Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 4.djvu/280

much fervour and eloquence, that their feelings, already excited, were wound up to the highest pitch, and a degree of enthusiasm pervaded the multitude which sufficiently assured their leaders of the popularity of their cause. The instrument itself, which was now submitted for signature, was a roll of parchment four feet long and three feet eight inches broad; yet such was the general zeal for the covenant, that this immense sheet was in a short time so crowded with names on both sides throughout its whole space, that there was not room latterly for a single additional signature; even the margin was scrawled over with subscriptions, and as the document filled up, the subscribers were limited to the initial letters of their names. Copies were now sent to different parts of the kingdom, and met every where, excepting in three places to be afterwards named, with the same enthusiastic reception which had marked its appearance in Edinburgh, receiving thousands of signatures wherever it was exhibited. The three excepted places were Glasgow, St Andrews, and Aberdeen. In the two former, however, the feeling regarding the covenant amounted to little more than indifference; but in the latter city it was absolutely resisted. Anxious to have the voice of all Scotland with them, and especially desirous that there should not be so important an exception as Aberdeen, the leaders of the covenanters despatched several noblemen and two clergymen, one of whom was Henderson, to that city, to attempt to reclaim it; and this object, chiefly through the powerful eloquence of the subject of this memoir, they accomplished to a very considerable extent, obtaining no less than five hundred signatures, many of them of the highest respectability, immediately after the close of a discourse by Mr Henderson, in which he had urged the most irresistible arguments for the subscribing of the covenant. Mr Henderson was now universally acknowledged as the head of the nonconforming Scottish clergy. On his moderation, firmness, and talent, they reposed their hopes ; and to his judgment they left, with implicit confidence, the guidance and direction of their united efforts. Of this feeling towards him they were now about to afford a remarkable proof. The king, though still without any intention of yielding to the demands of the covenanters, having consented that a General Assembly should be held, empowered his commissioner, the marquis of Hamilton, to convoke it. On the second day of the meeting of this celebrated assembly, which sat down at Glasgow on the 21st November, 1638, Mr Henderson was chosen moderator, without one single dissenting voice. To form a correct idea of the general esteem for his amiable qualities, and the appreciation of his abilities which this appointment implied, it is necessary to consider all the singular and important circumstances connected with it—circumstances which altogether rendered it one of the utmost delicacy, difficulty, and hazard. He was, at a moment of the most formidable religious distraction, called upon to preside over an assembly whose decisions were either to allay or to promote that distraction; who were to discuss points of serious difference between their sovereign and the nation ; who were to decide, in short, whether the nation was to proclaim open war against their sovereign a sovereign backed by a nation of much greater power and larger population; an assembly by whose proceedings the religious liberties of the kingdom were either to stand or fall, and one, in consequence, on which the eyes of the whole people were fixed with a gaze of the deepest and most intense interest. Important, however, and responsible as the appointment was, Henderson was found more than equal to it, for he conducted himself on this trying occasion not only with a prudence and resolution which increased the respect and admiration of his own party for his character and talents, but with a forbearance and urbanity which secured him also the esteem of those who were opposed to them. "We have now" said Henderson at the conclusion of the eloquent and impassioned