Series 2 > Diary of Sir Archibald Johnston of Wariston, 1650-1654

INTRODUCTION
xxxvii
A contemporary states that the Commission’s answer to
the query on the 14th of December ‘ did mightily offend
all those in the Estate that had declared themselves against
any conjunction with those formerly debarred. . . .
Lord Warriston, clerk register, left the Parliament,
Sir John Chiesly, and some others, a little before had left
the Committee of Estates. Also those ministers that
favoured the Remonstrance and that association, and that
had declared themselves against any conjunction [and]
that were members of the Commission, did dissent and
protest against the answer to the query and left the
judicatory as discontented persons.’1 These objectors
were confirmed in their opposition by the repeal of the Acts
of Classes. Before the end of May, Wariston had come
to think that, in the Declaration of the West Kirk, ‘ wee
was then by words playstring over a busines that God was
il pleased with ’ ; 2 and, on the very day that the Acts
of Classes were repealed, he received from John Livingstone
a narrative of the negotiations leading up to the Treaty of
Breda, which made it more and more clear to him that
that Treaty—‘ the fountayne of all our evil ’—had been
‘ foule and polluted.’ 3
Wariston regarded the penitential satisfaction given to
the Church as ‘ mock repentance ’;4 and in the Acts of
Parliament he saw reflected ‘ the great defection of the
land and the first rype fruits of the Malignants sitting in
Parliament.’ 5 The General Assembly met at St. Andrews
on the 16th of July. He was anxious to be present, and
James Guthrie urged him to go.6 Other friends, including
Robert Leighton and John Livingstone, were against his
1 Blair’s Life, p. 251.—The reasons of the ‘discontented persons’ were very
clearly expressed by the Presbytery of Stirling (Records of the Commissions of
Assemblies, iii. 173-181).
2 P. 58. 2 P. 63.
1 P. S6.
5 P. 64.
6 P. 72