THE Dark Year of Dundee: A Tale of the Scottish Reformation.

PREFACE

The Dark Year of Dundee may be called a tale of Fact, since Fiction has only been employed in it as the handmaid of Truth, and for the purpose of throwing a more vivid light upon scenes and events that actually occurred. The “story,” slight as it is, may not inaptly be likened to the sheath or calyx that encloses and protects the yet unopened bud. When the flower unfolds its petals, the calyx has fulfilled its work, and, hidden from the eye, no longer attracts the thoughts and attention of the spectator. Thus it has been intended only to leave upon the reader’s mind the impression of one grand and simple character;—only to tell, plainly and briefly, the story of one who, long ago, laboured viabundantly and endured nobly for Christ’s sake, “strengthened with all might according to his glorious power.” And no alloy of fiction has been admitted into what is here recorded of George Wishart; for, apart from any other consideration, such a character as his is “God’s workmanship,” and it would seem impossible to add anything to

the great Artist’s design without marring its beauty and completeness.

I. Fanaticism.

It was the early summer of the year 1544, and the shadow of a dark cloud was already looming over every home in Dundee. God’s terrible angel of the pestilence stood with his sword outstretched, as of old over guilty Jerusalem; but no eye was opened to behold him; as yet no one suspected the danger and the anguish at hand.

In a small room of one of the high dark houses of the old town, a pretty, modest-looking young girl sat spinning, and singing as she span, in a sweet though rather listless voice. Now and then she glanced anxiously at the door, or rose to pay some little attention to the “kail” for the mid-day repast. Although the meal could scarcely have been intended for more than two persons, the fire necessary for its preparation increased uncomfortably the heat of the narrow room.

“Guid day, Mary,” said a girl about her own age, or a little older, entering without ceremony.

12The new comer was tall and strongly made; and, without the smallest pretensions to beauty, had an honest, open countenance. She held in her hand a large bunch of the pretty field-flowers so well known in Scotland as blue-bells.

“Look what I hae brocht ye, sin’ ye tell me ye come frae the hills. I thocht ye’d like them, maybe, to mind ye of yer auld hame.”

Mary Wigton eagerly took the flowers, thanked her friend with many expressions of delight, and a moment or two afterwards burst into tears.

Honest Janet Duncan was considerably disconcerted by the effect produced by her gift. “Weel, to be sure,” she ejaculated, “gin I didna think they’d hae pleasured ye!”

“Sae they hae,” said Mary, recovering herself quickly. “It was naebut a wee thocht of the auld hame and the auld times, and the heather and gowans on the bonnie Sidlaw hills. But it’s nae use thinking lang. Noo father’s farm is sold, it’s no like we’ll ever gae back again. Where did ye get thae blue-bells, Janet?”

“Archie, the ne’er-do-weel, played the truant frae his schule wi’ a wheen idle callants like himsel, and gaed out owre the Law and Balgay Hill. I’m afeard when Jamie comes ben and hears it he’ll be sair angered. An’ it’s no wonnerfu’, when he’s focht as he has to keep 13the lad to his schuling, and he nae mair himsel but a puir journeyman baxter.”[1]

“He’s a guid brither to ye, Janet.”

“Ye may say just that.” Then, as a new thought struck her, she contradicted herself energetically. “Na, he’s nae guid brither, but the best brither in a’ Dundee. Left but[2] father, or mither, or friend in the wide warld, wha wad hae thocht he could hae keepit us thegither, and fended for us sae weel. I can turn my hand to mony a thing, thank the saints, but there’s Archie and Effie, puir bairns; Archie naebut gaun threteen, and unco witless, and Effie a wee bit lassie. Eh, but we’ve seen hard times, Mary.”

Mary probably thought her own troubles had been greater than those of her friend; but she only said in a sympathizing tone, “Sit ye down, Janet, ye’re no hurried the day?”

Janet replied in the negative, for she dearly loved half an hour’s chat with a friend, when it could be obtained without neglecting her duties to her paragon brother Jamie, or her youthful charges, Archie and Effie.

“Ye’re watching for your father?”

“Ay; but I’m in hopes he’s got a lift o’ wark, he’s sae late. It’s unco little he brings hame,” she said sadly.

“It’s ill speiring after wark in this muckle town,” 14answered Janet. “Why did ye no bide in the country pairts, whaur a’body kenned ye?”

