and gentlemen even indulged in the dance in the exuberance of triumph; and one young lord, touched with the fervour of a spinning dervish or marabout, was only held back by strong arms from tossing his rings, chains, jewels, and all that was precious about him into the fire.

But there were some who were still stiffnecked enough to dote upon the Covenants in that mad, roaring time-so-called Remonstrants or Protesters, extreme Presbyterians, who saw nothing worth living for but to stamp their "pure and spotless" church polity over the whole land-who had a fervid way of moving heaven and earth to that end in prayers, sermons, petitions, and pamphlets. Patrick Gillespie, who held the pen to the royal scapegrace in 1650, and Samuel Rutherford, who had a passion for the tropes and figures of the Song of Solomon, and wrote a book against tyrants, entitled "Lex Rex," were the burning and shining lights of this small but loud party. In August a dozen of them were seized in Edinburgh, while concocting some wholesome advice for the benefit of the royal rake about the ceremonies of his chapel, and an honest but imprudent reminder of his former solemn approval of the Covenants. They were shut up in the castle; they were threatened with a process of treason; they remained as inflexible as adamant on the point that they had a right to petition.

One of them, the Reverend James Guthrie, was specially detested by General Middleton, the King's chief Scottish adviser, a fierce military upstart who had followed war as his trade since boyhood. The untamable tongue of the minister of Stirling might do a deal of mischief yet, if it were allowed to wag, for he was little more than forty years of age. Banishment was the severest penalty hitherto imposed on preachers for their opinions. But this man had been the author of papers full of "damnable and execrable" slanders against the Royal Martyr and other crowned heads, and had "let fly at the King" in his sermons ten years before. In February he was indicted for treason, fought his own battle, and was condemned to death. He received the sentence with a light heart. It had long been the wish of his life to die a martyr. In the streets of Edinburgh he had once had a vision of this blessed consummation. On the 1st of June, 1661, in the same week that saw Argyll's head fall, he suffered martyrdom. He discoursed from the ladder for an hour with as much composure as if he were only delivering one of his usual sermons. "I take God to record upon my soul I would not exchange this scaffold," he cried, "with the palace or mitre of the greatest prelate in Britain." When the napkin was laid upon his face, he lifted it and shouted, "The Covenants, the Covenants, shall yet be Scotland's

rejoicing!" With the words of the aged Simeon on his lips he was executed. His "dying testimony" was preserved as sweet and precious. When his head was cut off to be spiked on one of the city gates, the body was tenderly dressed in church by a number of ladies, who dipped their handkerchiefs in the blood and carried them away as precious memorials to be held up to heaven in their invocations. There was another remarkable incident at this strange scene. "There came in a pleasant young gentleman, and poured out a bottle of rich ointment on the body, which filled the whole church with a noble perfume." Weeks after, it was said drops of blood fell from the withered head on the cover of Middleton's coach, and no art of man could wipe them out.

This infamous execution failed to raise in Scotland anything like universal indignation; partly because the Presbyterian camp had long been divided into two parties that were ready to fly at each other's throat, and partly because there had arisen a new generation which rebelled against the social tight-lacing of the Commonwealth. But it sounded the keynote of the policy of the Stuarts; and we shall see how, step by step, the faithful adherents of the Covenants were "cabined, cribbed confined," until at last they rose in arms, were butchered and banished, gave the Stuarts over to Satan, and were shot down remorse lessly by the dragoons of Claverhouse in the wilds of Ayr and Galloway.

JENNY GEDDES; THE COVENANTS.

Blunder after blunder had been committed by the Scottish Solomon and the "Royal Martyr" in their attempts at the personal government of democratic Scotland. King James, once seated on the English throne. sought to thrust prelacy upon his native country, although he had at one time assured the Presbyterians of Scotland that they possessed the purest Church on earth. When some distasteful doctrines were about to be ratified in the Black Parliament of 1621, and the King's commissioner rose to touch the Act with the tip of the sceptre, a vivid flash of lightning, then a second and a third, gleamed through the window, amid load claps of thunder; a storm of hail and rais swept across the northern metropolis, and the streets ran like rivers. Many declared that the wrath of heaven had descended on a deed so impious; other readers of God's judgments likened the omen to the majestic sanctions of Sinai.

