History of the Presbyterian Church in South Carolina, Vol. I pt 1, Part 10

Author: Howe, George, 1802-1883
Publication date: 1870
Publisher: Columbia, Duffie & Chapman
Number of Pages: 722


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91


DEATH OF CHARLES II.


1670-1685.]


of all persons in their families, above the age of twelve years, in order to transportation." . The military were to put such questions as these to whomsoever they chose : "Will you renounce the covenant?" "Will you pray for the king?" " Was the killing of the archbishop of St. Andrew's murder ?" " Was the rising at Bothwell Bridge rebellion?" " Will you take the test ?" " Will you abjure the late treasonable declaration ?"*


In the midst of these terrible persecutions Charles II. died, on February 6th, 1685, not without suspicions of poison, and secretly receiving, according to Bishop Burnet,t the rites of the Romish Church, in whose calendars he is canonized as a. saint. " His ambition was directed," says Mr. Fox, "solely against his own subjects, unprincipled, ungrateful, mean, and treacherous; to which may be added vindictive and remorseless. I doubt whether a single instance can be produced of his having spared the life of any one whom mo- tives of policy or revenge prompted him to destroy."


The death of Charles gave but a temporary respite to the persecuted church. His successor, James II., was a big- oted papist, whom his English subjects had ineffectually attempted to exclude from the succession to the throne. No amendment took place in the case of the persecuted sufferers. They wandered about almost literally, like the men of faith of a former day, "in sheep-skins and goat-skins, in dens and caves of the earth, being destitute, afflicted, tormented." The system of persecution was only reduced to a more regular plan. Presbyterians were treated still little better than mur- derers and assassins. In consequence of the unsuccessful in- vasion of the Earl of Argyle, who was their patron, two hun- dred of them were, without a moment's warning, taken from the prisons of Edinburgh and sent across the Forth, confined in a small room for two days, offered their liberty if they would take the oath of allegiance and supremacy ; which last they could not do, since they acknowledged Christ alone as the supreme and only head of the church. A few only, worn out with suffering, were enabled to compromise with conscience so far as to comply ; the remainder were driven like felons, with .


* It was these troubles which induced the Scottish noblemen and gentle- men before mentioned to make their arrangements for a Scotch colony in Carolina, to escape the persecutions of arbitrary power under the guise of prelacy. In 1685 " the great and good Earl of Cassilis," who sat in West- minster Assembly, proposed to leave Scotland.


+ Burnet, ii., pp. 457, 263.


92


MARGARET WILSON AND MARGARET McLAUCHLAN. [1670-1685. .


their hands tied behind them, to the Castle of Dunnottar, crowded into a damp subterraneous vault, where they were denied the most common necessaries of life, and had to pay for the water with which they were supplied. They were again offered the oaths, and refusing them, were banished to the plantations. Many died on the passage. This was but one instance. There were others of equal barbarity. Indeed, the descendants of these poor sufferers are to be found now in va- rious parts of our country. Women were publicly whipped and branded on the cheek for refusing to take oaths ensnaring to their consciences. Margaret McLauchlan, relict of John Mulli- gen, a carpenter by trade, about sixty-three years of age, " was a woman of more than ordinary knowledge, discretion, and prudence, and for many years of singular piety and devotion ; she would take none of the oaths now pressed upon women as well as men, nor desist from hearing Presbyterian ministers, and joining with her friends in prayer, and supplying her per- secuted relations and acquaintances in their straits. It is a jest to suppose her guilty of rising in arms and rebellion, though, indeed, this was in her indictment. For these great crimes, and no other, she was seized on the Lord's day, when at family worship in her own house ; which was now an or- dinary season for apprehending honest people. Jointly with her, Margaret Wilson, eighteen years of age, and Agnes, her sister, a child of thirteen, whom their parents had been for- bidden to harbor, speak to, or see, and who were obliged to wander with their brothers as fugitives through Carrick, Gal- loway, and Nithsdale, were imprisoned, and many methods used to corrupt them and make them take the oaths. They were sentenced for rebellion at Bothwell Bridge, Ayr's Moss, and being present at twenty field conventicles. They had never been within many miles of Bothwell or Ayr's Moss. Agnes Wilson could be but eight years of age at Ayr's Moss, and her sister but thirteen ; it was impossible they could have any access to these risings ; and Margaret McLauchlan was as free from them as they. All the three refused the abjuration oath, and it was unaccountable it should be put to one of them. Agnes Wilson had been got out of prison, her father being bound for her. He paid his bond rather than produce her. Both the parents had before conformed to the Episcopal rites, but had been so severely fined for their children as finally to be reduced to poverty. The sentence which was pronounced against the three was, that they should be tied to stakes fixed in the sea, between high and low water mark, and


93


MARTYRDOM OF AGNES WILSON.


