BY THE REV. D. BEATON, WICK.
(Continued from Vol. XIII., page 461.)
THE MARCHIONESS OF HAMILTON.
LADY ANNE CUNNINGHAM, afterwards Marchioness of Hamilton, was the fourth daughter of James, seventh Earl of Glencairn. On her father’s side she was descended from those who were among the first to accept the doctrines of the Reformation. Her great-grandfather, Lord Kilmours, afterwards Earl of Glencairn, was so noted for his benevolence and piety as to procure for him the title of “the good Earl.” He was one of Knox’s most faithful supporters. Her father, the seventh Earl of Glencairn, was also a friend of religious liberty, and played a prominent part in the incident known in Scottish history as the Raid of Ruthven.
Lady Anne was married to Lord James, the son and heir presumptive of John, first Marquis of Hamilton. It was at this date that King James, in his recoil from Presbyterianism, was doing his best to overthrow it, and from fulsome praise he turned to unmeasured abuse, asserting that Presbytery and Monarchy agreed as well as God and the devil. This was one of the heroic periods of Scottish Presbyterianism, and though there were so many among the ministers of the Church of Scotland actuated by anything but high motives, still there was a band of ministers, faithful and true, who were willing to take the spoiling of their goods joyfully, and even to lay down their lives, if need be, to maintain the good cause. To this party the Marchioness gave her hearty support. Her husband lacked her strength of character and deep religious convictions, and in order to please his Sovereign, had consented to the Five Articles of Perth. He also used his influence, as the King’s High Commissioner, to have them ratified by the Scottish Parliament in 1621. He died in 1625, in his thirty-sixth year, and “small regret,” says Calderwood, “was made for his death, for the service he made at the last Parliament.”
But it is chiefly owing to her connection with one of the most memorable revivals in the history of the Scottish Church that her name will be remembered. The story is well known how, owing to the breakdown of her carriage at Shotts, the minister of the parish invited her ladyship and her travelling companions to accept his hospitality, which she readily did. And in turn for this act of kindness on the part of Mr. Home, the Marchioness, noticing the dilapidated condition of the manse, gave instructions that a new manse might be built. On its completion Mr. Home waited on the Marchioness, and asked if he could do anything to show his gratitude for such a favour. The Marchioness replied that the only favour she craved was to have permission to suggest the names of the ministers to assist at the dispensation of the Lord’s Supper. The request, as may be expected, was readily granted. She named Mr. Robert Bruce and Mr. David Dickson among others. Great crowds gathered on the occasion, among whom were the Marchioness and other ladies of rank. The people were deeply impressed, much time was spent in prayer, and the Sabbath night was specially devoted to earnest supplication. When Monday came the people showed no signs of dispersing. And though it was not the custom at that date to have services on the Monday, yet, because of the evident desire of the people, it was decided to have a thanksgiving service. The minister appointed to preach became unwell, and at the suggestion of Lady Culross, the duty was laid upon John Livingstone, then a young man and Chaplain to the Countess of Wigtown. Livingstone had preached before at Shotts, but the great multitude of people assembled and the peculiar solemnity pervading the congregation, made him diffident, and his first thoughts were of stealing away. The spot where Livingstone was engaged in meditation and prayer on the morning of this momentous day is still pointed out. The plough-share has not disturbed the coarse bent grass which grows as it must have grown in those far away days. The same rocks are there and the old churchyard,—the only signs to connect the present with those days of power. Livingstone’s fears, however, were banished. “I durst not so far distrust God,” he says, “and so went to sermon and got good assistance. I had about an hour and a half upon the points I had meditated on (Ezekiel xxxvi. 25, 26), ‘Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean: from all your filthiness, and from all your idols, will I cleanse you. A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh.’ And in end, offering to close with some words of exhortation, I was led on about an hour’s time in a strain of exhortation and warning, with such liberty and melting of heart as I never had the like in public all my life.” Such is Livingstone’s own account of this sermon which had such remarkable results. Fleming, in his Fulfilling of Scripture, says: “Near five hundred had at that time a discernible change wrought on them, of whom most proved lively Christians afterwards. It was the sowing of a seed through Clydesdale, so as many of the most eminent Christians in that country could date either their conversion or some remarkable confirmation in their case from that date.” Such is a brief account of one of the days of the right hand of the Son of Man. To this date the practice of preaching on Monday at Communion seasons is to be traced—the mere accident, we are so ready to remark, of the breakdown of the carriage and the Marchioness’s generosity to Mr. Home for his hospitality, all apparently insignificant in themselves, but of essential importance when we realise that they were links in the chain of an eternal purpose.
Livingstone, in his “Memorable Characteristics,” has given the Marchioness an honourable place among “some of the professors in the Church of Scotland of his acquaintance who were eminent for grace and gifts.”
