The Covenanters in Moray and Ross

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Preface

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The following chapters originated in a series of popular Lectures prepared at the request of the Mechanics' Institute of Forres, and delivered in that town, and in Nairn, Inverness, Invergordon, and Elgin. There was no intention of giving them, either a wider publicity, or a more permanent form ; but the audiences in the several places having expressed a wish to see my manuscript in print — probably because they felt that the ear required the aid of the eye in following the details of the narrative, — it is now published. The sketch has grown somewhat in the reproduction, but the demands of a laborious pastorate have forbidden any attempt to recast it in a more strictly historic form, or to bestow upon it a treatment worthier of the subject. Whatever its imperfections, I trust that, at the least, the men of Moray and Ross will recognise it as a well-meaning, if feeble, attempt to keep alive the memory of men and of deeds that ought not to be forgotten by us.

I had cherished the hope of being able, some day, to follow up the subject by tracing the history of

VI. PREFACE.

religious life and ecclesiastical activity in this district, from the Revolution to the present day, but that hope has now to be abandoned. Perhaps some Moray man better acquainted than I with the district and its memories will take it up.

I gratefully acknowledge the obligations under which James D. Miller, Esq., Forres, the Rev. Gustavus Aird of Creich, and several other friends, have laid me, by kindly permitting me to draw on the stores of their memories and their book-shelves.

M. M.

Nairn, 24th July, 1875.

Preface To Second Edition

In response to a request conveyed to me at a public meeting held in Nairn to welcome me back, after an absence of sixteen years, to the scene of my former labours, I have agreed to issue a Second Edition of these Lectures which have been now for several years out of print, but are still inquired for in the North of Scotland. I should have liked to have re-written them, adding a supplementary chapter on the Religious History of Moray since the Revolution, but my visit to Europe, undertaken for purpose of health, being limited, I must content myself with a few corrections and the addition of an explanatory note or two. For the same reason, I must leave the correction of the press to the publishers.

Weston-Super-Mare,

i^th September ; 1891.

NOTE BY PUBLISHERS.

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The publishers have added to this edition a photo.- lithograph of Pont's Map of Moravia (Moray), published about 1654, which covers the district referred to in the Lectures, and on this account will be of interest to the reader. They have also added views of Cawdor, Kilravock, Inshoch, and Brodie Castles, and the village of Auldearn, from photographs by, and with the kind permission of, Messrs Valentine & Sons, Dundee, and Mr Gordon, Nairn.

Inverness, May, 1892.

ERRATA.

Page 108, line 7, for casual read causal. 112, ,, 14, for wordly read worldly.

u

Chapter I. Subscribing The Covenant

FAOB.

Moray in 1638 — "No Bishop, no King" — Bishop Guthrie putting on his Sleeves — The Tables — The Covenant and the Earl of Sutherland — Bishop Maxwell conducting Service in the Chanonry of Ross — Letter to the Baron of Kilravock — Andrew Cant's Address at Inverness — Signing the Covenant in Moray — Robert Brace of Kinnaird— The Clans taking the Covenant — The Bishop Fortifying Spynie — The Glasgow Assembly — Card-Playing and Dancing Bishops — David Prott, the Gillie of Gicht — Sir Robert Munro and his Soldadista — The Carved Screen of Elgin Cathedral — The Solemn League and Covenant — Robert Todd of Rothes, and his Kirk -Session, 1

Chapter II. Fighting For The Covenant

Montrose and Colkitto — Ravaging Moray — The Battle of Auldearn — The Graves of the Covenanters — The Siege of Lethen — Middleton Chasing Montrose from the Ness to Beauly — Lord Brodie at Breda — King Charles of Scotland and King Milne of Garmouth — Glencairn's Expedition — Duel on the Links of Dornoch — The Citadel of Inverness — Troopers settling in the North— The Fast at Lethen, - - - -33

Chapter III. Proscribing The Covenant

The Restoration— The King's Tools— Sharp's Perfidy- Presbytery Abolished — The Scottish Hierarchy — Bishop Mackenzie of Moray — Ministers and Elders Deposed — Thomas Hogg of Kiltearn — John M'Killican of Fodderty — Sir Hugh Campbell of Cawdor, and the Lord's Prayer — Fines, Evictions, and Imprisonment, 67

Xll. CONTENTS.

Chapter IV. Suffering For The Covenant

FAOE.

