Continued from page 244 of the August issue
4 Farewell to Ayr
Rev. K. D. Macleod
WELSH arrived home exhausted from the meeting of the 1605 General Assembly in Aberdeen but, because he was faithful enough to his Master to support the holding of that meeting in the face of Government opposition, his days in Ayr were almost over. The next Sabbath he preached on the Day of Judgement, and gave his people his reflections on what happened in Aberdeen. “Never a greater providence found I in my lifetime,” he told them, “than in this my last journey. I thank my God for it; and here I avow, if this blood of mine should go for it, it was acceptable service we did to God that day. I know there were many among you that sent up your prayers to God for the maintenance of our liberty. I am sure the Lord heard you. In every step I took I felt the Lord was with me, and confirmed me in believing that all was well and acceptable to Him.”
The next Sabbath he spoke again from the same text (Rev 20:12) and in the course of his sermon he warned his congregation: “Prepare you all for this day of account . . . and it shall be well with you. I beseech you to think of standing with your naked consciences before the all-seeing eye of God. I would speak to you as if I were never to see your faces again, and I take the Lord to record that I have given you warning according to the measure of light which has been given me, and that I am not guilty of your bloods…. Because we cannot tell how long our time will last together, and because the devil rages, for he envies our estate, I beseech you in the bowels of the Son of God that every one of you would repent.”
Before this he must have heard that John Forbes, his brother-minister, had been denounced as a rebel. One night he got up through the night to pray as usual. In another room he cried long and earnestly to God. When he returned, his wife gently spoke to him about the danger to his health by being out of bed for so long. But he told her that he had been deeply disturbed because of the troubles threatening the Church, and the two of themselves in particular, and by his fear that his work in Ayr was already finished. Before he wakened in the morning, there was a messenger from the King on his doorstep summoning him before the Privy Council. He was never to return.
His ministry in Ayr — brief but marvellously blessed — was indeed at an end, except for one final sermon that morning. The service was in the parish church instead of the building that the magistrates had fitted out for weekday services. Towards the end of his discourse he told his people, “To thee who art in Christ . . . I open the gates of the kingdom of heaven; but to thee who art not in Christ, but in the flesh, I testify that as long as thou art in the flesh the gates of heaven are closed on thee and the gates of hell are open to thee . . . I will judge none of you. I would have you to judge yourselves that ye be not judged . . . And, that you may not say in that great day that you wanted (lacked) warning, Here I take heaven and earth to record, I take these walls and pillars of stone to record, I take that sun that shineth yonder, and your own consciences, to be witnesses betwixt you and me that I have told you the whole counsel of God so far as He has made known to me, and that now I speak the truth in Christ and lie not, when I tell you that if thou livest and diest in the flesh thou shalt die for ever. Here I take witnesses of this, that none of you may say that I have been a traitor to your souls, that I told you not your danger while I was with you . . . Suppose you had never gotten more warning than this one day’s preaching, I take heaven and earth and this house to be witnesses that I am free of your blood . . . Such of you as were never in Christ . . . I beseech you to come to Jesus and say, ‘Sweet Lord, give me a drink of Thy blood to quench the thirst of my scorched soul and to save me from the wrath to come; give me a fill of Thy flesh that I die not eternally; send down Thy Spirit to lead me in the strait and narrow way which leadeth unto life.’
“As for you who are in Christ already, I beseech you to be thankful to God, in that He has shown thee so great mercy; and rejoice in that free grace of His Son Jesus Christ, who hath bought thee from sin and hell, and walk worthy of that calling of His whereunto thou art called. Abide in Him and He will abide in thee, and study daily to make thy election sure. Use all the means of His worship daily. Hear the Word gladly, meditate on it night and day. Let the words of God’s grace be in your lips, watch and pray continually, and in all things be thankful, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus towards you.
“And, last of all, forget not the poor Church of God but, thou that art a member of that body, I beseech thee to care for the rest of the members of that body. Pray for it, for I crave nothing of you but prayer, and we have no other weapons but prayer. Pray that the Lord would arise and manifest Himself from heaven and defend His poor Church and overthrow His enemies. I say no more, but commend you all to the blessing of God in Christ Jesus, to whom with the Father and the Holy Spirit be all praise, honour and glory, now and for evermore. Amen.”