1670-1685.]


there be drowned. Margaret Wilson's friends used every means to prevail upon her to take the oath of abjuration, and to engage to hear the curate, but she stood fast in her integ- rity. The barbarous sentence was executed to the letter. On the appointed day they were guarded by soldiers to the place of execution. Margaret McLauchlan's stake was a good dis- tance beyond the other, that she might be first despatched, and her sad fate terrify the other into compliance. But in vain. When the water was overflowing her fellow martyr, Margaret Wilson was asked what she thought of the other now struggling in death. She answered, " What do I see but Christ in one of his members wrestling there. Think you that we are the sufferers ? No, it is Christ in us, for he sends none a warfare upon their own charges." While at the stake, she sang, read the eighth of Romans, and prayed. While at prayer, the water covered her; but before she was quite dead, they pulled her up, and held her out of the water till she was recovered and able to speak, and then she was asked, by Major Windram's orders, if she would pray for the king. She answered, " She wished the salvation of all men, and the damnation of none." One said to her, " Dear Margaret, say God save the king, God save the king." She answered, with the greatest steadiness, " God save him, if he will, for it is his salvation I desire." Whereupon some of her relations called out to Windram, "Sir, she hath said it, she hath said it." The major then came near and offered her the abjuration, charging her instantly to swear it or return to the water. She deliberately said, " I will not ; I am one of Christ's children; let me go." She was thrust down again into the water, where she finished her course with joy. She died a virgin martyr, about eighteen years of age. Both suffered for refusing con- formity and the abjuration oath, and were evidently innocent of anything worthy of death. The Earl of Argyle was the most exalted of those who ended their lives by the hand of violence during this year of bloodshed. He was beheaded for taking up arms for the deliverance of his afflicted country .*


In reviewing this period of Scottish history, we are filled with amazement at the efforts which were persistently made on the part of government to invade the rights of conscience and the right of private judgment,-to force upon the people a form of ecclesiastical government which they did not admit to be best for them, nor to rest on the basis of scripture,-to pre-


* Abridged from Wodrow, vol. ii., p. 289, seq .; iii., p. 363; iv., pp. 247-249.


94


DISSENTERS IN ENGLAND.


[1670-1685.


vent them from attending upon those religious guides whom they loved as their spiritual shepherds, and the ministers whom Christ had appointed,-and to invade, under the fiction of the king's supremacy in matters of religion, the sole head- ship over the church of the Lord Jesus Christ. In the con- tendings of the Church of Scotland, she was contending for what was truly expressed on the banners of the covenanters at Bothwell-" Christ's Crown and Covenant." Her people were contending too for civil liberty. "It may be said," says Hetherington, " in favor of the very strictest of the Presbyte- rians, that the principles they held were the very same which, nine years afterwards, pervaded the whole nation, drove the race of Stuarts from the throne, and secured the liberty of Britain by what all men with one consent rejoice to term the Glorious Revolution; and it would not be easy for any man who defends the principles which led to that great national deliverance to show his consistency in condemning those of the persecuted covenanters."* "Almost the only real difference between the Declaration of the Cameronians, or rather of the true Presbyterians, and that of the Convention of the Estates at the Revolution, consisted in the former being the act of a small band of enlightened and determined patriots, the latter that of the nation."t And we may take occasion hereafter to show how much these very principles had to do with our own American Independence. :


In the neighboring country of England, during these fifteen years, the history of the dissenting churches runs parallel in many respects with that of Scotland. Still, as Episcopacy was declared at once the Established Church-as it had been previous to the Westminster Assembly of Divines-all things reverted easily to their former position. In 1672 a declara- tion of indulgence suspended the penal laws against the non- conformists, granted to protestant dissenters the public exer- cise of their religion, and to papists the exercise of theirs in their own private houses. James II. " hated the puritan sects with manifold hatred, theological and political, hereditary and personal." "He who had expressed just indignation when the priests of his own faith were hanged and quar- tered, amused himself with hearing covenanters shriek, and seeing them writhe while their knees were beaten flat in the boots. In this mood he became king." Under him Baxter was browbeaten, abused, and insulted by the demoniacal


* History of the Church of Scotland, p. 255. + Ibid., p. 159.