Hogg, M'Killican, and Urquhart in the Tol booth of Forres — Ministers ** falling about the Work of Preaching"— Fraser of Brea— The Field -Presbytery of Moray — Thomas Ross of Kincardine — The Ladies of the Covenant — Hearing the Curates — The good Lady of Kilravock — Lilias Dunbar — "The Tolbooth of Tain in Inverness " — The Clatterin Brig — Fines and Imprisonment— Communion at Obsdale — Principles of the Covenanters — The Bass Rock — Incidents of the Imprisonment, 102

Chapter V. Bonds And Banishment And Death For The

COVENANT.

The Thane of Cawdor — Northern Ministers again Imprisoned — Death of Lord Brodie — Thomas Hogg in Holland — Nonconformist Preachers in Moray- Commission of Privy Council sitting in Elgin — The Fiery Cross — Satisfaction of the Clergy — Imprisonment substituted for Banishment — Power of Conscience among the Episcopal Clergy, - - - . - 132

Chapter VI. The Triumph Of The Covenant

Closing Scenes — Death of John M'Killican — Thomas Hogg's Return — Restored to Kiltearn — Domestic Chaplain to the King — Death in Peace — Thomas Hogg's Grave — Character of Thomas Hogg — Spiritual Direction — Mrs Campbell of Torrich — William Balloch and Jane Taylor — Hugh Anderson of Cromarty — Grace Crombie and the Appletree — Fraser of Brea — The Magistrates of Inverness — Conclusion, - - 172

Appendix

ILLUSTRATIVE EXTRACTS.

Burning of the Clavie— Seaforth's Covenant — The Strong House of Lethen— Brodie on the Consecration of the Bishops— Hugh Rose of Nairn on Prayer, etc.— Mark 8 of Conversion— M'Killican's Diary — Marrying without Proclamation of Banns — Another Thomas Hogg — Pringlo of Torwoodlee, and Pringle of Green- Knowe— The Fiery Cross in Moray, - 199

THE

COVENANTERS IN MORAY AND ROSS.

9mm*

Chapter I

Moray in 1638— "No Bishop, no King"— Bishop Guthrie putting on his Sleeves — The Tables — The Covenant and the Earl of Sutherland — Bishop Maxwell conducting 8ervice in the Chanonry of Ross — Letter to the Baron of Kilravock— Andrew Cant's Address at Inverness — Signing the Covenant in Moray — Robert Bruce of Kinnaird— The Clans taking the Covenant — The Bishop Fortifying Spynie— The Glasgow Assembly — Card-Playing and Dancing Bishops— David Prott, the Gillie of Gicht— Sir Robert Munro and his Soldadista— The Carved Screen of Elgin Cathedral— The Solemn League and Covenant — Robert Todd of Rothes, and his Kirk -Session.

MY object in this short course of Lectures is to sketch the history of the Covenanting Cause, as far as it was acted out in Moray or involved the action of Moray men. By Moray, I mean specially the Province so designated — the district of country between the Bogie and the Beauly. I take the liberty, however, of annexing, for the purpose of these Lectures, the adjoining counties of Ross and Sutherland, regarding myself at liberty to roam round the threehorned head of the Firth, from the mouth of the Spey on the South to the Ord of Caithness on the North.

The close connection, social and ecclesiastical, which subsisted, during the period under review, between Moray proper and the neighbouring counties to the north, is my excuse for this act of annexation. For many years the Synod of Moray embraced the United Presbytery of Ross and Sutherland. By the Covenanting Cause, I mean the principles and aims of the party to which the great National Covenant of 1638 gave form and a name. The survey will carry us over half a century — from the adoption of the Covenant to the triumph of its principles in the Revolution of 1688. Let us go back in imagination, and glance at the Moray of 1638. We meet with the same towns with which we are familiar in the present, but they are smaller, more compact, more picturesque, and, sooth to say, more filthy. Elgin wears a decidedly ecclesiastical look. Its noble Cathedral is, indeed, in ruins, but the great tower in the centre is still standing, and to certain painted rooms therein, Roman Catholics repair to say their prayers, as the excellent Lachlan Shaw testifies.* Forres and Nairn consist, each of a single street, with "closes," or narrow lanes, abutting; and a tolbooth not in the best of repair, protruding into the roadway. In Inverness, two streets cross each other at right angles under the shadow of the Castle, and communicate by a bridge of oak with a straggling suburb on the left bank of the river. Dingwall is a long muddy street of mean houses with their gables

* The Rev. Lachan Shaw was settled as minister of the parish of Kingussie in 1716. In 1719 he was translated to Cawdor, and in 1734 he was settled at Elgin. He resigned his charge as one of the ministers of Elgin in 1774 and died in 1777. His body was interred within the walls of Elgin Cathedral, and in the year 1SC8 a granite slab was placed in the Chancel of the Cathedral to his memory by a number of friends who recognised the great value of his services as Historian of Moray.