During the Covenanting struggle the Marchioness espoused the cause of the Covenant, and so deep was her attachment to the cause that it is said that when her son, James, Marquis of Hamilton, who sided with Charles I., conducted a fleet to the Firth of Forth to overawe the Covenanters, she appeared on horseback, with two pistols by her side, at the head of a troop of horse to resist his landing. She had an interview with her son on board his vessel, and whether it was owing to this or to some other cause the troops were not disembarked.
The Marchioness died in 1647. She had a strong, powerful will. Directed as it was in right channels, she was a power for good in Scotland; and though she did not endure such sufferings as some of the other heroines in these sketches, yet her piety, singleness of purpose, and her determination to lay aside all maternal feeling and uphold the cause of truth when it was endangered by the action of her own son, all go to proclaim that she has a right to be reckoned as one of the heroines of the faith in Scotland.
LADY CALDWELL.*
LADY CALDWELL was a descendant of the Cunninghams of Cunninghamhead in Ayrshire, one of the most ancient and powerful cadets of the Glencairn family. Her ancestors distinguished themselves in the promotion of the Scottish Reformation. Her great-grandfather, William Cunningham, joined the Lords of the Congregation, and sat in the Parliament which, in 1560, ratified and approved the Confession of Faith, which was the subordinate standard of the Church of Scotland until it gave place to the Westminster Confession in 1647. Her father, Sir William Cunningham, had been created a baronet in the reign of Charles I. Barbara Cunningham, the subject of this sketch, was married to William Muir of Caldwell in 1657, and hence, by the custom of the time, she was known as Lady Caldwell. When the Presbyterian ministers were ejected in 1662, Muir of Caldwell cast in his lot with the outed ministers. In a letter of Mr. John Carstairs of Glasgow, to Lady Ralston, dated 6th March, 1663, he writes:—“The people here, and in the parts about, are likely to be sorely put to it, if the Lord do not graciously prevent: they imprison some of them for not hearing, both in this town and elsewhere. The Lord Cochrane is very zealous in this good cause. Some of Neilston parishioners are in prison at Paisley on that account, and Caldwell was cited by the Lord Chancellor to appear before the Council at Edinburgh because he would not promise to hear afterward. He should have appeared yesterday, but he got the first day put by; whether he will get his appearance shifted altogether I know not. I heard (and it seems by that same zealous man’s means) that some din was made to the Lord Chancellor about Caldwell, Dunlop, and the Laird’s [Ralston] keeping meetings together at Paisley. Some were afraid the Chancellor would have called for the Laird, but I have heard nothing since; it’s like it will evanish and settle down again.”
This was but the beginning of sorrows for the zealous and faithful Laird of Caldwell and his devoted lady, one with him in the common faith. A few years after this—in 1666—the Covenanters made an unsuccessful attempt at the Pentland Hills, near Edinburgh, to vindicate their cause. Caldwell had raised a small band with the intention of joining the Covenanter force, but on learning that General Dalziel lay with his troops between him and the Covenanters, he wisely disbanded his little company. The Government, after this rising, visited the Covenanters, and also those who were in any way suspected of being favourable to them, with the utmost rigour and severity. Caldwell, knowing well his danger, concealed himself for a time, and then fled to Holland, that he might be beyond the cruel and powerful hand of the tyrannical Scottish Government of Charles II. Notwithstanding his absence, Caldwell was prosecuted by the King’s Advocate before the Lords Justiciary for high treason, and on 16th August, 1667, being found guilty by a jury in his absence, he was sentenced to undergo capital punishment, and to be reckoned as a traitor when he should be apprehended, and all his lands, tenements, annual rents, offices, titles, tacks, dignities, steadings, rooms, possessions, goods, and gear whatsoever were declared to be forfeited to his Majesty’s use. This sentence was illegal, for by an Act of the eleventh Parliament of James VI., “all processes of forfeiture before the Justice Court in absence” were declared to be invalid. But the Government of Charles had an easy way of getting over inconvenient laws, so they passed an Act post facto in 1669, ratifying such forfeiture as the above. The Laird of Caldwell’s fine estate was given over to General Dalziel, and in 1670 an Act of Parliament was passed ratifying the royal grant made to Dalziel.
The sentence against Caldwell fell as heavily on his devoted wife as it did upon himself. The comforts of home for herself and children were now gone, and though she lived to see that property restored to her after the Revolution, yet between that happy event and the deprivation of all their worldly goods, there were long years of sorrow and suffering.
