Fair Sunshine

Fair Sunshine

He crowned the king, and the king gave him an even better crown.

ONE OF the privy councillors of Scotland beginning in 1628 was Archibald Campbell, the eighth earl of Argyll. In February 1638 when Scottish people of all ranks signed the Scottish National Covenant, an oath that bound them to keep the church free of governmental control, Argyll did not sign it but tried to persuade the king to compromise with the signers, now called Covenanters. However, by November he had joined the Covenanters and immediately became one of their leaders. When King Charles I visited Scotland in 1641, he recognized Argyll’s prominence by making him a marquis. Argyll helped write the Solemn League and Covenant of 1643 in which the signatories swore to maintain the Reformed faith in Scotland.

After the execution of King Charles I in England, Argyll, a supporter of the monarchy, personally crowned Charles II as king of Scotland at Scone on New Year’s Day 1651, the last coronation of a king in Scotland. Cromwell’s Commonwealth temporarily replaced the monarchy, but in 1660, Charles II was restored to the throne, and Argyll went to London to congratulate him. Friends warned him that there was danger ahead, and the king never gave him an audience. Instead, he ordered that the marquis of Argyll be imprisoned for treason in the Tower of London, where he was kept in chains throughout the summer and autumn. In December he was sent back to Scotland to stand trial before the Parliament in Edinburgh.

The verdict of the trial was a foregone conclusion, for the king wished him to be executed. The young lawyers who finally agreed to defend him were harassed and not given enough time to prepare a proper defense for the charges against him: that he was a Covenanter, that he had cooperated with Cromwell, and that he questioned the Divine Right of kings. He was found guilty of high treason and sentenced to be executed at Edinburgh on Monday, May 27, 1661. When denied a last petition to the king, he responded, “I had the honour to set the crown on the king’s head, and now he hastens me to a better crown than his own.”

He was allowed to spend his last weekend with his wife, and during those two days he felt a calm and courage he attributed to “the special mercy of God.” He told her, “For my part, I am as content to be here as in the castle, and I was as content in the castle as in the Tower of London, and there I was as content as when at liberty; and I hope to be as content upon the scaffold as in any of them all.”

On the fateful Monday he rose early to write letters and see friends. He warned his minister friends that they must “either suffer much or sin much.” To his daughter-in-law he wrote, “What shall I say in this great day of the Lord, wherein in the midst of a cloud, I have found a fair sunshine. I can wish no more for you, but that the Lord may comfort you, and shine upon you as He does upon me, and give you that same sense of His love in staying in the world, as I have in going out of it.” He wrote Charles II, adding the prayer that “your Majesty and your successors may always sway the scepter of these nations, and that they may be a blessed people under your government.”

When the two o’clock execution neared, he walked to the scaffold, a model of decorum. The ministers prayed, and he spoke his parting words: “I bless the Lord, I pardon all men, as I desire to be pardoned myself.”

Reflection

Being involved in politics was dangerous business in the 1600s. To be on the losing side often meant a trip to the scaffold. Yet Archibald Campbell and many others like him were willing to give their lives to stand up for God’s people and God’s principles. How seriously do you take your role as citizen? Might God be asking you to do more than merely vote?

Whatever you do or say, let it be as a representative of the Lord Jesus.

Colossians 3:17