MORAY IN 1638. 3

to the roadway, flanked on the north by a marsh, which spreads round the church and the extensive ruins of the stronghold of the proud Earls of Ross. Tain, a compact little town, with an air of importance and substantial comfort, clusters round its Tolbooth and handsome church, on the brow of the terrace overlooking the ruins of St Duthus. Cromarty — a labyrinth of fishermen's cottages, the owners of which can converse fluently in Latin with Sir Thomas, Lord of the Manor, — inclines more to the Southern Sutor than the modern town, and finds itself rather confined between the encroaching sea and the base of the tall, gaunt, keep of the Urquharts. The Chanonry of Ross, a group of manse-like dwellings, seems to divide its allegiance between the towering Castle of Lord Seaforth and the decaying Cathedral, the southern aisle of which is still used as a place of worship. Findhorn is a seaport of considerable importance. Its hardy skippers keep up a brisk trade with Holland, and supply the gentlemen of the Province with strong waters and other commodities of less questionable utility. In Burghead, neither the ancient earthworks, nor the chapel within their lines, have yet been removed. The village itself, consisting of a few cottages, does not seem to prosper much, notwithstanding the annual "Burning of the Clavie,"* and the blessing it invokes. The old castles, which the Moray of 1875 knows only as picturesque ruins, are the dwellings of feudal chiefs and lordly barons. Hearths are as warm in Spynie, Duffus — though in Duffus they seem to have had no chimneys, — Inschoch, Kilcoy, Fairburn, Cullicudden, and Lochslin, as in Brodie, Kilravock, and Cawdor.

* See Appendix, Note A.

Mansions, whose sites cannot be determined in the nineteenth century, are the abodes of happy households. The House of Culbin is still surrounded by its orchard and fertile fields. Families that the Moray of our day has utterly forgotten, are flourishing in the land. An Innes sits in Innes house. Sir Robert Gordon, the premier Baronet of Scotland, having retired from Court, is still living in his new house of Gordonstown. There are Sutherlands at Duffus and Kinsteary; Kinnairds at Culbin; Hays at Lochloy and Park; Falconers at Kincorth, and up to 1600, at Lethen; Dunbars at Dalvey or Grangehill: Urquharts at Cromarty, and at Sancher; Mackenzies at Redcastle; and Baynes at Tulloch. Great stretches of forest run along the upper reaches of the Findhorn and the Spey; but there is little wood on the lower grounds beyond the trees planted round the castles and principal homesteads. The fields are small unenclosed patches, of irregular outline, in the midst of wide breadths of unbroken land. The plough by which they are tilled is a rude wooden implement drawn by oxen, in a zigzag furrow, round and round, without turning. Roads are tolerably numerous, though not so good, probably, as when Dr Clephane wrote a hundred years later, "A certain Lord, having asked a gentleman what great advantages Moray had over other counties, was told, 'Three — forty miles of better road than in most counties; almost always better weather; and only one Lord among them (Lord Moray), and he has no interest or following.' "

The ecclesiastical division of the district into parishes is much the same as in the nineteenth century. The churches, generally, are small, narrow, low-browed structures, roofed with thatch. The Laird of Brodie

"no bishop, no king." 5

enters a resolution in his diary to procure heather "to thack the kirk" — I presume the Church of Dyke. Some of these edifices, however, are older than the Reformation, and bear witness to the taste and skill of the ghostly architects of Rome. The congregations that assemble in them are ministered to by men who love Presbytery, and cling to it, though they are now governed by bishops. George Buchanan's pedantic pupil, acting on his favourite maxim, "No Bishop, no King," has succeeded, at last, in erecting an Episcopal establishment in Scotland, as a buttress to his ancient throne. A prelate sits in Spynie,* as in days of yore: he has not all the power of his lordly predecessors, and he cannot vie with them in state — for his revenues are of the scantiest, — but he is supported by the Courts of High Commission. These terrible creations of arbitrary prerogative claimed jurisdiction over every other Ecclesiastical Court. Any individual might be summoned before them ; examined as to his conduct, conversation, and religious opinions; and visited with excommunication, outlawry, fine, and imprisonment, at the discretion of his judges. Yet, hard as James strove, by shuffling intrigue and tyrannic encroachment, to shape the Scottish Kirk into the form and dimensions of Prelacy, it was but the mere frame-work of Episcopacy that he succeeded in rearing. With this, neither he nor his son, who succeeded him in 1625, could rest content. Charles was resolved to have an Episcopal establishment in Scotland, which

