Among the Captured in that poor Committee or Shadow of Committee was poor old General Leven, time-honoured Lesley, who went to the Tower with the others; his last appearance in Public History. He got out again, on intercession from Queen Christina of Sweden; retired to his native fields of Fife; and slept soon and still sleeps in Balgony Kirk under his stone of honour, -the excellent crooked little Feldtmarshal' that he was. Excellent, though unfortunate. He bearded the grim Wallenstein at Stralsund once, and rolled him back from the bulwarks there, after long tough wrestle ;-and in fact did a thing or two in his time. Farewell to him.1 But with the light of Government snuffed out in Scotland, and no rekindling of it from the Worcester side, resistance in Scotland has ended. Lambert, next summer, marched through the Highlands, pacificating them.2 There rose afterwards rebellion in the Highlands, rebellion of Glencairn, of Middleton, with much mosstroopery and horsestealing; but Monk, who had now again the command there, by energy and vigilance, by patience, punctuality, and slow methodic strength, put it down, and kept it down. A taciturn man; speaks little; thinks more or less; -does whatever is doable here and elsewhere. Scotland therefore, like Ireland, has fallen to Cromwell to be administered. He had to do it under great difficulties; the Governing Classes, especially the Clergy or Teaching Class, continuing for most part obstinately indisposed to him, so baleful to their formulas had he been. With Monk for an assiduous Lieutenant in secular matters, he kept the country in peace; -it appears on all sides, he did otherwise what was possible for him. He sent new Judges to Scotland; 'a pack of kinless loons,' who minded no claim but that of fair play. He favoured, as was natural, the Remonstrant Ker-and-Strahan Party in the Church; favoured, above all things, the Christian-Gospel Party, who had some good message in them for the soul of man. Within wide limits he tolerated the Resolutioner Party; and beyond these 1 Scotch Peerages; Förster's Wallenstein als Feldherr (Potsdam, 1834), p. 124. Granger (Biographic History of England) has some nonsense about Leven,-in his usual neat style. He limits would not tolerate them ;-would not suffer their General Assembly to sit; marched the Assembly out bodily to Bruntisfield Links, and sent it home again, when it tried such a thing.1 united Scotland to England by act of Parliament; tried in all ways to unite it by still deeper methods. He kept peace and order in the country; was a little heavy with taxes:— on the whole, did what he could; and proved, as there is good evidence, a highly beneficial though unwelcome phenomenon there. Alas, may we not say, In circuitous ways he proved the Doer of what this poor Scotch Nation really wished and willed, could it have known so much at sight of him! The true Governor of this poor Scotch Nation; accomplishing their Covenant without the Charles Stuart, since with the Charles Stuart it was a flat impossibility. But they knew him not; and with their stiffnecked ways obstructed him as they could. How seldom can a Nation, can even an individual man, understand what at heart his own real will is: such masses of superficial bewilderment, of respectable hearsay, of fantasy and pedantry, and old and new cobwebbery, overlie our poor will; much hiding it from us, for most part! So that if we can once get eye on it, and walk resolutely towards fulfilment of it, the battle is as good as gained!— For example, who, of all Scotch or other men, is he that verily understands the real ends of the Covenant,' and discriminates them well from the superficial forms thereof; and with pious valour does them, and continually struggles to see them done? I should say, this Cromwell, whom we call Sectary and Blasphemer! The Scotch Clergy, persisting in their own most hidebound formula of a Covenanted Charles Stuart, bear clear testimony, that at no time did Christ's Gospel so flourish in Scotland as now under Cromwell the Usurper. 'These bitter 'waters,' say they, 'were sweetened by the Lord's remarkably blessing the labours of His faithful servants. A great door and ' an effectual was opened to many." Not otherwise in matters civil. Scotland,' thus testifies a competent eye-witness, was 'kept in great order. Some Castles in the Highlands had Garri 1 Whitlocke, 25 July, 1653; Life of Robert Blair (Edinburgh, 1754), pp. 118, 19; Blencowe's Sidney Papers, pp. 153-5. 2 Life of Robert Blair, p. 120; Livingston's Life of Himself (Glasgow, 1754), pp. 54, 5, &c. &c. sons put into them, which were so careful of their discipline, ' and so exact to their rules,' the wild Highlanders were wonderfully tamed thereby. Cromwell built three Citadels, Leith, Ayr and Inverness, besides many little Forts, over Scotland. Seven or Eight thousand men, well paid, and paying well; of the strictest habits, military, spiritual and moral: these it was everywhere a kind of Practical Sermon to take note of! There was good 'justice done; and vice was suppressed and punished. So that we always reckon those Eight Years of Usurpation a time of 'great peace and prosperity,'-though we needed to be twice beaten, and to have our foolish Governors flung into the Tower, before we would accept the same. We, and mankind generally, are an extremely wise set of creatures. Bishop Burnet's History of his own Time, book i. |