ecution, and there to be hanged and quartered. He 1615 then cried out, God have mercy upon me! If there ' be here any hidden Catholics, let them pray for me; but the prayers of heretics I will not have.' After a short interval allowed for penitence and prayer, (perhaps also for erecting the scaffold) he was hanged that same afternoon, but the quartering was dispensed with. A few months after, William Sinclair, advocate, Robert Wilkie, brewer, and Robert Cruikshanks, stabler in Edinburgh, were tried before the Court of Justiciary for resetting, that is, giving meat and lodging to the above John Ogilvie and another Jesuit priest. They were convicted; and by express warrant of his Majesty were sentenced to be hanged: but by a posterior warrant the sentence was changed into perpetual banishment. Mr. John Wallace for saying of Mass, being habit and repute a Popish Priest, and refusing to take the Formula. THE penal laws against Papists had amounted to a 1722 most sanguinary pitch of persecution; but, as in most cases where the punishment bears no proportion to the offence, the humanity of mankind is unwilling to furnish the public prosecutor with evi * Records of Justiciary, July 14, August 18, and 90, 1615. 1722 dence, so, in the crime of Popery, the state had to enact a law for ascertaining a proof of the offence. By this law it was declared, that any person who was habit and repute, that is, generally holden and deemed to be a Popish Priest, and who should refuse to take a formula therein prescribed, should be banished for life, never to return under pain of death. By the same law, the being found in a chapel where there were altar and mass-book, &c. subjected the person so found to perpetual banishment. Papists, or those refusing to take the formula, by this statute, are likewise declared incapable of all succession whatever; the same to devolve upon the next Protestant heir. And those who aposlize from the true Protestant religion,' by professing the Popish, are also declared to forfeit their whole heritable estate to their next Protestant heir. Upon this law Mr. Wallace was indicted.† It was charged against him, that the magistrates of the Canongate, a suburb of Edinburgh, had sent a parcel of soldiers into the house of Elizabeth, Duchess Dowager of Gordon on the 29th of April last, which, by the bye, was a Sunday; that the soldiers there apprehended the prisoner when he was about to say mass; and that he refused to take the formula whẹn tendered to him. He and his surety had granted a bail-bond of a thousand merks Scots to stand trial; * William, parliament 1st, sess. S. c. 3. A. D. 1700. These magistrates were entitled to a reward of 500 merks 1 but, as he failed to appear, the bail-bond was forfeit- 1722 ed, and sentence of outlawry was pronounced against him. It aggravates not a little that contempt, mixed with horror, which ought to be entertained of certain parts of our penal law, that by the unrepealed statute upon which the prisoner was condemned, no parent can put his child to an eminent master in riding, fencing, music, French, or Italian, (for such are mostly Papists) but he must incur a penalty of 500 merks for each offence, which may be pursued for by any Protestant subject, and upon conviction shall pertain to the pursuer for his reward.' What heightens the absurdity is, that one of those masters thus forbidden by statute to teach, has a royal bounty of 200 a year for teaching.-The trumpet of sedition and fanaticism, blown by the foul breath of ignorance against the repeals of those penal laws; the dismal consequences of the blast; the guilt which those trumpeters incurred; and the disgrace which they have brought upon this country, will not be purified by many lustrums of liberal science. I shall make no farther commentary upon this statute, and this prosecution, but that it should teach a little moderation of language to that class of people which upon every occasion launches forth its undistinguishing applause, upon the principles of liberty which flowed from the glorious Revolution; and the principles of toleration, so congenial to the meek spirit of the Reformed Religion. So late as April 25, 1755, Alexander McDonald, a Popish priest, by the way of favour and clemency, was banished Scotland for life, having refused to take the formula. Sir James Ker for celebrating clandestine and irregular marriage. 1590 SIR JAMES KER in Old Roxburgh was deposed from the office of a clergyman on account of misbehaviour, in November, 1583, and was excommunicated on the 26th of May after.* He continued notwithstanding to celebrate marriage and the sacrament of baptism. For these offences he was tried on the 18th of June, 1590, on an indictment, for lying under the horrible sentence of excommunication, separ C ate from the suffrage and prayer of the Kirk, and ❝ merit of the blood of Christ, to the damnation of his soul, continually from the 26th day of March, 1584: that although he, for misbehaviour, had 'been deprived of the clerical function in the month of November, 1583, he continued notwithstanding to abuse the sacraments, by marryingt sundry per sons, and baptising of children? The prisoner came in the King's will, i. e. submitted to his Majesty's pleasure, which the King's Advocate declared to be, that the prisoner should stand two hours at the Cross with a paper in his hat denoting his crime; and that he should not commit * Records of Justiciary, June 18, 1590. + The Advocate was here a little out in his divinity. It is an apt illustration of the nicety of the dispute between the Romish and Reformed Churches concerning the number of the sacra ments, and of the iniquity of annexing rigorous punishment to a difference of religious opinion, that the King's Advocate, in a criminal libel, should fall into the mistake of stating the celebra tion of irregular marriage as the abuse of a sacrament, the like transgression again under pain of death. 1590 Let us compare this sentence with that which was pronounced in the following trial, in a more enlightened age, and under a more free government. John Connochar for celebrating clandestine and irregular marriage. JOHN CONNOCHAR was a nonjuring clergyman of 1755 the Episcopal Church of Scotland. His residence in a wild district of the Highlands, where there was not within many miles a man of his knowledge and learning, gave him a degree of consequence to which his irreproachable morals and unaffected piety added singular importance: but his virtues were poisoned by his attachment to an unfortunate family; and the eminence of his situation and character, which in better times would have commanded felicity, served only to attract the fire of political vengeance. He was marked out as a victim whose ruin was to confound the remains of a vanquished party. The gentry in the North of Scotland professed almost universally the Episcopal or Popish religion; and meeting-houses were tolerated where public worship was performed according to the liturgy of the Church of England. But, on the extinction of the rebellion 1745, Government thought proper to make an indirect acknowledgement of the King's title to the throne, in the most solemn addresses to God, an indispensible part of the formula. It commanded all Episcopal clergymen, at every time they |