* The Palace of the Bishops of Moray. Before the Loch of Spynie was drained there was communication by sea with the Palace. It was a fortalice of considerable strength, and its ruins, picturesquely situated at the head of what once was a lake, still remain and are preserved by the Earl of Fife, to whom the property now belongs.

should he a model even to that of England. In order to this, the doctrine, worship, and polity of the Northern church, down to the attire of her clergy, must he fashioned to the royal ideal, which was as much the style approved by Rome, as Laud, the evil genius of Charles's reign, could -secure. But, first, maintenance must he found for the bishops worthy of the rank assigned them. Let the barons be compelled to surrender the broad lands which formed the ancient patrimony of the Church. More easily said than done. The nobles resisted the measure with such desperate resolution, that it had to be incontinently abandoned. It left behind it, however, a legacy of bitter hatred of the bishops, which they themselves did their utmost to foster, by their arrogance and ambitious grasping at offices of State.

On his first visit to Scotland, Charles gave his soul to the question of clerical millinery, with all the devotion of an advanced ritualist of the present day. Vestments, perfect to hem and fringe, were exhibited to the admiration of the stern disciples of Calvin, and enjoined to be worn by every Mess John of them, from Maidenkirk to John o' Groats. A certain John Guthrie, who hailed from the Castle of Spynie, was the first to adorn himself in the new robes. He "put on his sleeves," in the presence of the king, in the High Church of Edinburgh, declaring, with an unnecessary exuberance of zeal, "that he would be yet more vile to please the king" — a speech which he was not allowed to forget, as perhaps we shall see. Three years later was issued the "Book of Canons," by which the king's supremacy in matters of conscience was assumed in its fullest extent, and the whole fabric of

THE TABLES. 7

Presbytery levelled with the dust. Another northern prelate, John Maxwell, Bishop of Ross — a man of undoubted ability, but haughty, intriguing, and greedy of power, — had a chief hand in framing this new constitution for the Church of Scotland, under the supervision of "his little Grace of Canterbury." Letters in reference to this book from Laud, and Juxon, Bishop of London — the same who stood beside the poor king when he came to lay his neck on the block in front of Whitehall, — may be read in the Appendix to Baillie's Letters. In one of these epistles Juxon says: — "With your letter I received your book of Canons, which perhaps, at first, will make more noise than all the cannons in Edinburgh Castle." The good bishop was right The new artillery — the episcopal spelling makes no difference between canons ecclesiastical and cannons military — did prove eminently resonant and explosive, though not so much so as another piece which the Bishop of Ross had the honour of bringing down to Scotland from the arsenal of Canterbury, in the following year, 1638. This was the Liturgy or Service- Book, which the king's paternal solicitude for the welfare of his northern subjects had provided for their help in prayer. The performances of this new ordnance rather astonished its inventors. The attempt to discharge it blew gun-carriage, embrasure, and casemate, all to pieces; scattering the affrighted gunners in every direction. The nation was Presbyterian to the core.

From the continued friction of the royal efforts to introduce Episcopacy there resulted a highly electric state of popular feeling. A trivial incident might cause an explosion. Dr Hanna, Dean of Edinburgh, began to read the service in St Giles'. Jenny Geddes, the old herb-woman — or else Mrs Mein, the merchant's wife, according to Wodrow, — sent her stool flying through the air in the direction of the dean's reverend head; and the nation, rising as one man, threw itself, with a shout of enthusiasm, on the newly-built walls of Episcopacy, and razed them to the ground. We must not regard this as a mere outburst of democratic fury. The scared Prelatists thought the people mad, yet they could not but admit there was method in their madness. There was, indeed, a great deal of method. Witness the organisation of the Tables — that remarkable executive of four committees, representing the burghers, the gentry, the ministers, and the nobles. Witness also the spirit and tact with which they wrought together in defence of their rights. Thanks to the king's impolitic treatment of the aristocracy, and to the arrogance of the bishops, the majority of the nobles of Scotland were ready to take their natural place as leaders of the people. Among them were patriots of high principle and great talent, God-fearing men, wise in council and energetic in action. A strikingly large proportion of their number were ardent young men, able and ambitious, eager for position and distinction. At least one nobleman from the north of the Grampians was there, and none was purer in motive than he, — the good Earl of Sutherland.

