The Resolutioners and Protesters

(Continued from page 212.)

SEVEN days after the passing of the Act of Classes (30th January, 1649) Charles was executed at Whitehall. The news was received in the Courts of Europe with horror. The Scots immediately indicated their willingness to set his son upon the throne provided he accepted the two Covenants, all the Westminster standards, Presbyterian government, and remove from his presence the Marquis of Montrose—already “cast out of the Church of God.” This statute made it imperative that the King should be a Presbyterian and Covenanter. Then began a series of negotiations with Charles, which must fill the mind of every true patriot with feelings of pity and disgust—pity that serious-minded men should have been so duped by a scheming scoundrel, and disgust at the duplicity of a man who was selling his soul for a crown. This, with the rejoicings at Charles’s Restoration in 1660, is one of the most humiliating episodes in our history, and Scotland was to pay for it in blood and tears. The Commissioners sent from Scotland to negotiate with Charles were the Earl of Cassillis, the Laird of Brodie, Bailie Jaffrey (Aberdeen), Provost Barclay (Irvine), and Revs. Robert Baillie and James Wood, and Mr. George Winram, elder, Libberton. Dr. King Hewison does no injustice to Charles when he says of him:—“Time developed him in his true colours as a man who concealed his lack of virtue, principle, and grace by plausible manners, courteous acts done for expediency, and pleasant promises made to be broken if convenient. He inherited his father’s genius for dissimulation, and his grandfather’s inability to understand that subjects had rights as well as rulers” (The Covenanters, I., 456). At the very time he was negotiating with the Scottish Commissioners he was over head and ears in the most subtle intrigues, and fooling the delegates all the while. “Babbling” (as Carlyle happily characterised him) Baillie wrote to Robert Douglas about this cunning schemer:—“He is one of the most gentle, innocent, well-inclined, princes, so far as yet appears, that lives in the world; a trim person, and of a manly carriage; understands pretty well; speaks not much; would God he were amongst us.” And, as if this was not sufficient, he adds:—“If God would send him amongst us without some of his present counsellors, I think he would make, by God’s blessing, as good a king as Britain saw these three hundred years.” Deluded Baillie! The Commissioners had to return without accomplishing their purpose, but negotiations were again renewed, when three ministers were included among the Commissioners—John Livingstone, James Wood, and George Hutcheson.* Livingstone foreboded evil of these negotiations, and had resolved not to go to Breda, and to take his “hazard of any censure of the kirk” for his disobedience. In his “Account of the Treaty with the King at Breda” he tells of his forebodings, and how his resolution to remain at home was overcome. “But according as my nature,” he writes, “is blunt and ready to yield, chiefly to those whom I knew both pious and wise, Mr. David Dickson, Mr. James Guthrie, Mr. Patrick Gillespie, after some while dealing, prevailed with me to go. One word I foolishly spoke then to them, which many a time thereafter met me—that ere I condescended to go and to have an hand in the consequences that I apprehended would follow, I would choose rather to condescend, if it were the Lord’s will, to be drowned in the waters by the way” (Select Biographies, I., 171). His wife, like-minded with himself, and a worthy helpmate of such a husband, met with a serious accident while Livingstone was in Holland. While riding by the mill of Nether Ancrum, through the unskilfulness of the servant riding before her, she fell into the dam, and was carried down by the water to the mill wheel, in which she was entangled and severely bruised and crushed. She wrote to her husband saying “that she thought she was therein an emblem of what the treaty was like to bring on the land” (Select Biographies, I., 184). While negotiations were going on, Montrose landed at John o’ Groat’s, marched south along the Caithness coast, breaking his march at Dunbeath Castle, and then proceeding to Carbisdale (now Culrain), where he met with a crushing defeat. The Royalist troops were pushed into the Oykel near where the Highland Railway bridge crosses the river at Invershin. Montrose fled to Assynt, and was handed over to the Covenanter authorities by Neil Macleod of Assynt. On his way southward he was kept a night at Skibo Castle, and then brought to Edinburgh, where he met with barbarities that few will now justify, and afterwards he was tried and executed. This was an event on which Charles