Part 36
The train of artillery was commanded by a Master of the Ordnance, whose pay was 120_l._ per annum, with a conductor, engineer, fireworker, and master gunners.--(_Miscellany of the Maitland Club._)
Dalyell's pay as a Scottish General was 400_l._ per annum.
Assisted by a militia, this small force proved sufficient, for a time, to coerce all the Lowlands of Scotland.
In July, this year, Mr. William Spence, a follower of the recently forfeited Marquis of Argyle, was tortured by the Privy Council, that he might be forced to reveal all he knew of that noble's intrigues with the English, and to read certain letters in cypher, which were placed before him by Major Holmes; but on the torture failing to produce the desired effect, "he was," according to Lord Fountainhall, "_put in General Dalyell's hands_; and it was reported that by a hair shirt and pricking (_i.e._, with a needle), as the witches are used, he was five nights kept from sleep, till he was half distracted. He ate very little that he might require less sleep; yet all this while he discovered nothing; though had he done so, little credit was to be given to what he should say at such a time."
After this is the following entry:--
"August 7th, 1684. At Privy Council, Spence (mentioned 26th July) is again tortured, and has his thumbs crushed with thumbiekins. It is a new invention used among the colliers when transgressors, and discovered by General Dalziell and Drummond, they having seen them used in Muscovy. After this, when they were about to put him in the boots, he, being frightened, desired time, and he would declare what he knew; whereon they gave him some time, and sequestrated him in the Castle of Edinburgh, as a place where he would be free from any bad advice or impression to be obstinate in not revealing."
There is something alike quaint and horrible in the quiet and matter-of-fact way in which this old senator records such extra-judicial barbarities; but instruments of torture were then as necessary to the Privy Council as the pen and ink with which their minutes were recorded.
To repress the reviving spirit of the Covenanters, four Commissions of Lieutenancy were, in September, ordained to meet at Glasgow, Ayr, Dumfries, and Dunse. The first, as Dalyell ordered, to be guarded by Lord Ross's troop of Horse and Captain Inglis's Dragoons; the second by the troop of Guards and his own Grey Dragoons; the third by the Horse of Claverhouse, Drumlanrig, and Strachan; the fourth by the Horse of Balcarris and Lord Charles Murray's Dragoons; but now the horrors of this civil and military persecution received a check by the death of Charles II. on the 6th February 1685, and on the accession of his brother, who was immediately proclaimed at Edinburgh, James VII. of Scotland, by the Lyon King and magistrates, and Dalyell received a new commission as commander-in-chief of the kingdom; but the Catholic tendencies of the new court--tendencies to which, with all his hatred of Covenanters and Low Churchmen, "the old Muscovite" was rigidly averse--would not have permitted him to retain his authority long.
Death now, however, solved the important problem of how he was to act at this peculiarly dangerous juncture; he was thus, to use the words of his comrade Creichton, "rescued from the difficulties he was likely to be under, between the notions he had of duty to his prince on one side, and true zeal for his religion on the other;" as he expired suddenly at his house in the Canongate of Edinburgh, in the month of July, 1685.
On the 7th August, while the minute-guns boomed from the dark portholes of the ancient half-moon battery of the castle, his body, in a magnificent hearse, drawn by plumed horses, and having six pieces of brass cannon, his led charger, his suit of armour, and his many trophies, sword, spurs, helmet, and gauntlets, and his general's baton, all borne by officers of rank, and escorted by all the standing forces in Edinburgh, with drums muffled, standards craped, and arms reversed, was slowly conveyed through the western gate of the city to Linlithgowshire, and interred in the family vault of the Dalyells at Binns, in the parish of Abercorn.
There the persecuting Cavalier rests in peace, though the superstitious peasantry still aver that his tall, thin, and venerable figure, in buff coat and head-piece, with his vast white beard floating from his grim visage to his military girdle, is seen "in glimpses of the moon," flitting, like an unquiet spirit, about the old manor house, or in the avenues and parks which were formed by himself around it.
He died in his eighty-fifth year.
The hearts of the Covenanters gathered hope, and held jubilee at his death; and if all be true that is recorded of him, it can scarcely be a matter for wonder that his name and memory are still execrated in Scotland, and that the reputation he has left behind him is not one to be envied.
General Drummond, his old Russian comrade, succeeded him as Commander-in-Chief of the Scottish army; Charles, Earl of Dunmore, was appointed Colonel of the Scots Greys, and the Laird of Livingstone filled the seat left vacant by him, as Commissioner in Parliament for the shire of Linlithgow.