With the precedents of 1557 and 1581, or, as they themselves would rather say, with the precedents of Israel's national engagements to the Lord, before them, it was natural that the Tables should have recourse to a Covenant, binding the nation to be true to God, and to itself, in defending its liberties. After due deliber-

THE COVENANT. 9

ation, they drew up and subscribed the famous National Covenant of 1638. Its projection was a masterstroke of leadership. It consists of three parts. The first is a simple reproduction of the Covenant of 1581 — an explicit, and most energetic abjuration of the several tenets of the Romish system. The second is a recapitulation of the Acts of Parliament which condemned Popery, and ratified the Acts of the General Assembly. The third is the practical application of the whole to the existing circumstances of the nation — a document of great ability, full of fire and vigour. Its author, in all probability, was Alexander Henderson, minister of Leuchars, — a man in whom impartial historians recognise a statesman of the highest order. Assuming that the Episcopacy of the Book of Canons and the Liturgy is incipient Popery — the tadpole, so to speak, of the bloated frog of the Pontine Marshes, — this historic instrument binds all who subscribe it to adhere to the Protestant faith, as stript of the recent innovations; to labour, by all means lawful, to recover the purity and liberty of the Gospel, as it was established and professed before their introduction; to resist all contrary error and superstition to the utmost of their power, all the days of their life; and, at the same time, to be loyal to the person, majesty, and authority of the king, and faithful to one another in the defence and preservation of the true religion, liberties, and laws of the kingdom. Liberty to be loyal to the God of truth and Lord of the conscience, is the great principle on which the Covenant insists. In the estimation of its authors, that is the grand contention — the main thing to be claimed — a claim to be struggled for to the death. The privileges of civil freedom are sub-

IO THE COVENANTERS IN MORAY AND ROSS.

ordinated to this "one thing needful," but they are by no means overlooked. The right of the subject to the enjoyment of law regulated liberty in things social and civil, is clearly enunciated and vigorously claimed. The National Covenant of 1638 is the Magna Charta of Scotland. Lord Loudon gave expression to its animating spirit and fundamental principle, when, speaking for himself and his fellow-subscribers, he told the Royal Commissioner, that they "knew no other bands between a king and his subjects but those of religion and the laws." "If these are broken," he said, "men's lives are not dear to them; threatened we shall not be; such fears are past with us." The Covenant banded the people together, in defence of their inalienable birthright of religious and civil freedom, against the arbitrary encroachments of a throne that acknowledged no control, and submitted to no limitation. It inaugurated a determined struggle against the oppressor. For fifty long years, it held the intellect and the moral strength of Scotland marshalled in resolute opposition to a false, a cruel, a licentious tyranny. The ranks of the patriots were often broken ; but,

" Freedom's battle once begun, Bequeathed by bleeding sire to son, Though baffled oft, is ever won."

Through much blood, and many tears, and widespread desolation, the blue banner of the Covenant was borne at length to victory. The Revolution Settlement planted it on the summit of the reconstructed edifice of the British Constitution, its sacred "bands" binding the "guarantees" of Runnymede into one common symbol of religious and civil liberty.

SERVICE IN THE CHANONRY OF ROSS. II

I need not describe the signing of the Covenant in the Greyfriars Church and churchyard of Edinburgh, on the i st of March 1638. It is imprinted on the memory of every reader of our history. We claim for the shores of the Moray Firth the honour of giving the first signature to the Covenant. It was that of Scotland's premier Earl, the venerable Lord of Dunrobin.* After him thousands on thousands signed, before the sun went down on that short spring day. In the minds of some of these subscribers doubts sprang up afterwards as to whether they did right in signing; but at the time they had no doubts or scruples : if there were any who hesitated to sign, their hesitation yeilded to the general enthusiasm. Copies of the Covenant bearing the signatures of the leading peers, were despatched to all parts of the country, and signed by all ranks of the community. In two months, ah Scotland was banded under the Covenant, Moray and the North included. Special attention, indeed, was paid to the North. For this, it was indebted to our acquaintance, the Bishop of Ross. Instead of fleeing "furth of Scotland," in fluttering panic, as several of his colleagues had done, when the introduction of the Liturgy was checked in St Giles', Maxwell retired to his diocese, determined to accomplish at Fortrose what could not be achieved in Edinburgh. In the Chanonry of Ross, if nowhere else, the new ceremonial would be becomingly observed, and everything done according to high Episcopal order. The little burgh, basking dreamily in the sunshine around his Cathedral, would offer no rude interruption. Besides, had he not smoothed the way for the introduction of the Service-Book by using the English

* The Seat of the Sutherland Family.