had not reckoned, and with characteristic duplicity the two-faced schemer wrote a letter to Parliament in which he expresses regret for Montrose invading Scotland, and asks the Parliament “to do himself that justice as not to believe that he was accessory to the said invasion in the least degree.” Dr. King Hewison has, with becoming vigour, exposed the hollow hypocrisy of Charles when he says:—”No knave could have stooped lower than Charles to betray and then to calumniate a noble friend” (The Covenanters, I., 470). Charles reached Speymouth on 23rd June, 1650, and before putting foot on Scottish soil he was required to subscribe both Covenants. He wished to do so with reservations, and tried to get free of the clause that bound him to give legal sanction to Presbyterianism both in England and Ireland when he ascended the throne. The Commissioners were inexorable, and Charles appeared to surrender. John Livingstone saw through the hollow hypocrisy of the King in accepting the Covenants “without any evidence of any real change in his heart, and without forsaking former principles, counsels, and company.” The people, ignorant of Charles’s deceit, welcomed him to Edinburgh with open arms; bonfires, ringing of bells, blowing of trumpets were the order of the day. Edinburgh was to witness other days ere this reign was ended. Oliver Cromwell now appears on the scene, and he is to play his part in connection not only with his armies in the field, but also in the ecclesiastical controversy into which the Covenanters are so soon to be plunged and divided. Charles had become as great an adept at taking oaths as in using them, and one will heartily agree with Lord Guthrie when he says:—”There was something truly pathetic in the attempt of the Covenanters to fashion a Scriptural King out of a heartless rake” (Records of the Commissions of the General Assemblies, III., xxv.). Charles not only became an adept at taking the most solemn oaths, which he never meant to keep, but, like the true hypocrite he was, he, with remarkable facility, used expressions of piety which he knew would please the Covenanters. In connection with a Fast Day appointed by the Commission of the General Assembly, after he had signed the Covenants, the King wrote to the Commission a letter, in which he says:—”We are really and unfeignedly convinced of our ancestors’, grandfather’s, father’s, and our own sins, for the which we do humbly from the Lord beg pardon and forgiveness, and shall (as we trust in His grace) before the Day of Humiliation, and upon it, and all our life, strive to be humbled for what had been done in the Royal Family, to the offence of God, and the grief of His good people.” But in his letter to the Commission after the defeat of the Scots army by Cromwell at Dunbar, Charles’s feigned piety reached a point that made the Covenanters’ zeal appear quite Laodicean. “Being informed,” he wrote to the Commission; “of your being at Stirling we thought good to send these unto you to assure you that, notwithstanding of what hath befallen in this dispensation from the Lord, which we humbly acknowledge to be just for our sins (for what have the poor people done? upon ourself we lay the guiltiness, as knowing best our own wickedness and transgressions; for the Lord’s judgments are just and right, and in faithfulness He afflicts), that yet we hope His merciful kindness will comfort according to His word, and that the proud that have dealt perversely without a cause shall be ashamed and confounded. . . . I assure you for myself, we are not casten down; and it is not in a fleshly confidence, in a sword and in a bow. There were little cause for that. But I trust that the Lord that had mercy upon us, and brought us into the Covenant and this land, will perfect that which concerneth us and will glorify Himself in mercy and not in justice. We purpose on the strength of His grace faithfully to prosecute the ends of the Covenant, and that the friends of it shall be by us esteemed our friends, and the enemies of it our enemies, and that we shall be ready to lay down our life for the maintenance and defence of it.” The Royalist party were resolved, if possible, to effect a conjunction of the diverse parties in Church and State. Opinions differed as to the wisdom of acquiescing in the proposal, which was afterwards known as the Public Resolutions, and from which the Resolutioners, as supporters, and the Protesters, as opposers, derived their names. The Commission of Assembly, already referred to, on being appealed to, answered that they resolved, according to former grounds, to receive persons accessory to the Engagement, only upon their petition and public satisfaction. At the same time they appointed a