95


JUDGE JEFFREYS.


1670-1685.]


Jeffreys, the most iniquitous of men, now exalted to be the terror of every dissenter and especially of every Presbyterian, and the disgrace of the English bench, converting a court of law into a tribunal not less tyrannical and bloody and far less decent than the Spanish Inquisition. The invasion of Mon- mouth, in concert with Argyle, raised the hopes of those who were suffering under the ban of those in power, and his defeat was followed by the most sanguinary vengeance. The courts which were held by Jeffreys immediately after, are known in legal history as " the bloody assizes." This inhuman judge treated every one who thwarted his intentions, whether pris- oner or witness, with the most abusive blackguardism. "Show me a Presbyterian," says he to a witness, "and I will show thee a lying knave." "I can smell a Presbyterian forty miles." The condemned were hung in irons, or hung, drawn, and quartered. Even the female sex were not permitted to escape. Lady Alice, the widow of John Lisle, who had been commis- sioner of the great seal under Cromwell, was condemned to be burned alive for entertaining a couple of fugitives, one of whom was a clergyman, in her own dwelling, in her abundant charity ; and yet she had in former times shown the same kindness to suffering royalists. Three hundred and twenty, according to Macaulay, six hundred according to Burnet, seven hundred according to Lonsdale, were hung in these " bloody assizes." Eight hundred and forty-one were trans- ported by Jeffreys to the West Indies, and sold as slaves for the term of ten years, purposely sent to an unhealthy climate and an unsympathizing people. Their property became the spoil of those who condemned them. The dissenters could now only meet in secret, with sentinels posted to give the alarm if a stranger approached. The minister was clothed in some dis- guise. Trap-doors, or passages through the walls of adjoining houses, furnished methods of concealment or escape, or cur- tains suspended before the preacher concealed his person till he could secrete himself from search. Some of the best of men retired from England, among whom was John Howe, who went abroad with Lord Wharton and took up his abode at Utrecht.


The affairs of the Huguenots in France became more and more desperate. One after another the higher nobles had deserted their cause, the inferior nobles followed them, and many of the gentlemen also discovered that the path of hon- orable and lucrative employment was only to be found and preserved by adopting the religion of the state. The ruin of the Protestants was now resolved on. Madame de Maintenon


90


PERSECUTION OF THE HUGUENOTS.


[1670-1685.


says of Louis XIV., "If God spares him, there will be only one religion in his kingdom." "By special decrees many of the Protestant houses of worship were closed, and ministers convicted of holding unauthorized assemblies were led by the public executioner with a rope around their necks, and ban- ished the kingdom. In 1670, schoolmasters were forbidden to teach the children of Protestants beyond the common branches of reading, writing, and arithmetic. In 1671, it was again decreed that they should have but one school and one teacher in any place. Mixed courts, half of Protestants and half of Catholics, were abolished, and they must always ap- pear before judicatories prejudiced against them. A fund was created for the conversion of Protestants, and placed under the direction of Pelisson, himself a convert from the Hugue- not ranks, who bought his converts at six livres per head ; the " miracles" of Pelisson were a jest of the court, where he was represented to be less learned, but more persuasive than Bossuet. Protestant nobles were deprived of their nobility, which, perhaps, was but recently conferred; soldiers were quartered upon the reformed, and the privacy of their families destroyed; but if they should be converted to the Church of Rome they were to be exempted for two years. Children were permitted to enter the church from the age of seven years ; and if, by the terror of the rod, or the offer of an orange, or any other means, a child could be brought to express the slightest desire to join the Romish Church, or to enter its place of worship,-if it could be affirmed that he had joined in prayer, made the sign of the cross, or kissed the image of the Virgin, he was taken away from the care and society of his parents, and educated in the faith of Rome at his parents' expense. Churches were demolished which were in the vicin- ity of those of the dominant faith. Those especially in towns where the Protestant population were the most numerous were destroyed. The course of instruction in the Reformed colleges was interfered with. Greek, Hebrew, and Theology were successively struck off from the curriculum. The col- lege of Sedan was destroyed in 1681, that of Montauban interdicted in 1685, and that of Saumur suppressed. At length the soldiery were sent to undertake the conversion of the Huguenots. As they entered the houses of the dis- trict of Poitou, sword in hand, they would cry "Kill! kill !" to frighten the women and children. As long as there were any money or valuables remaining, they pillaged them of all. They would then seize them by the hair and drag