Liturgy for two whole years? The bishop reckoned without his host. A spirit had been aroused whose strength he had failed to gauge. The boys attending the Academy will curb the zeal of my lord, if none other will.

On Sunday morning, nth March, when he was preparing, in proper person, to conduct the service according to the new ritual, "the scholars" burst into the Cathedral, seized the copies of the Service- Book which had been placed on the desks, and carried them off to Chanonry Point, to burn them there, as a spectacle to the surrounding country. A passing shower extinguished the fire which they carried with them for the purpose, and they contented themselves with tearing the books to pieces, and casting the fragments into the Frith.* The bishop had sufficient presence of mind to proceed with the service, independent of the new Prayer-Book, as if nothing had happened; but no sooner was the sermon, which was of the shortest, finished, and the benediction pronounced, than he hastened across the ferry, rode hard by Nairn and Forres, and rested not till he reached Spynie, where he took refuge with his brother prelate, John Guthrie of Moray. After consultation with the Marquis of Huntly, "he fled disguised over the Mounts," as Baillie expresses it, and made his way to Court. Burning with resentment against the Covenanters, Maxwell urged the king to extreme measures. He strongly recommended the raising of the Northern clans, whom he represented as sure to take the side of the throne. In conjunction with the Cavaliers of the South, they would form a party sufficiently powerful to check

* Spalding.

LETTER TO THE BARON OF KILRAVOCK. 1 3

the still gathering strength of their opponents; and all might yet be retrieved, if proper measures were promptly taken. The Tables, who had their emissaries everywhere, even in the bed-chamber of the king, took the hint, and resolved to be beforehand with the bishop and his royal master. Baillie says: — "Diligence was used to send some lawyers to the uttermost north, to obtain the hands of all the clans to the Covenant of the country." A commission was despatched forthwith, but it was by no means confined to lawyers. It consisted, as a letter in the Charter-Chest of Kilravock informs us, of the Earl of Sutherland, Lord Lovat, the Master of Berriedale, the Lairds of Grant, Balnagown, and others, — "barones and gentlemen of qualitie." The commission was accompanied by Andrew Cant, minister of Pitsligo — a man whose bold and energetic advocacy of the National Bond obtained for him, among Norland men, the designation of the Apostle of the Covenant. The Cavaliers have avenged themselves on their sturdy opponent, by handing his name down to posterity as a synonym for all that is insincere, hypocritical, and sanctimonious in speech — a gross injustice to the worthy man, than whom there was none more honest and single-minded among the public characters of the day.

The letter just referred to, was addressed to Hugh, twelfth Baron of Kilravock, by the Covenanting leaders, informing him of the appointment and purpose of the Commission, and requesting him to meet them in Inverness on the 25th of April. "Right worshipful and loving friend," say the noble Lords, of whom the first to sign is Montrose, in good, legible half-text, "we did write unto you, that, in consideration of the weighty business in hand (whereby our religion, laws, and liberties, are in evident danger), you would repair to Edinburgh with all convenient speed, that you might be truly informed of the estate of our affairs, and give your concurrence and advice how these innovations of the Service-Book, High Commission, canons, and other abuses, so much threatening the overthrow of religion and law, might be removed. And now, having thought it a fitter way for your ease, and sparing your pains in so long a journey, to send some of our number from this to meet at Inverness," — then follows the commission: — "We do earnestly desire that you will be pleased to be present at the said meeting, where our Commissioners will treat with you in all respective (respectful) manner, informing you truly how legally we have proceeded from the beginning; what cause we have had to maintain religion according to the pattern of our worthy and pious Reformers; with what respect to the person and authority of his sacred Majesty, and obedience to the laws and statutes of his kingdom, made in favour thereof; and to clear all doubts and scruples that may arise in the mind of any man not truly informed, nor conceiving aright of these matters. Our hope is, that these weighty considerations are sufficient motives to induce you to keep this meeting, and take such impression, that you will prefer the cause thereof to all worldly respects, and that your determinations and resolutions, taken herein, shall express and include in them your zeal to the purity of religion, your love to your native country, and maintenance of the laws we have happily lived under. Whereof being confident, we will remain your sincere, affectionate friends."*