“I tell ye. There’s a man here that owes father a matter o’ twa hundert merk—that Maister Wilson wha has the muckle shop in the Nethergate, and sells silks and ribbons and sic’. He’s a rich man, but he’s no an honest man, Janet. When father loaned him the siller he was naebut a puir laddie, and father helped him sin’ he was sib to his wife’s mither. Weel, father’s that careless he never took tent to get a bit writing, forbye his word o’ mouth, ye ken. Sae when the warld gaed by-ordinar ill wi’ him, and the oats failed, and the sheep dee’d, and he maun sell the bonnie farm his forbears held before him, he thocht o’ Maister Wilson and his twa hundert merk, and came here to look after the siller. But Maister Wilson, he says there’s nae debt ava’, and that father canna prove it. Whilk last is owre true, wae’s me! Gin John, that’s my brither, wad hae bided wi’ us, he’d hae been a braw lawyer the noo, and richted us.”

“I didna ken ye had a brither, Mary.”

“Oh, ay; there were five o’ us, and a’ dee’d bairns but John and mysel. He was the eldest, an’ I the youngest. He was twal year aulder than I. He was a clever bairn, vera. Father had siller to spare in thae days, sae he thocht to make a man of him, and sent him to St. Andrews to study the law. And he was sae guid and 15kind-like, and loved his book sae weel. A’ the maisters set muckle store by him, and as for father and mither, he was just the licht o’ their een. But he gaed clean daft.”

“Gaed daft, Mary?”

“I canna mind mysel, for I was a wee lassie the time; but father told me he wasna seventeen year auld full when sic’ a change came owre him. He grew dour and hard, and wad hae nocht to do wi’ archery, and goff, and putting the stane, and a’ thae ploys that young men use. He wad gang by himsel, and greet and talk of his sins. It was aye and aye his sins wi’ him. Gin he had been a thief or a murderer he couldna hae made mair to do on’t. Yet he was aye a guid lad, and what he could hae done to gar him tak’ on sae, nae mortal could speir. Let father say what he might, naething would serve him but to gie the law up, and tak’ the priest’s frock. Sae that was the end on’t.”

“And do ye no see him whiles?”

“Na; we couldna gang to him, and he wouldna come to us. Father thinks he has clean forgot us. Thae holy men grow unco hard to their ain folk whiles. He’s no John Wigton ony mair, he’s Sir John Wigton the priest. I dinna ken whaur he is the noo, and gin we met in the street ane ’id pass the ither by.”

“When yer mither dee’d did ye no tell him?”

“How could we? We’re nae scholars, father nor I. But I trow he helped mither to her grave.”

16“Weel, our Jamie’s no that religious; but he gaes to his kirk regular, and says his aves and minds his puir soul as he can.”

“Seems to me,” said Mary, “it’s a hard case gin puir folks canna save their souls but they break their parents’ hearts. But here’s father!”

Janet stayed to exchange greetings with an elderly man of respectable appearance, but with something in his step, voice, and manner, that betrayed a certain weakness and indecision of character. Having answered his remark, “It’s by-ordinar hot and heavy for the time o’ year,” with a heartfelt, “Ye may weel say that,” she bade Mary good-bye, and hastened upstairs to the rooms in the same “land” which the Duncan family occupied.

While the father and daughter partake of their simple meal, a few words may be added in explanation of the religious history which Mary had recounted to her friend, much as an ignorant person might describe the appearance of some curious piece of mechanism, the construction and uses of which he was alike unable to comprehend.

John Wigton was no very unusual character. There have been obscure Dominics and Loyolas, as well as village Hampdens and mute inglorious Miltons. Naturally of a thoughtful temperament, as he passed from boyhood into youth he began to ask himself some of those solemn questions which are the birthright of every 17human soul. He knew but little of the great realities of the eternal world, but that little sufficed to make him first anxious and then miserable. He knew that sin was hateful to God, and he felt himself a sinner. His convictions partook of the ardour and intensity of his character, he was willing to do or suffer anything so that he might escape from the wrath to come. At this time perhaps John Wigton was not very far from the kingdom of heaven. Had a copy of Tyndale’s New Testament fallen into his hands, had he heard some enlightened reformer preaching Christ and him crucified, his character, humanly speaking, might have differed from what it actually became as light differs from darkness. But Rome had him in her hands to mould, and out of such

