George III.’s illness and recovery, which their author referred to nearly thirty years afterwards, in the defence he prepared for the judge and jury at his trial for sedition. He issued an “Admonitory address to Great Britain; a poem in six parts, to which is added Britain’s Remembrance,” Edinburgh, 1792. This goodly octavo of 481 pages is addressed to King George III., and is a call upon his Majesty to abrogate the anti-christian practices of the slave trade, duelling, and Church patronage, and also every other vice. A preface follows, the burden of which is a lament upon the degeneracy of the times. These pithy verses, with prose commentary exhibits Douglas as a social reformer far in advance of his day. Yet with all his earnestness, we learn in a future publication, that these reforms had fallen still-born from the press. By 1793, he removed to Dundee, where he officiated as a minister of the Relief charge, Dudhope Crescent. There he caused some sensation by
“The Lady’s Scall,” a poem, and a few other select pieces, 12 mo., Dundee, 1794. Another volume of his sermons extending to 222 pages, octavo, was published at Dundee in 1795. Its title is “Britain’s Guilt, Danger, and Duty.”
In the summer of 1797, Douglas, along with a Mr. M’Naught, were deputed by the Relief body to go on a mission tour to Argyleshire. The expense of the mission seems to have been defrayed by the proceeds of a sermon by Douglas at Dundee and Glasgow on “Messiah’s glorious Rest in the latter days” (Isaiah xl. 10), Dundee, 1797.
The Relief Church’s mission to the Highlands originated in this way. Lady Glenorchy, who was always bent on doing good, got Mr. Smith, minister of Kilbrandon (afterwards Dr. Smith of Campbeltown), to translate into Gaelic the book called “Alaine’s Alarm.” Mr. Smith preached the translation to his congregation, which had the effect of a great awakening among them, but Mr. Smith does not seem to have nursed the movement, and the moderate ministers in the neighbourhood characterised it as temporary insanity, and would have nothing to do with them. The leaders of the movement approached the Lady again, and she arranged with the Relief Church to send Missionaries to Argyleshire in 1796-7, which at first was very promising. Mr. Douglas, Dundee, and Mr. M’Naught, Dumbarton, were those selected. At first they appear to have visited Kilbrandon, and in 1797 visited the peninsula of Kintyre, commencing at Southend, afterwards in the parishes of Barr (P) Clachan, and Killean, and also in Kilmadan, where they had audiences from 500 to 1500. The people followed them from place to place. Few missions ever started with a better prospect of doing good, but it was speedily blasted,—like a blazing meteor—and never afterwards regained vigour, and it ultimately died.
Douglas was a zealous reformer,—warmer perhaps than wise. In his earlier years, at Dundee, he allowed himself to be nominated a delegate from Dundee to the Edinburgh Convention, and had even at one of the meetings acted as president. He was therefore a marked man. In setting out on his mission, he had very imprudently carried a political manuscript to Edinburgh and stipulated for its printing. During his absence in the Highlands the pamphlet was seized. After finishing his mission work, he returned by Glasgow for Dundee,—was to pass through to Edinburgh on his way homewards, and there also give an account of his mission. In the metropolis sad news awaited him. The reign of terror was then raging in Government circles, owing to the French Revolution. He was told his papers were seized, and himself a marked man. In vain did he plead his innocence. The people would not come to hear his account of his labours. Dispirited and crestfallen he returned to Dundee. Thus the mission he had laboured to set up, and of which he was the mainspring, he had dashed to the ground. After returning to
Dundee everything went against him, and reports were in continual circulation that he was to be seized and tried for sedition, he therefore gave up his church and repaired to Edinburgh in 1798, where he set up a printing press, resolving to support himself as an author and printer, and to preach when he had an opportunity. He suffered the distraint of his goods when in Edinburgh, the effect of which only confirmed him more in his political principles. In 1799 his printing press was broken, his premises entered, and some of his pamphlets seized for sedition. His (first) wife being a cousin of Lord Melville, he wrote him, and through his interference the matter was quashed, and his publications were restored.
Douglas kept a journal of his mission to the Highlands in 1797—being a series of letters to a friend (of 180 pages) published in Edinburgh in 1799. He gives a graphic description of his journeys and meetings, but there is not much to be gathered from his diary as he does not condescend to mention the particular places and persons he visited. He seems to have been well received except by the clergy, who considered him an intruder. The proprietors and factors received him cordially which was a pleasant contrast to their treatment of the lay preacher, Donald ban M’Arthur.
