got rid of such a man as this, must be left to the reader. He went to Holland, where he lived tili August 1672, and then entered into the joy of the Lord. While in Holland he made a Latin version of the Old Testament, which, though approved by many great men, was never printed.

The same day, Mr James Gardiner and Mr Robert Trail, were in like manner sentenced to banishment for refusing to take the oath of allegiance, and obliged to subscribe each of them a bond as Mr Livingstone had done, with this difference, that they were to remove in a month; however the council was pleased to give Mr Trail a little more time.

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On the 16th of December, Mr John Menzies and Mr George Meldrum appeared before the council, and declaring their readiness to comply with the present established churchgovernment, so far as to join in presbyteries and synods, and to take the oath of allegiance, they were recommended to the archbishop of St Andrews in order to their restitution. We shall see how burdensome this compliance became to Mr Menzies before his death. Mr Meldrum was ordained by the presbytery of Aberdeen 1659, but was stopt in the exercise of his ministry by the above-mentioned act at Glasgow, about fourteen days before the bishop of Aberdeen's first diocesan synod, at which the bishop passed a sentence of deposition against him and the learned and pious Mr Menzies, for not subscribing to the oath of canonical obedience, though they offered submission to the present church-government; ever, the council, finding them so far willing, recommended them both to the primate, in order to their being both restored. When this was presented to the bishop, he readily promised to cbey it, and never spoke to them one word of the oath of canonical obedience: when, in his letter to the bishop of Aberdeen, he signified that they were willing to own the government, Mr Meldrum refused to receive it, unless he added this qualification, so far as to join in presbyteries and synods; to which the primate agreed, since they would take it in no other terms. However, Mr Meldrum declared his sorrow for that submission, though he never took the oath of canonical obedience. He was remarkably useful, with his colleague Mr Menzies, in Aberdeen, against the Quakers and Jesuits, till the self-contradictory test turned him out of that city. And after he had, with many faithful ministers, suffered no small persecution till King James's toleration, he was settled at Kilwinning, and from thence translated to Edinburgh, where he filled the chair of divinity with much repu

tation.

On the 25d of December, Mr John Neave appeared before the council, and was obliged to sign a bond to remove out of

the nation against the first of February, upon his refusing the oath of allegiance; and for the same cause, Mr John Cameron was ordered to confine himself within the bounds of Lochaber. Mr James Nasmith and Mr Samuel Austin were referred to the commissioner, who was to deal with them as he saw proper; but he soon left the country, and it seems he remit→ ted Mr Nasmith to the council, who ordered him to confine himself within the bounds of the sheriffdom of Merse. Mr Alexander Dunlop, minister at Paisley, was likewise sentenced to be banished, for the same reason with the rest, but happened to be overlooked. Mr Alexander Gordon was prevented by a violent fever, from being ordered before them. Thus Messrs Livingstone, Trail, Brown, Neave, and Gardiner went over to Holland, which, at that time was the asylum of the banished, merely for refusing the oath of allegiance, though all of them were willing to take it in the same sense the managers said they had themselves taken it..

CHAP. V.

Of the dismal effects of the ejection of near 400 Ministers. Of the acts and proceedings of the Council and Parliament, the execution of Lord Waristoun and the sufferings of others during the year 1663.

BY

Y the act of Glasgow, spoke of in the preceding chapter, above a third part of the ministers in Scotland were thrust from their charges, amounting to near 400. And the hardship was the greater, that, generally speaking, they were persons of remarkable grace and eminent gifts, godly, and laborious, a great many of them learned and able ministers, all of them singularly dear to their people, and most of them had suffered under the usurpation for their loyalty to the king, and refusing the tender; so that all the presbyterians in Scotland suffered in a most sensible part, by being deprived of them, especially as those who were intruded into their charges were men of a quite different character.

Bishop Burnet says, that the prejudices of the people againstepiscopacy was out of measure increased by the incumbents, who were put in the places of the ejected preachers, who were generally very mean and despicable in all respects; that they were the worst preachers he ever heard; were ignorant to a reproach, and many of them openly vicious; they were a disgrace to their sacred functions, and were indeed the dreg and refuse of the northern parts; those of them who rose above contempt or scandal, were men of such violent tempers, that they were as much hated, as the others were despised.

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'It is easy then to perceive how dismal the circumstances of presbyterians were at that time, when so many places, espe cially in the west and south, were left destitute; for the most part in the north country conformed. They could not in conscience hear the new incumbents, called by the country people curates, because in so doing, they would have countenanced those who had broken the covenant, and overturned the whole work of reformation: this would have been a vir◄ tual acknowledgment of the authority of the prelates, and an approbation of that wicked act by which their own lawful ministers were ejected. Besides, these curates had not the qualifications of ministers; for they were neither sound in the faith, nor moral in their practice; neither had they a right to officiate in the places where they were thrust in, because, instead of having the consent and approbation of the people, they were imposed upon them by compulsion and violence.

As the people could not hear the new incumbents, in many places they had twenty miles to go before they could hear sermon; some of them repaired to the older ministers, who were not affected by the act of Glasgow; they who could not reach them, frequented the family-worship, and exercises of the ejected ministers. And the numbers that came to their houses were so great, that several of them were obliged to preach without doors, and at length to go to the open fields. This was the original of field-meetings in Scotland, which afterwards made so great a noise, that, some years after, it was made death by law, first to the minister, and then to the hearers.

