This Day Two Hundred Years

Southland Times, Issue 10199, 3 July 1889, Page 3

This Day Two Hundred Years

• 25th March, 1689-1889. What a contrast between Edinburgh as I see it this morning and Edinburgh in the throes of the Revolution ! On my left hand stretches the New Town, with its shining terraces covering the long slope to the sea. But in 1689 all on that side of the Nor' Loch was a green hillside. And all on the otber side of the central ridge, where the city now throws out long arms to enclose Arthur's Seat as it has already enclosed the Calton Hill, was then country pasturage, from which at a still earlier date the cows trooped home in the gloaming through the Cowgate. Two hundred years ago Edinburgh was a small and fortified town, shut in between the strong West Port and the stronger Nether Bow, and with its burghal houses piled steep and massy within the TFlodden Wall. But within that narrow circuit a storm of fear and hope raged on 25th March, 1689. The Lords of Convention still sat in the Parliament House, as they had done every day for a fortnight. Among the lesser Barons and representative Burgesres Were men whose houses had been crushed by fines, their tenantry oppressed by dragoons, and themselves outlawed, men who a few months ago could have appeared there only at the risk of being hurried down to the chambers below to meet the Boots, or to the neighbouring Grassmarket to face the gallows. Nor was the danger passed. For on the other side of the room confronted them the Bloody Advocate, Sir George Mackenzie, learned, accomplished, calm, and cruel, as he needed to be who, in his assumed character of Religious Stoic, had resolved not only to make "the laws of his country his creed "in Church matters, but to enforce them on aU others. And beside him, for the first five days of the Convention, frowned a more ominous face, which we may still see on many a canvas, " beautiful as when he lived, with his long, dark, curled locks streaming down over his laced buff coat," — John Graham, of Claverhouse, since November last became Viscount Dundee. For all present knew that the only regular force in the city was Claverhouse's eighty horsemen ; and the swords which had hewed down many a prayer-meeting where not likely to spare a treasonable Convention. But the constitutional traitors had taken their own precautions, Nearly four hundred of the Westland Whigs had made their way quietly from Glasgow to Edinburgh, they were all armed, and under the directions of Hamilton and Binny, they dived into the vaults and cellars aroundjthe Parliament Close, to emerge in the hour of need. Argyll also had not come without a few Eighlanders, and Lord Leven's drums had seen heard beating for volunteers. The jitizens of Edinburgh, too, were on the side )f freedom, as Scottish burghs have always jeen. But above the burgh frowned the Castle, and its twenty-two canon and its leldpieces commanded tbe whole buildings, md in particular the Parliament House. Sere lay the immediate danger. At first ;he Duke of Gordon had been willing X) yield his place as Governor to the Convention of the Estates of Scotland. But Claverhouse had arrived in time. He 3topped the Duke's fnrniture as it was passing the portcullis, and privately persuaded him to retain for the King the last remaining of fche Royal fortresses. Then followed ci state of tension which lasted till the very day of this forgotten anniversary. On Marcb 19th, Claverhouse, having ascertained that he was hopelessly in a minority, and arranged for a Royalist meeting in Stirling, strode into the Convention, and complained of a plot to assassinate Mackenzie and himself. Blue-bonneted ruffians, standing in the doorways, had muttered a resolve " to deal with the dogs as they had dealt with better men." The Convention declined to take the Lhing seriously ; and the daring soldier, who had fully formed his new plans, rode off it the bead of " the bonnets of bonnie Dundee." But he did not ride, as Sir Walter Scott in hk bugle-like ballad makes him do, by the West Port and the Bends of the Bow. rhe horsemen went out by the opposite Water Gate, leading to Leith, and there turning, swept along the line of what is now Princes street to the West. Dundee liad a reason. He wished to see Gordon, md to see him privately. So while the dragoons entered the Lang Gate, leading [rom Edinburgh into the country, _ their leader clamoured up the huge and slippery basalt (rock, and held conference with the Duke at the postern still visible in the rampart on the side away from the town. But even there were sharp eyes to see, and swift feet to run to the Convention with the news. It had that evening in the chair the Duke of Hamilton, one of a house marked throughout all Scottish history by " a peculiar capriciousness of political action, and a wavering uncertainty which sickened all Bolid reliance." But on tbis occasion the smothered fire in his nature, as an eyewitness and opponent calls it, blazed out at the touch of danger. He told the meeting they had traitors within as well as outside, and must meet both. Therefore, while their soldier, the Earl of Leven, should go out alone to rouse the city, the doors must be locked and the keys laid upon the table. Balcaijras and the other confederates of Claverhouse, finding themselves in a trap, loudly approved of the suggestion; and in five minutes Leven's drums were again beating down the causeway, the city bells were swinging above, and from the fcen-storey high houses on either side the dense population of Edinburgh hurled itself in the High street. And from that wild night on to the 25th the excitement never leased. It is known now, and it was surmised then, that the Governor of the Castle ivas pressed.by the united Royalist party in the town to bend his guns—" Meg and her marrows "—upon the chamber where the Estates sat and pound it to pieces. We have become aware that he declined, but all known at the time was that he refused next day, when summoned by a herald, to surren3er to the Parliament. So while the Castle srloomed doubtfully above the town, and the town feebly invested it below, all men looked anxiously for succour to the sea. One thing only could heighten the suspense— the fear of the earlier approach |of an army on the other side. Two days before our date, on March 23rd, Sir James Dalrymple of Stair wrote from London to his friends in Edinburgh, that the Stuarts had set Ireland in a flame, and that " tlie invasion on Britain will certainly be on Scotland rather than on England." And on that evening, or the next, the Edinburgh men, looking to the Castle ramparts, suddenly saw bonfires and tar-barrels blaze out against the western sky and heard the trumpets and kettle-drums of the besieged proclaim their delight at the news that " King James had landed in Ireland," and was going to enjoy his own a^ain. The Good Town was still resolute, as became the heart of Scotland ; but it beat hard and uneasily till the very hour when, two hundred yeara ago frora this Monday, a flight of vessels frora the Thames streamed up the Firth. And then all men knew that General Mackay and the three regiments 'of the Scots Brigade, which had been fighting in Holland, had arrived to save them. The suspense was over; the deliverance from arbitrary power'J was assured ; the next generation, and "their sons after them for ever, would be born to the responsibilities of freedom. -^A, T.I. in Spectator.