materials Rome moulds fanatics—from this wine she distils her sourest vinegar. She did not seek to obliterate his convictions; she rather strengthened, though she did not, properly speaking, deepen them. She told him little of the holiness of God’s character and of the true nature of sin; but she told him much of the sinner’s awful doom, of the fire and brimstone and the never-dying worm. She employed almost exclusively images of physical suffering, and employed them to terrify the imagination and to shake the nerves, rather than to touch the heart or the conscience. And when he sought for a way of escape from all these horrors, the path of penance and self-mortification was opened before him. He was 18taught to torture himself here that God might not torture him for ever hereafter; for it was in such an aspect that the Lord merciful and gracious, slow to anger and plenteous in goodness and truth, was presented to his mind. Being sincere and earnest, he did all, and more than all, that was required of him. He scourged himself,

he starved himself, he deprived himself of necessary sleep, and in many other ways, which it would be neither pleasant nor profitable to enumerate, he practised “will-worship and neglecting of the body.” But it would not do. If the blood of bulls and goats cannot take away sin, neither could a man’s own blood, though he were to pour it forth drop by drop, and in the most painful way that even the depraved imagination of monkish inquisitors could devise. John Wigton’s conscience, like that of many another miserable victim of Rome, bore sad witness to this truth. He was not at peace, he was not forgiven. On he went, further and further, upon the painful path prescribed to him, still pursuing a phantom that, like the mirage of the desert, always eluded his grasp. He did not find what he sought, but something he did find which, in the abnegation of all possible enjoyment, and the endurance of almost all possible suffering, still made life tolerable to him—he found excitement, he found employment for his powers, and food for his pride. Even apart from the praise it

brought him (and he who knew himself a miserable 19unpardoned sinner liked to hear himself called a saint), he began to take a morbid but real pleasure in self-infliction.

But there is an old and wise saying, “When water ceases to quench thirst, what will you drink after it?” It is the character of every unnatural excitement to pall with indulgence; and thus John Wigton found at length that his bodily austerities ceased to afford him even temporary relief and satisfaction. A stronger stimulant was required, and he found it. He set himself to mortify, not the nerves and muscles of his body, but the desires of his mind and the feelings of his heart. Family affection, friendship, the love of study, the free exercise of reason and judgment, all were ruthlessly sacrificed on the altar of his faith. In process of time he came to regard an impulse of tenderness towards his parents or his little sister as a kind of sinful self-indulgence, only greater than a soft bed or a luxurious meal. And there is this difference between the grosser and the more subtle forms of self-torture, that while a man may perhaps educate himself into an unnatural insensibility to bodily pain without injury to the rest of his character, the

process of hardening his soul is equivalent to a moral self-murder. John Wigton dared not allow himself to love or to pity, and he succeeded (or thought he did) in conquering these weaknesses of human nature; but he paid a heavy price for his success. He soon learned to 20regard the sufferings of others with indifference, nay, with joy and triumph, when they advanced the interests of the Church. In her service he was willing (or thought he was) to give his own body to be burned, and it was quite as meritorious, and on the whole rather more convenient, to burn the bodies of other men. At this point his education may be considered finished. At thirty years of age he was a thorough fanatic, with conscience and feeling both absorbed in one master passion. And then cooler heads began to take note of him as a man who might make a useful tool when there was work to be done from which ordinary men would shrink in horror.

Is this a fancy sketch? Alas! history answers, No; and from amongst the dim and shadowy forms of that multitude whom Rome has crowned with her doubtful honours there rises before the memory more than one so-called “saint” who might have sat for the portrait.

II. Clouded Death.

When we look from a distance upon some great mountain, we are apt to form rather mistaken ideas, not only of its dimensions, but of its relation to the surrounding landscape. It seems to stand before us alone in its majesty, rising like an altar to heaven, and sundered by some sharp dividing line from the plain beneath. But usually it is not so. A nearer approach brings us to gentle slopes, green with pasture or waving with corn, rising higher and higher, sometimes almost imperceptibly, till at last, by slow gradations, we arrive at the region of jagged rock and frowning precipice. Something like this we may find in the moral world. To the distant observer, a time of terror and anguish stands out in bold relief from the ordinary level of common life; and he forgets the subtle gradations, the diversified incidents, some of them trivial enough, through which men usually pass from one kind of life to another.

