Ringan Gilhaize, or, The Covenanters Part 16

CHAPTER x.x.xVI

The burial of Marion Ruet was decently attended by Bailie Kilspinnie and all his family; and though he did not carry the head himself, he yet ordered their eldest son to do so, because, whatever her faults had been, she was still the youth's mother. And my grandfather, with his wife, having spent some time after with their friends at Crail, returned homeward by themselves, pa.s.sing over to Edinburgh, that they might taste once more of the elixir of salvation as dispensed by John Knox, who had been for some time in a complaining way, and it was by many thought that the end of his preaching was drawing nigh.

It happened that the dreadful tidings of the murder of the protestants in France, by the command of "the accursed king," reached Edinburgh in the night before my grandfather and wife returned thither; and he used to speak of the consternation that they found reigning in the city when they arrived there, as a thing very awful to think of. Every shop was shut, and every window closed; for it was the usage in those days, when death was in a house, to close all the windows, so that the appearance of the town was as if, for the obduracy of their idolatrous sovereign, the destroying angel had slain all the first-born, and that a dead body was then lying in every family.

There was also a terrifying solemnity in the streets; for, though they were as if all the people had come forth in panic and sad wonderment, many were clothed in black, and there was a funereal stillness--a dismal sense of calamity that hushed the voices of men, and friends meeting one another, lifted their hands, and shuddering, pa.s.sed by without speaking.

My grandfather saw but one, between Leith Wynd and the door of the house in the Lawnmarket, where he proposed to lodge, that wore a smile, and it was not of pleasure, but of avarice counting its gains.

The man was one Hans Berghen, an armourer that had feathered his nest in the raids of the war with the Queen Regent. He was a Norman by birth, and had learnt the tempering of steel in Germany. In his youth he had been in the Imperator's service, and had likewise worked in the a.r.s.enal of Venetia. Some said he was perfected in his trade by the infidel at Constantinopolis; but, however this might be, no man of that time was more famous among roisters and moss-troopers, for the edge and metal of his weapons, than that same blasphemous incomer, who thought of nothing but the greed of gain, whether by dule to protestant or papist; so that the sight of his hard-favoured visage, blithened with satisfaction, was to my grandfather, who knew him well by repute, as an omen of portentous aspect.

For two days the city continued in that dismal state, and on the third, which was Sabbath, the churches were so filled that my grandmother, being then in a tender condition, did not venture to enter the High Kirk, where the Reformer was waited for by many thirsty and languis.h.i.+ng souls from an early hour in the morning, who desired to hear what he would say concerning the dark deeds that had been done in France. She therefore returned to the Lawnmarket; but my grandfather worked his way into the heart of the crowd, where he had not long been when a murmur announced that Master Knox was coming, and soon after he entered the kirk.

He had now the appearance of great age and weakness, and he walked with slow and tottering steps, wearing a virl of fur round his neck, and a staff in one hand; G.o.dlie Richie Ballanden, his man, holding him up by the oxter. And when he came to the foot of the pulpit, Richie, by the help of another servant that followed with the Book, lifted him up the steps into it, where he was seemingly so exhausted that he was obligated to rest for the s.p.a.ce of several minutes. No man who had never seen him before could have thought that one so frail would have had ability to have given out even the psalm; but when he began the spirit descended upon him, and he was so kindled that at last his voice became as awful as the thunders of wrath, and his arm was strengthened as with the strength of a champion's. The kirk dirled to the foundations; the hearts of his hearers shook, till the earth of their sins was shaken clean from them; and he appeared in the wirlwind of inspiration, as if his spirit was mounting, like the prophet Elijah, in a fiery chariot immediately to the gates of heaven.

