The Book-Hunter, John Hill Burton [essential reading TXT] 📗

Less still could he have imagined that fame would arise for him after two hundred years—that vehement though vain efforts should be made to endow the simple name of John Spalding with the antecedents and subsequents of a biographical existence, and that the far-off descendants of many of those lairds and barons, whose warlike deeds he noticed at humble distance, should raise a monument to his memory in an institution called by his name. He was evidently a thoroughly retiring man, for he has left no vestige whatever of his individuality. Some specimens of his formal official work might have been found in the archives of his office—these would have been especially valuable for the identification of his handwriting and the settlement of disputed questions about the originality of manuscripts; but these documents, as it happens, were all burnt early in last century with the building containing them. So ardent and hot has been the chase after vestiges of this man, that the fact was once discovered that with his own hand he had written a certain deed concerning a feu-duty or rent-charge of £25, 7s. 4d., bearing date 31st January 1663; but in spite of the most resolute efforts, this interesting document has not been found.

It is probably to this same unobtrusive reserve, which has shrouded his very identity, that we owe the valuable peculiarities of the Commissary-Clerk's chronicle. He sought no public distinctions, took no ostensible side, and must have kept his own thoughts to himself, otherwise he would have had to bear record of his own share of troubles. In this calm serenity—folding the arms of resignation on the bosom of patience, as the Persians say—he took his notes of the wild contest that raged around him, setting down each event, great or small, with systematic deliberation, as if he were an experimental philosopher watching the phenomena of an eclipse or an eruption. Hence nowhere, perhaps, has it been permitted to a mere reader to have so good a peep behind the scenes of the mighty drama of war. We have plenty of chroniclers of that epoch—marching us with swinging historic stride on from battle unto battle—great in describing in long sentences the musterings, the conflicts, and the retreats. In Spalding, however, we shall find the numbers and character of the combatants, their arms, their dresses, the persons who paid for these, and the prices paid—the amount they obtained in pay, and the amount they were cheated out of—their banners, distinguishing badges, watchwords, and all other like particulars, set down with the minuteness of a bailiff making an inventory of goods on which he has taken execution. He is very specific in what one may term the negative side of the characteristics of war—the misery and desolation it spreads around. The losses of this "gudeman" and that lone widow are stated as if he were their law agent, making up an account to go to a jury for damages for the "spulzie of outside and inside plenishing, nolt, horse, sheep, cocks and hens, hay, corn, peats, and fodder." He specifies all the items of mansions and farm-houses attacked and looted, or "harried," as he calls it—the doors staved in, the wainscoting pulled down—the windows smashed—the furniture made firewood of—the pleasant plantations cut down to build sleeping-huts—the linen, plate, and other valuables carried off: he will even, perchance, tell how they were distributed—who it was that managed to feather his nest with the plunder, and who it was that was disappointed and cheated.

He had opportunities of bestowing his descriptive powers to good purpose. Besides its ordinary share in the vicissitudes and calamities of the war, his town of Aberdeen was twice pillaged by Montrose, with laudable impartiality—once for the Covenanters and once for the Royalists. Here is his first triumphant entry:—

"Upon the morne, being Saturday, they came in order of battle, being well armed both on horse and foot, ilk horseman having five shot at the least, whereof he had ane carbine in his hand, two pistols by his sides, and other two at his saddle-torr; the pikemen in their ranks with pike and sword; the musketeers in their ranks with musket, musket-staff, bandelier, sword, powder, ball, and match. Ilk company, both horse and foot, had their captains, lieutenants, ensigns, sergeants, and other officers and commanders, all for the most part in buff coats and goodly order. They had five colours or ensigns, whereof the Earl of Montrose had one having his motto drawn in letters, 'For Religion, the Covenant, and the Countrie.' The Earl Marechal had one, the Earl of Kinghorn had one, and the town of Dundee had two. They had trumpeters to ilk company of horsemen, and drummers to ilk company of footmen. They had their meat, drink, and other provisions, bag and baggage, carried with them, done all by advice of his Excellency Field-Marshal Leslie, whose counsel General Montrose followed in this business. Then, in seemly order and good array, this army came forward and entered the burgh of Aberdeen about ten hours in the morning, at the Over Kirk gateport, syne came down through the Broadgate, through the Castlegate, over at the Justice Port to the Queen's Links directly. Here it is to be noted that few or none of this haill army wanted are blue ribbon hung about his craig [viz., neck] under his left arm, whilk they called 'the Covenanters' ribbon,' because the Lord Gordon and some other of the Marquis's bairns had ane ribbon, when he was dwelling in the toun, of ane red flesh colour, which they wore in their hats, and called it 'the royal ribbon,' as a sign of their love and loyalty to the King. In dispite or dirision whereof this blue ribbon was worn and called 'the Covenanters' ribbon' by the haill soldiers of this army."

