Ordnance gazetteer of Scotland

GLASGOW
of the Church. The commissioner, a man of steady
judgment and sharp and clear wit, did his best to stop
what he deemed a high-handed and unauthorised pro-
ceeding ; hut he had arrayed against him all the best
men of the time, for whom single-handed he was no
match in argument, and at length, on Wednesday, 28
Nov. , at the seventh sitting, when the members were
about to vote on the question whether the Assembly
was competent to judge the bishops, the marquis, de-
claring that he could not give his countenance to their
proceedings, produced the King's instructions and war-
rant to dissolve the Assembly, which he accordingly
did, and left the Assembly accompanied by his asses-
sors and a few of the members, and 'immediatelie causes
ane herald to go to the Cross of Glasgow in his cot
armes, with ane proclamation maid wp be him and
the lordis of seereit . counsall and subscrivit with there
handis and givin wnder his Majesteis signet, daitit the
29th of November, and be sound of trumpet dischargeit
the said generall assemblie and in his Hines name eom-
mandit the said pretendit moderatour, commissioneris,
reulling elderis, and all uther memberis thairof, not to
treat, consult, or conclude any farder in the said assem-
blie wnder the pane of tressoun, and that they should
ryss wp and dissolue out of the toune of Glasgow
within 24 houris.' The General Assembly held at Glas-
gow in 1610 had declared that all general meetings of
the Church were unlawful without the licence of the
King, but the men of 1638 were of different mind and
in another temper. While the commissioner was leav-
ing the meeting, instruments were being taken and a
protest read declaring that the work of the Assembly
would not be interrupted ; and protest was again made
at the Cross against the proclamation, claiming that the
Assembly being once convened could not be dissolved
without its own consent. The loss of the royal repre-
sentative was considered to be compensated for by the
adherence and encouragement of the Earl of Argyll, who
now definitely cast in his lot with the Covenanters ; and
so the Presbyterians, left to themselves, proceeded with
earnestness and devoted courage to do the work for
which they had assembled. ' They passed an act de-
claring the Assemblies of 1606, 160S, 1616, 1617, and
1618 to have been so vitiated by kingly interference as
to be null and void.' They condemned 'the service
book, the book of canons, the book of ordination, and
the Court of High Commission. They abjured Episco-
pacy and the five articles of Perth,' and then proceeded
to the trial and deposition of the bishops and some
other ministers besides for professing the doctrines of
Arminianism, Popery, and Atheism ; for urging the use
of the liturgy, bowing to the altar, and wearing the
cope and rochet ; for declining the Assembly, and for
being guilty of simony, avarice, profanity, adulter}',
drunkenness, and other crimes. The Bishop of St
Andrews, for instance, was found guilty of riding-
through the country on the Lord's Day, of carding and
dicing during the time of divine service, of tippling in
taverns till midnight, of falsifying the acts of Assembly,
of slandering the Covenant, and of adultery, incest,
sacrilege, and simony ! It is difficult to believe all this
of a venerable man like Spottiswoode, and probably his
real fault was that he was a bishop. Thomas Poster,
minister of Melrose, was deposed on the charge ' that
he used to sit at preaching and prayer, baptise iu his
own house ; that he made a way through the church for
his kine and sheep ; that he made a waggon of the old
communion table to lead his peats in ; that he took in
his corn, and said it was lawful to work, on the Sabbath ;
and that he affirmed the Reformers had brought more
damage to the Church in one age than the Pope and his
faction had done in a thousand years.' One of the
counts against the Bishop of Orkney was 'that he was a
curler on the ice on the Sabbath day ; ! while the
Bishop of Moray was convicted of all 'the ordinary
faults of a bishop,' and was besides charged by Mr
Andrew Cant with having danced in his nightshirt at
his daughter's wedding ! And so the Archbishops of
St Andrews and Glasgow, and the Bishops of Edinburgh,
670
GLASGOW
Aberdeen, Galloway, Ross, Brechin, Dunblane, Dun.
keld, Moray, Orkney and Lismore and the Isles, were de-
posed and excommunicated ; the Covenant was ordered
to be, signed by all classes of the people ; and thus ' the
whole fabric which James and Charles in a long course
of years had been rearing with so much care and policy
fell at once to the ground.' The government of the
Church by kirk sessions, presbyteries, and synods was
restored ; and the work of the Assembly being over,
it adjourned on 20 Dec, having held eighteen meet-
ings after the commissioner retired, and the last day is
stated to have been a ' blithe day to alL ' As to the
part the Glasgow representative took there can be no
doubt, for it is recorded that, after duly consulting the
council as he had been ordered, he was instructed to
vote for all the resolutions put and carried.
Soon after the meeting of the Assembly the great
civil war broke out, and the Earl of Montrose, having
abandoned the Covenanting party and attached himself
to the cause of the King, raised an army in the North,
and, after defeating the troops of the Covenanters at
a number of battles, marched southwards to Kilsyth,
a few miles from Glasgow, where, on 15 Aug. 1645, he
inflicted a decisive defeat on General Baillie at the head
of 7000 Covenanters. The authorities in Glasgow heard
of the triumph of Montrose with no small uneasiness,
but, though strong Covenanters, and opposed therefore
to the cause for which the marquis had fought and con-
quered, they were men of policy ; and so, making a virtue
of necessity, they sent a deputation, consisting of Sir
Robert Douglas of Blackerston and Archibald Pleming,
Commissary of the City, to Kilsyth to invite Montrose,
in the name of Provost Bell and the magistrates, to
honour the city by his presence and to partake of their
hospitality. The marquis accepted the invitation, and
marched to Glasgow, where he and his army were wel-
comed with much solemnity and outward respect, his
lordship and his officers being sumptuously entertained
by the magistrates and higher classes of the inhabitants
at a banquet, during which their apologies for their
former want of loyalty were tendered and received in
good part. A ' pest ' then prevailed in the city, how-
ever, and Montrose left it on the second day and
moved to Bothwell ; not, however, without leaving a
memorial of his visit in a forced loan to assist in carry-
ing on the war on the King's behalf to the extent of
£50,000 Scots, which was, of course, never repaid.
Within a month after, Montrose was surprised and de-
feated at Philiphaugh by General Leslie, who, in his
turn, visited Glasgow, where the town council had
meanwhile got into difficulties over their conduct
towards Montrose, the Earl of Lanark having, in virtue
of a warrant from the committee of the estates, sus-
pended the whole council, and the estates themselves
having selected a new one, which was accepted, though
not without protest against such an invasion of the pri-
vileges of the burgh. Leslie was very civil, and even
moderate, but, with a very grim joke about money being
necessary to pay the interest of the loan to Montrose,
he also borrowed from them £20,000 Scots, so that the
city probably lost more than it would have done if it
had left the matter alone. Montrose, as the King's
lieutenant, had summoned a parliament to meet at
Glasgow on 20 Oct., but now, instead of the bustle
of a meeting of the estates, the citizens had the spectacle
of an execution, for three of the prisoners taken at
Philiphaugh— Sir William Rollock, Sir Philip Nisbet,
and Alexander Ogilvie of Inverquharity — were put to
death within the city, Rollock on 28, and his two com-
panions on 29 Oct. That the spectacle of the execution
of these unfortunate royalists was a pleasing one to a
large number of the citizens there can be no reason to
doubt, and some idea may be obtained of the bitter
feeling of the contending parties, when we remember
the remark of so presumably pious a man as the Glasgow
Professor of Divinity for the time being, Mr David Dick-
son, who, when he heard of the executions, exclaimed,
' The work gangs bonnily on,' a saying which became
proverbial, and was long significantly used in Glasgow.