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97


THE DUNGEONS OF GRENOBLE.


1670-1685.]


them to church, or they would torture them at slow fires, by roasting their hands or feet. They would break their ribs or arms with blows, or burn their lips, or throw them into damp dungeons to rot. In the canton of Bearn, these "booted apostles," instructed by their leader, would keep the head of the family and other members of the house- hold awake by noise of drums, by compelling them to main- tain an erect position, pricking them with sharp instruments, pulling them about, suspending them by cords, blowing tobacco smoke up their nostrils, till they were completely exhausted, and would promise anything to escape from their complicated tortures. An old man of Nismes, M. de Lacas- sagne, tormented thus a long time by fifty dragoons, abjured in the presence of the bishop. . "Soon," says the prelate, " you will find repose." . "Alas, my lord," replied the worn-out old man, "I expect repose only in heaven, and God grant its gates, should I reach them, may not be shut against me." Young mothers were bound to the post of the conjugal' bed, and reduced to the alternative of abjuring or seeing their infants perish with hunger. Some succumbed under their maternal love, and professed conversion, for the privilege of suckling their famishing babes, hoping that the infinite mercy of God would pardon the . act, and pity the weakness of a mother's love. The soldiers offered indignities to the women. Their officers were no better. "They spat in their faces. made them lie down on burning coals, forced them to put their heads in ovens, the vapors of which were enough to suf- focate them." Their study was to invent tortures which should be painful without being mortal. They affirmed that everything was permitted them, by the order of their superiors, except murder and rape. The greater part of the commerce and manufactures of the nation were then in the hands of the Huguenots. Their richly-furnished houses were rifled, and their stores, filled with goods, plundered. The dragoons made their horses lie down on the fine linens of Holland, and stabled them in the shops of the merchants, filled with bales of silk, wool, and cotton. At Bordeaux some were cast into the dungeons of the castle, the walls of which were arranged in the form of retorts. The miserable victims of imprison- ment in these could not continue standing, lying, or sitting. They were let down into them with ropes, and drawn up daily to be scourged. Many, after a few weeks of confinement, came forth from the dungeons of Grenoble without either hair or teeth. At Valance they were cast into deep pits,


7


98


DEMOLITION OF PROTESTANT CHURCHES.


[1670-1685;


noisome with the stench of the decaying entrails of sheep. These combined enormities filled whole communities with terror. Many feigned conversion to escape them. News was constantly borne to the court of Louis, of the result of these diabolical cruelties .* Madame de Maintenon writes to her confessor, "The king is well; every courier brings him great cause for joy : news of conversions by thousands." At length he gave the finishing stroke, as he supposed, to the French Protestant Church, and signed at Fontainbleau, on the 22d of October, 1685, the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. The Protestant temples were ordered now to be demolished, and their religious worship, both private and public, was prohibited. The ministers were to leave the coun- try within fourteen days, on pain of the galleys. The people were not permitted to leave, and any attempt was punished by the galleys if they were men, and imprisonment if women, and by confiscation of their goods. Refugees were to return within four months, and if they did not so return, their prop- erty was to be confiscated. The day the edict was registered, the demolition of the church at Charenton, built by the archi- tect Debrosse, and capable, it is said, of containing 14,000 persons, was begun and finished in five days.+ Other churches, where the eloquence of some of the noblest men of France had defended the truth, and called men to repentance, structures, famous for their magnitude or architectural beauty, were lev- elled with the ground. The temple of Nismes was soon a heap of ruins, which was long marked by a stone in the midst, bearing the inscription, "Here is the House of God : Here is the Gate of Heaven."# The ministers immediately