The well-ordered army passed through, levying a fine on the Malignants, and all seemed well; but because the citizens had not resisted Montrose, the loyal barons in the neighbourhood fell on them and plundered them; and because they had submitted to be so plundered, the Covenanting army came back and plundered them also. "Many of this company went and brack up the Bishop's yetts, set on good fires of his peats standing within the close: they masterfully broke up the haill doors and windows of this stately house; they brake down beds, boards, aumries, glassen windows, took out the iron stauncheons, brake in the locks, and such as they could carry had with them, and sold for little or nothing; but they got none of the Bishop's plenishing to speak of, because it was all conveyed away before their coming." On Sunday, Montrose and the other leaders duly attended the devotional services of the eminent Covenanting divines they had brought with them. "But," says Spalding, "the renegate soldiers, in time of both preachings, is abusing and plundering New Aberdeen pitifully, without regard to God or man;" and he goes on in his specific way, describing the plundering until he reaches this climax: "No foul—cock or hen—left unkilled. The haill house-dogs, messens, and whelps within Aberdeen felled and slain upon the gate, so that neither hound nor messen or other dog was left that they could see." But there was a special reason for this. The ladies of Aberdeen, on the retiring of Montrose's army, had decorated all the vagabond street-dogs with the blue ribbon of the Covenant.

This was in 1639. Five years afterwards Montrose came back on them in more terrible guise still, to punish the town for having yielded to the Covenant. In Aberdeen, Cavalier principles generally predominated; but after being overrun and plundered successively by either party, the Covenanters, having the acting government of the country at their back, succeeded in establishing a predominance in the councils of the exhausted community. Spalding had no respect for the civic and rural forces they attempted to embody, and speaks of a petty bailie "who brought in ane drill-master to learn our poor bodies to handle their arms, who had more need to handle the plough and win their livings." Montrose had now with him his celebrated army of Highlanders—or Irish, as Spalding calls them—who broke at a rush through the feeble force sent out of the town to meet them. Montrose "follows the chase to Aberdeen, his men hewing and cutting down all manner of men they could overtake within the town, upon the streets, or in their houses, and round about the town, as our men were fleeing, with broadswords, but mercy or remeid. These cruel Irish, seeing a man well clad, would first tyr [i.e., strip] him and save the clothes unspoiled, then kill the man; ... nothing heard but pitiful howling, crying, weeping, mourning, through all the streets.... It is lamentable to hear how thir Irishes, who had gotten the spoil of the town, did abuse the samin. The men that they killed they would not suffer to be buried, but tirled them of their clothes, syne left their naked bodies lying above the ground. The wife durst not cry nor weep at her husband's slaughter before her eyes, nor the mother for her son—which if they were heard, then they were presently slain also; ... and none durst bury the dead. Yea, and I saw two corpses carried to the burial through the old town with women only, and not are man amongst them, so that the naked corpses lay unburied so long as these limmers were ungone to the camp."

The Commissary-Clerk was on Montrose's side, but he had the hatred of a Lowlander of that day for the Highlanders. He has a great many amusing episodes describing the light-fingered lads from the hills coming down, and in the general confusion of the times plundering Cavalier and Covenanter alike; and on these occasions he drops his usual placidity and becomes rabid and abusive, as the best-tempered Americans are said to become when they speak of niggers, and deals out to them the terms limmers, thieves, robbers, cut-throats, masterful vagrants, and so forth, with great volubility. Of some of their chiefs, renowned in history, he speaks as mere robber-leaders, and when they are known by one name in their own country and another in the Lowlands, he puts an alias between the two. The very initial words of his chronicle are, "Efter the death and burial of Angus Macintosh of Auldterlie, alias Angus Williamson."

Montrose having departed, Argyle's troops commenced to plunder the district for having submitted to his enemy, and these, being doubly offensive as Covenanters and Highlanders, are treated accordingly. But it is necessary to be impartial; and having bestowed so much on the Cavalier annalist, let us take a glimpse at the other side.

Robert Wodrow.

From the collections of the Reverend Robert Wodrow, the historian of The Sufferings of the Church of Scotland, a rich harvest has been reaped by the northern clubs, one of which appropriately adopted his name. He was a voluminous writer and an inexhaustible collector. It is generally classed among the failings of the book-hunter that he looks only to the far past, and disregards the contemporary and the recent. Wodrow was a valuable exception to this propensity. Reversing the spirit of the selfish bull which asks what posterity has done for us, he stored up contemporary literature for subsequent generations; and he thus left, at the commencement of the eighteenth century, such a library as a collector of the nineteenth, could he have sent a caterer before him, would have prepared to await his arrival in the world. The inestimable value of the great collection of the civil-war pamphlets made by George Thomason, and fortunately preserved in the British Museum, is very well known. Just such another of its kind is Wodrow's, made up of the pamphlets, broadsides, pasquinades, and other