were executed at Edinburgh; ten of whom were suspended from the same gibbet, their heads were stuck upon the city-gates, and their right arms sent to Lanark for a similar exhibition. Thirty-five were executed at their own doors, after having endured the torture. As the Privy Council affected to believe that this insurrection was but a part of an organized conspiracy against the Government, many persons were cruelly tortured, in order to extort evidence of a discovery. Of this number was a young preacher of the name of Maccail; whose leg had been squeezed in an instrument of torture called the iron boot, till the bones were crushed and broken. He endured these cruelties with unshaken fortitude; and expired on the scaffold in transports of joy, while the spectators were overwhelmed with grief.

CHAPTER VIII.

Mode

Iniquitous proceedings of Burnet and Sharpe—who are superseded. ration of Leighton. Tyranny of Lauderdale. The nobles remonstrate-ineffectually.

THESE affecting spectacles were a prelude to a series of atrocities. Dalziel, with his associate Drummond, who had been inured to cruelty in the Russian service, introduced military execution into the Western counties. The torture and the sword were cloyed with blood. Robberies, rapes, and murders, with every species of military excess, were committed by the soldiers with impunity. Even the semblance of trial was superseded: Many were seized on the highways, and instantly executed; lighted matches were fastened to the fingers of others, in order to extort confession. Filial affection and conjugal love were in those barbarous times disreputable in the estimation of the ruling powers, if unsubservient to the arbitrary mandates of the renowned hero of Pentland.

From the prevailing infection of venality, the civil and criminal courts were not exempted. The officers of state privately tampered with the judges; who did not hesitate to declare, though in opposition to the established laws of the realm, that the Court of Justiciary could proceed to the trial and condemnation of state offenders, even in their absence. Fifty-five gentlemen were thus arraigned; of whom twenty were condemned to

be executed whenever they should be apprehended; and their estates were divided among their prosecutors. These acts of misgovernment were sanctioned by the Parliament; which also confirmed the extravagant pretensions of the Justiciary Court.

These iniquitous measures were directed or connived at by Burnet and Sharpe; whose influence prevailed in the Privy Council: But their violence had been indulged or artfully fomented by Lauderdale, till it reached a crisis destructive to themselves.

An unsuccessful war with the Dutch, so aggravated the general discontent in Britain, that Charles was compelled to adopt a more lenient system of government, and to sacrifice his ministers to the A.D. popular resentment. Sharpe and Rothes were dismissed 1668. S from office; and a milder administration succeeded, under the auspices of Tweeddale, Kincardine, and Sir Robert Murray. Sir Robert was appointed justice-clerk: He was a gentleman of an accomplished mind and unimpeached integrity. The army that had oppressed the Western counties was withdrawn and disbanded; and the milder substitute of bonds, accompanied with an ample indemnity, was generally adopted for the preservation of the public peace.

The moderate but artful Leighton attempted an accommodation between the Episcopalians and the Presbyterians, for the purpose of restoring a uniform mode of worship. The church, as it was modelled in the reign of James the Sixth, was to be reëstablished; and though the change might in the mean time be derogatory to the authority of the bishops, Leighton represented that their power would be easily recovered when the present generation of fanatics should sleep with their fathers.

An alliance which must soon have extinguished their name, was declined by the Presbyterians, who preferred a separate though precarious existence, as more congenial to the simplicity and purity of their religion and the austerity of their manners, Leighton, however, persevered in his efforts to effect a reconciliation. A partial indulgence was granted to above forty of the ejected clergy, who were permitted to officiate in vacant churches: But they soon sunk in the estimation of their own party, and were contumeliously styled the King's curates.

A union of the kingdoms was projected by Tweeddale: But that project, so often attempted before, was frustrated by the Scottish aristocracy; who demanded that the Parliaments of the two king

doms should be entirely incorporated, instead of a proportional representation.

Scarcely had the nation begun to breathe under a humane and impartial government, when the prospects of liberty and peace were unhappily clouded. Lauderdale, by whose means the prelates had been removed from the Privy Council, unexpectedly withdrew his support from his virtuous colleagues, and assumed the sole administration of the government. He had hitherto exerted his influence for the benefit of his country; but finding that other qualities were better fitted to accelerate his promotion than virtue and patriotism, he abandoned his early principles for the vicious maxims of the times.

He prevailed upon the Parliament to pass two acts subversive of the civil and religious rights of his country. By the first of these acts, the King was invested with absolute power over the church,—that whatever he might enact respecting ecclesiastical matters should acquire the authority and operation of a law, when sanctioned by the Privy Council. The second act impowered the Crown to maintain a permanent militia of twenty-two thousand men; and their service was to extend to any part of Britain.

