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 BAILLIE,
ROBERT, of Jerviswood, an eminent patriot of the reign of Charles
II, was the son of George Baillie of St John’s kirk in Lanarkshire,
cadet of the ancient family of Baillie of Lamington, who appears to have
purchased the estate of Jerviswood, also in Lanarksbire, in the reign of
Charles I., from a family of the name of Livingstone. It is stated by
the jacobite, Robert Mylne, in a publication called "Fountainhall’s
Notes," that the first circumstance which alienated the mind of
Robert Baillie from the government, was his marrying a daughter of Sir
Archibald Johnston of Warristoun, who, having borne a conspicuous part
in the civil war from its beginning, was executed after the Restoration.
Whatever be the truth of this allegation, Baillie appears before the
year 1676, to have been otherwise allied to the non-conformist party.
The incident which first
brought him forward into view as a subject of persecution, was one of
those interferences in behalf of natural justice, where all sense of
consequences is overborne by the exigency of the occasion. During the
misgovernment of the Duke of Lauderdale, a wretched profligate of the
name of Carstairs had bargained with Archbishop Sharpe to undertake the
business of an informer upon an uncommonly large scale, having a troop
of other informers under him, and enjoying a certain reward for each
individual whom he could detect at the conventicles, besides a share of
the fines imposed upon them. It may be supposed that an individual who
could permit himself to enter upon a profession of this kind, would not
be very scrupulous as to the guilt of the persons whom he sought to make
his prey. He accordingly appears to have, at least in one noted
instance, pounced upon an individual who was perfectly innocent. This
was the Rev. Mr Kirkton, a non-conformist minister it is true, but one
who had been cautious to keep strictly within the verge of the law.
Kirkton was the brother-in-law of Mr Baillie of Jerviswood, by his
marriage to the sister of that gentleman, and he is eminent in Scottish
literary history for the memoir of the church during his own times,
which was of great service in manuscript to the historian Wodrow, and
was at length published in 1817. One day in June, 1676, as Mr Kirkton
was walking along the High Street of Edinburgh, Carstairs, whose person
he did not know, accosted him in a very civil manner, and expressed a
desire to speak with him in private. Mr Kirkton, suspecting no evil,
followed Carstairs to a very mean-looking house, near the common prison.
Carstairs, who had no warrant to apprehend or detain Mr Kirkton, went
out to get one, locking the door upon his victim. (Burnet. Wodrow’s
account is slightly different.] The unfortunate clergyman then perceived
that he was in some danger, and prevailed upon a person in the house to
go to seek his brother-in-law, Mr Baillie, and apprise him of his
situation. Carstairs, having in vain endeavoured to get the requisite
number of privy-councillors to sign a warrant, now came back, resolved,
it appears, to try at least if he could not force some money from Mr
Kirkton for his release. Just as they were about to confer upon this
subject, Mr Baillie came to the door, with several other persons, and
called to Carstairs to open. Kirkton, hearing the voices of friends,
took courage, and desired his captor either to set him free, or to show
a warrant for his detention. Carstairs, instead of doing either, drew a
pocket pistol, and Kirkton found it necessary, for his own safety, to
enter into a personal struggle, and endeavour to secure the weapon of
his antagonist. The gentlemen, without, hearing a struggle, and cries of
murder, burst open the door, and found Carstairs sitting upon Mr Kirkton,
on the floor. Baillie drew his sword, and commanded the poltroon to come
off, asking him at the same time if he had any warrant for apprehending
Mr Kirkton. Carstairs said he had a warrant for conducting him to
prison, but he utterly refused to show it, though Mr Baillie said that,
if he saw any warrant against his friend, he would assist in carrying it
into execution. The wretch still persisting in saying he had a warrant,
but was not bound to show it, Mr Baillie left the place, with Mr Kirkton
and other friends, having offered no violence whatever to Carstairs, but
only threatened to sue him for unlawful invasion of his brother-in-law’s
person.
It might have been
expected from even a government so lost to all honour and justice as
that which now prevailed in Scotland, that it would have had at least
the good sense to overlook this unhappy accident to one of its
tools. On the contrary, it was resolved to brave the popular feeling of
right, by listening to the complaints of Carstairs. Through the
influence of Archbishop Sharpe, who said that, if Carstairs was not
countenanced, no one would be procured to apprehend fanatics afterwards,
a majority of the council agreed to prosecute Baillie, Kirkton, and the
other persons concerned. For this purpose, an ante-dated warrant was
furnished to Carstairs, signed by nine of the councilors. The Marquis of
Atholl told Bishop Burnet, that he had been one of the nine who lent
their names to this infamous document. The whole case was therefore made
out to be a tumult against the government; Baillie was fined in six
thousand merks (318 pounds sterling) [Wodrow says 500 pounds sterling,
new edit. V. 2. p. 328.] and his friends in smaller sums, and to be
imprisoned till they should render payment.
This award was so
opposite, in every particular, to the principles of truth, honour, and
justice, that, even if not directed against individuals connected with
the popular cause, it could not have failed to excite general
indignation. It appears that a respectable minority of the council
itself was strongly opposed to the decision, and took care to let it be
known at court. Mr Baillie was therefore released at the end of four
months, in consideration of payment of one half of his fine to the
creature Carstairs. Lord Halton, however, who was at this time a kind of
pro-regent under his brother Lauderdale, had interest to obtain the
dismissal of his opponents from the council, namely, the Duke of
Hamilton, the Earls of Morton, Dumfries, and Kincardine, and the Lords
Cochrane and Primrose, whom he branded, for their conduct on this
occasion, as enemies to the church and favourers of conventicles.
After this period,
nothing is known of Mr Baillie till the year 1683, when he is found
taking a prominent share in a scheme of emigration, agitated by a number
of Scottish gentlemen, who saw no refuge but this from the tyranny of
the government. These gentlemen entered into a negotiation with the
patentees of South Carolina, for permission to convey themselves
thither, along with their families and dependents. While thus engaged,
Mr Baillie was induced, along with several of his friends, to enter into
correspondence and counsel with the heads of the Puritan party in
England, who were now forming an extensive plan of insurrection, for the
purpose of obtaining a change of measures in the government, though with
no ulterior view. Under the pretext of the American expedition, Lord
Melville, Sir John Cochrane of Ochiltree, Mr Baillie, and three others,
were invited and repaired to London, to consult with the Duke of
Monmouth, Sydney, Russell, and the rest of that party. This scheme was
never properly matured; indeed, it never was any thing but a matter of
talk, and had ceased to be even that, when a minor plot for
assassinating the king, to which only a small number of the party were
privy, burst prematurely, and involved several of the chiefs, who were
totally ignorant of it, in destruction. Sydney and Russell suffered for
this crime, of which they were innocent; and Baillie and several other
gentlemen were seized and sent down to be tried in Scotland. [Mr Rose,
in his Observations on Mr Fox’s History, relates that the hope of a
pardon being held out to him, on condition of his giving information
respecting some friends supposed to be engaged with him, his answer was,
"They who can make such a proposal to me neither know me nor my
country;" an expression of which the latter part is amply justified
by fact, for, as Lord John Russell has justly observed, in is Memoirs of
Lord William Russell, "It is to the honour of Scotland, that (on
this occasion) no witnesses came forward voluntarily, to accuse their
associates, as had been done in England."]
The subsequent judicial
proceedings were characterised by the usual violence and illegality of
the time. He endured a long confinement, during which he was treated
very harshly, and not permitted to have the society of his lady, though
she offered to go into irons, as an assurance against any attempt at
facilitating his escape. An attempt was made to procure sufficient proof
of guilt from the confessions wrought out of his nephew-in-law, the Earl
of Tarras (who had been first married to the elder sister of the Duchess
of Monmouth); but, this being found insufficient, his prosecutors were
at last obliged to adopt the unlawful expedient, too common in those
distracted times, of putting him to a purgative oath. An accusation was
sent to him, not in the form of an indictment, nor grounded on any law,
but on a letter of the king, in which he was charged with a conspiracy
to raise rebellion, and a concern in the Ryehouse Plot. He was told
that, if he would not clear himself of these charges by his oath, he
should be held as guilty, though not as in a criminal court, but only as
before the council, who had no power to award a higher sentence than
fine and imprisonment. As he utterly refused to yield to such a demand,
he was fined by the council in £6,000, being about the value of his
whole estates. It was then supposed that the prosecution would cease,
and that he would escape with the doom of a captive. For several months
he continued shut up in a loathsome prison, which had such an effect
upon his health that he was brought almost to the last extremity. Yet
"all the while," to use the words of Bishop Burnet, [Burnet,
being the nephew of Sir Archibald Johnstone, was cousin by marriage to
Mr Baillie.] "he seemed so composed, and even so cheerful, that his
behaviour looked like a reviving of the spirit of the noblest of the old
Greeks or Romans, or rather of the primitive Christians, and first
martyrs in those last days of the church." At length, on the 23rd
of December, 1684, he was brought before the court of justiciary. He was
now so weak as to be obliged to appear at the bar in his night-gown, and
take frequent applications of cordials, which were supplied to him by
his sister, the wife of Mr Key of Graden. The only evidence that could
be produced was the confessions forced from his friends by torture, one
of whom, the Rev. Mr Carstairs, afterwards the distinguished Principal
of the Edinburgh University, had only emitted a declaration, on an
express promise that no use was to be made of it. Mr Baillie solemnly
denied having been accessary to any conspiracy against the king’s
life, or being unfavourably disposed to monarchical government. He
complained that his friends had been forced to bring forth untrue
representations against him. Indeed, there can be no doubt that the
whole extent of his offence was a desire to procure some
amelioration of the measures, and not any change of the members of the
government; we say desire, because it never could be proved that
a single step had been taken in the matter, nor is there the least
probability that it would have ever been heard of, but for the trials of
several innocent persons.
A cavalier and
contemporary writer has alleged that Mr Baillie conducted himself on his
trial in a very haughty and scornful manner,—"very huffy and
proud," is the expression used—but this probably is only the
colour given by a political enemy to the Roman dignity, which Burnet saw
in his behaviour. After the evidence had been adduced, and when the Lord
Advocate had ended his charge, the following remarkable dialogue took
place between him and that officer:-
"My lord, I think it
very strange that you charge me with such abominable things; you may
remember that when you came to me in person, you told me that such
things were laid to my charge, but that you did not believe them. How
then, my lord, did you come to lay such a stain upon me with so much
violence? Are you now convinced in your conscience that I am more guilty
than before? You may remember what passed betwixt us in prison."
The whole audience fixed
their eyes upon the advocate, who appeared in no small confusion, and
said, "Jerviswood, I own what you say. My thoughts there were as a
private man; but what I say here is by special direction of the privy
council. And," pointing to Sir William Paterson, clerk, "he
knows my orders."
"Well," said
Baillie, "if your lordship have one conscience for yourself and
another for the council, I pray God forgive you; I do. My lords,"
he added, "I trouble your lordships no further."
The assize was
empannelled at midnight, and sat till nine in the morning of the
succeeding day, when a verdict of guilty was returned against Mr Baillie,
and he was sentenced to be executed that afternoon, at the cross, and
his limbs to be afterwards exhibited on the jails of four different
Scottish towns. The reason for such precipitation was the fear of his
judges that a natural death would disappoint the wishes of the
government, which called imperatively at this moment for a public
example to terrify its opponents. Baillie only said, "My lords, the
time is short, the sentence is sharp, but I thank my God who hath made
me as fit to die as you are to live." On returning to the prison he
experienced what Wodrow describes as "a wonderful rapture of joy,
from the assurance he had, that in a few hours he should be
inconceivably happy."
Mr Baillie was attended
to the scaffold by his faithful and affectionate sister. He had prepared
an address to the people; but knowing that he might be prevented from
delivering it, he had previously given it to his friends in writing. It
is said that the government afterwards offered to give up his body for
burial, if his friends would agree to suppress this document. They
appear to have rejected the proposition. The unfortunate gentleman was
so weak that he required to be assisted in mounting the ladder; he
betrayed, however, no symptom of moral weakness. Just before being
consigned to his fate, he said, in the self-accusing spirit of true
excellence, "My faint zeal for the protestant religion has brought
me to this end." His sister-in-law, with the stern virtue of her
family, waited to the last. [The Lady Graden, with a more than masculine
courage, attended him on the scaffold till he was quartered, and went
with the hangman and saw his quarters sodden, oyled, &c." – Fountainhall’s
Notes, 117, 118. It is scarcely possible for an individual
accustomed to the feelings of modern society to believe such a
statement.]
"Thus," says
Bishop Burnet, "a learned and worthy gentleman, after twenty months’
hard usage, was brought to death, in a way so full in all the steps of
it of the spirit and practice of the courts of the Inquisition, that one
is tempted to think that the methods taken in it were suggested by one
well studied, if not practiced, in them. The only excuse that ever was
pretended for this infamous prosecution was, that they were sure he was
guilty; and that the whole secret of the negotiation between the two
kingdoms was intrusted to him; and that, since he would not discover it,
all methods might be taken to destroy him. Not considering what a
precedent they made on this occasion, by which, if they were once
possessed of an ill opinion of a man, they were to spare neither
artifice nor violence, but to hunt him down by any means."
Dr Owen has testified in
a strong manner to the great abilities of the Scottish Sydney. Writing
to a Scottish friend, he said, "You have truly men of great spirits
among you; there is, for a gentleman, Mr Baillie of Jerviswood, a person
of the greatest abilities I ever almost met with."
Mr Baillie’s family was
completely ruined by his forfeiture. He left a son, George Baillie, who,
after his execution, was obliged to take refuge in Holland, whence he
afterwards returned with the Prince of Orange, by whom he was restored
to his estates. The wife of this gentleman was Miss Grizel Hume,
daughter of Sir Patrick Hume of Polwarth, a fellow-patriot of Mr Robert
Baillie. The occasion of their meeting was very remarkable. Miss Grizel,
when a very young girl, was sent by her father from the country, to
endeavour to convey a letter to Mr Baillie in prison, and bring back
what intelligence she could. She succeeded in this difficult enterprise;
and having at the same time met with Mr Baillie’s son, the intimacy
and friendship was formed, which was afterwards completed by their
marriage. |