His discourse was of the children of Bethlehem slain by Herod, and he spoke of the dreadful sound of a bell and a trumpet heard suddenly in the midnight hour, when all were fast bound and lying defenceless in the fetters of sleep. He described the dreadful knocking at the doors--the bursting in of men with drawn swords--how babies were harled by the arms from their mothers' beds and bosoms, and dashed to death upon the marble floors. He told of parents that stood in the porches of their houses and made themselves the doors that the slayers were obliged to hew in pieces before they could enter in. He pictured the women flying along the street, in the nakedness of the bedchamber, with their infants in their arms, and how the ruffians of the accursed king, knowing their prey by their cries, ran after them, caught the mother by the hair and the bairn by the throat, and, in one act, flung the innocent to the stones and trampled out its life. Then he paused, and said, in a soft and thankful voice, that in the horrors of Bethlehem there was still much mercy; for the idolatrous dread of Herod prompted him to slay but young children, whose blameless lives were to their weeping parents an a.s.surance of their acceptance into heaven.

"What then," he cried, "are we to think of that night, and of that king, and of that people, among whom, by whom, and with whom, the commissioned murderer twisted his grip in the fugitive old man's grey hairs, to draw back his head that the knife might the surer reach his heart? With what eyes, being already blinded with weeping, shall we turn to that city where the withered hands of the grandmother were deemed as weapons of war by the strong and black-a-vised slaughterer, whose sword was owre vehemently used for a' the f.e.c.kless remnant of life it had to cut! But deaths like these were brief and blessed compared to other things--which, Heaven be praised, I have not the power to describe, and which, among this protestant congregation, I trust there is not one able to imagine, or who, trying to conceive, descries but in the dark and misty vision the pains of mangled mothers; babes, untimely and unquickened, cast on the dung-hills and into the troughs of swine; of black-iron hooks fastened into the mouths, and driven through the cheeks of brave men, whose arms are tied with cords behind, as they are dragged into the rivers to drown, by those who durst not in fair battle endure the lightning of their eyes. O, Herod!--Herod of Judea--thy name is hereafter bright, for in thy b.l.o.o.d.y business thou wast thyself nowhere to be seen. In the vouts and abysses of thy unstained palace, thou hidst thyself from the eye of history, and perhaps humanely sat covering thine ears with thy hands to shut out the sound of the wail and woe around thee. But this Herod--let me not call him by so humane a name. No: let all the trumpets of justice sound his own to everlasting infamy--Charles the Ninth of France! And let his amba.s.sador that is here aye yet, yet to this time audaciously in this Christian land, let him tell his master that sentence has been p.r.o.nounced against him in Scotland; that the Divine vengeance will never depart from him or his house until repentance has ensued, and atonement been made in their own race; that his name will remain a blot--a blot of blood, a stain never to be effaced--a thing to be p.r.o.nounced with a curse by all posterity; and that none proceeding from his loins shall ever enjoy his kingdom in peace."

The preacher, on saying these prophetic words, paused, and, with his eyes fixed upwards, he stood some time silent, and then, clasping his hands together, exclaimed with fear and trembling upon him, "Lord, Lord, thy will be done?"

Many thought that he had then received some great apocalypse; for it was observed of all men that he was never after like the man he had once been, but highly and holily elevated above earthly cares and considerations, saving those only of his ministry, and which he hastened to close. He was as one that no longer had trust, portion, or interest in this temporal world, which in less than two months after he bade farewell, and was translated to a better. Yes, to a better; for a.s.suredly, if there is aught in this life that may be regarded as the symbols of infeftment to the inheritance of Heaven, the labours and ministration of John Knox were testimonies that he had verily received the yird and stane of an heritage on High.

CHAPTER x.x.xVII

Shortly after my grandfather had returned with his wife to their quiet dwelling at Quharist on the Garnock side, he began, in the course of the winter following, to suffer an occasional pang in that part of his body which was damaged by the fall he got in rugging down the Virgin Mary out of her niche in the idolatrous abbeykirk of Kilwinning, and the anguish of his suffering grew to such an head by Candlemas that he was obligated to send for his old acquaintance, Dominick Callender, who had, after his marriage with the regenerate nun, settled as a doctor of physic in the G.o.dly town of Irvine. But for many a day all the skill and medicamenting of Doctor Callender did him little good, till Nature had, of her own accord, worked out the root of the evil in the shape of a sklinter of bone. Still, though the wound then closed, it never was a sound part, and he continued in consequence a lamiter for life. Yet were his days greatly prolonged beyond the common lot of man; for he lived till he was ninety-one years, seven months, and four days old, and his end at last was but a pleasant translation from the bodily to the spiritual life.

