Henrietta Lindsay, Lady Campbell of Auchinbreck
Born in the winter of 1657-8, Henrietta Lindsay was the daughter of the First Earl of Balcarres and his wife, Lady Anne Mackenzie. Being deprived of her father by death before she was two years old, Henrietta received her first religious impressions from the instruction and example of her godly mother, and from some women servants of the family. The piety of the latter became the means of first stirring her up to prayer, which led to her making a public profession of Christ at the tender age of 13 years (such an early profession was by no means rare in the better days of the Church of Scotland). The step Henrietta had taken was not without its anxieties, and even dread, for only a few months later she began to fear that her early presence at the Lord’s Table sprang more from ‘faint wishes’ and rashness than from personal experience of the life and power of godliness. These convictions were first produced on her mind after moving to Inverary Castle following her mother’s second marriage, to the Earl of Argyll. It was a combination of the awakening sermons of Rev. Patrick Campbell and the weekly catechising class held in the family that were blessed to her, finally bringing her to see the danger of her natural state, to renounce her own righteousness as wholly insufficient to form the ground of her justification before God, and to place all her hope and confidence in the finished work of the blessed Mediator. This, she later thought, and not her earlier profession, was the ‘time of love’ for her, since it was only now that her heart was drawn out in ardent affection to the Saviour, enabling her to find great delight in the secret exercises of her soul. Shortly afterwards, finding her soul drawn out to God in much sweetness under the preaching of the ejected ministers, she entered into personal covenant with the Lord, to dedicate herself to Him for ever. In the solitude of Balcarres, and also at Stirling, where she attended the secret services of the Covenanting ministers, she was greatly strengthened in the faith. About this time, Henrietta made the long journey to Camusnethan, where “that shining light,” Rev. William Violant administered the Lord’s Supper to those who would not enslave their consciences to the evil laws then in operation. A season in Edinburgh, where the persecution was most severe, brought her many “bitter, silent Sabbaths,” though the enjoyment of “sweet Gospel days” at private meetings were precious to her. There the ministrations of Alexander Moncrieff and John Carstairs were blessed to her.
Upon her marriage to Sir Duncan Campbell of Auchinbrech, Henrietta moved into the family home at Lochgair, remote from the centres of nonconformity, and having an episcopal curate for the parish minister. Here, she secretly entertained dissenting ministers at the risk of great loss to herself. One such minister, Robert Muir, was unexpectedly directed in providence to the Campbell’s home, where he stayed at Sir Duncan’s request for several weeks, during which period he became the means of both conviction and comfort to several who attended his lectures and family exercises. Some time after, Muir was enabled to return their hospitality, for on the growth of persecution, the Campbells and their young son were forced to flee their home, and coming to Edinburgh, were directed to his lodgings, where they found him “a dear sympathising friend” in their difficulties. “And what was I,” she exclaimed, “that the Lord should thus regard me, that in most of my greatest troubles, He hath been pleased to favour me with His people’s society and company? But He is gracious, and His compassions fail not.”
While in Edinburgh, Lady Campbell visited the Earl of Argyll, awaiting execution. In the Council House, on the day of his death, she obtained an interview with him. His composure and edifying conversation greatly comforted her. After addressing many affectionate remarks to her, whom he loved as though she had been his own daughter, the Earl said: “We must not part like those not to meet again.” He then went to the place of execution “with the greatest assurance.” A letter, written to her the same day, reads as follows:
Dear Lady Henrietta,
June 30th, 1685
I pray God sanctify this lot to you. Our concerns are strangely mixed; the Lord look on them; I know all shall turn to good to them that fear God and hope in His mercy. So I know you do, and that you may still do it more and more is my wish for you. The Lord comfort you.
I am, Your loving father and servant,
Argyll.
Following the Earl’s execution, a price was put on Sir Duncan’s head, whereupon they fled Scotland, he to Holland, she to London with a view to securing from James II an act of indemnity by which her husband’s life and estates, over which a deed of forfeiture was impending, would be spared. Being at Durham on a Sabbath, amongst strangers and away from the means of grace, she received much strength from the comforting application to her soul of Romans 8:35 — “Neither tribulation, nor distress, nor persecution, nor famine, nor nakedness, nor peril, nor sword, shall separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
From the cruel and bigotted King, however, Lady Campbell received no assurances, despite several months’ importunity. The cold reception she met with from the men in power is touchingly contrasted with the sinner’s welcome at the court of heaven: “Among sweet hours then,” she writes, “though in a very troublesome attendance at Windsor, where great ones of the world were solicited and waited on with no little painfulness and charge, O how did it give occasion to commend the preferableness of His matchless service, who is King of Kings and Lord of Lords, who does not scare at petitioners because of their blemishes and importunity, there being no want of leisure at His blessed throne; no destitute case is slighted by Him; no wilderness condition in a solitary way doth make petitions burdensome to Him; but He satisfies the longing soul, and filleth the hungry with good things.”
