It has been seen, by what I have told concerning the part my grandfather had in the great work of the Reformation, that the heads of the house of Argyle were among the foremost and the firmest friends of the resuscitated Evangil.  The aged Earl of that time was in the very front of the controversy as one of the Lords of the Congregation; and though his son, the Lord of Lorn, hovered for a season, like other young men of his degree, in the purlieus and precincts of the Lady Regent’s court, yet when her papistical counsels broke the paction with the protestants at Perth, I have rehearsed how he, being then possessed of the inheritance of his father’s dignities, did, with the bravery becoming his blood and station, remonstrate with her Highness against such impolitic craft and perfidy, and, along with the Lord James Stuart, utterly eschew her presence and method of government.

After the return of Queen Mary from France, and while she manifested a respect for the rights of her covenanted people, that worthy Earl was among her best friends; and even after the dismal doings that led to her captivity in Lochleven Castle, and thence to the battle of Langside, he still acted the part of a true nobleman to a sovereign so fickle and so faithless.  Whether he rued on the field that he had done so, or was smitten with an infirmity that prevented him from fighting against his old friend and covenanted brother, the good Regent Murray, belongs not to this history to inquire; but certain it is, that in him the protestant principles of his honourable house suffered no dilapidation; and in the person of his grandson, the first marquis of the name, they were stoutly asserted and maintained.

When the first Charles, and Laud, that ravenous Arminian Antichrist, attempted to subvert and abrogate the presbyterian gospel worship, not only did the Marquis stand forth in the van of the Covenanters to stay the religious oppression then meditated against his native land, but laboured with all becoming earnestness to avert the pestilence of civil war.  In that doubtless Argyle offended the false counsellors about the King; but when the English parliament, with a lawless arrogance, struck off the head of the miscounselled and bigoted monarch, faithful to his covenants and the loyalty of his race, the Marquis was amongst the foremost of the Scottish nobles to proclaim the Prince of Wales king.  With his own hands he placed on Charles the Second’s head the ancient diadem of Scotland.  Surely it might therefore have been then supposed that all previous offence against the royal family was forgotten and forgiven; yea, when it is considered that General Monk himself, the boldest in the cause of Cromwell’s usurpation, was rewarded with a dukedom in England for doing no more for the King there than Argyle had done for him before in greater peril here, it could not have entered into the imagination of Christian men, that Argyle, for only submitting like a private subject to the same usurped authority when it had become supreme, would, after the Restoration, be brought to the block.  But it was so; and though the machinations of political enemies converted that submission into treasons to excuse their own crime, yet there was not an honest man in all the realm that did not see in the doom of Argyle a dismal omen of the cloud and storm which so soon after burst upon our religious liberties.

Passing, however, by all those afflictions which took the colour of political animosities, I hasten to speak of the proceedings which, from the hour of the Restoration, were hatched for the revival of the prelatic oppression.  The tyranny of the Stuarts is indeed of so fell a nature that, having once tasted of blood in any cause, it will return again and again, however so often baffled, till it has either devoured its prey, or been itself mastered; and so it showed in this instance.  For, regardless of those troubles which the attempt of the first Charles to exercise an authority in spiritual things beyond the rights of all earthly sovereignty caused to the realm and to himself, the second no sooner felt the sceptre in his grip than he returned to the same enormities; and he found a fit instrument in James Sharp, who, in contempt of the wrath of God, sold himself to Antichrist for the prelacy of St Andrews.

But it was not among the ambitious and mercenary members of the clergy that the evidences of a backsliding generation were alone to be seen; many of the people, nobles and magistrates were infected with the sin of the same reprobation; and in verity, it might have been said of the realm that the restoration of King Charles the Second was hailed as an advent ordained to make men forget all vows, sobriety and solemnities.  It is, however, something to be said in commendation of the constancy of mind and principle of our West Country folk that the immorality of that drunken loyalty was less outrageous and offensive to God and man among them, and that although we did submit and were commanded to commemorate the anniversary of the King’s restoration, it was nevertheless done with humiliation and anxiety of spirit.  But a vain thing it would be of me to attempt to tell the heartburning with which we heard of the manner that the Covenant, and of all things which had been hallowed and honourable to religious Scotland, were treated in the town of Lithgow on that occasion, although all of my grandfather’s stock knew that from of old it was a seat and sink of sycophancy, alien to holiness, and prone to lick the dust aneath the feet of whomsoever ministered to the corruption abiding there.

Had the general inebriation of the kingdom been confined only to such mockers as the papistical progeny of the unregenerate town of Lithgow, we might perhaps have only grieved at the wantonness of the world; but they were soon followed by more palpable enormities.  Middleton, the King’s commissioner, coming on a progress to Glasgow, held a council of state there, at which was present the apostate Fairfoul, who had been shortly before nominated Archbishop of that city; and at his wicked incitement, Middleton, in a fit of actual intoxication from strong drink, let loose the bloodhounds of persecution by that memorable act of council which bears the date of the 1st of October, 1662,-an anniversary that ought ever to be held as a solemn fast in Scotland, if such things might be, for by it all the ministers that had received Gospel ordination from and after the year forty-nine, and who still refused to bend the knee to Baal, were banished, with their families, from their kirks and manses.

But to understand in what way that wicked act, and the blood-causing proclamation which ensued, came to take effect, it is needful, before proceeding to the recital, to bid the courteous reader remember the preaching of the doctrine of passive obedience by our time-serving pastor, Mr Sundrum, and how the kirk was deserted on that occasion; because, after his death, which happened in the forty-nine, godly Mr Swinton became our chosen pastor, and being placed and inducted according to the apostolic ordination of Presbytery, fell, of course, like many of his Gospel brethren, under the ban of the aforesaid proclamation, of which some imperfect sough and rumour reached us on the Friday after it was framed.

At first the particulars were not known, for it was described as the muttering of unclean spirits against the purity of the Truth; but the tidings startled us like the growl of some unknown and dreadful thing, and I dreamt that night of my grandfather, with his white hair and the comely venerableness of his great age, appearing pale and sorrowful in a field before me, and pointing with a hand of streaming light to horsemen, and chariots, and armies with banners, warring together on the distant hills.

Saturday was then the market-day at Irvine; and though I had but little business there, I yet went in with my brother Robin, chiefly to hear the talk of the town.  In this I but partook of the common sympathy of the whole country-side; for, on entering the town-end port, we found the concourse of people there assembled little short of the crowd at Marymas Fair, and all eager to learn what the council held at Glasgow had done; but no one could tell.  Only it was known that the Earl of Eglinton, who had been present at the council, was returned home to the castle, and that he had sent for the provost that morning on very urgent business.

While we were thus all speaking and marvelling one with another, a cry got up that a band of soldiers was coming into the town from Ayr, the report of which, for the space of several minutes, struck every one with awe and apprehension.  And scarcely had the sough of this passed over us, when it was told that the provost had privately returned from Eglinton Castle by the Gallows-knowes to the backsides, and that he had sent for the minister and the bailies, with others of the council, to meet him in the clerk’s chamber.

No one wist what the meaning of such movements and mysteries could be; but all boded danger to the fold and flock, none doubting that the wolves of episcopalian covetousness were hungering and thirsting for the blood of the covenanted lambs.  Nor were we long left to our guesses; for, soon after the magistrates and the minister had met, a copy of the proclamation of the council held at Glasgow was put upon the Tolbooth door, by which it was manifested to every eye that the fences of the vineyard were indeed broken down, and that the boar was let in and wrathfully trampling down and laying waste.