* Louvois writes : " 60,000 conversions have been made in the district of Bordeaux, and 20,000 in Montauban. There'remains only 10,000 religionists in the District of Bordeaux, where, on the 15th of last month, were 150,000." The Duke of Noailles announced the entire conversion of Nismes, Uzèz, Alais, Villeneuve. "The most considerable men of Nismes," he wrote, "apostatized in the church the day after my arrival." Again, he writes : " The number of religionists in this province is about 240,000; and when I asked from you till the 25th of next month for their complete conversion, I took too long a time; for I believe that will be finished by the end of the present month."


t The Rev. Thomas Cotton was an eye-witness.of this desecration. "The sight of the vast assembly there convened," says lie, " was not transporting ; but the thought of such numbers being devoted to banishment, to slavery, and to the most barbarous deaths, some of which I witnessed, was more than I could bear."


{ "The Protestants," says Weiss, "were steeped in a letliargy of grief .. They had admired Louis XIV. as the greatest king of the age, obstinately believing in his good faith, his wisdom, and his humanity." They had


.


99


JUDITH MANIGAULT.


1670-1685.]


left the kingdom, in haste, not knowing whither they went. They. were sometimes detained on the frontiers, that they might be prevented from escaping within the appointed time, and so be doomed to the galleys. Multitudes of the people attempted their escape, were arrested, sent to the galleys, and chained for life to the benches on which they ate and slept. Among these were often men of intelligence and illustrious descent .* Many were sold as slaves to the West Indies. Multitudes, notwithstanding the frontiers were guarded, escaped by night or in the day-time, in innumerable dis- guises, or in boats, and every kind of procurable craft by sea. " Six hundred thousand," says Voltaire, "fled from the perse- cutions of Louis, carrying with them their riches, their in- dustry, and their implacable hatred against their king."t


The commerce and manufactures of France were crippled by the departure of her most industrious and valuable citizens, and her arts and manufactures transferred to those countries where the persecuted fugitives found refuge. At this time, and from this cause, Carolina received many valuable citizens from the French Huguenots, who brought their pastors with them, and at an early period set up their worship according to the Presbyterian faith and order. The sufferings which they underwent in escaping from their own country to this, may be conceived by the letter of Judith Manigault to her brother : "During eight months," she says, " we had suffered from the contributions and the quartering of the soldiers, with many other inconveniences. We resolved on quitting France by night, leaving the soldiers in their beds, and abandoning the house and its furniture. We continued to hide ourselves at Romans, in Dauphiny, for two days, while a search was made for us ; but our hostess, being faithful, did not betray us. We passed on to Lyons, to Dijon, to Metz, to Treves, to Coblentz, to Cologne, to Holland, and to England, and thence to Carolina. Embarking at London, we suffered every kind of misfortune. The red fever broke out on board the ship ; many of us died of it, and among them our aged mother. We touched at the islands of Bermuda, where the vessel which


reposed, also, on the remonstrances of the Protestant powers. Every illusion ceased, however, when they saw fall, even to the last, the eight hundred temples they possessed."-Vol. i., p. 102.


* See lists of the sufferers in Coquerel, Histoire des Églises du Désert, Appendix.


+ Methods of escape .- De Felice, p. 415, et seq .; Southern Lit. Gaz., p. 165; and Zurich Letter, Weiss, vol. i., pp. 109, 110. Comp., also, Browning's Hugue- nots, and Smedley.


100


FRENCH PRESBYTERIANS.


[1685-1700.


carried us was seized. We spent all our money there, and it was with great difficulty that we procured a passage on.board of another ship. New misfortunes awaited us in Carolina. At the end of eighteen months, we lost our eldest brother, who succumbed to such unusual fatigue. So that, after our de- parture from France, we endured all that it was possible to suffer. I was six months without tasting bread, working, be- side, like a slave ; and during three or four years, I never had the wherewithal completely to satisfy the hunger which de- voured me. And yet," adds this woman, in a spirit of the most admirable resignation, "God accomplished great things in our favor, by giving us the strength necessary to support these trials."* Another, who became the mother of an im- portant family, was conveyed in her childhood over the frontier of France in a large milk-can in the pannier of a beast of burden-for the parents had assumed the guise of dairyman and dairymaid, as if going to the nearest market town to supply milk to the inhabitants for their morning meal.t




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