King Charles II. died February 6, 1685.  Few tears were shed, many hearts were glad, at his departure.  He was called the “Merry Monarch,” in allusion to his frivolous spirit and gross dissipation.  “Wherever you see his portrait, you may fancy him in his court at Whitehall, surrounded by some of the worst vagabonds in the kingdom, drinking, gambling, indulging in vicious conversation, and committing every kind of profligate excess.”

Charles left behind him a gory path.  Pools of blood, precious blood, the blood of the saints, marked it all the way through the twenty-five years of his reign.  Where did that horrible path lead?  We shudder at the answer; we draw a veil over the scene; we are careful not to speak our thoughts.  But the strong-hearted martyrs followed the vision to the end.  “Would you know what the devil is doing in hell?” exclaimed John Semple, one of the Covenanted ministers.  “He is going with a long rod in his hand, crying, Make way, make room, for the king is coming; and the other persecutors are posting hither.”  How like the scathing irony of Isaiah, in describing the death of the king of Babylon!  “Hell from beneath is moved for thee, to meet thee at thy coming.”  An ovation in the lower world!  What horrid mockery there awaits the chieftains of crime!

A curious coincidence occurred at this time.  Alexander Peden, on a certain night, was conducting family worship.  He was hundreds of miles distant from the king.  While reading from the Bible, he suddenly stopped, and exclaimed, “What’s this I hear?” He uttered the strange words three times.  Then after a brief pause, he clapped his hands and said, “I hear a dead shot at the throne of Britain.  Let him go; he has been a black sight to these lands, especially to poor Scotland.  We’re well quit of him.”  That same night the king fell in a fit of apoplexy, or as some say, by a dose of poison, and died within five days.  His brother, the Duke of York, succeeded him on the throne.

James VII, the new king, inherited Charles’ work of slaughter, and continued it with revolting savagery.  He, too, was infatuated with the thought of being supreme over the Church, and became infuriated with the purpose of overthrowing Presbyterianism, and suppressing the Covenanters, now called “The Cameronians.”  Had he paused to consider, surely he would have hesitated to follow the man, who had gone to meet his Judge, to answer for the blood that was crying against him for vengeance.  We tremble at the thought of the naked soul facing the accusations of the slain, and receiving righteous retribution for its cruel deeds.  How great the infatuation of the successor, who determined to follow the same path!