His son Thomas, who succeeded him, was created a baronet of Nova Scotia, and left a daughter, Magdalene Dalyell, who, by her marriage with James Menteith, of Auldcathie, transmitted the property to her son, who thus represented the ancient line of the Earls of Menteith.
In reviewing the life of this singular officer, I cannot do better than quote the words of one of the most temperate and popular of Scottish writers:--
"There are _two_ ways of contemplating the character even of so blood-stained a persecutor as Dalyell. He had, it must be remarked, served royalty upon principle in its worst days, and seen a monarch beheaded by a small party of his rebellious subjects, and a great part of the community, including himself, deprived of their property, and obliged to fly for their lives to foreign lands; and all this was on account of _one particular way_ of viewing politics and religion. When the usual authorities of the land regained their ascendancy, Dalyell must naturally have been disposed to justify and support very severe measures, in order to prevent the _recurrence_ of such a period as the Civil War and the Usurpation. Thus all his cruelties are resolved into an abstract principle, to the relief of his personal character, which otherwise, we do not doubt, might be very good. How often do we see, even in modern times, actions justified upon general views, which would be shuddered at if they stood upon their naked merits, and were to be performed upon the sole responsibility of the individual!"
Such was the chequered military career of the first colonel of the old Scots Greys, certainly one of the most remarkable men of a time replete with bloodshed and cruelty.
The persecuted and the persecutor--the fiery Cavalier and the stern Covenanter--are alike in their quiet graves, and the grass of nearly two hundred years has grown and withered over them. Their strife is becoming, indeed, a tale of the times of old; yet few Scotsmen can look back without emotions of sorrow and compassion to those dark days of religious madness and political misrule when, with all their bravery, their forefathers perpetrated such deeds as made "the angels weep." But, happily for us, time and the grave mellow the memory of all things.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 31: Chambers' _Eminent Scotsmen_.]
[Footnote 32: Alexander Gordon, of Auchintoul, major-general in the service of the czar, wrote a life of Peter I., which was published at Aberdeen in 1755. "On the 30th November, this year," says this work, "died also General Patrick Gordon, much regretted by the czar and the whole nation. His majesty visited him five times during his illness--was present at the moment he expired, and shut his eyes with his own hands. He was buried also in great state. He was son to John Gordon, Esq., of Achlenchries in the county of Aberdeen, whose grandfather was a son of the family of Haddo, now Earls of Aberdeen." This officer entered the Russian service in the reign of Alexis; and Alexander Gordon joined it in 1693. Both served at the capture of Azof; the younger was at the battle of Narva, and was long a prisoner in the hands of the Swedes. In his old age, he returned to Scotland, and closed his days in peace in his native place.]
[Footnote 33: This must be the Russian computation of time.]
[Footnote 34: Raised for Charles II. in 1650, and disbanded after Worcester.]
[Footnote 35: War-office communicated.]
[Footnote 36: The Royal Horse Guards of Scotland were raised at Edinburgh in 1702. The Duke of Argyle, who came over in 1688, was their first colonel. Lord Polwarth's Horse (now the 7th Hussars) then the only Scottish regiment of Light Dragoons, were embodied in 1689.]
[Footnote 37: In a muster-roll of Captain Murray's Scottish company, at this time, I find "_Corporall_ Sir David Livingstone."]
[Footnote 38: See Crichton's _Memoirs of Blackadder_.]
* * * * * *
BY JAMES GRANT.
_Price 2s. each, Fancy Boards._
The Romance of War. The Aide-de-Camp. The Scottish Cavaliers. Bothwell. Jane Seton; or, The King's Advocate. Philip Rollo. The Black Watch. Mary of Lorraine. Oliver Ellis; or, The Fusiliers. Lucy Arden; or, Hollywood Hall. Frank Hilton; or, The Queen's Own. The Yellow Frigate. Harry Ogilvie; or, The Black Dragoons. Arthur Blane. Laura Everingham; or, The Highlanders of Glenora. The Captain of the Guard. Letty Hyde's Lovers. The Cavaliers of Fortune. Second to None. The Constable of France. The Phantom Regiment. The Girl he Married. First Love and Last Love. Dick Rodney. The White Cockade. The King's Own Borderers. Lady Wedderburn's Wish. Only an Ensign. Jack Manly. The Adventures of Rob Roy. The Queen's Cadet. Under the Red Dragon. Shall I Win Her? Fairer than a Fairy. The Secret Dispatch. One of the Six Hundred. Morley Ashton. Did She Love Him? The Ross-shire Buffs.
GEORGE ROUTLEDGE AND SONS,
THE BROADWAY, LUDGATE.