For some days before the close he was calm and cheerful, rehearsing to the neighbours that came to speer for him, many things like those of which I have spoken herein. Towards the evening a serene drowsiness fell upon him, like the snow that falleth in silence, and froze all his temporal faculties in so gentle a manner, that it could not be said he knew what it was to die; being, as it were, carried in the downy arms of sleep to the portal door of Death, where all the pains and terrors that guard the same were hushed, and stood mute around, as he was softly received in.

No doubt there was something of a providential design in the singular prolongation of such a pious and a blameless life; for through it the possessor became a blessed mean of sowing, in the hearts of his children and neighbours, the seeds of those sacred principles, which afterwards made them stand firm in their religious integrity when they were so grievously tried. For myself I was too young, being scant of eight years when he departed, to know the worth of those precious things which he had treasured in the garnel of his spirit for seed-corn unto the Lord; and therefore, though I often heard him speak of the riddling wherewith that mighty husbandman of the Reformation, John Knox, riddled the truths of the gospel from the errors of papistry, I am bound to say that his own exceeding venerable appearance, and the visions of past events, which the eloquence of his traditions called up to my young fancy, worked deeper and more thoroughly into my nature than the reasons and motives which guided and governed many of his other disciples. But, before proceeding with my own story, it is meet that I should still tell the courteous reader some few things wherein my father bore a part--a man of very austere character, and of a most G.o.dly, though, as some said, rather of a stubbornly affection for the forms of wors.h.i.+p which had been established by John Knox and the pious worthies of his times; he was withal a single-minded Christian, albeit more ready for a raid than subtle in argument. He had, like all who knew the old people his parents, a by-common reverence for them; and spoke of the patriarchs with whom of old the Lord was wont to hold communion, as more favoured of Him than David or Solomon, or any other princes or kings.

When he was very young, not pa.s.sing, as I have heard him often tell, more than six or seven years of age, he was taken, along with his brethren, by my grandfather, to see the signing at Irvine of the Covenant, with which, in the lowering time of the Spanish armada, King James, the son of Mary, together with all the Reformed, bound themselves in solemn compact to uphold the protestant religion. Afterwards, when he saw the country rise in arms, and heard of the ward and watch, and the beacons ready on the hills, his imagination was kindled with some dreadful conceit of the armada, and he thought it could be nothing less than some awful and horrible creature sent from the sh.o.r.es of perdition to devour the whole land. The image he had thus framed in his fears haunted him continually; and night after night he could not sleep for thinking of its talons of bra.s.s, and wings of thunder, and nostrils flaming fire, and the iron teeth with which it was to grind and gnash the bodies and bones of all protestants, in so much that his parents were concerned for the health of his mind, and wist not what to do to appease the terrors of his visions.

At last, however, the great Judith of the protestant cause, Queen Elizabeth of England, being enabled to drive a nail into the head of that Holofernes of the idolaters, and many of the host of s.h.i.+ps having been plunged, by the right arm of the tempest, into the depths of the seas, and scattered by the breath of the storm, like froth over the ocean, it happened that, one morning about the end of July, a cry arose that a huge galley of the armada was driven on the rocks at Pencorse; and all the s.h.i.+re of Ayr hastened to the spot to behold and witness her s.h.i.+pwreck and overthrow. Among others my grandfather, with his three eldest sons, went, leaving my father at home; but his horrors grew to such a pa.s.sion of fear that his mother, the calm and pious Elspa Ruet, resolved to take him thither likewise, and to give him the evidence of his eyes, that the dreadful armada was but a navy of vessels like the s.h.i.+p which was cast upon the sh.o.r.e. By this prudent thought of her, when he arrived at the spot his apprehensions were soothed; but his mind had ever after a strange habitude of forming wild and wonderful images of every danger, whereof the scope and nature was not very clearly discerned, and which continued with him till the end of his days.

