THE readers of Sir Walter Scott’s Rob Roy
will be familiar with the sayings and doings of that
egotistic "Gleska" serving-man oddity and original, Andrew Fairservice,
who habitually dated events from the time of the Sorrowfu'
Union.
As is well known, the great mass of the Scottish
people were bitterly opposed to the incorporative union of the two
countries and parliaments of England and Scotland. So general and
widespread was this antagonistic feeling, that the General Assembly of
the Church of Scotland appointed a day of fasting
and humiliation to implore Divine assistance from the impending
calamity, and a sermon on the subject was accordingly preached in the
Tron Church, Glasgow, by the Rev. Mr. Clark, whose
closing appeal to the congregation was in these words:
"Wherefore up and be valiant for the city of our
God," on hearing which the congregation literally
rose up in a body, and, headed by the preacher, proceeded to the Cross,
nearly opposite, where they burned the proposed Articles of Union. This
feeling had no small effect in bringing about the Jacobite Rising of
1715; and it did not subside till many years after the Union; when the
rapid and steady increase of prosperity reconciled the citizens of
Glasgow and the people of the Lowlands of Scotland to the loss of our
separate nationality.
|
