The threatened bolt of excommunication was not launched, but our author found it necessary to apply to the Commission of General Assembly in order to make his peace with the ecclesiastical power. Accordingly, on the 22nd of June, 1650, he appeared in Edinburgh before this body, and presented his "supplicatioun" for pardon for the guilt of taking part in the Northern insurrection, and of assaulting and razing the walls of Inverness.
The Commission met, doubtless, in that "little roome of [off] the East Church" of St Giles, which Baillie describes as having been "verie handsomelie dressed for our Assemblies in all time coming,"[111] and from which, three years later, the English officers, under Cromwell's order, ejected the members of the General Assembly. The Commission on that day, when our author appeared before them, consisted of twenty-four members--the most distinguished divines and politicians in Scotland of the Covenanting party. The moderator, or chairman, was Robert Douglas,[112] "a great State preacher," who had been chaplain to the Scots troops in the service of Gustavus Adolphus, and had won the esteem of that monarch, and who in little more than six months' time would officiate at the coronation of Charles II., for whom Sir Thomas Urquhart had prematurely drawn the sword. Beside him was Samuel Rutherford, the Principal of St Andrews, whose fervid piety has found no lack of admirers in every generation since his time. Robert Baillie, the writer of the _Letters_ which contain so many vivid pictures of events in that stirring period; David Dickson, Professor of Divinity in Glasgow, whose name we have heard as one of the deputation to persuade the people of Aberdeen to take the Covenant; and James Guthrie, who died as a martyr, the year after the Restoration, were present there that day. The contrast between these grave, dignified, saintly Covenanting leaders, and the brilliant Cavalier, Sir Thomas Urquhart, is one which, by its picturesqueness, strongly impresses the imagination.
The Commission, after hearing the petitioner's statements, did not, apparently; treat the matter as of very serious moment. The dangerous crisis was over, and they could afford to be merciful. They seem to have condoned the political offence, but referred Sir Thomas to Mr John Annand, minister of Inverness, one of their number, "that he might confer with him concerning some dangerous opinions which, as was informed, he had sometimes vented." If these could be explained away, and no further complicity in disloyal schemes were brought home to him, Mr Annand was empowered, acting at all times under the advice of the Presbytery of Inverness, to receive his public "satisfaction" in the church of that city. How the matter ended we do not know. But there is very little doubt that Sir Thomas's nebulous heterodoxy proved no bar to his being freed from ecclesiastical censure, and that, in due course, according to the custom of that time, he stood, as a penitent, before the congregation of the Parish Church, in that city the walls of which he had assisted to assault and overthrow.