Series 5 > Miscellany [of the Scottish History Society] XIII

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MISCELLANY XIII
presbyterian, type—led her to the village of Bathgate, west of
Edinburgh. After her marriage, she visited Irvine in Ayrshire before
continuing to Ireland. In both locations she had close contact with
outstanding evanglical presbyterian ministers. The narrative ends in
Ireland following the deaths of her husband and her baim.
3. Pilgrimage. The author presents a catalogue of the prevailing
religion of her time and place; indeed one could supply a passable
description of Scottish Jacobean (and later) piety by annotating
Mistress Rutherford’s narrative. Hers is a history of religious
melancholia, and fits very well the description provided by William
Sargant.1 It commences when she was but eleven years of age. We see
her wrestling to find assurance of faith. The darker side of
supernatural belief impinges on her life. She thinks that the devil is
after her, and then comes to fear that she is becoming a witch. There
was no witch craze at the time of her youth, but she would have
known about the phenomenon, perhaps even from sermons, and in her
highly suggestible state it is a condition she would have undoubtedly
reflected upon.2 She ponders suicide; she goes to church; she finds
both solace and consternation in communion; Betty Aird and others
try to give her spiritual counsel and support; she is aware of pulpit
controversies, namely Arminianism (a doubtful point; she has likely
read the trouble back from the perspective of a later time) and the
dispute over kneeling, in the wake of the Five Articles of Perth;3 she
prefers sitting, and attends what was undoubtedly Richard Dickson’s
act of defiance in the West Kirk on 7 March 1619 when he served the
Lord’s supper according to the presbyterian mode and lost his position
as a result; Aird and other friends bring her closer toward the non¬
conformist presbyterianism of Edinburgh and elsewhere, and it may
be that she begins to connect with the privy meetings which arise in
the time. She frets over whom to marry, and then does wed, without
enthusiasm, and seems to find as much joy in her marriage as one
might expect for such a depressive personality.
W. Sargant, Battle for the Mind: A Physiology of Conversion and Brain-Washing
(London, 1957), esp. chs. 5-7.
D. Mathew, Scotland under Charles I (London, 1955), 57; C. Lamer, Enemies of
God: the Witch-Hunt in Scotland (London, 1981); C. Lamer, Witchcraft and
Religion: the Politics of Popular Belief (Oxford, 1984), esp. eh. 2; L.A. Yeoman,
‘The Devil as doctor: witchcraft, Wodrow and the wider world,’ Scottish Archives, i
(1995), 94-5.
D.G. Mullan, Episcopacy in Scotland: the History of an Idea, 1560-1638
(Edinburgh, 1986), ch. 9.