Matters were quickly despatched. The curate accused whomsoever he pleased to any of the officers, sometimes to a mere private. The soldier acted as judge, heard no witness, pronounced the sentence, and then executed it, managing to put a good round sum in his own pocket. These men, like the locusts of Egypt, covered the face of the country, and devoured its substance.

Sometimes, on the Sunday morning, a great noise would be heard in the village public house; it proceeded from the soldiers drinking and carousing round the tables. In this village, some good old minister might be living, who, for reasons I have already mentioned, had been allowed to remain at his post without humbling himself to the bishop. Thither the faithful crowded from all quarters, and the church would be filled, which greatly enraged the bishops and their hirelings. All at once the soldiers would rise from table with great tumult, take up their arms, and run to the church door, a sentinel having come to inform them that the service was nearly over. These satellites would then carefully guard all the outlets, and make the congregation pass one by one, like sheep to be counted. "Do you belong to this "parish?" asked they of each individual, and insisted on an answer upon oath. All who did not belong to the parish were fined, and robbed of all they had about them: If these poor Scotchmen had no money, "Give me your Bible," cried the soldiers; or else they would take the men's hats and coats,

and the women's caps and plaids. The military party then returned to their quarters, laden with spoil, laughing and blaspheming, as if they had been pillaging a town taken by storm.

Sometimes the soldiers did not wait for the end of the service. One party would stand at one door of the church, and another at the other; a third then entered, interrupted the worship, and sometimes took to prison all who were not parishioners. This they would term a good haul of the drag-net.

IV.

TYRANNY AND INDULGENCES.

At the sight of all these atrocities, a cry of indignation arose so loud, that it even reached England. Lord Lauderdale profited by this opportunity to ruin his rival, Middleton, who had presided over these tyrannical scenes. The king having ordered the suspension of the fines, the avaricious Middleton for some time kept back his Majesty's proclamation. Lauderdale therefore accused him to Charles of having violated the royal prerogative. Middleton hastily repaired to London his end was approaching; the never-failing punishment of Heaven was about to fall upon him. An old country-woman, seeing him pass by at

Coldstream, cried out to him: "Go thy way, go thy way! I tell thee thou shalt never return." Middleton, however, went forward, and the king sent him to Tangier, where he soon after died.

The management of affairs was then entrusted to Lauderdale. He appointed to the Presidency of the Council Lord Tweeddale, whose son had married his daughter, and who exerted a somewhat conciliatory influence; and the Earl of Rothes was named Lord High Commissioner. But the Church of Scotland did not gain by this. The new government passed an act, sentencing whosoever should absent himself from the official worship to a fine equal to a quarter of his income, besides corporal punishment, as should be thought fit. This act was called "The Bishops' Drag-net." But the persecution of the church was not yet severe enough in the eyes of Archbishop Sharp. He thought the privy council was deficient in zeal in the suppression of Presbyterianism, and would have had that sect persecuted to the death. He therefore obtained from the king, in 1664, the re-erection of the Court of High Commission, to which all causes, ecclesiastical and civil, were to be referred, and, in particular, the judgment of the ejected ministers who dared preach, and of the faithful who dared listen to them. The curates became the agents and spies of this inquisitorial tribunal, and Sharp himself attended to the proper working of the machine. The soldiers undertook to lead the parishioners one by one to church, as galley slaves are driven to hard labour, and all were

declared guilty of sedition who should give relief to an ejected minister, were he even dying with want. It was a saying of the Archbishop of Glasgow, "The only way to be taken with these fanatics" (such was the name bestowed upon them in the proclamations)" is to starve them out!"*

They soon went even farther than this. On the 13th of November, 1666, four countrymen, who were seeking to avoid the tyranny of this inquisition, were taking refreshment in the village of Dalry in Galloway, when they were informed that some soldiers were cruelly maltreating an old man, with the intention of making him pay a ruinous fine. They hastened to the place, and found the victim lying on the ground, bound hand and foot, and the soldiers. employed in taking off his clothes, in order to execute the horrible threat they had uttered of stretching him naked on a red-hot gridiron. At this hideous spectacle, the countrymen uttered a cry, and the soldiers threw themselves on them sword in hand: the troopers were disarmed, and one of their number was wounded. Knowing the danger which menaced these generous men, the people of the neighbourhood rose in arms, and others soon joined them. But this sudden flame was speedily quenched in torrents of blood on the Pentland hills.

A few of the Scottish nobles now began to grow weary of these horrors, and to lift up the voice of

*The same expression has been also used in our own day, in an official document of the Canton de Vaud.

army

is

humanity. An order from the king commanded the army to be disbanded, with the exception of the guards. The bishops and the curates were in consternation; and Burnet, archbishop of Glasgow, (whom we must not confound with the English historian,) exclaimed: "Alas! now that the "disbanded, the Gospel will go out of my diocese." Among the preachers who were then persecuted was Hugh M'Kail, a young man of amiable character, handsome person, distinguished talents, and holy life. He was a preacher when the 400 pastors were expelled from their livings; and in preaching he had said, that the church, persecuted in all ages, had always found among its enemies a "Pharaoh on the throne, a Haman in the state, and "a Judas in the church." Archbishop Sharp, having heard of this sermon, doubted not that he was the Judas himself, and immediately despatched a party of soldiers to seize M'Kail; but the latter fled to Holland, where he remained four years. Returning to Scotland in 1665, and finding affairs worse than he had left them, he led a quiet and retired life in his father's house. There, far from the world, he wandered among the hills, the lonely pastures, and the peaceful valleys; and alone, under the canopy of heaven, wept and prayed for his unhappy country. Soon after, the peasantry having taken up arms, as before mentioned, in defence of Presbyterianism, he joined them; but being of a weak constitution, he was unable to endure the fatigue, and soon left them to return to

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