The Heart of Mid-Lothian - Penn State University

NOTE P.—Expulsion of the Bishops from the
Scottish Convention.
For some time after the Scottish Convention had commenced
its sittings, the Scottish prelates retained their
seats, and said prayers by rotation to the meeting, until
the character of the Convention became, through the
secession of Dundee, decidedly Presbyterian. Occasion
was then taken on the Bishop of Ross mentioning King
James in his prayer, as him for whom they watered their
couch with tears. On this the Convention exclaimed, they
had no occasion for spiritual Lords, and commanded the
Bishops to depart and return no more, Montgomery of
Skelmorley breaking at the same time a coarse jest upon
the scriptural expression used by the prelate. Davie
Deans’s oracle, Patrick Walker, gives this account of
their dismission.
“When they came out, some of the Convention said
they wished the honest lads knew they were put out, for
then they would not get away with haill (whole) gowns.
Sir Walter Scott
655
All the fourteen gathered together with pale faces, and
stood in a cloud in the Parliament Close; James Wilson,
Robert Neilson, Francis Hislop, and myself, were standing
close by them; Francis Hislop with force thrust Robert
Neilson upon them, their heads went hard on one
another. But there being so many enemies in the city
fretting and gnashing the teeth, waiting for an occasion
to raise a mob, when undoubtedly blood would have been
shed, and having laid down conclusions amongst ourselves
to avoid giving the least occasion to all mobs, kept
us from tearing off their gowns.
“Their graceless Graces went quickly off, and there
was neither bishop nor curate seen in the street—this
was a surprising sudden change not to be forgotten. Some
of us would have rejoiced near them in large sums to
have seen these Bishops sent legally down the Bow that
they might have found the weight of their tails in a tow
to dry their tow-soles; that they might know what hanging
was, they having been active for themselves and the
main instigators to all the mischiefs, cruelties, and bloodshed
of that time, wherein the streets of Edinburgh and