24So passed the men of Dundee, in the summer months of that terrible year, step by step from vague apprehension to vivid, actual terror; as the pestilence that walketh in darkness first struck down one, and another, and another; then gradually multiplied its victims until the voice of lamentation filled the city, and no man felt his own life safe from the destroyer for a single hour.

Not very long after the first appearance of the pestilence, Archie Duncan came back one morning in high glee from the grammar-school, whither he had been despatched by the careful Janet only half an hour before.

“Nae mair schule,” he cried, flinging his book on the table; “maister’s awa’, for fear o’ the sickness;—and may guid gang wi’ him!”

Jamie, who happened to be in the room, brought his brother’s ill-timed hilarity to a close by a smart box on the ear. “Hae ye no feeling, callant?” he asked angrily. “Ye suld be on yer twa knees, praying the blessed saints to pity us, instead of jesting and daffing.”

There was justice in the reproof, and Archie was abashed. He withdrew quietly to the window where his little sister was standing, and Jamie presently resumed: “A’ the rich folk’ll soon be awa’, and naebody left in the toun but puir bodies, wha maun just bide because they canna quit.”

25“There’s a hantle shops shut up alang by the High Street and the Nethergate,” remarked Janet.

“Folk dinna care to buy, these times,” responded Jamie. “I hae thocht it an ill trade enoo’ to be naething but a puir baxter lad, Janet; but noo I thank Saint Andrew for the same, for folk maun eat, so lang’s they’re alive.”

At this moment the door was partly opened, and a low, startled voice called, “Janet!”

“Come ben, Mary,” said Jamie, at once recognising that of Mary Wigton.

Mary did not come in, however, and Janet went outside the door to speak to her. The poor girl’s face was deadly pale, and her eyes were large and wild with terror. “What’s wrang wi’ ye?” asked Janet, in alarm.

“Na sae muckle,” said Mary, trying to hide her fears, not so much from her friend as from herself. “Father’s head’s licht the day, and he’s no himsel a’ thegither,—but—but—he’s no that ill, Janet.” She was trembling violently and clinging to the handle of the door for support.

“Puir lassie,” said Janet, compassionately.

“Will ye come and see him the noo? Do, Janet, do—for mercy’s sake!”

Janet was a brave girl, and she loved Mary Wigton dearly. But for the sake of the other members of her family she felt she durst not enter the infected room. 26She answered, therefore, after a moment’s hard struggle with herself, “Wae’s me! I daurna, for Jamie and the bairns.”

Mary did not remonstrate, but the sorrowful expression of her face touched Janet deeply. She said, “I’ll gang in and gar Jamie fetch ye a leech.[3] He’ll ken what’s wrang wi’ yer father. Aiblins it’s no the sickness.”

Mary thanked her, and returned sadly to her watch beside her father’s bed; still hoping against hope that this might prove some passing ailment, and not the dreaded “sickness.”

James Duncan found it difficult to procure a physician; as some, who thought their own lives of more value than those of their patients, had quitted the town, and of course those who remained had their hands full of work.

At length, however, he succeeded; though at the heavy price of presenting himself late at his master’s shop, and being obliged to admit that the sickness had made its appearance in the house where he lodged.

The physician, a compassionate man, reluctantly pronounced the verdict poor Mary most dreaded. He then prescribed some remedies, which were probably calculated to do neither good nor harm to the sufferer; 27and left, promising to send a hired nurse, and to return himself on the morrow.

The presence of the nurse probably saved Mary’s reason, if not her life. All that day, and the night that followed it, they two kept their awful watch beside the suffering and delirious patient. When the morning broke, and all things looked weird and strange in the faint gray light, then there came a change. Mary had risen to extinguish the useless lamp, when to her great joy her father quietly asked her to leave it burning still. Reason had returned, but alas! it was only the last look cast upon earth by the parting soul ere its dread flight to the unknown world.

“I hae been vera ill, Mary!” said the dying man. “I maun hae a priest. Where’s our John?”

Mary started. Up to this moment, terror and anguish had so bewildered her, that, as she afterwards thought, with bitter self-reproach, she had forgotten her dear father’s soul in ministering to his body. “John’s no here,” she said, “but I’ll fetch ye a priest.”