On this occasion, Mr. Donald ban M’Arthur, of whom afterwards, became associated with Mr. Douglas as an evangelist. They had many traits of character in common, and enjoyed each others fellowship, until Mr. Douglas broached his views about universal restoration. They had been holding meetings in Glendaruel, and stayed together that night in Camchauh, and discussed the point till morning. When M’Arthur found Douglas obdurate he parted with him saying from henceforth he would be his worst enemy, and expose his heresy everywhere which he at once did. From that time forth, except those who clung to his new theories about the Final Restoration, Mr. Douglas found himself isolated, as a preacher, in his native district.
As we have seen already, he now returned to Dundee, and his propensities led him to be very erratic in his movements, and to preach according to his own partialities than according to Presbyterian Order. Before he left Dundee the next year for Edinburgh, there were said to be some complaints that he was preaching in a somewhat form, the doctrine of Universal Redemption. In 1801 he removed from Edinburgh to Greenock, and commenced to ventilate his theories about “The Universal Restoration.” These were embodied in a pamphlet which he published shortly thereafter, notice of which is inserted in The Greenock Advertiser of 13th March, 1804, which says—”N. Douglas, Greenock, returns grateful thanks to those who have encouraged his attempts to enlighten the public mind and dissipate the clouds of early prejudice that obstruct the current of free enquiry on religious subjects.” In the interval in 1802, he published a volume the title of which is “An antidote against Deism,” being a series of letters on the Final Restoration, to
which is added a number of pieces on the same subject in prose and verse. The Rev. Kenneth Bayne of the Gaelic Chapel detected the heresy, and denounced Douglas to his people as a dangerous character. Then an angry correspondence followed, which is published in his “Journal to Argyleshire” in 1804. To his other callings when in Greenock, he added that of printing and music teaching as may be gleaned from the Advertiser of above date, which says—”Mr. Douglas gives notice to the public that a considerable quantity of printing types (his property) have been embezzled some time ago from the late Advertiser Office while occupied in the evenings in teaching music, and he threatens law proceedings against the delinquents who are known to him, unless they make immediate restitution.
In 1805, Douglas settled in Stockwell Street, and about 1809 he seceded from the Relief Church to set up on his own account as a preacher of Restoration or Universal preacher. As such, he published “King David’s Psalms in common verse, with notes critical and explanatory, dedicated to Messiah,” pp. 638, 12 mo. “Printed and sold by N. Douglas, the author, 161 Stockwell Street, Glasgow.”
In the year 1817 Douglas had publicly announced a course of lectures to be given in the Anderson University on the prophecies of Daniel. At the first of them, his language and gestures were reported to the Magistrates as savouring of sedition, they got alarmed, and sent three of the city officers to take notes of his speech. The presiding baillie took from them a written precognition which was sent to Lord-Advocate M’Conochie, and within a few days orders came to seize his person. He thus fell into the hands of the law. Although sixty-seven years of age, and to use his own phrase, loaded with infirmities, he was on 2nd May of that year duly arraigned before the High Court of Justiciary, Edinburgh, upon an indictment charging him with sedition, and was tried before the Court of Session, 26th May, 1817. Jeffrey and Cockburn were two of four Advocates retained for him.
Lord Cockburn, in giving a summary of the trial, says—”The prisoner had been a member in the old time of the ‘British Convention,’ and active in its proceedings. He was now a clergyman belonging to the sect called Universalists, sedition was the crime charged; and the general assertion was that the prisoner had, in the course of various prayers, sermons, and declamations from his pulpit, spoken criminally of the King, who was then afflicted with a mental derangement, the Regent, Parliament and Judges. The particular facts were that the prisoner did ‘assert’ and draw a parallel between His Majesty and Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, remarking and insinuating that, like the King of Babylon, His Majesty was driven from the society of men for infidelity and corruption,’ and he ‘asserted’ that His Royal Highness the Prince Regent was a poor devotee of Bacchus, that he drew a parallel between His Royal Highness the Prince Regent and Belshazzar, King of Babylon, remarking and insinuating that
His Royal Highness like the King of Babylon, had not taken warning from the example of his father, and that a fate similar to that of the said King of Babylon awaited His Royal Highness, if he did not amend his ways and listen to the voice of his people’; that he had asserted ‘that the House of Commons was corrupt, and that the members thereof were thieves and robbers, and that the seats in the House of Parliament were sold like bullocks in the market’; that the laws were not justly administered within the kingdom, and that the subjects of His Majesty were condemned without trial and without evidence.”