So ended an exceptional ministry. The congregation crowded out into the streets for a last farewell, and three of the men rode out of Ayr with him to give their support to their beloved pastor on this journey to Edinburgh. They were the town clerk and the sheriff clerk of the town and a local landlord.
Welsh arrived in Edinburgh on July 25. A number of other ministers were already there for the same reason as himself, and John Forbes was the first to be called to the Privy Council. He was asked if he still maintained that the meeting of ministers in Aberdeen was a lawful General Assembly. He declined to pass judgement on an action in which he himself was involved and submitted himself and all the proceedings of the meeting to the judgement of the next General Assembly. He and those who followed him were refusing the authority of a civil court over an ecclesiastical one.
Such a spirit of independence did not sit well with the doctrine of the divine right of kings so beloved of the Stuart kings. Forbes had stood before men who owed their appointment to their unscrupulous subserviency to the King, men who could speak of the King as their “earthly Creator”, and of themselves as “the breath of his nostrils”. Not surprisingly, justice did not come high on their list of priorities. Forbes was, without any further questioning, imprisoned in Edinburgh Castle, until he could be taken to Blackness Castle, which was built on a rock on the south bank of the Firth of Forth near Linlithgow. “A foul hole”, James Melville described it, and that was true even in comparison with the other prisons of the time.
Welsh was to fare no better than his brother-minister. That evening, as he and some other ministers were on their way to visit Forbes, a summons was put into Welsh’s hand, commanding him to appear before the Privy Council at seven o’clock the following morning, a time early enough, it was hoped, to avoid the presence of some of the lords who at a previous meeting “reasoned honestly for the brethren of the Assembly of Aberdeen”. Welsh, when he appeared before the Council, refused to answer any questions, taking advantage of the legal provision that he should have received a copy of the questions before being asked to answer on oath. His objection was instantly overruled, and he was hurried away to the Tolbooth, the common jail. Before the morning was over, he and Forbes were on their way under guard to Blackness Castle, where they were locked up in separate dungeons.
Forbes noted later that he and Welsh were seized first because they were particularly disliked by the members of the Council, as “the most forward” in opposing their policies, though “experience thereafter did teach them,” he went on, “that there was no less sincerity, courage and constant resolution in the rest of the brethren against their corruption and wickedness, and for the truth, than in those two whom they so much feared.” There was also the fact that Welsh had a special place in the affections of the people generally and he had used his eloquence to great effect in opposing the episcopal innovations. Early the following day news of Welsh’s imprisonment reached Ayr. The Provost of the town chaired a meeting which appointed a local gentleman to proceed to Edinburgh with all possible speed, at the town’s expense, to appear, along with the three men who had accompanied Welsh to the capital, before the Privy Council to plead for their minister’s freedom. We know nothing further of the mission of these men, but it is perfectly clear that the Council was in no mood to listen to their pleas.
Welsh had refused to answer questions about his supposed offence on technical grounds, but he later deemed it wiser to offer a response. He was accordingly brought again before the Privy Council on August 2, but no account of what happened has come down to us, except that he was soon back in his cell. That same day four other ministers were questioned about the Aberdeen Assembly, and found themselves in Blackness Castle within 24 hours. But their God did not forsake them; one of them has recorded the consolation which they enjoyed from God through their fellowship in the cross of Christ. The reaction of the Privy Council was a decision to send Welsh, Forbes and one of the others to Dumbarton Castle, but for some reason this was never done. The Council also issued a proclamation forbidding all church courts from “approving or justifying the unlawful Assembly at Aberdeen”, nor were the ministers to do anything of that nature in preaching or in prayer or any other way. This oppressive regulation was disobeyed by, among others, David Blyth, minister of the Canongate, who found himself incarcerated for ten weeks in Blackness as a result. But others who took the same line as Blyth were left alone because the Council was afraid of the public outcry that would follow their imprisonment.
