John Welsh, the Irongray Covenanter. 69 



nethan) about midnight, where there were 200 or 300 people 

 all of the meanest commons. Above 20 children were chris- 

 tened. Lord Tweeddale says he had got notice of his haunts, 

 and sent Mungo Murray, the lieutenant of the guard, " to try 

 his hand," but Welsh eluded pursuit. (Lauderdale Papers, 

 ii., 123.) 



The Indulgences. 



It is necessary for a moment to turn from the personal 

 history of Welsh to the ecclesiastical policy of Lauderdale, 

 for unless this is understood it is impossible to understand 

 Welsh's position from 1669 till Bothwell Bridge, ten years 

 later. Lauderdale returned to Scotland in 1669 as King's Com- 

 missioner. The retiring Commissioner, Rothes, had become 

 very unpopular through the severities which he allowed Sharp 

 (Archbishop of St. Andrews) and Dalziel of Binns to exercise 

 in suppressing the Pentland Rising. Lauderdale was sensual 

 and cynical, a notorious evil liver, but he was not a fool, and 

 he knew his countrymen. He saw that the policy of Rothes 

 and Sharp was a mistake. He had no love for prelacy ; in 

 fact, he was a Presbyterian, if he was anything. His object, 

 therefore, was not to magnify the office of the bishops, but to 

 minimise it. He could not abolish it, but he tried to make it 

 less obnoxious to the people. 



In 1669 he issued the first indulgence. You will remem- 

 ber that the Parliament of 1662 had passed an Act ordering 

 all ministers to obtain presentation from their lay patron and 

 collation from their bishop, or else vacate their charges. 

 Under this Act, Welsh and about 350 other ministers had 

 been driven from their parishes. The ministers who were sent 

 to replace them were known as curates. Though we need 

 not believe all that the Covenanting writers say about them — 

 for in those days any evidence was good enough to condemn 

 an adversary — still the curates were not, on the whole, the sort 

 of people who would win the respect of honest men. Their 

 congregations were driven to church through fear of fines and 

 imprisonment. It is true the curates had not an easy life, for 

 when the military withdrew from the district the parishioners 

 were apt to make the parish too warm for them, as in the case 



