preachers should have power to excommunicate, with civil penalties, and should be obeyed no less than God should be obeyed? Are these things part and parcel of "the Presbyterian creeds of to-day"? If so, the members of the Church of Scotland do not believe their creeds. If these beliefs are not parts of "the Presbyterian creeds of today," I do not attack these creeds. As to the soldier's letter, I quoted the document as published by the Scottish History Society in 1894. CAUSES OF SLUTTISHNESS. Meanwhile Mr Wanliss attributes the dirt of the Borderers to English invasions seventy years earlier, or more, than 1650 (pp. 50-52). He does not tell us that the Scottish raids of centuries produced the same results among English Borderers. Even Mr Wanliss cannot maintain that a desire to be "free and lousy," rather than "clean and conquered," produced the filthy state of Edinburgh as described by the patriotic author of 'The Tears of Scotland' and of 'Humphrey Clinker,' a century after the days of the Covenant. Our poet Dunbar, our municipal records, MARGARET WILSON. the young Wilsons, were children of Episcopalian parents, and, after their flight from their parents, were aged eighteen, sixteen, and thirteen.1 They fled, before they attained these ages, to "hills, bogs, and caves," to the society, I presume, of the Wanderers. I say that the drowning of Margaret Wilson is "a crime that would soil the calendar of hell." Mr Wanliss calls this phrase "hysterical." It is adapted from Sir Thomas Browne. I denounce the infamy of "the fanatic preachers or leaders who lured children into the wilderness to entangle I overstated my case here, them with sophistries rejected and shall, on opportunity, deby the honourable Presbyterians lete the incriminated passage. of Scotland." The "children," It was the duty of 1 History, vol. iii. p. 387. VOL. CLXXVIII.-NO. MLXXX. 2 M any not a third attended. The gentry, burghs, and commonalty 'a hundred for one abhorred it, and would never have instructed their Commissioners that way,' but the constituencies 'were overawed.' Several ministers, among them Guthry himself, did their best in the Assembly for the king, but the other Guthrie, he who came to be hanged, with the more precise brethren, held sway. Guthry represents Hamilton and Lanark, though they voted against the desertion, as lukewarm, and negligent of opportunities, some of their friends were accidentally absent, others on design, and some_downright deserted them,' says Burnet. 'All apprehended that some strange curse would overtake those who were active in this infamous business. A curse did overtake them; for when they saw the king in danger, and repented, and would have rescued him, they were thwarted and ruined by 'the prophets' to whom they had enslaved themselves." preachers should have power to excommunicate, with civil penalties, and should be obeyed no less than God should be obeyed? Are these things part and parcel of "the Presbyterian creeds of to-day"? If so, the members of the Church of Scotland do not believe their creeds. If these beliefs are not parts of "the Presbyterian creeds of today," I do not attack these creeds. As to the soldier's letter, I quoted the document as published by the Scottish History Society in 1894. CAUSES OF SLUTTISHNESS. Meanwhile Mr Wanliss attributes the dirt of the Borderers to English invasions seventy years earlier, or more, than 1650 (pp. 50-52). He does not tell us that the Scottish raids of centuries produced the same results among English Borderers. Even Mr Wanliss cannot maintain that a desire to be "free and lousy," rather than "clean and conquered," produced the filthy state of Edinburgh as described by the patriotic author of The Tears of Scotland' and of 'Humphrey Clinker,' a century after the days of the Covenant. Our poet 6 Dunbar, our municipal records, MARGARET WILSON. the young Wilsons, were children of Episcopalian parents, and, after their flight from their parents, were aged eighteen, sixteen, and thirteen.1 They fled, before they attained these ages, to "hills, bogs, and caves," to the society, I presume, of the Wanderers. I say that the drowning of Margaret Wilson is "a crime that would soil the calendar of hell." Mr Wanliss calls this phrase "hysterical." It is adapted from Sir Thomas Browne. I denounce the infamy of "the fanatic preachers or leaders who lured children into the wilderness to entangle I overstated my case here, them with sophistries rejected and shall, on opportunity, deby the honourable Presbyterians lete the incriminated passage. of Scotland." The "children," It was the duty of any 1 History, vol. iii. p. 387. VOL. CLXXVIII.-NO. MLXXX. 2 M preachers or lay leaders among the hill folk to send the younger Wilsons back to their suffering parents. So far, not further, I have a right to go. re The ministers taught the people to shun Renwick, who had issued the Apologetical Declaration of war by murder against the Government, the Conformist"viperous and malicious bishops and curates," and against witnesses summoned to give evidence by the Government. The people were quired to abjure this Declaration "in so far as it declares war against his sacred Majesty, and declares it lawful to kill all those who are employed by his Majesty." The abjuration, as Sheild (who took it) tells us, "was not scrupled at even by the generality of great professors and ministers." 1 But the brave and unfortunate girl of eighteen, Margaret Wilson, had been taught to differ from "the generality of ministers." In circumstances not understood, and after the women had received what Wodrow says was then regarded as "a material pardon," and although, by Act of Council, the Abjuration oath was to be put to no women who had not in a special manner been "active in these courses," Margaret Wilson and Margaret M'Lauchlan were cruelly drowned on May 11, 1685. The "deeply guilty men were the local authorities, in Wodrow's opinion, and I call their deed one that "would soil the calendar of hell." I am wedded to that opinion. 99 Mr Wanliss remarks that "it is a fashion with writers of Mr Lang's stamp to decry Wodrow as a chronicler" (p. 73). When Wodrow has documents he is very accurate, though, perhaps for lack of documents, he once says that a woman was hanged who was not hanged. In the first draft of my book I wasted much indignation on the hanging of this woman, but then I found that, despite Wodrow, she was not hanged at all. This passage, of course, Mr Wanliss omits. "What place was there for Montrose," I ask, "among the dull misgovernors of the Restoration?" 1 What place was there for Claverhouse! No man regrets more than I that he did not, before 1679, return to foreign fields of honourable warfare. It is in hell that Scott shows us Claverhouse, "as beautiful as when he lived, with his long, dark, curled locks streaming down over his laced buff-coat, and his left hand always on his right spule-blade, to hide the wound that the silver bullet had made. He sat apart from them all, and looked at them with melancholy, haughty countenance, while the rest hallooed, and sung, and laughed that the room rang." All three have left such remarks on the Covenanters as never came from my pen,and no "Anglicised" pen wrote "Bonnie Dundee." I cannot follow Mr Wanliss into the relations between the Churches of England and Scotland at this moment. My object, in a history of the seventeenth century, was not "to make it appear that" the Church of Scotland "to-day is not a Church fit for intelligent and cultured men and cultured men" (p. 95). I am not absolutely an idiot. By scrupulously suppressing all such passages, by imputing to me the vilest and most absurd of motives, and by his other "critical" methods, Mr Wanliss, I think, has failed in producing a correct set of statements about myself and my volumes. But I doubt not that he has made on his public the impression which he desired to make, and I congratulate him on a success with which I can I am "Anglicised," says Mr MY "MANY BLUNDERS." read Mr Wanliss to discover what blunders I had made. I found just two-errors of unguarded phrases and of overstatement. All the rest of the "many blunders" attributed to me were blunders made by my critic. By the way, Mr Wanliss has disappointed me! I read in an inadequate review of his treatise that he had exposed my "many blunders.' That caused me to read the "Critical Review" of Mr Wanliss. All historians blunder: even Mr Gardiner was not immaculate; even Mr Froude and Lord Macaulay glided into errors of health, happiness, and long fact. Consciously fallible, I life. Here I say farewell to Mr Wanliss, and wish him 1 History, vol. iii. p. 221. |
