In 1767, Watt was employed as a surveyor. See Muirhead's Life of Watt, 2nd edit. London, 1859, p. 167.
409
I will quote, in a single passage, the opinions of an eminent German and of an eminent Scotchman. ‘Dr. Spurzheim, when he last visited Scotland, remarked that the Scotch appeared to him to be the most priest-ridden nation in Europe; Spain and Portugal not excepted. After having seen other countries, I can understand the force of this observation.’ Notes on the United States of North America by George Combe, vol. iii. p. 32, Edinburgh, 1841.
410
In 1638, one of the most eminent of the Scotch clergy writes: ‘Our maine feare’ is ‘to have our religion lost, our throats cutted, our poore countrey made ane English province, to be disposed upon for ever hereafter at the will of a Bishope of Canterburie.’ Baillie's Letters and Journals, vol. i. p. 66. Compare p. 450. ‘This kirk is a free and independant kirk, no less then the kingdom is a free and independant kingdom; and as our own Patriots can best judge what is for the good of the kingdom, so our own Pastors should be most able to judge what form of worship beseemeth our Reformation, and what serveth most for the good of the People.’ Two generations later, one of the most popular arguments against the Union was, that it might enable the English to force episcopacy upon Scotland. See De Foe's History of the Union between England and Scotland, pp. 222, 284, 359. ‘The danger of the Church of Scotland, from the suffrages of English bishops,’ &c.
411
The hatred which the Scotch naturally felt against the English for having inflicted so much suffering upon them, was intense about the middle of the seventeenth century, notwithstanding the temporary union of the two nations against Charles. In 1652, ‘the criminal record is full of cases of murder of English soldiers. They were cut off by the people whenever a fitting opportunity occurred, and were as much detested in Scotland as the French soldiers were in Spain during the Peninsular war.’ The Spottiswoode Miscellany, vol. ii. p. 98, Edinburgh, 1845. See also p. 167: ‘a nationall quarrell, and not for the Stuarts.’
412
Browne's History of the Highlands, vol. ii. pp. 75–77: ‘the English army was augmented to twenty thousand men, and citadels erected in several towns, and a long train of military stations drawn across the country to curb the inhabitants.’
413
Clarendon, under the year 1655, says, ‘Though Scotland was vanquished, and subdued, to that degree, that there was no place nor person who made the least show of opposing Cromwell; who, by the administration of Monk, made the yoke very grievous to the whole nation; yet the preachers kept their pulpit license; and, more for the affront that was offered to presbytery, than the conscience of what was due to majesty, many of them presumed to pray for the king; and generally, though secretly, exasperated the minds of the people against the present government.’ Clarendon's History of the Rebellion, p. 803.
414
And, what they must have felt very acutely, he would not go to hear them preach. A writer of that time informs us that, even in 1648, when Cromwell was in Edinburgh, ‘he went not to their churches; but it is constantle reported that ewerie day he had sermons in his oune ludginge, himself being the preacher, whensoewer the spirit came upon him; which took him lyk the fitts of an ague, somtyms twise, sometyms thryse in a day.’ Gordon's Britane's Distemper, p. 212. In 1650, according to another contemporary, ‘he made stables of all the churches for hes horsses quhersoeuer he came, and burned all the seatts and pewes in them; riffled the ministers housses, and distrayed ther cornes.’ Balfour's Annales of Scotland, vol. iv. p. 88. The clergy, on the other hand, employing a resource with which their profession has always been familiar, represented Cromwell as opposing Providence, because he was opposing them. Rutherford (Religious Letters, reprinted Glasgow, 1824, p. 346) says, that he fought ‘against the Lord's secret ones;’ and Row (Continuation of Blair's Autobiography, p. 335), under the year 1658, triumphantly observes: ‘In the beginning of September this year, the Protector, that old fox, died. It was observed, as a remarkable cast of divine providence, that he died upon the 3d of September, which he, glorying of routing of our armies at Dunbar and Worcester on that day, used to call his day. On that same very day the Just Judge called him to an account,’ &c.