Towards the end of August the prisoners in Blackness received a list of 18 questions drawn up by the King, with orders to appear in Perth before a meeting of the Privy Council. Messengers were sent to intimate that they would not need to appear before the Council if suitable replies were given to the King’s questions. Welsh and his brethren were allowed to meet to put together their reply. They declared that they kept the Assembly because of their regard to the Word of God, which authorised such meetings; because of the welfare of the Church, which depended on the freedom to hold them; because of their solemn engagements to maintain and defend the discipline spoken of in the National Covenant; and because of the need for obedience to their fellow-presbyters, whose representatives they were. Their answers, as might be expected, were not considered satisfactory by the authorities. So to Perth they were brought the next day, and from Perth back to Blackness. At some stage Elizabeth Welsh made the long journey from Ayr to visit her imprisoned husband. Whether she was able to gain admission to the Castle is uncertain, for the Privy Council had ordered that no one was to have any access to Welsh. But records of the Treasurer of Ayr show that the town gave her ten pounds Scots for the expenses of her trip.
In an attempt to influence public opinion the King appointed a meeting of the General Assembly on the last Tuesday of July, but it was suspected that, as no year was mentioned, the meeting would be indefinitely postponed. Steps were also taken to demonstrate the Government’s protestant credentials in the hope that the people would assume that the imprisoned ministers must indeed be guilty when prosecuted by a government which seemed to show such a deep concern for the true religion. One of those who fell victim to government policy was the ex-abbot of Newabbey, Gilbert Brown, whom Welsh had previously engaged in controversy. Brown too was taken as a prisoner to Blackness, but only for two days, after which he was transferred to Edinburgh Castle. He was later allowed to leave the country for France.
When Welsh and his fellow-prisoners petitioned the Privy Council to be set at liberty, offering to find security for their appearance whenever they would be called before the Council or any other court, they were refused. Instead, the Constable of the Castle was instructed to separate the prisoners two to a cell, and to prevent them meeting together at any time. The ministers had to pay for their keep in Blackness, and indeed the Constable was utterly extortionate in his charges. At the beginning of October another attempt was made to bring the ministers, Welsh especially, to the King’s way of thinking by the use of an independent intermediary, Sir William Livingstone. Welsh’s reply may be summed up by the following extracts from his letter to Livingstone: “What is required of us is such a thing as, in the sight of our Lord, we may not do without the hazard of our consciences and liberty of Christ’s kingdom, which should be dearer to us than anything else…. And we are fully resolved that what we did was acceptable service to our God, who hath put it up as a service done to Him, and hath allowed it and sealed it to us by many tokens…. We, Sir, if the Lord will, are yet ready to do more in our callings and to suffer more in the same if so be it will please our God to call us to it and to strengthen us in it, for in ourselves we can promise nothing, but in our God all things.”
In his letter Welsh also referred to Archbishop Spottiswood, son of another John who was a Reformation colleague of John Knox. This younger Spottiswood had initiated the approach to Welsh, but he in fact probably bore most of the responsibility for the whole campaign of persecution against the ministers. “I am far from bitterness,” Welsh wrote, “but here I denounce the wrath of an everlasting God against him, which assuredly shall fall except it be prevented (that is, by Spottiswood’s repentance)… who hath been so sore an instrument, not against our persons (that were nothing, and I protest to you, Sir, in the sight of my God, I forgive him all the evil that ever he hath done, or can do, to me) but unto Christ’s poor Kirk in stamping under foot so glorious a kingdom and beauty as was once in this land. He hath helped cut Samson’s hair and to expose him to mocks, but the Lord will not be mocked…. Let this letter, Sir, be a monument of it, that it was told before, that when it shall come to pass it may be seen there was warning given him. And therefore, Sir, seeing I have not the access myself, if it would please God to move you, I wish you did deliver this hard message unto him, not as from me, I assure you, but as from the Lord, that except he repent he shall be made a fearful spectacle of God’s wrath in this land.” If Spottiswood, once Welsh’s co-presbyter, ever received the message he must have hardened his heart against it. Yet he lived long enough to be brought down, even before men; he lost his archbishopric at the great General Assembly at Glasgow in 1638.
(To be continued)
Dr Thomas McCrie, author of The Story of the Scottish Church, says with regard to Welsh and his fellow-sufferers, “Their conduct on this occasion was marked equally by respect to the royal authority and fidelity to the great Head of the Church; and it deserved the warmest approbation of every friend of religion and civil liberty.”