These repeated checks bred a panic in the Lieutenant-General's ranks,for several of his men flung down their arms.Urged by such fatal symptoms,and by the approaching night,he deployed his men,and closed in overwhelming numbers on the centre and right flank of the insurgent army.
In the increasing twilight the burning matches of the firelocks,shimmering on barrel,halbert,and cuirass,lent to the approaching army a picturesque effect,like a huge,many-armed giant breathing flame into the darkness.
Placed on an overhanging hill,Welch and Semple cried aloud,'The God of Jacob!The God of Jacob!'and prayed with uplifted hands for victory.(19)But still the Royalist troops closed in.
Captain John Paton was observed by Dalzell,who determined to capture him with his own hands.Accordingly he charged forward,presenting his pistols.Paton fired,but the balls hopped off Dalzell's buff coat and fell into his boot.With the superstition peculiar to his age,the Nonconformist concluded that his adversary was rendered bullet-proof by enchantment,and,pulling some small silver coins from his pocket,charged his pistol therewith.Dalzell,seeing this,and supposing,it is likely,that Paton was putting in larger balls,hid behind his servant,who was killed.(20)Meantime the outposts were forced,and the army of Wallace was enveloped in the embrace of a hideous boa-constrictor -tightening,closing,crushing every semblance of life from the victim enclosed in his toils.The flanking parties of horse were forced in upon the centre,and though,as even Turner grants,they fought with desperation,a general flight was the result.
But when they fell there was none to sing their coronach or wail the death-wail over them.Those who sacrificed themselves for the peace,the liberty,and the religion of their fellow-countrymen,lay bleaching in the field of death for long,and when at last they were buried by charity,the peasants dug up their bodies,desecrated their graves,and cast them once more upon the open heath for the sorry value of their winding-sheets!
INION ON STONE AT RULLION GREEN:
HERE
AND NEAR TO
THIS PLACE LYES THE
REVEREND MR JOHN CROOKSHANK
AND MR ANDREW MCCORMICK
MINISTERS OF THE GOSPEL AND
ABOUT FIFTY OTHER TRUE COVENANTED
PRESBYTERIANS WHO WERE
KILLED IN THIS PLACE IN THEIR OWN
INOCENT SELF DEFENCE AND DEFFENCE
OF THE COVENANTED WORK OF
REFORMATION BY THOMAS DALZEEL OF BINS
UPON THE 28OF NOVEMBER
1666.REV.12.11.ERECTED
SEPT.281738.
BACK OF STONE:
A Cloud of Witnesses lyes here,Who for Christ's Interest did appear,For to restore true Liberty,O'erturned then by tyranny.
And by proud Prelats who did Rage Against the Lord's Own heritage.
They sacrificed were for the laws Of Christ their king,his noble cause.
These heroes fought with great renown;
By falling got the Martyr's crown.(21)
V -A RECORD OF BLOOD
'They cut his hands ere he was dead,And after that struck of his head.
His blood under the altar cries For vengeance on Christ's enemies.'
EPITAPH ON TOMB AT LONGCROSS OF CLERMONT.(22)MASTER ANDREW MURRAY,an outed minister,residing in the Potterrow,on the morning after the defeat,heard the sounds of cheering and the march of many feet beneath his window.
He gazed out.With colours flying,and with music sounding,Dalzell,victorious,entered Edinburgh.But his banners were dyed in blood,and a band of prisoners were marched within his ranks.The old man knew it all.That martial and triumphant strain was the death-knell of his friends and of their cause,the rust-hued spots upon the flags were the tokens of their courage and their death,and the prisoners were the miserable remnant spared from death in battle to die upon the scaffold.Poor old man!he had outlived all joy.
Had he lived longer he would have seen increasing torment and increasing woe;he would have seen the clouds,then but gathering in mist,cast a more than midnight darkness over his native hills,and have fallen a victim to those bloody persecutions which,later,sent their red memorials to the sea by many a burn.By a merciful Providence all this was spared to him -he fell beneath the first blow;and ere four days had passed since Rullion Green,the aged minister of God was gathered to is fathers.(23)When Sharpe first heard of the rebellion,he applied to Sir Alexander Ramsay,the Provost,for soldiers to guard his house.Disliking their occupation,the soldiers gave him an ugly time of it.All the night through they kept up a continuous series of 'alarms and incursions,''cries of "Stand!""Give fire!"'etc.,which forced the prelate to flee to the Castle in the morning,hoping there to find the rest which was denied him at home.(24)Now,however,when all danger to himself was past,Sharpe came out in his true colours,and scant was the justice likely to be shown to the foes of Scottish Episcopacy when the Primate was by.The prisoners were lodged in Haddo's Hole,a part of St.Giles'
Cathedral,where,by the kindness of Bishop Wishart,to his credit be it spoken,they were amply supplied with food.(25)Some people urged,in the Council,that the promise of quarter which had been given on the field of battle should protect the lives of the miserable men.Sir John Gilmoure,the greatest lawyer,gave no opinion -certainly a suggestive circumstance -but Lord Lee declared that this would not interfere with their legal trial,'so to bloody executions they went.'(26)To the number of thirty they were condemned and executed;while two of them,Hugh M'Kail,a young minister,and Neilson of Corsack,were tortured with the boots.