415
See contemporary notices of this, in Nicoll's Diary, p. 110; and in The Diary of Mr. John Lamont of Newton, pp. 56, 57. But the best account is that given by Baillie, in a letter to Calamy, dated Glasgow, 27th July 1653. He writes: ‘That on the 20th of July last, when our Generall Assemblie was sett in the ordinarie tyme and place, Lieutenant-Colonell Cotterall besett the church with some rattes of musqueteirs and a troup of horse; himself (after our fast, wherein Mr. Dickson and Mr. Dowglas had two gracious sermons) entered the Assemblie-house, and immediately after Mr. Dickson the Moderator his prayer, required audience; wherein he inquired, If we did sitt there by the authority of the Parliament of the Commonwealth of England? or of the Commanders-in-chiefe of the English forces? or of the English Judges in Scotland? The Moderator replyed, That we were ane Ecclesiasticall synod, ane Spirituall court of Jesus Christ, which medled not with anything Civile; that our authoritie wes from God, and established by the lawes of the land yet standing unrepealed; that, by the Solemn League and Covenant, the most of the English army stood obliedged to defend our Generall Assemblie. When some speeches of this kind had passed, the Lieutenant-Colonell told us, his order was to dissolve us; whereupon he commanded all of us to follow him, else he would drag us out of the rowme. When we had entered a Protestation of this unheard-of and unexampled violence, we did ryse and follow him; he ledd us all through the whole streets a myle out of the towne, encompassing us with foot-companies of musqueteirs, and horsemen without; all the people gazing and mourning as at the saddest spectacle they had ever seen. When he had ledd us a myle without the towne, he then declared what further he had in commission, That we should not dare to meet any more above three in number; and that against eight o'clock to-morrow, we should depart the towne, under paine of being guiltie of breaking the publick peace: And the day following, by sound of trumpet, we were commanded off towne under the paine of present imprisonment. Thus our Generall Assemblie, the glory and strength of our Church upon earth, is, by your souldiarie, crushed and trod under foot, without the least provocatione from us, at this time, either in word or deed.’ Baillie's Letters and Journals, vol. iii. pp. 225, 226.
416
In August 1640, the army marched into England; and ‘it was very refreshfull to remark, that after we came to ane quarter at night, there was nothing almost to be heard throughout the whole army but singing of Psalms, prayer, and reading of Scripture by the souldiers in their severall hutts.’ Select Biographies, edited by Mr. Tweedie for the Wodrow Society, vol. i. p. 163. ‘The most zealous among them boasted, they should carry the triumphant banners of the covenant to Rome itself.’ Arnot's History of Edinburgh, p. 124. In 1644, the celebrated divine, Andrew Cant, was appointed by the Commissioners of the General Assembly, ‘to preach at the opening of the Parliament, wherein he satisfied their expectation fully. For, the main point he drove at in his sermon, was to state an opposition betwixt King Charles and King Jesus (as he was pleased to speak) and upon that account to press resistance to King Charles for the interest of King Jesus. It may be wondered that such doctrine should have relish'd with men brought up in the knowledge of the Scriptures; and yet, such was the madness of the times, that none who preach'd in public since the beginning of the Troubles, had been so cried up as he was for that sermon.’ Guthry's Memoirs, pp. 136, 137.
417
‘The rooting out of prelacy and the wicked hierarchy therein so obviously described, is the main duty.’ Naphtali, or the Wrestlings of the Church of Scotland, pp. 53, 54. This refers to the Covenant of 1643. So, too, the continuator of Row's History of the Kirk, p. 521, says, under the year 1639, that the object of the war was, ‘to withstand the prelaticall faction and malignant, countenanced by the kinge in his owne persone.’ Compare the outbreak of the Reverend Samuel Rutherford, against ‘the accursed and wretched prelates, the Antichrist's first-born, and the first fruit of his foul womb.’ Rutherford's Religious Letters,
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