When he came to Edinburgh, every circumstance of elabo rate rage and insult was put in practice by order of the parliament. At the gate of the city he was met by the magistrates, and put into a new cart, purposely made with a high chair or bench, where he was placed, that the people might have a full view of him. He was bound with a cord, drawn over his breast and shoulders, and fastened through holes made in the cart. The hangman then took off the hat of the noble prisoner, and rode himself before the cart in his livery, and with his bonnet on; the other officers, who were taken prisonors with the marquis, walking two and two before them. The populace, more generous and humane, when they saw so mighty a change of fortune in this great man, so lately their dread and terror, into whose hands the magistrates, a few years before, had delivered on their knees the keys of the city, were struck with compassion, and viewed him with silent tears and admiration. The preachers next Sunday exclaimed against this movement of rebel nature, as they termed it; and reproached the people with their profane tenderness towards the capital enemy of piety and religion. When he was carried before the parliament, which was then sitting, Loudon, the chancellor, in a violent declamation, reproached him with the breach of the national covenant, which he had subscribed; his rebellion against God, the king, and the kingdom; and the many horrible murders, treasons, and impieties for which he was now to be brought to condign punishment. Montrose, in his answer, maintained the same superiority above his enemies, to which, by his fame and great actions, as well as by the consciousness of a good cause, he was justly entitled. He told the parliament, that since the king, as he was informed, had so far avowed their authority as to enter into a treaty with them, he now appeared uncovered before their tribunal: a respect which, while they stood in open defiance to their sovereign, they would in vain have required of him: that he acknowledged, with infinite shame and remorse, the errors of his early conduct, when their plausible pretences had seduced him to tread with them the paths of rebellion, and bear arms against his prince and country that his following services, he hoped, had sufficiently testified his repentance; and his death would now atone for that guilt, the only one with which he could justly reproach himself. That in all his warlike enterprises he was warranted by that commission which he had received from his and their master, against whose lawful authority they had erected their standard: that to venture his life for his sovereign was the least part of his merit: he had even thrown down his arms in obedience to the sacred commands of the king; and had resigned to them the victory, which, in defiance of all their efforts, he was still enabled to dispute with them: that no blood had ever been shed by him but in the field of battle; and many persons were now in his eye, many now dared to pronounce sentence of death upon him, whose life, forfeited by the laws of war, he had formerly saved from the fury of the soldiers: that he was sorry to find no better testimony of their return to allegiance than the murder of so faithful a subject, in whose death the king's commission must be at once so highly injured and affronted that as to himself, they had in vain endeavored to vilify and degrade him by all their studied indignities: the justice of his cause, he knew, would ennoble any fortune; nor had he other affliction than to see the authority of his prince, with which he was invested, treated with so much ignominy: and that he now joyfully followed, by a like unjust sentence, his late sovereign; and should be happy, if in his future destiny he could follow him to the same blissful mansions, where his piety and humane virtues had already, without doubt, secured him an eternal recompense. Montrose's sentence was next pronounced against him: "That he, James Graham," (for this was the only name they vouchsafed to give him,) "should next day be carried to Edinburgh Cross, and there be hanged on a gibbet, thirty feet high, for the space of three hours: then be taken down, his head be cut off upon a scaffold, and affixed to the prison: his legs and arms be stuck up on the four chief towns of the kingdom: his body be buried in the place appropriated for common malefactors; except the church, upon his repentance, should take off his excommunication. The clergy, hoping that the terrors of immediate death had now given them an advantage over their enemy, flocked about him, and insulted over his fallen fortunes. They pronounced his damnation, and assured him that the judgment which he was so soon to suffer, would prove but an easy prologue to that which he must undergo hereafter. They next offered to pray with him but he was too well acquainted with those forms of imprecation which they called prayers. "Lord, vouch safe yet to touch the obdurate heart of this proud, incorrigible sinner; this wicked, perjured, traitorous, and profane person, who refuses to hearken to the voice of thy church." Such were the petitions which he expected they would, according to custom, offer up for him. He told them, that they were a miserably deluded and deluding people; and would shortly bring their country under the most insupportable servitude, to which any nation had ever been reduced. "For my part, added he, "I am much prouder to have my head affixed to the place where it is sentenced to stand, than to have my picture hang in the king's bed-chamber. So far from being sorry that my quarters are to be sent to four cities of the kingdom, I wish I had limbs enow to be dispersed into all the cities of Christendom, there to remain as testimonies in favor of the cause for which I suffer." This sentiment, that very evening, while in prison, he threw into verse. The poem remains; a single monument of his heroic spirit, and no despicable proof of his poetical genius. Now was led forth, amidst the insults of his enemies, and the tears of the people, this man of