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.[1]
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
- ↑ 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 his 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."