Committee, consisting of James Durham, John Duncan, James Guthrie, Robert Ker, and John Short, with the Moderator, Robert Douglas, to draw up a Remonstrance to the Committee of Estates. This was issued under the title, A Shorte Declaratione and Varninge. This document called upon all to search for the iniquities which had provoked God’s wrath against Scotland, and summoned the King to consider his hypocritical acceptance of the Covenant in order to gain an earthly crown. Another document was issued entitled “Causes of a Solemn Public Humiliation upon the Defeat of the Army, to be keepit throughout all the Congregations of the Kirk of Scotland.” The dissatisfaction of the “honest party” was becoming more vocal, and in the “Humble Remonstrance of the Gentlemen, Commanders, and Ministers, attending the Forces in the West,” commonly known as the Western Remonstrance or Covenant, there is straight-forward speaking: This document attributed the Lord’s wrath to (1) the admission of Charles to the Covenant without proof of the reality of his professions; (2) provoking God by the hasty conclusion of the Treaty, after the crooked dealing of Charles stood disclosed, thus overlooking his dissimulation; (3) the King’s action in conjunction with the apostate Montrose and other malignants and Papists, in opposition to the work of God and the Covenant; (4) the unjust design of some to invade England to obtain booty and to force a king upon an independent nation; (5) backsliding from the Covenant, neglecting to fill public offices with Covenanter, and tolerating malignants; (6) the sins of covetousness, extortion, self-seeking, and trust in the flesh instead of in God. The Committee of Estates were highly displeased with the Remonstrance, and they endeavoured to get the General Assembly to condemn and to impeach James Guthrie and Patrick Gillespie. This the Assembly would not do until Guthrie and Gillespie were given an opportunity at a later diet of explaining themselves.

The Committee of Estates now brought matters to an issue by authorising that outward compliance with the Covenants should be the right of entrance to the Royalist ranks. They ordered Robert Douglas, Moderator of the General Assembly, to convene the Commission of Assembly in Perth on 12th December, and to obtain a judgment on the question whether it was lawful to reinstate those formerly purged out of the Army by the Act of Classes. A quorum, chiefly of Fife ministers, assembled, and a majority resolved to reply that all persons, except excommunicates, the forfeited, vicious, Discoveranters, and professed enemies of God’s cause were eligible for defence of their country against the Cromwellian forces or Sectaries. This was the first resolution. The Commission were asked also whether it was lawful to admit to the Committee of Estates persons formerly debarred but now, after satisfaction, admitted to the Covenant. The Commission answered that all except a few “prime actors against the State” should be admitted. This was the second resolution. To begin with, the Protesters had more influence in shaping in the decisions of the Commission, but as time went on the Resolutioners outvoted the Protesters. Six hundred ministers adhered to the Resolutions, and, with the exception of forty, all conformed to Episcopacy in 1661. Among the Resolutioners were men of noted piety and outstanding influence, such as Robert Douglas, Robert Baillie, Robert Blair, David Dickson, James Wood, and James Durham, and their evil genius James Sharpe, whom we regret to have to mention with those men. The outstanding Protesters were Patrick Gillespie, John Carstairs, James Guthrie, Samuel Rutherford, and Robert Traill. “The latter,” says the younger Dr. MacCrie, “were accustomed, as Baillie alleges, to call themselves ‘the godly party,’ and though Baillie was specially offended at this, reckoning it at once presumptuous, uncharitable, and untrue, yet there is ground to think that the greater part of the piety of the country was on the side of the Protesters” (Autobiography and Life of Robert Blair, p. 362, footnote). The Presbytery of Stirling made a strong protest, which Cromwell caused to be printed with the title: A Remonstrance of the Presbytery of Stirling against the present conjunction with the Malignant Party. The Protesters were more favourably inclined to Cromwell, and some of them visited him while in Glasgow and discussed the situation with him. In the summer of 1651 the General Assembly, which met at St. Andrews in July, had to listen to a protest from James Guthrie against certain members taking their seats. And Prof. John Menzies, Aberdeen, proposed debarring the whole Commission for falling in with the Committee of Estates. Douglas challenged