The ejection of so many excellent men could not fail to lay the foundation of much distraction and trouble, especially as it was for adhering to their known and professed principles, even to the doctrine, worship, discipline, and government of the church of Scotland, and to those sacred covenants which they had frequently sworn, and often renewed. This was the cause for which they were obliged to wander, with their numerous families, many of them knew not whither, and that too in the winter season: but a good and gracious God wonderfully provided for them and theirs, to their own confirmation and amazement.

Scotland was never witness to such a sabbath as the last on which these ministers preached. It had not its parallel, except to the presbyterians in England on the 17th of August the preceding year; for it was a day of mourning and lamentation, and the beginning of great sorrow to the godly through the

nation.

Before considering the acts of council and parliament, this year, I observe, that in February died Mr David Mitchell, who

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was made first bishop of Aberdeen after the restoration, though his character did not merit any elevation in the church, and was succeeded by Mr Alexander Burnet.

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This Mr Mitchell had determined to go to the church of Mas ryculter, in the presbytery of Aberdeen, and declare the same vacant, but, as I am assured by a worthy minister now at Aber deen, he died the Saturday night before; so that the pious and excellent Mr Leask, minister of that parish, notwithstanding his non-conformity, possessed his church till the year 1670, either, as my informer says, through some indulgence of Bishop Scou gal, or some remarkable restraint he was under. When Mr Leask was on his death-bed, the episcopal incumbent of Peterculter went to see him, and asked him what his thoughts were now. To which the holy man replied, I am dying in the faith of what I have held, and am as full of glory as a clay vessel can hold then bowed his head and died. There are other two instances of presbyterian ministers in the synod of Aberdeen that kept their parishes notwithstanding the act of ejection, of which I have an account from the same person, which may be depended upon, viz. that of Mr Dumbar, minister at Kearn in the presbytery of Alford, who, partly protected by Lord Forbes, whose parish-minister he was, and partly by his insignificant benefice of 300 merks, continued many years, till he died, and Mr Gilbert Clark, minister at New-deer in the presbytery of Deer, having been chaplain to Colonel Keith, afterwards Earl Marshal, and called king in Buchan, was protected in his church by him. till the time of the test, when the earl could not keep himself in any public office, without taking that self-contradictory oath. Mr Wodrow has given a large list of the ejected ministers, &c. Append. No. 37, to which I must refer.

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When the Earl of Middleton went to London, about the end of the last year, he met with a very cold reception from his majesty; for the Earl of Lauderdale his rival, had opened up unjust proceedings with respect to the act of fines, whereupon his majesty wrote to his privy-council in Scotland, dated January the 23d, ordering them to issue out a proclamation for suspending the execution of the said act till farther orders. The council received this letter on the 12th of February, and the same day drew up a proclamation accordingly. But next day they received a letter from Middleton, desiring them, in his majesty's name, to do nothing in that affair, and therefore they stopt the publishing of the proclamation, and recommended to the lord chancellor to write to the commissioner Middleton to signify the same to his majesty. The king was so displeased, upon receiv ing this information, that, on the 10th of March, he sent another letter to the council requiring the orders he had given in his former to be punctually obeyed. And therefore the chanceller

ordered the proclamation to be published at the cross of Edinburgh, for which he had the council's approbation and thanks. Lauderdale having now got the king's ear, managed his affairs so well that Middleton was obliged to resign all his places.

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During these things Sharp was prevailed with to go to court. He promised to the Earl of Middleton's friends that he would stick firm to him, and lay before the king, that his standing or falling must be the standing or falling of the church. Of this the Earl of Lauderdale had advice sent him. Yet when' Sharp came to London, and saw that the king was alienated from Middleton, he resolved to make great submissions to Lauderdale. When he reproached him for his engagements to Middleton, he denied all, and said, he had never gone farther than what was decent, considering his post. He also denied that he had wrote to the king in his favour; but the king had given the original letter to Lord Lauderdale, who upon that shewed it to Sharp, with which he was so struck, that he fell a crying in the most abject manner. He begged pardon for it, and said, what could a company of poor men refuse to the Earl of Mid

dleton, who had done so much for them, and had them so entirely in his power! Lauderdale, upon this, comforted him, and. said he would forgive them all that was past, and would serve them and the church at another rate than Lord Middleton was capable of doing. So Sharp became wholly his.'

Middleton after this lived in obscurity, till the governor's place at Tangier fell vacant by the death of the Lord Rutherford, when the king was prevailed upon to confer that post upon him, as a reward for establishing prelacy in Scotland. And thus, after he had banished so many worthy and excellent ministers, he was himself sent to die in a foreign land. He lived in contempt there for a little while; and at last, by a fall, he broke the bone of his right arm, and the broken bone, at another fall down pair of stairs, pierced his side, and wounded him in such a manner, that he first turned stupid and very quickly died. Mr Wodrow says, that, at the time of taking the covenant, such was his zeal for it, that, coming from the place where he and several more had taken it, he said to some gentlemen, and others about him, that this was the pleasantest day ever he had seen, and if ever he should do any thing against that blessed work he had been engaging in, holding up his right hand, he wished to God that might be his death.' Thus fell the great overturner of the reformation in Scotland.

Upon Middleton's resignation Lauderdale had the management of the Scots affairs committed to him, and came down to Scotland along with the Earl of Rothes, who was made the king's commissioner to the ensuing session of parliament, and the Earl of Twoeddale was made president of the council.