THE COVENANTERS.* WHATEVER may be the view regarding Dr. Hewison's

impartiality as an historian which a study of these volumes inspires, there can be no question that they afford ample evidence of unusually minute and conscientious research, and of a successful endeavour to bring to bear upon his subject a mass of information that needed only to be selected and systematised to have its true historical value appreciated. With this aspect of the author's work no fault can be found; and it will be long ere sufficient fresh facts will be divulged to admit of any work superseding his in respect of copious and relevant detail. That his sympathies are inevitably with one side in the protracted struggle, that his work is in effect a Covenanting history of the Covenanters, is, indeed, soon evident. In dealing with controversial matters he acts more often as counsel than as judge, manipulating his evidence skilfully, and on the whole with convincing moderation. .Occasionally, however—and this is most true with regard to his characterisations of such men as Graham of Claverbouse

• The Covenanters. By 3, K. Howison, AD. 2 vols. Glasgow: John Smith and Son, [828.] and Archbishops Sharp and Leighton—his criticism is marred by a trenchancy which amounts almost to virulence, and his condemnations are delivered with a gusto which, though it

makes lively reading, is scarcely desirable from the historical standpoint.

Throughout in his treatment of the subject the writer is concerned more with the end than with the means : he is imbued with a reverence and enthusiasm for the Covenanting cause which inevitably lead him to view with a certain par- tiality the men who fought for it, and the deeds that were done in its name. He defines that cause as follows :—

" The genuine Covenanters from first to last never resiled from those definite principles on which the Reformed Church in Scot- land was founded. These principles were, in fine, the absolute authority of• the Word of God over all men: the exclusive power of the ruler in civil affairs only, according to the Word, and in Scotland according to its ancient Constitution. It is now manifest beyond doubt, from the authoritative documents issued by the Scottish Presbyterians, that the reason for their persistent Covenanting was an inextinguishable dread of and revulsion from Popery—the antithesis of their cherished principles. They also feared that diocesan Episcopacy was Popery in disguise. This fear of Popery was like a fever seizing hold of the spirit of the Scotch people, and making itself felt recurrently, with the intermittent revelations of the crooked negotiations which went on between the successive Stuart sovereigns and the Popes, and regarding which the sapient Protestant leaders obtained accurate information from their well-informed foreign agents."

The first volume, which covers a period extending to the fall of Charles L and Montrose, begins with a very complete

outline of Scottish ecclesiastical history in the sixteenth century, without which, as Dr. Hewison rightly contends, a study of the Covenanting movement of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries would be more or less unintelligible.

At this part of his task he is, as be himself admits, working on a field that has already been fully cultivated, and he refrains from overburdening his work with references, and seldom attempts an elaborate characterisation. Of Queen Mary in 1562 he says :—

" The giddy queen became giddier. The sedate Scot has always taken pleasure sadly. When the mad world' prophesied by

Randolph, appeared at Holyrood the Covenanters believed that the devil was running loose in the land. By day the anxious Queen might hold tearful levees with churlish preachers and rude cavaliers, who clamoured for a settled religion; by night she loved to dance, oven in male attire, to play the galliard, to sweep through the dark alleys and streets as a

masked mummer, and to play cards till break of morn She was not a nervous, timorous girl, cowering at the sight of haggard Knox, as some conclude. Her letters prove that she possessed the courage of the Stuart race, and the invincible fidelity of a Joan of Arc consecrated to a holy mission She played, however, at sixes and sevens with her 'chance.'" One of the most interesting chapters in the first volume is that which deals with clerical life after the Reformation, detailing by means of examples from the records the appalling

difficulties which the Scottish clergyman of the late sixteenth century had to face. Confronted often with a congregation "as fully armed as South Sea Islanders, gaping for any oratorical indiscretion, lying in wait behind the tombstones to be avenged of fancied wrongs, and still half purged of the old leaven of Roman Catholicism," the pastor could tax his " sheep" with their wanderings only at the risk of having a " whinger " flung at his bead, or even of having to use the sword with which he was usually armed in defence of his life.

Stipends were incredibly small, and as often as not paid in "kind " ; manses were a luxury, one enthusiast living in the steeple of his church ; and a library worth more than one or two pounds was the exception. It is little wonder, as Dr. Hewison remarks, that the literary output of the starved and harried clergy of this period will not bear comparison with that of the Carolan or the Elizabethan age.

Dr. Hewison's sympathy for the Covenanting cause, though it may necessitate some reservations in the acceptance of his work as a whole, does not lead him into attempting to minimise the brutalities of which the victors at Philiphaugh were guilty, or the cruelty of the extermination of the Macdonalds by the troops of General Sir David Leslie in 1648. His account of these events induces in the reader, at least, the conviction that there was little to choose between the opposing factions in the matter of ferocity when victory gave an opportunity for the display of it. There is nothing in Dr. Hewison's restatement of the facts to justify his contention that Nevay, who instigated Leslie in the latter affair, is not deserving of the epithets " bloodthirsty " and