In the time of the first Charles, an old woman in Edinburgh, named Jenny Geddes, rose up in church one summer day, and hurled her stool at a surpliced dean who was about to read Laud's liturgy, shouting out the immortal words, "Villain, dost thou say the

mass at my lug?" This was not, as Charles fondly thought, but the idle and foolish word of a scolding virago: the whizz of that cabbage-woman's chair across the Kirk of St. Giles was a symbol and prelude of the wrath of Scotland which drove the tyrant from his throne. Nobles, gentlemen, ministers, and the people erected tables in an Edinburgh churchyard (1638), and there, and all over the excited country, signed, sometimes with their own blood, a document known as the National Covenant, abjuring prelacy and binding its subscribers to stand up for their own religion and Presbyterian government. The foolish King marched with an English (to them a foreign) army against the covenanters, the historic name of those who maintained that the sovereign had no right to dictate to assemblies on religious matters; but "old crooked" Leslie waited for him at Duns Law with the blue banner; and in the next year the blue-bonneted "Jockies" sent his riff-raff redcoats flying in a panic at Newburn.

The Solemn League and Covenant (1643) was another memorable document. In this the parliaments of England and Scotland joined hands for the mutual defence of the true religion, and for the extirpation of popery and prelacy in England, Scotland, and Ireland. King Charles would not accept it after his surrender to the Scottish forces in 1646. He was accordingly given over to the tender mercies of the English Parliament, and, as all the world knows, the "royal martyr," denounced by his foes as "tyrant, traitor, murderer, and public enemy," was beheaded on the 30th day of January, 1649.

THE FARCE THAT CLOSED WITH A TRAGEDY; PRINCE CHARLES ACCEPTS THE COVENANTS.

The merry monarch, who "never said a foolish thing nor ever did a wise one," acted in 1650 one of the most selfish farces on record. It is ludicrous if we contrast the secret grimaces of the young scapegrace with the grim countenances and credulous loyalty of the Scotsmen who gazed on him, but tragic when we view it in the fierce light of the coming years and see the faithless debauchee a secret papist--thrust episcopacy into the pulpits of Scotland, and in clearest breach of his vow to the patriots who fought and bled for him against Cromwell, suffer and prescribe them to be eaten out of house and home, fined, plundered, imprisoned, sent into slavery, hunted to their holes and shot down as vermin. On the 16th day of August the clever prince, then twenty years of age, was in the tiny city of Dunfermline, the ancient residence of many of his predecessors. Before him was spread out a "most remarkable" document, containing

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things that were "doubtless of hard digestion." The lad expresses deep contrition before God for his father's opposition to the cause of the Scottish Church and for the idolatry of his esteemed mother; declares that he had sworn to the Covenants, not 'upon any sinister and crooked design, for attaining his own ends, but so far as human weakness will permit, in the truth and sincerity of his heart;" and promises to extirpate popery, prelacy, and all schisms from every part of his dominions. The Rev. Patrick Gillespie held out the pen, appealing to him not to sign the paper, no not for three kingdoms, if he could not do so with his soul and conscience. But Charles "could swallow anything," as occasion demanded. "Mr. Gillespie, Mr. Gillespie, I am satisfied, I am satisfied,” he exclaimed, and signed the indigestible document. We do not wonder that Charles in later days often spoke with bitter jest of his unfortunate Scottish trip, and maintained that Presbytery was no religion for a gentleman. THE PRIMATE SHARP; THE DRUNKEN ACT; "AULD SANDY'S" FAREWELL.

Scotland, Guthrie's execution showed, was not to have the theocracy, the New Jerusalem, of the Protesters. But still most of the ministers were not attached to this party; they were "sober" Presbyterians; and Charles assured them in 1660 that the Scottish Church would remain as it had been settled by law. He kept his word, but in a strange way. The "terrible parliament" of 1661 acted as if its members had just risen from a drunken bout: the Covenants were condemned as illegal; all Acts since 1633 were swept away; the royal supremacy in Church and State was declared; the settlement of the Church's government was pronounced an inherent right of the Crown. The Scottish courtiers hastened to the scramble in London. In the teeth of the covenanting Lauderdale and others, Charles declared for prelacy: publicly he branded the Presbyterian Church as violent and hostile to the royal prerogative, out of harmony with the Churches of England and Ireland; privately he said it was no religion for a gentleman. James Sharp, the man whom the Scottish ministers had trusted as their own souls to manage their affairs at Court, was offered the honour of primate, and dishonourably accepted it. Scotland was rolled back to where she stood in 1637.