illustrious birth, and of the greatest renown in the nation, to suffer, for his adhering to the laws of his country, and the rights of his sovereign, the ignominious death destined to the meanest malefactor. Every attempt which the insolence of the governing party had made to subdue his spirit, had hitherto proved fruitless: they made yet one effort more, in this last and melancholy scene, when all enmity, arising from motives merely human, is commonly softened and disarmed. The executioner brought that book, which had been published in elegant Latin, of his great military actions, and tied it by a cord about his neck. Montrose smiled at this new instance of their malice. He thanked them, however, for their officious zeal; and said, that he bore this testimony of his bravery and loyalty with more pride than he had ever worn the garter. Having asked whether they had any more indignities to put upon him, and renewing some devout ejaculations, he patiently endured the last act of the executioner, Thus perished, in the thirty-eighth year of his age, the gallant marquis of Montrose; the man whose military genius, both by valor and conduct had shone forth beyond any, which, during these civil disorders, had appeared in the three kingdoms. The finer arts, too, he had in his youth success fully cultivated; and whatever was sublime, elegant, or noble, touched his great soul. Nor was he insensible to the pleasures either of society or of love. Something, however, of the vast and unbounded characterized his actions and deportment; and it was merely by an heroic effort of duty, that he brought his mind, impatient of superiority, and even of equality, to pay such unlimited submission to the will of his sovereign. The vengeance of the Covenanters was not satisfied with Montrose's execution. Urrey, whose inconstancy now led him to take part with the king, suffered about the same time Spotiswood of Daersie, a youth of eighteen, Sir Francis Hay of Dalgetie, and Colonel Sibbald, all of them of birth and character, underwent a like fate. These were taken prisoners with Montrose. The marquis of Huntley, about a year before, had also fallen a victim to the severity of the Covenanters. The past scene displays in a full light the barbarity of this theological faction: the sequel will sufficiently display their absurdity. The king, in consequence of his agreement with the commissioners of Scotland, set sail for that country; and being escorted by seven Dutch ships of war, who were sent to guard the herring fishery, he arrived in the Frith of Cromarty. Before he was permitted to land, he was required to sign the covenant; and many sermons and lectures were made him, exhorting him to persevere in that holy confederacy.* Hamilton, Lauderdale, Dumfermling, and other noblemen of that party whom they called engagers, were immediately separated from him, and obliged to retire to their houses, where they lived in a private manner, without trust or authority. None of his English friends, who had served his father, were allowed to remain in the kingdom. The king himself found that he was considered as a mere pageant of state, and that the few remains of royalty which he possessed, served only to draw on him the greater indignities. One of the quarters of Montrose, his faithful servant, who had borne his commission, had been sent to Aberdeen, and was still allowed to hang over the gates when he passed by that place.† The general assembly, and afterwards the committee of estates and the army, who were entirely governed by the assembly, set forth a public declaration, in which they protested, "that they did not * Sir Edward Walker's Historical Discourses, p. 159. espouse any malignant quarrel or party, but fought merely on their former grounds or principles; that they disclaimed all the sins and guilt of the king, and of his house; nor would they own him or his interest, otherwise than with a subordination to God, and so far as he owned and prosecuted the cause of God, and acknowledged the sins of his house, and of his former ways."* The king, lying entirely at mercy, and having no assurance of life or liberty further than was agreeable to the fancy of these austere zealots, was constrained to embrace a measure which nothing but the necessity of his affairs and his great youth and inexperience could excuse. He issued a declaration, such as they required of him. He there gave thanks for the merciful dispensations of Providence, by which he was recovered from the snare of evil counsel, had attained a full persuasion of the righteousness of the covenant, and was induced to cast himself and his interests wholly upon God. He desired to be, deeply humbled and afflicted in spirit, because of his father's following wicked measures, opposing the covenant and the work of reformation, and shedding the blood of God's people throughout all his dominions. He lamented the idolatry of his mother, and the toleration of it in his father's house; a matter of great offence, he said, to all the Protestant churches, and a great provocation to him who is a jealous God, visiting the sins of the father upon the children. He professed, that he would have no enemies but the enemies of the covenant; and that he detested all Popery, superstition, prelacy, heresy, schism, and profaneness; and was resolved not to tolerate, much less to countenance, any of them in any of his dominions. He declared that he should never love or favor those who had so little conscience as to follow his interests, in preference to the gospel and the kingdom of Jesus Christ. And he expressed his hope, that whatever ill success his former guilt might have drawn upon his cause, yet now, having obtained mercy to be on God's side, and to acknowledge his own cause subordinate to that of God, divine providence would crown his arms with victory. Still the Covenanters and the clergy were diffident of the king's sincerity. The facility which he discovered in yielding whatever was required of him, made them suspect, that he regarded * Sir Edward Walker's Historical Discourses, p. 166, 167. |