" monster" which have been applied to him by Mr. Andrew Lang and Mr. W. L. Mathieson. Rather would it be truer

to admit that there were few men on either side in the struggle to whom such epithets, in the light of modern thought, could not be applied ; and to realise that there is nothing very improbable in the story, which Dr. Hewison considers " somewhat incredible," that when the "poetic " Professor of Divinity in the University of Glasgow, David Dickson, heard of the wholesale and summary executions which followed on Philiphaugh, he exclaimed : " The work goes bonnily on." Even the lapse of two centuries has not enabled Dr. Hewison to regard the enemies of the Covenant with any great measure of toleration. To Montrose, however, he is just, and, in fact, almost generous

"A brave, cultured, and capable Scot, who in a less troubled and more refined age might have given to his country the fruits of a genius which had the power to create trust, enthusiasm, and admiration among those whom the hapless hero came into contact with. A mistake of judgment made him the champion of an

indefensible cause Montrose had all the valour, with the defects, of his Celtic ancestry, and failed in realising high ideals because the sentiment which dominated him was tribal rather than cosmopolitan. A chieftain himself, he wrongly imagined that it was the first duty to obey the King, as the infallible vice- gerent of God. Unlike many Royalists he had a clean life, although his Covenanting confessors suggested otherwise. A love of praise and distinction detracted from a magnanimous character, but he was not cursed with the mean land-hunger that degraded the succeeding defenders of the Carolan faith, and spoilers of the Covenanters—Dalyell, Bruce, Claverhouse."

At the beginning of his second volume Dr. Hewison gives a detailed account of the coronation of Charles II. at Scone in 1651. As exhibiting in all its nakedness the stern fanaticism of the men to satisfy whom, and to save his crown, Charles perjured himself, and as marking the chasm which separated the outlook of the Stuarts on religion and govern- ment from that of their Northern subjects—a chasm that no Covenant could bridge—it would be hard to find a better picture. For the best part of a day the " Merry Monarch " was flagellated for the sins of his house, prayed over, preached over to the text of the coronation of Joasb, with the analogies to his own case carefully emphasised, compelled to listen to the recital of the Covenants, National and Solemn League, and exhorted to " turn good like Joash, purge the Court, cleanse the Church, and reform the masses and himself." Of his signing of the Covenants and taking of the oath of fidelity to Presbyterianism Dr. Hewison says that " for an indecent outrage on religion and patriotism one could not readily find a match to that perpetrated at Scone by the libertine Charles," an opinion with which most of us will agree. It is not extra-

ordinary, however, that Charles should have remarked : " I think I must repent too that I was ever born," and have asserted, after his escape to France, that he would rather be

banged than again trust himself to the mercy of the Scots. It is to be wondered that more of the Presbyterian party did not see, as some indeed did, the utter futility of the whole proceeding.

In his chapter on the condition of the country in the seven- teenth century Dr. Hewison takes up the cudgels with enthusiasm in defending the Covenanters from the charge of repressing natural gaiety and healthy recreation. He gives instances to prove their love of music, of culture, and of sport, and cites a wedding-feast which was graced by the Duke of Sutherland, a notable Covenanter, and his friends, at which the company has been described by a contemporary diarist as " merry, jovial, and facetious." This, indeed, is one of the happiest chapters in the book. It abounds with instances not only of heroism and sacrifice, but of kindliness, sympathy, and wit, and neutralises any importance that Buckle's gloomy

picture of the Covenanters may still possess.

A little later we find Dr. Hewison swinging his battleaxe again. Archbishop Leighton is a "miserable invertebrate" and a "passionless mummy." We are told that "an infinite charity could not veneer the character of Sharp with a semblance of humanity," and the following is his estimate of

Claverhouse :—

" He left no proof of the possession of the talents of a great soldier, or a wise statesman. No feat of prowess is recorded to the credit of this untiring and merciless executor of the orders of his superiors, and of the cruel decrees he assisted in framing. On the contrary, there abide reminiscences of a martinet, a mercenary, a miserable clamourer for spoil, and a ruthless reveller in the blood of his countrymen. The gruesome libel that the Atholl Murrays raised the skull of Dundee and used it as a drinking quaich, is less likely to have been a taunt of the Jacobites in reference to the alleged double dealing and irresolu- tion of Atholl than the suggestion of some sardonic Whig that at last a temporary use had been discovered for the cranium of a small Scot whom his unhappy fatherland could well have spared."

In fine, it may be said that these two volumes, affording copious proofs of careful research which can hardly be over- praised, and characterised by much forcible writing, are yet marred, in the opinion of those who prefer to have their history presented to them as free as possible from criticism, by the author's bias in favour of the subjects of his theme. Dr. Hewison's point of view is well exemplified by the verse which he quotes at the end, and which has been attributed to Burns by Allan Cunningham :—

" The Solemn League and Covenant

Cost Scotland blood, cost Scotland tears ; But it sealed Freedom's sacred cause— If thou'rt a slave, indulge thy sneers."

The reader may find himself more in sympathy with the original version of the same verse, pencilled by Burns on the margin of an account of several martyred Covenanters, now in Dumfries Mechanics' Institute :— " The Solemn League and Covenant

Now brings a smile, now brings a tear ; But sacred Freedom, too, was theirs : If thou'rt a slave, indulge thy sneer."

It should be mentioned that the volumes contain a number of admirable photographs of men and places dealt with in the text, as well as several interesting reproductions of the original Covenants.