Disgusted by the vanity of court life, and seeing her quest to be fruitless, Lady Campbell rejoined her husband, sailing to Briel, where Sir Duncan met her. They then settled in Amsterdam, where refreshing Gospel means were available to them.
In June, 1686, Lady Campbell made a brief visit home, in order to take their only child, who had been temporarily left in the care of friends, over to Holland. Disembarking in Rotterdam after surviving a great storm in the North Sea, she attended the ministry in the Scots Church there of Rev. Robert Fleming, who preached the first Sabbath from John 11:40 — “Said I not unto thee, that if thou wouldest believe, thou should see the glory of God?” From this time, Sir Duncan and Lady Campbell resided in Rotterdam. Thomas Halyburton later described the spiritual privileges enjoyed there during the Covenanting Persecution: “On the Lord’s Day, we had three sermons and two lectures in the Scots’ Church, on Thursday a sermon there likewise. On Tuesday, one of the suffering ministers by turns preached. There was a meeting for prayer on Wednesday. On Monday and Friday nights Mr James Kirkton commonly lectured to his family. On Saturday, he catechised the children of Scots sufferers who came to him.” It was also customary for the Scots and English exiled ministers to meet once a week for prayer on account of the distress of their countries. Lady Campbell and her husband regularly attended these meetings.
In July, 1688, when James II’s tyranny had become intolerable to the majority of his subjects and William of Orange was preparing to invade Britain, the Campbells were invited to attend the Dutch court for several days, as Sir Duncan enjoyed the confidences of the future King. The enthusiasm and believing expectation with which both British refugees and William’s Dutch subjects supported this project are recorded in Lady Campbell’s diary: “The Lord did marvellously appear, in animating of hearts to a joint concurrence with this project, so that more than ordinary concern might have been read in the generality of persons who were well-wishers to the Protestant interest, and after preparation made, and joint supplication appointed to be through all the churches in the Seven Provinces . . . there was a wonderful resoluteness and forwardness that possessed in general all who were honoured with this undertaking, as if the Lord had endowed them with more than ordinary resoluteness and courage, which must be ascribed to His doing only, who moved this design and carried it on for our deliverance; for which O to be helped for ever to bless His Name.”
After Prince William’s project had been crowned with success and James driven from the throne, the Campbells returned from the land of their exile. The prospect of having their forfeited freedom and estates restored was, however, not without deep feelings of regret at leaving Rev. Robert Fleming, whom Lady Campbell regarded as “a great shining light in his day.” The preciousness of his ministry was such that she described their parting as that of a “child bereaved of the breast.”
The newly-gained liberty enjoyed by Dissenters had changed the whole aspect of things by the time of their arrival in London. Formerly, sermons could only be heard by stealth and the Lord’s Supper celebrated in private houses, by night, but “now, Dissenters could assemble to conduct religious worship in the most public manner without any to make them afraid.” The Scottish capital presented a similar view: “Our arrival in Edinburgh,” she writes, “had its own mixture of great mercy, and of that crowning mercy of being welcomed with access to the purity of Gospel ordinances; being the sweeter on our calling to mind the restraint and difficulty that formerly had been seen there in later years when made the seat of bloodshed and oppression.”
With the restoration of their family estates by the Revolution Settlement, the Campbells could now return to Lochgair. In view of the deprivations he had suffered under James II, it appears passing strange that in his last days, Sir Duncan should become a Papist. His wife’s diary records the belief that on his death-bed he underwent a saving change. She expected, through encouragement in prayer, to “go to the grave mourning for what was wrong in him, and yet not to mourn as those who have no hope.” Only the Great Day will declare the truth.
Lady Campbell survived the Revolution by thirty years, dying in 1721. While we are deprived of any account of her last days and dying testimony, we are left with the evidences of the gracious change she underwent in her youth. Casting in her lot in the morning of her days with the persecuted Covenanters, she suffered many hardships for religious and civil liberty. Out of love to God, she devoted much time to secret prayer and study of the Scriptures. The Sabbath, which she accounted a delight, was profitably spent in diligent attendance on the public means of grace and secret meditation. To observe the Lord’s death in the sacrament of the Supper was her most delightful exercise. Carefully observing Divine providence, she saw both trials and comforts as proceeding from the Lord’s hand; and having by grace chosen Christ as her portion, the whole world, when compared with Him, paled into utter insignificance.
Such are a few of the leading characteristics of Lady Campbell, on whom the Lord conferred great grace, and entitled her to a place among those pious women of Scotland, who in the face of persecution kept the commandment of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ.