cause to be conveyed to the Committee of Estates; and that such return shall be sent back to me as they shall please to give. I remain, Sir, Your humble servant, OLIVER CROMWELL.* Here is a notice from Balfour:† At Perth, 22d November, 1650 (Rege præsente,' the King being present, as usually after that Flight to the Grampian Hills he is allowed to be), 'the Com. mittee of Estates remits to the Committee of Quarterings the exchange of Prisoners anent Mr. Alexander Jaffray and Mr. John Carstairs, Minister, with some English Prisoners in the Castle of Dunbarton.' Nevertheless at this date, six or seven weeks after, the business is not yet perfected.` Alexander Jaffray, as we know already, is Provost of Aberdeen; a leading man for the covenant from of old; and generally the Member for his Burgh in the Scotch Parliaments of these years. In particular, he sits as Commissioner for Aberdeen for the Parliament that met 4th January, 1649 ; under which this disastrous Quarrel with the English began. He was famed afterwards (infamous, it then meant) as among the first of the Scotch Quakers; he, with Barclay of Urie, and other lesser Fallen-Stars. Personal intercourse with Cromwell, the Secretary and Blasphemer, had much altered the notions of Mr. Alex. ander Jaffray. Baillie says, He and Carstairs, then Prisoners on parole, were sent Westward, by Cromwell 'to agent the Remonstrance,'-to guide towards some good issue the Ker-and-Strahan Negotiation which, alas, could only be guided headlong into the ditches at Hamilton before daybreak, as we saw !-Jaffray sat afterwards in the Little Parliament; was an official person in Scotland,§ and one of Cromwell's leading men there. Carstairs, we have to say or repeat, is one of the Ministers of Glasgow deep in the confused Remonstrant-Resolutioner Controversies of that day; though on which side precisely one does *Thurloe, i., 172. Leigh Parliament House. Balfour, iii., 382. † iv., 168. § Ousted our friend Scotstarvet,—most unjustly, thinks he of the Staggering State (p. 181). There wanted only that to make the Homily on Life's Nothingness complete! nature. not altogether know, perhaps he himself hardly altogether knew. From Baillie, who has frequent notices of him, it is clear he tends strongly towards the Cromwell view in many things; yet with repugnances, anti-sectary and other, difficult for frail human How he managed his life-pilotage in these circumstances shall concern himself mainly. His Son, I believe, is the Principal Carstairs,* who became very celebrated among the Scotch Whigs in King William's time. He gets home to Glasgow now, where perhaps we shall see some glimpses of him again. John Waugh (whom they spell Vauch, and Wauch, and otherwise distort) was the painful Minister of Borrowstounness, in the Shire of Linlithgow. A man of many troubles, now and afterwards. Captive in the Dunbar Drove; still deaf he to the temptings of Sectary Cromwell; deafer than ever. In this month of January, 1651, we perceive he gets his deliverance; returns with painfully increased experience, but little change of view derived from it, to his painful Ministry; where new tribulations await him. From Baillie I gather that the painful Waugh's invincible tendency was to the Resolutioner or Quasi-Malignant side; and too strong withal ;—no level sailing, or smooth pilotage, possible for poor Waugh! For as the Remonstrant or Ker-and Strahan Party, having joined itself to the Cromwellean, came ultimately to be dominant in Scotland, there ensued, for straitlaced clerical individuals who would cling too desperately to the opposite Resolutioner or Quasi-Malignant side, very bad times. There ensued in the first place, very naturally, this, That the straitlaced individual, who would not cease to pray publicly against the now Governing Powers, was put out of his living: this; and if he grew still more desperate, worse than this. Of both which destinies our poor straitlaced Waugh may serve to us as an emblem here. Some three years. hence we find that the Cromwellean Government has, in Waugh's, as in various other cases, ejected the straitlaced Resolutioner, and inducted a loose-laced Remonstrant into his Kirk ;-leaving poor Waugh the straitlaced to preach ' in a barn hard by.' And though the loose * Biog. Britann. in voce; somewhat indistinct. tiii., 248. laced have but fifteen,' and the straitlaced 'all the Parish,' it matters not; the stipend and the Kirk go with him whose lacing is loose one has nothing but one's barn left, and sad reflections. Nay in Waugh's case, the very barn, proving as is likely an arena of too vehement discourse, was taken away from him; and he, Waugh, was lodged in Prison, in the Castle of Edinburgh.* For Waugh 'named the King in his prayers,' he and Mr. Robert Knox' even went that length! In Baillie, under date 11th November, 1653, is a most doleful inflexible Letter from Waugh's own hand: "brought to the top of this rock,” as his ultimate lodgingplace; "having my habitation among the owls of the desert, because of my very great uselessness and fruitlessness among the sons of men.” Yet he is right well satisfied, conscience yielding him a good, &c., &c.-Poor Waugh, I wish he would reconsider himself. Whether it be absolutely indispensable to Christ's Kirk to have a Nell-Gwynn Defender set over it even though descended from Catherine Muir; and if no other, not the bravest and devoutest of all British men, will do for that? O Waugh, it is a strange camera-obscura the head of man !— LETTER CXI. · We have heard of many Mosstroopers: we heard once of a certain Watt, a Tenant of the Earl of Tweeddale's, who being ruined out by the War, distinguished himself in this new course; and contemporary with him, of 'one Augustin a High-German.' To which latter some more special momentary notice now falls due. Read Balfour's record, and then Cromwell's Letter. 'One Augustin, a High-German, being purged out of the Army before Dunbar Drove, but a stout and resolute young man, and lover of the Scots Nation,-imitating Watt,-in October or November this year, annoyed the Enemy very much; killing many of his stragglers; and made nightly infalls upon their quarters, taking and killing sometimes twenty, sometimes thirty, and more or less of *Baillie, iii., 248, 253, 228. them: whereby he both enriched himself and his followers, and greatly damnified the Enemy. His chief abode was about and in the Mountains of Pentland and Soutra.'-And again, from Perth, 19th December, 1650: Memorandum, That Augustin departed from Fife with a party of six-score horse; crossed at Blackness on Friday, 13th December; forced Cromwell's guards; killed eighty men to the Enemy; put-in thirty-six men to Edinburgh Castle, with all sorts of spices, and some other things; took thirtyfive horses and five prisoners, which he sent to Perth the 14th of this instant.' Which feat, with the spices and thirty-six men, could not indeed save Edinburgh Castle from surrendering, as we saw, next week; but did procure Captain Augustin 'thanks from the Lord Chancellor and Parliament in his Majesty's name,' and good outlooks for promotion in that quarter.* For the Right Honorable the Committee of Estates of the Kingdom of Scotland: These. MY LORDS, Edinburgh, 17th January, 1650. Having been informed of divers barbarous murders and inhuman acts, perpetrated upon our men by one Augustin a German in employ under you, and one Ross a Lieutenant, I did send to Lieutenant-General David Lesley, desiring justice against the said persons. And to the end I might make good the fact upon them, I was willing either by commissioners on both parts, or in any other equal way, to have the charge proved. The Lieutenant-General was pleased to allege a want of power from Public Authority to enable him herein which occasions me to desire your Lordships that this business may be put into such a way as may give satisfaction;-whereby I may understand what rules your Lordships will hold during this sad Contest between the two Nations; 'rules' which may evidence the War to stand upon other pretences at least than the allowing of such actions will suppose. Desiring your Lordships' answer, I rest, Your humble servant, OLIVER CROMWELL.† * Balfour, iv., 166, 210, 214. †Thurloe, i., 173. Laigh Parliament House. No effect whatever seems to have been produced by this Letter. The Scotch Quasi-Malignant Authorities have 'thanked' Augustin, and are determined to have all the benefit they can of him,— which cannot be much, one would think! In the following June accordingly we find him become Colonel Augustin,' probably Major or Lieutenant-Colonel; quartered with Robin Montgomery 'at Dumfries;' giving an alarm to Carlisle,' but by no means taking it; falling in,' on another occasion, with two hundred picked men,' but very glad to fall out again, nearly all cut off.' In strong practical Remonstrance against which, the learned Bulstrode has Letters in November, vague but satisfactory. That the Scots themselves rose against Augustin, killed some of his men, and drove away the rest;' entirely disapproving of such courses and personages. And then finally in January following, 'Letters that Augustin the great robber in Scotland,-upon disbanding of the Marquis of Huntley's forces,' the last remnant of Scotch Malignancy for the present,—' went into the Orcades, and there took ship for Norway."* Fair wind and full sea to him!— 6 LETTER CXII. AN Official Medallist has arrived from London to take the Effigies of the Lord General, for a Medal commemorative of the Victory at Dunbar. The Effigies, Portrait, or 'Statue' as they sometimes call it, of the Lord General appears to be in a state of forwardness; but he would fain waive such a piece of vanity. The Gratuity to the Army' is a solid thing: but this of the Effigies, or Stamp of my poor transient unbeautiful Face-?However, the Authorities, as we may surmise, have made up their mind. For the Honorable the Committee of the Army' at London: These. GENTLEMEN, Edinburgh, 4th February, 1650. It was not a little wonder to me to see that you should send Mr. Symonds so great a journey, about a business importing so Newspapers (in Cromwelliana, p. 104); Whitlocke, 23 November, 1651; ib., 14 January, 1651-2. |