After enduring hardships at Caldwell House, when it fell into the ruthless hands of Dalziel, she at last joined her husband in Holland. Caldwell was a man evidently of a very high type of character, and his true worth deeply impressed those who were fit judges of it; Lady Caldwell was a fit helpmeet to her husband, as may be seen from the testimony borne by Robert MacWard. Speaking of her, he says: “Who did so cheerfully choose to be his fellow exile and companion in tribulation, as she desired to be in the kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ.” They had not long resided in Holland when her noble husband was removed from her by death. On his death-bed he gave frequent expression to his affection for and his sense of the high character of her who was his companion in tribulation for the Gospel’s sake. “Tell her,” he said to one in her absence, “that she and I will be in heaven for ever and ever, and there we shall eat angel’s food.” His last words, as he bade farewell to time, were those of one who had overcome by the blood of the Lamb: “Victory! victory! victory, for evermore!”
Bereft now of her husband, with her helpless children in a foreign land, this good lady, with the strong spirit of independence characteristic of her nation, set to work with her own hands for her livelihood, and refused to accept the kindly offered gifts of sympathising friends. Colonel Wallace, in a letter written to her in 1677 or 1678, refers to her Christian character in the following terms: “Elect lady and my worthy and dear sister,—Yours is come to my hand in most acceptable time. It seems that all that devils or men these many years have done (and that has not been little) against you, to daunt your courage, or to make you, in the avowing of your Master, and His persecuted interests, to lower your sails, has prevailed so little, that your faith and courage are upon the growing hand, an evidence indeed as to your persecutors of perdition, but to you of salvation and that of God. It seems when you at first, by choice, took Christ by the hand to be your Lord and portion, that you wist what you did; and that notwithstanding of all the hardnesses you have met with in biding by Him, your heart seems to cleave the faster to Him. This says you have been admitted into much of His company and fellowship. My soul blesses God on your behalf, who hath so carried to you, that I think you may take these words amongst others as spoken to you, ‘You have continued with me in my afflictions: I appoint unto you a kingdom.’ It seems suffering for Christ, losing anything for Him, is to you your glory, is to you your gain. More and more of this spirit may you enjoy, that you may be among the few (as was said of Caleb and Joshua) that follow Him fully, among the overcomers, those noble overcomers, mentioned in Rev. ii. and iii. among those to whom only (as picked out and chosen for that end) He is saying, ‘Ye are my witnesses.’ Lady and my dear sister, I am of your judgment; and I bless His name that ever He counted me worthy to appear in that roll.”
After her return to Scotland, Lady Caldwell lived in peace until the year 1683, when, without any warning, she was made a prisoner and confined in the state prison for over three years. The charge brought against her was that one of the outed Presbyterian ministers had been preaching in her house in Glasgow. She and her three daughters were apprehended and lodged in the Tolbooth. The Privy Council thereafter gave orders that Lady Caldwell and her daughter Jean should be taken to the Castle of Blackness and there retained as prisoners. The crime with which Lady Caldwell was charged was regarded as a very serious one by the Government. But it so happened that on this particular occasion the charge was false. Owing to the ill-health of her daughter, the Council, after ten month’s incarceration, allowed her to go forth free; but Lady Caldwell was kept a close prisoner, not being permitted even to see one of her daughters on her death-bed, though she besought her governors with tears to give her this boon. After enduring imprisonment for three years she presented a petition to the Privy Council in the following terms:—”The Petition of Barbara Cunningham, relict of William Mure, sometime of Caldwell, prisoner in the Castle of Blackness, humbly sheweth that your lordships’ petitioner hath been detained prisoner above these three years for alleged being present at a house conventicle, by reason whereof she is become very valetudinary, and is also reduced to great difficulties, being, in respect of her deceased husband’s forfeiture, wholly deprived of any subsistence forth of that estate, either to her or her children, these nineteen years begone. May it therefore please your lordships to commiserate my valetudinary and destitute condition, and ordain me to be set at liberty, and your petitioner shall ever pray.” The petition, it will be observed, gives no indication of the lowering of the flag, no renunciation of the principles for which she was suffering. The Privy Council, in one of those brief periods when, for the sake of policy, they became, to outward appearance at least, generous and considerate, granted the prayer of Lady Caldwell’s petition on 21st June, 1686.
The day of liberty was fast drawing nigh—the day which many had longed to see, but had not seen. Within two years James was a fugitive, and persecution was at an end. After her release, Lady Caldwell lived with her daughters, earning her living by the labours of her own hands. It is interesting to know that by the Act passed in 1690, Lady Caldwell came into possession of her husband’s estates.
(To be Continued.)
Beza’s Portraits of the Reformers.—A second edition of Dr. MacCrie’s Beza’s Icones has been issued by the Religious Tract Society. The price has now been reduced to 3s. 6d., and will thus bring it within the reach of many who could not afford the price charged for the first edition. Accompanying the portraits there are brief biographical sketches from the pen of Rev. Dr. C. G. MacCrie, Ayr.