Soon after the death of my grandfather, he had occasion to go into Edinburgh anent some matter of legacy that had fallen to us through the decease of an uncle of my mother, a bonnet-maker in the Canongate; and, on his arrival there, he found men's minds in a sore fever concerning the rash councils wherewith King Charles the First, then reigning, was mindit to interfere with the pure wors.h.i.+p of G.o.d, and to enact a part in the kirk of Scotland little short of the papistical domination of the Roman Antichrist. To all men this was startling tidings; but to my father it was an enormity that fired his blood and spirit with the fierceness of a furnace. And it happened that he lodged with a friend of ours, one Janet Geddes, a most pious woman, who had suffered great molestation in her worldly substance, from certain endeavours for the restorations of the horns of the mitre, and the prelatic buskings with which that meddling and fantastical bodie, King James the Sixth, would fain have buskit and disguised the sober simplicity of gospel ordinances.

No two persons could be more heartily in unison upon any point of controversy than was my worthy father and Janet Geddes, concerning the enormities that would of a necessity ensue from the papistical pretensions and unrighteous usurpation of King Charles; and they sat crooning and lamenting together all the Sat.u.r.day afternoon and night about the woes of idolatry that were darkening again over Scotland.

No doubt there was both reason and piety in their fears; but in the method of their sorrow, from what I have known of my father's earnest and simple character, I redde there might be some lack of the decorum of wisdom. But be this as it may, they heated the zeal of one another to a pitch of great fervour, and next morning, the Sabbath, they went together to the high Kirk of St Giles to see what the power of an infatuated government would dare to do.

The kirk was filled to its uttermost bunkers; my father, however, got for Janet Geddes, she being an aged woman, a stool near the skirts of the pulpit; but nothing happened to cause any disturbance till the G.o.dly Mr Patrick Henderson had made an end of the morning prayer, when he said, with tears in his eyes, with reference to the liturgy, which was then to be promulgated, "Adieu, good people, for I think this is the last time of my saying prayers in this kirk;" and the congregation being much moved thereat, many wept.

No sooner had Mr Henderson retired, than Master Ramsay, that horn of the Beast, which was called the Dean of Edinburgh, appeared in the pulpit in the pomp of his abominations, and began to read the liturgy. At the first words of which Janet Geddes was so transported with indignation that, starting from her stool, she made it fly whirring at his head, as she cried, "Villain, dost thou say the ma.s.s at my lug?" Then such an uproar began as had not been witnessed since the destruction of the idols; the women screaming, and clapping their hands in terrification as if the legions of the Evil One had been let loose upon them; and the men crying aloud, "Antichrist! Antichrist! down wi' the Pope!" and all exhortation to quiet them was drowned in the din.

Such was the beginning of those troubles in the church and state so wantonly provoked by the weak and wicked policy of the first King Charles, and which in the end brought himself to an ignominious death; and such the cause of that Solemn League and Covenant, to which, in my green years, my father, soon after his return home, took me to be a party, and to which I have been enabled to adhere, with unerring constancy, till the glorious purpose of it has all been fulfilled and accomplished.

CHAPTER x.x.xVIII

When my father returned home, my mother and all the family were grieved to see his sad and altered looks. We gathered around him, and she thought he had failed to get the legacy, and comforted him by saying they had hitherto fenn't without it, and so might they still do.

To her tender condolements he however made no answer; but, taking a leathern bag, with the money in it, out of his bosom, he flung it on the table, saying, "What care I for this world's trash, when the ark of the Lord is taken from Israel?" which to hear daunted the hearts of all present. And then he told us, after some time, what was doing on the part of the King to bring in the wors.h.i.+p of the Beast again, rehearsing, with many circ.u.mstances, the consternation and sorrow and rage and lamentations that he had witnessed in Edinburgh.