this; while Robert Blair acted as a peacemaker, Ritherford and other twenty-one sympathisers protested against the meeting as unconstitutional. Douglas was voted into the Moderator’s chair by the Resolutioners. The King sent a request asking that the Protesters should be censured. The Assembly had to give up its sittings at St. Andrews owing to the disturbed state of the country, and continued them at Dundee. There, on 22nd July, Samuel Rutherford’s Protest, declining the Assembly, was read. Balcarres, the Lord High Commissioner, demanded, but in vain, that the twenty-two absent Protesters should be reported for civil punishment for their reflections on the King, Parliament, and Church. The Assembly, however, ordered Presbyteries to deal with them. James Guthrie, Patrick Gillespie, James Simson, James Naismith, and John Menzies were cited to appear before the Assembly, but refused. The Assembly thereupon deposed Guthrie, Gillespie, and Simson; suspended Naismith, and referred Menzies to the Commission of General Assembly. After the meeting of the St. Andrews Assembly a work was published under the title: “A Vindication of the Freedom and Lawfulness of the Late Assembly.” It was from the pen of the Rev. James Wood, a worthy minister. The Vindication was answered by “The Nullity of the Pretended Assembly at Saint Andrews and Dundee.” The question of the lawfulness of these Assemblies comes up time and again in the conferences for union between the Resolutioners and Protesters, to which reference will be made later on. The “Nullity” gives a list of forty Protesters, among whom may be mentioned Henry Semple, Dumbarton; Patrick Gillespie, Glasgow; Pollock, Perth; S. Rutherford, St. Andrews; Grant, Aberdeen; John Livingstone, Jedburgh; John Veitch, Earlston; Robert Traill, Edinburgh; and James Guthrie, Stirling. The action of the Dundee Assembly was ill-advised, and one can readily consent to the opinion expressed by Dr. King Hewison when he says:—”This ill-advised policy of the Moderates of conciliating a faithless King and worthless politicians while coercing their conscientious and wiser co-religionists—the Protesters—was forever fatal to the unity of the Church of Scotland. That great schism, which the Covenant itself banned and time never remedied, was not the only fault of this Laodicean Assembly” (The Covenanters, II., 35). Charles was crowned at Scone, 1st January, 1651. The sermon was preached by Robert Douglas from the text, “And he brought forth the king’s son, and put the crown upon him, and gave him the testimony; and they made him king and anointed him; and they clapped their hands and said, God save the king. And Jehoiada made a covenant between the king and the people that they should be the Lord’s people; between the king also and the people” (2 Kings xi. 12-17). Sermon being concluded, the National Covenant and the Solemn League and Covenant were distinctly read, then the minister prayed for grace to perform the contents of the covenant, and administered the oath to the king, who, kneeling and lifting up his right hand, swore:—”I Charles, King of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, do assure and declare by my solemn oath in the presence of Almighty God, the Searcher of Hearts, my allowance and approbation of the National Covenant and of the Solemn League and Covenant, above written, and faithfully oblige myself to prosecute the ends thereof in my station and calling; and that I, for myself and successors, shall consent and agree to all acts of Parliament enjoining the same, and establishing presbyterian government as approved by the General Assemblies of this Kirk and Parliament of this Kingdom, and that I shall give my royal assent to acts and ordinances of Parliament, passed or to be passed, enjoining the same in my other dominions; and that I shall observe these in my own practice and family, and shall never make any opposition to any of these or endeavour any change thereof.” After certain other matters the King was asked if he was willing to take the coronation oath. To which he replied:—”Most willing.” This oath binds the King in the strongest terms to defend the ecclesiastical constitution as settled by law; and ordains that all princes and magistrates, before admission to public offices, shall give similar pledges for their support of the same constitution. The oath having been read, Charles knelt, and with uplifted hand swore, “By the eternal and Almighty God who liveth and reigneth for ever, I shall observe and keep all that is contained in this oath.” The proceedings were very solemn, but what are the most solemn oaths to a conscienceless man?

* This is the Rev. George Hutcheson whose sermons have been appearing in the Magazine.