The prosecutor examined seven witnesses, of these, two were common town officers, who were sent by the magistrates to the place of worship for the very purpose of detecting sedition, but the preacher was so exceedingly rapid and indistinct in his utterance that it was difficult to understand him. There was not a single witness who did not state this fact, or who did not use it as an apology for being able to report so little.
The prisoner’s defence was that he did not go out of his way to get at the story of the Babylonian King, but had been lecturing on Daniel for about two years, and took this passage in the regular turn; that neither the expression nor the sentiments ascribed to him had been uttered; that he spoke only of kings, sins, and visitations of Providence in general, making only the usual Scriptural application of the passage; and that on the whole, it was an orthodox and loyal discourse.
The solicitor general, Wedderburn, admits that as to slandering the administration of justice, “there has been no evidence brought before you.” And even as to the other two charges of maligning the King and the House of Commons, though he thinks his own proof sufficient, he says, even as to these, “At same time I must observe on the part of the Crown falls far short of what I expected to have laid before you.”
The solicitor was so chagrined in having lost his case, that he laboured by every possible phrase to ‘leave a slime of guilt attached to the prisoner, and would only go the length of giving him the benefit of not proven.
The Lord Justice Clerk, Boyle, very properly left the point to the jury, who unanimously found the prisoner not guilty.
This case extends over twenty-eight pages of the State trials.
HIS APPEARANCE AND CHARACTER.
In the portrait by J. Brooks, engraved by R. Gray, prefixed to his “Journal” of 1797, he appears to be a stout set man, under middle height, with stern look, and full expressive eyes. This picture bears a strong resemblance to two cousins, Angus and Dugald Douglas, weavers, in Kilbridebeg in Glendaruel, who died about forty years ago. He must have had other attractions in his younger years, as he married a cousin of the first Viscount Melville. In fact, it is said she ran away with him. They had a
son who died when a year old, for which he published a doleful elegy in 1789. His only surviving son, Niel, who it is said could speak sixteen languages, was a constant source of trouble, and narrowly escaped hanging, but was banished for being guilty of falsehood, fraud, and wilful imposition (see trial, 12th July, 1816, Scots Magazine).
The incessant work and worry Mr. Douglas had undergone, caused that at the comparatively early age of sixty-seven, he appeared as an old man. A picture is taken during his trial in 1817, which represents him sitting at the bar with Daniel v. 17-28, below, being the text which brought him into trouble, and is signed B. W. Of his appearance in this position, Lord Cockburn several times refers to him, first, “as old, deaf, dogged, honest, and respectable,” again he says, “The very appearance of the prisoner, a little, antique, firm body, with a brown wig, worn bare in the service of what was called sedition, combined with the absence of public interest in the case, lowered the dignity of State trials. He further says, “The prisoner, though an avowed and hoary Reformer, was a loyal man, always praying for the King and the Royal family, more fervently than most of the Established clergy did; that his very first sermon, after a recent trial and conviction of his son for swindling, contained an encomium on the fairness of the trial, and on our administration of justice.”
HIS ABILITIES AS A WRITER AND SPEAKER.
Although he always preached in his native place in Gaelic, which he spoke fluently and according to grammar, yet none of his numerous publications appeared in that tongue. Considering his early opportunities, his voluminous English books caused more than ordinary public attention. He dabbled a good deal in poetry, which may not be considered of a high order, but will pass as fair rhyme; being of a restless temperament, he was continually giving vent to his feelings by tongue and pen, and it may be said of him, what was once said of a greater man, “That he became inebriated by the exuberance of his verbosity.”
Peter M’Kenzie, of the Scotch Reformer’s Gazette, knew Douglas intimately when located in Stockwell Street, and often heard him address a Glasgow audience. In his “reminiscences,” he says, “Douglas was in stature, rather small, and in person, lean and lank, and sallow complexioned. But he had a voice terrible in its power, those who heard it could scarcely forget it. When the perspiration came trickling down his lean cheeks, he would think nothing to throw off his curly wig, wipe his face with a towel he had for the occasion. When he resumed the thread of his discourse, he looked like a spirit from the grave, conjured by the painters of old. None could excel him for stamping and thumping, or the hot fire of his eloquence, when he fairly became excited with his inflammable matter, even the elder Kean (the actor) could not match him for vehemence of speech and rapidity of action
and if his place of worship could have held 10,000 in place of 500, we are persuaded it would not have contained all the numbers rushing and panting to hear him on some of his grand occasions.”