I, who was the ninth of his ten children, and then not pa.s.sing nine years old, was thrilled with an unspeakable fear; and all the dreadful things, which I had heard my grandfather tell of the tribulations of his time, came upon my spirit like visions of the visible scene, and I began to weep with an exceeding sorrow, in so much that my father was amazed, and caressed me, and thanked Heaven that one so young in his house felt as a protestant child should feel in an epoch of such calamity.

It was then late in the afternoon, towards the gloaming, and having partaken of some refreshment, my father took the big Bible from the press-head, and, after a prayer uttered in great heaviness of spirit, he read a portion of the Revelations, concerning the vials and the woes, expounding the same like a preacher; and we were all filled with anxieties and terrors; some of the younger members trembled with the thought that the last day was surely at hand.

Next morning a sough and rumour of that solemn venting of Christian indignation which had been manifested at Edinburgh, having reached our country-side, and the neighbours hearing of my father's return, many of them came at night to our house to hear the news; and it was a meeting that none present thereat could ever after forget:--well do I mind everything as if it had happened but yestreen. I was sitting on a laigh stool at the fireside, between the chumley-lug and the gown-tail of old Nanse Snoddie, my mother's aunty, a G.o.dly woman, that in her eild we took care of; and as young and old came in, the salutation was in silence, as of guests coming to a burial.

The first was Ebenezer Muir, an aged man, whose grandson stood many a blast in the persecution of the latter days, both with the Blackcuffs and the b.l.o.o.d.y dragoons of the remorseless Graham of Claver. He was bent with the burden of time, and leaning on his staff, and his long white hair hung down from aneath his broad blue bonnet. He was one whom my grandfather held in great respect for the sincerity of his principles and the discretion of his judgment, and among all his neighbours, and nowhere more than in our house, was he considered a most patriarchal character.

"Come awa, Ebenezer," said my father, "I'm blithe and I'm sorrowful to see you. This night we may be spar't to speak in peace of the things that pertain unto salvation; but the day and the hour is not far off, when the flock of Christ shall be scattered and driven from the pastures of their Divine Master."

To these words of affliction Ebenezer Muir made no response, but went straight to the fireside, facing Nanse Snoddie, and sat down without speaking; and my father, then observing John Fullarton of d.y.k.edivots coming in, stretched out his hand, and took hold of his, and drew him to sit down by his side.

They had been in a manner brothers from their youth upward. An uncle of John Fullarton's, by whom he was brought up, had been owner, and he himself had heired, and was then possessor of, the mailing of d.y.k.edivot, beside ours. He was the father of four brave sons, the youngest of whom, a stripling of some thirteen or fourteen years, was at his back: the other three came in afterwards. He was, moreover, a man of a stout and courageous nature, though of a much-enduring temper.

"I hope," said he to my father--"I hope, Sawners, a' this straemash and hobbleshow that fell out last Sabbath in Embro' has been seen wi' the glamoured een o' fear, and that the King and government canna be sae far left to themsels as to meddle wi' the ordinances of the Lord."

"I doot, I doot, it's owre true, John," replied my father in a very mournful manner; and while they were thus speaking, Nahum Chapelrig came ben. He was a young man, and his father being precentor and schoolmaster of the parish, he had more lair than commonly falls to the lot of country folk; over and aboon this, he was of a spirity disposition, and both eydent and eager in whatsoever he undertook, so that for his years he was greatly looked up to amang all his acquaintance, notwithstanding a small spicin of conceit that he was in with himself.

On seeing him coming in, worthy Ebenezer Muir made a sign for him to draw near and sit by him; and when he went forward, and drew in a stool, the old man took hold of him by the hand, and said, "Ye're weel come, Nahum;" and my father added, "Ay, Nahum Chapelrig, it's fast coming to pa.s.s, as ye hae been aye saying it would; the King has na rest.i.t wi'

putting the prelates upon us."