"Take it, and the curse of God with it," the gentle Robert Douglas is reported to have said as he clapped Sharp's shoulder and shut the door. And the curse did come. He shared with Middleton, Lauderdale, Mackenzie, Dalziel, Lagg, and Clavers, the fierce obloquy of the covenanters. He was called a monster of hypocrisy, perjury, and vileness.. He was the murderer of his own child of

shame, and had buried the innocent babe under the hearthstone. He was a sorcerer; an old woman saw him closeted with the Prince of Darkness after midnight. Such was the mud thrown at him. Yet James Sharp had his small virtues. His friend Cromwell had called him "Sharp of that Ilk." We have admired his beautiful penmanship. His early letters, too, have the flavour of a graceful piety. The perfume quickly evaporated under the sunshine of royal smiles. He was a despot's tool, and, like the proverbial beggar, rode at full gallop. Nature had destined him for an attorney's clerk; and in a few years some wild Scotsmen stabbed him horribly on Magus Moor, after they had prayed long and often and had heard the voice of God.

The covenants were burned and caricatured. Patronage, which had been abolished in 1649, was restored. Ministers who had been installed since that date by popular election were to be presented by the patrons and collated by the bishops; they were to observe the 29th of May as the royal anniversary; they and all persons in public trust were to sign a declaration against the covenants. It was thought that this last would finish the career of Lauderdale; Stair boggled at it, but the earl laughed, and declared that he would sign a cartful of such oaths before he would lose his place. Some ministers, like Donald Cargill and John Livingstone, who preached with Pentecostal fervour and success, would not celebrate the anniversary because they disliked all holy days, and would not take the oath of allegiance as it was expressed; they were summoned before the Council and banished beyond the Tay or into foreign lands. The Council-the Star Chamber of Scotland-went into the west, and learned that the bishops were mere ciphers. The "Drunken Act" of Glasgow banished all ministers from their houses, parishes, and presbyteries who did not receive collation by a certain day.

Three hundred and fifty ministers refused to yield to the mandate of the "Drunken Council." The peasants of the west and south, clad in black and white plaids and scarlet mantles, or in suits of hodden grey, flocked in thousands to listen to the farewell sermons of their devoted pastors. Perhaps the strangest of all these partings was that of "Old Sandy" Peden, of Glenluce, the Thomas the Rhymer of the Scottish covenanters. He is described as of diminutive stature, but with an athletic frame and elastic step; long dishevelled hair floated on his shoulders from beneath his blue bonnet; he had a sallow complexion and dark, penetrating eyes. His voice was shrill, but he was endowed with a fervid, ready, and homely eloquence peculiarly fitted to rivet the attention and stir the feelings of

the Scottish peasant. At his farewell to his flock in Galloway, the vast multitude burst forth into sobs and tears. When the long service was closed with the benediction, the venerable seer descended from the tent with the Bible in his hands, while the slow music of a psalm rose to heaven in the twilight from thousands of lips. The hymn of praise ended in a deep silence, amid which the solemn multitude beheld their pastor lock the door of the church, and then knock thrice upon it with the back of the pulpit Bible, uttering the words, which were deemed prophetic "I arrest thee, in my Master's name, that never any enter thee but such as come in at the door as I did!"

THE RISE OF LAUDERDALE.

The Scottish dilution of episcopacy must not be imagined as having any doctrinal or ceremonial likeness to that of England There was no surplice, no altar, no liturgy, no kneeling at communion, no signing with the cross in baptism; the Confession of Faith was that of the first reformers; there were kirk sessions, presbyteries, and synods. But the spirit of the evil thing was in it. There were lay patrons instead of the divine call of the people; King Charles had taken the supremacy that belonged to King Jesus: hierarchy was hierarchy, and led back the suspicious Presbyterian eye to the mediav iniquities of Rome.

The recruits who were thrust into the churches of the ejected were far from being able to fill the shoes of their predecessors. Bishop Burnet declared they were the worst preachers he ever heard. They were the scum of the north,-ignorant, mean, violent; some of them were addicted to swearing, drunkenness, and other vices. The people treated them with contempt: they received them with tears and begged them to be gone; they reasoned and argued with them; they stole the clapper of the church bell; they barricaded the doors against them; they poured ants into their boots on the way to the pulpit. A ridiculous tumult at Irongray, near Dumfries, where John Welsh, the sturdy great-grandsor of Knox had ministered, threw the Court into such alarm that it was rumoured that a huge and wild army would soon cross the Border, although the simple fact was that a number of base women had assembled in the kirkyard and driven off the curate and a band ct armed soldiers with no other weapons than the stones of the highway. The Earl of Linlithgow was sent down with three hundred soldiers to quarter in the parish, and the poar inhabitants had to pay for their whistle to the tune of half-a-crown a day for each horseman, and a shilling for each foot-soldier. But it was impossible to gain respect for the curates. Boys would pelt them in the pulp