THE great principles for which the Covenanters risked their worldly all and life itself, cannot be said to have appealed with like power to the Highlanders. Attached as they were to their chiefs, and these chiefs as a rule, the devoted supporters of the ill-fated House of Stewart, they were regarded more as the scourge of the Covenanters than their friends. The wild semi-civilized Highland Host committed many a deed of crime and hurled themselves recklessly on the ranks of those who were fighting for religion and freedom. But there were not wanting evidences that even in the Highlands the good seed of the Kingdom was sown and bore fruit. The saintly James Hog, Fraser of Brea, and John MacGilligan, Alness, may be mentioned as faithful servants of Christ. The banishment of Robert Bruce to Inverness bore notable fruit in the conversion of Alexander Monro, who afterwards became minister of Durness. He found his parish a spiritual desolation and a wilderness when he came to it, but under the blessing of the Spirit and a notably consecrated life, a great change came over the people. Among the leading chiefs in the far north, there were true patriots and men actuated by the deepest religious motives in coming to the aid of the great
principles for which the Covenanters contended. The first to sign the National Covenant in Greyfriars Churchyard in 1638 was the Earl of Sutherland. In Caithness, William Innes of Sandside, Sir James Sinclair of Murkle, and the Master of Berriedale (grandson of the Earl of Caithness), cast in their lot with the Covenanters. The action of the Master was strongly resented by his blood and kin. The Earl of Huntly wrote to the Master’s father, Lord Berriedale, saying:—”As you desire to prevent your son his ruin, strive to bring him in time from these idle courses, for hereafter it will be impossible.” The father then addressed his son in anything but fatherly terms, as may be seen from the following sentences:—”Son,—Howsoever your unnaturalness and miscarriages have disgusted me in times past, yet for discharging my duty as a father both before God and man, foreseeing your imminent ruin, I have thought good by these presents to warn you of the same. And if your idle and preposterous courses you have on hand you and your property perish, I have God to witness that I have discharged the part of an loving father—howsoever, you have deserved it at my hands, and for your better information of your danger have sent herewith the Marquis of Huntly’s letter to me presently.” The Master replied to his father in a letter which may well be regarded as one of the finest expressions of filial acknowledgment of parental authority in the sphere where that authority has a right to expect obedience, but he is careful to point out that there are matters that pass beyond this sphere, and in these he acknowledges but One—that God, who alone is Lord of the conscience. The letter written on 24th December, 1638, is as follows:—”MY VERY NOBLE AND GUID LORD, AND LOVING FATHER,—I received your Lordship’s kind letter, advertisement and council, and though your Lordship gives therein some undeserved checks, yet I most patiently accept of what it shall please your Lordship to write or speak to me, and shall endeavour (my conscience reserved) to perform to the uttermost of my power what your Lordship will command. But where your Lordship by these desires me to fall back and repent of that I have both sworn and subscribed unto, I think it were a disgrace of your Lordship to be a father to such a son; and a perpetual infamy to remain to posterity and great iniquity against God and His Spirit, which persuades my conscience of the equity of what I have done. I hope that thereby I have offended none (if not by accident). If I suffer for righteousness cause, happy am I, for I ever resolved to suffer affliction with the servants of God than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season; neither do I account the momentary afflictions of this life worthy to be compared in respect of the joy and comfort laid up for me in Christ, and if for His cause (not having done anything contemptuously against authority) I lose either lands, wife, or children, I have His own promise to the which I will constantly rely without wavering, assuring myself I shall receive a hundred-fold now in this time, howso if with
persecution, and in the world to come eternal life—so that none needs to regret. But in case that your Lordship should have a prejudicial opinion of my proceedings, I protest to God I intend nothing but to the glory of God, the honour of the King, and loyalty to my native country, and filial affection to your Lordship, as becometh your Lordship’s obedient son and servant, Sinclair.”
D. B.