"What's te prelates, Robin Fullarton?" said auld Nanse Snoddie, turning round to John's son, who was standing behind his father.

"They're the red dragons o' unrighteousness," replied the sincere laddie with great vehemence.

"Gude guide us!" cried Nanse with the voice of terror; "and has the King daur't to send sic accursed things to devour G.o.d's people?"

But my mother, who was sitting behind me, touched her on the shoulder, bidding her be quiet; for the poor woman, being then doited, when left to the freedom of her own will, was apt to expatiate without ceasing on whatsoever she happened to discourse anent; and Nahum Chapelrig said to my father,--

"'Deed, Sawners Gilhaize, we could look for nae better; prelacy is but the prelude o' papistry; but the papistry o' this prelude is a perilous papistry indeed; for its roots of rankness are in the midden-head of Arminianism, which, in a sense, is a greater Antichrist than Antichrist himself, even where he sits on his throne of thraldom in the Roman vaticano. But, nevertheless, I trust and hope, that though the virgin bride of protestantism be for a season thrown on her back, she shall not be overcome, but will so strive and warsle aneath the foul grips of that rampant Arminian, the English high-priest Laud, that he shall himself be cast into the mire, or choket wi' the stoure of his own bakiefu's of abominations, wherewith he would overwhelm and bury the Evangil. Yea, even though the s.h.i.+eld of his mighty men is made red, and his valiant men are in scarlet, he shall recount his worthies, but they shall stumble in their walk."

While Nahum was thus holding forth, the house filled even to the trance-door with the neighbours, old and young; and several from time to time spoke bitterly against the deadly sin and aggression which the King was committing in the rape that the reading of the liturgy was upon the consciences of his people. At last Ebenezer Muir, taking off his bonnet, and rising, laid it down on his seat behind him, and then resting with both his hands on his staff, looked up, and every one was hushed. Truly it was an affecting sight to behold that very aged, time-bent and venerable man so standing in the midst of all his dismayed and pious neighbours,--his grey hairs flowing from his haffets,--and the light of our lowly hearth s.h.i.+ning upon his bald head and reverent countenance.

"Friens," said he, "I hae lived lang in the world; and in this house I hae often partaken the sweet repast of the conversations of that sanctified character, Michael Gilhaize, whom we a' revered as a parent, not more for his ain worth than for the great things to which he was a witness in the trials and troubles of the Reformation; and it seems to me, frae a' the experience I hae gatherit, that when ance kings and governments hae taken a step, let it be ne'er sae rash, there's a something in the nature of rule and power that winna let them confess a fau't, though they may afterwards be constrained to renounce the evil of their ways. It was therefore wi' a sore heart that I heard this day the doleful tidings frae Embro', and moreover, that I hae listened to the outbreathings this night of the heaviness wherewith the news hae oppressed you a'. Sure am I, that frae the provocation given to the people of Scotland by the King's miscounselled majesty, nothing but tears and woes can ensue; for by the manner in which they hae already reb.u.t.ted the aggression, he will in return be stirred to aggrieve them still farther. I'm now an auld man, and may be removed before the woes come to pa.s.s; but it requires not the e'e of prophecy to spae bloodshed and suffering, and many afflictions in your fortunes. Nevertheless, friens, be of good cheer, for the Lord will prosper his own cause.

Neither king, nor priest, nor any human authority has the right to interfere between you and your G.o.d; and allegiance ends where persecution begins. Never, therefore, in the trials awaiting you, forget that the right to resist in matters of conscience is the foundation-stone of religious liberty; O see, therefore, that you guard it weel!"

The voice and manner of the aged speaker melted every heart. Many of the women sobbed aloud, and the children were moved, as I was myself, and as I have often heard them in their manhood tell, as if the spirit of faith and fort.i.tude had entered into the very bones and marrow of their bodies; nor ever afterwards have I heard psalm sung with such melodious energy of holiness as that pious congregation of simple country folk sung the hundred and fortieth psalm before departing for their lowly dwellings on that solemn evening.