The Bishop

The Bishop`s Dragnet and the Cess.

The Bishops Dragnet was another name for a law passed by Parliament on 10 July 1663 “ An Act for Separation and Disobedience to Ecclesiastical Authority “. It ran hand in hand with the infamous Middleton`s Act which evicted ministers who had not obtained patrons and presented themselves to bishops for approval. This Act stipulated  that ministers appointed before 1649 had to obtain collation  (approval or licence by a bishop) by 30 September; absentees and non conformists were suspended and deposed. In October the Privy Council enacted that all who had not complied  forfeited their livings and had to leave the locality by 1 November. Over 300 stepped down.  These `outed` ministers continued to preach and conducted services in homes, barns and open fields – the conventicle now replaced the kirk as the focus for the faithful. The flagrant disregard by the ministers, for what was the law,  infuriated the government, the prelates and the curates who had been appointed to the vacancies.

 The secondary purpose of the ` Bishops Dragnet ` was to force people to attend their own church on pain of fines and, worst of all, required names of delinquents to be sent to the Privy Council who could order corporal punishment. This was the first of the measures intending to force conformity to the Episcopal Church of Scotland. Shortly the collection of fines was passed to the military while the curates kept records of church attendance and reported absentees to the military for follow up action.

 It was the heavy handed collection of fines by soldiers that was the cause of the Pentland Rising. This happened when soldiers arrested an elderly farmer named John Grier for failing to attend church, they bound him hand and foot and threatened to strip him and roast him on a hot gridiron but local Covenanters intervened and released him. From there the resistance developed to a spontaneous march through the south west of Scotland – Dumfriesshire, Ayrshire and Lanarkshire and culminating in a defeat for the Covenanters at Rullion Green, south of Edinburgh, on 28 November 1666.

The Cess.

The `cess`  was the tax imposed to pay for military occupation but it was not only charged in the post Restoration period (after 1660). It was also a requirement  to pay it as a levy for the Engagement in 1648. In this period the infamous Sir John Turner was sent to Renfrewshire to enforce obedience. In his Memoirs Turner wrote :

 I found my work  not very difficult, for I shortly learnt to know that the quartering  of two or three troopers and half a dozen musketeers was an argument strong enough  in two or three night`s time  to make the hardest-headed Covenanter in the town to forsake  the Kirk and to side with the Parliament.

 Another method that Turner adopted was to quarter troopers, often in excessive numbers, “on none but the Magistrates, Council and Session “ and their supporters. This rigorous pursuit of the religious people (most of whom had some assets and money) brought rapid responses.  “In ten days  they cost a few honest people… above forty thousand pounds [Scots].”

 During Cromwell`s occupation the country people had to bear their share of providing `coal and candle`  equally with the burghs  when the soldiers were acting as garrisons. The elected members of the first joint Parliament made representations to Cromwell about the charges who commented that  “the Ministery did   preach uppe the interests of Charles Stuart .” The garrisons continued for some time because of the Jacobite sympathies that persisted, with the cess charged until the time of Colonel Monck`s march on London in 1659. Cromwellian soldiers lingered in Ayr and district until 1661.

In September 1678 three regiments of horse were added to the army of King Charles II for service  north of the Cheviot Hills and in the Solway region. These regiments were commanded by the Earl of Airlie, the Earl of Home and John Graham of Claverhouse, later to become Viscount Dundee. The purpose of these regiments was to maintain order and to repress the holding of conventicles.  The  Convention of Estates ordered in June 1678 that the means to pay for these soldiers was the `cess`. It  was regarded as particularly obnoxious by the people at large as another burden for them brought about by the activities of the Covenanters. Many of the  Covenanters themselves paid the tax although the die hard element reasoned that paying an unjust tax was conniving at the injustice.

 To add to the bitterness was the view of Richard Cameron, John Dickson and others that paying the cess was on par with accepting an Indulgence so that more division occurred amongst the Presbyterians. John MacMillan, the first full time preacher of the Societies, for example, enquired of parents at baptisms whether they had paid the cess.If they answered `yes` he would refuse to baptise the child. The Society Terms of Communion included the provision that no one could be accepted as a member who had paid the cess, locality or militia money to the civil authorities.

James Renwick was charged, amongst other things, with refusing to pay the cess giving as his reasons :

 For the present cess, enacted for the present usurper, I hold it unlawful to pay it , both in regard it is oppressive to the subject, it is for the maintenance of tyranny, and it is imposed for suppressing the Gospel

 There were several polemical writers about the Cess chief amongst  them was Robert McWard of Wamphray  who wrote a Testimony against Paying of Cess to an unjust and unlawful Government or wicked Rulers. And Alexander Shields in A Hind Let Loose has a vindication.

 Loosely grouped under the label of the Cess were other needs for money and not all the taxation was in fact used for the suppression of conventicles.

1661  An act to raise £40,000 for the King`s use.
     1665  A War tax  derived from a rate of forty shillings on each
               pound land.1666    Act requiring £72,000 monthly for a year in
               shires and burghs.      1670  An act for £360,000 for the King`s use.      1672  A requirement for £864,000 Scots  for war against the                States General (Holland, at this time was a Spanish colony).      1678  A supply of £1,800,000 Scots for suppression of conventicles.      1681 The supply to continue for five years.      1685  A supply of £216,000 yearly for life to James II.      1685  An act for Poll monies from parishioners to relieve heritors

               paying the supply.

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