To these impolitic measures, the acts of the next session were an exact counterpart. Statutes severe and sanguinary were enacted against conventicles. The laws formerly passed against separatists, operated chiefly against house conventicles: The Presbyterians therefore assembled in the open fields, as more eligible for defence or escape than private associations.

Against such assemblies, the new laws were particularly directed. The preachers were declared liable to confiscation and death. A sum nearly equivalent to thirty pounds Sterling was offered by Government for securing the person of a preacher, and an indemnity for his slaughter in case of resistance; and such as frequented conventicles were liable to imprisonment, arbitrary fines, and transportation to America.

By this iniquitous law, were produced effects exactly the reverse of those that had been expected; for the people, instead of being intimidated by its rigour, armed themselves for defence. A large conventicle in Fife was attended by gentlemen in their ordinary arms; and their example was generally imitated. For such unA.D. patriotic services, Lauderdale was rewarded with the title 1672. S of Duke: But his insolence excited universal odium; and

his administration relapsed into the same barbarity from which the nation had experienced a temporary relief.

The revenues of the kingdom were lavished by the viceroy and his friends; and when the ordinary supplies were found inadequate to his necessities, the most extravagant and oppressive extortions were resorted to. Penalties and confiscations to an incalculable amount were exacted for attending conventicles, with unrelenting rigour. Atholl, the Justice-General, received for his own emolument, in one week, nineteen hundred pounds Sterling. Ten gentlemen in Renfrewshire were amerced in the sum of thirty thousand pounds Sterling. The commerce of the kingdom languished; the most oppressive monopolies were engrossed by the minister and his friends; even the coin was reduced in weight and adulterated.

A.D.

}

These oppressions were not silently endured. A party 1673. of the nobles, headed by the Duke of Hamilton, provoked, by Lauderdale's arrogance, moved in Parliament, that an inquiry should be made into the grievances of the nation. This bold demand was reiterated by twenty members. At first, the minister attempted, by overbearing measures, to quash all inquiries: But the advocates of liberty were not to be silenced; they even intimated their determination to lay their grievances before the King.

A prorogation of the Parliament for two months was the immediate result; but as the popular clamour became still louder, the King commanded the Parliament to be dissolved. Notwithstanding a general promise of redress had been reluctantly granted during the recess, the dissolution of the Parliament was considered as an unworthy artifice to frustrate and supersede all inquiry. violent was the general discontent, that a plan was secretly formed to assassinate Lauderdale and his colleagues. Hamilton's influence was successfully exerted in overruling these desperate counsels; and he again implored to be heard by his Sovereign.

A.D.

So

As it was imminently dangerous to subscribe any do1674.cument, however cautiously framed, that might be converted into leasing-making, and employed for their destruction, Hamilton and his friends communicated their complaints by anonymous letters and pamphlets. Lauderdale's removal from office was first demanded: But Charles had found that minister so entirely devoted to his will, that he confirmed him in his employ

ments; and all his opponents except Hamilton were banished from the Council. Secure in his Sovereign's favour, the minister became more absolute than he had been before.

Though the spirit of the nation was apparently repressed, it occasionally displayed itself in a manner not to be misunderstood, and sufficiently ominous to the rulers... A private litigation before the Court of Session, in which Lauderdale publicly interfered to the perversion of justice, and for the purpose of preventing the constitutional right of an appeal to Parliament, so excited the indignation of the faculty of advocates, that they remonstrated against the interference of the minister, in a manner which he deemed rather uncourteous.

Two of the most eminent counsel were expelled for refusing to take an arbitrary oath; but their indignity was amply counterpoised by the approbation of the majority of their order, fifty of whom accompanied them from the bar. Their independence and spirit incurred a sentence of banishment twelve miles from the city for a year; but, upon a slight and evasive submission, they were permitted to return.

The

The submission and patience of the nation, when Lauderdale had surmounted all opposition, produced no relaxation of fines, imprisonment, torture, and exile: The slightest opposition to the minister was liable to be resolved into constructive treason. nobility and gentry were alike the objects of ministerial resentment: Bailie of Jarviswood, because he forcibly effected the rescue of Kirkton, his brother-in-law, a Presbyterian preacher, from the house of a spy, whither he had been decoyed by the advice of Archbishop Sharpe, was convicted of a state offence, fined five hundred pounds, and imprisoned for a year.

The Duke of Hamilton, and five other noblemen, who had remonstrated against this sentence, were dismissed from the Council, Could a plea of extenuation be urged in behalf of Lauderdale, it must be derived from the incessant and clamorous rage of the bishops, who considered religious toleration incompatible with the security of their authority; or from an unjust but incurable prejudice of the King against the Presbyterians, as disaffected to his government and ever ready to revolt.

As the severities of Government served rather to multiply conventicles than to suppress them, an obsolete statute was revived, whereby the accused, if they failed to appear before the