to be revenged for the insult she had put on them. "If the fanatics," she concludes, "chance to kill me, comfort yourself it shall not be for nought. I was once wounded for our gracious King, and now, in the strength of Heaven, I will hazard my person with the men I can command, before these rebels rest where you have power." No doubt, Lady Methven acted against these "vagueing gipsies," as she terms them, with as much honesty and sincerity of purpose, as they themselves entertained in resisting her.

But the principal agents of government, in the persecution of these oppressed people, were the soldiery, to whom, contrary to the rule in all civilized countries, unless in actual warfare, power was given to arrest, examine, detain, and imprison such persons as they should find in the wildernesses, which they daily ransacked to discover delinquents, whose persons might afford plunder, or their purses pay fines. One of these booted apostles, as the Presbyterians called the dragoons, Captain Creichton by name, has left his Memoirs, in which he rather exults in, than regrets, the scenes of rapine and violence he had witnessed, and the plunder which he collected. The following is one of his stories.

Being then a Life-guardsman, and quartered at Bathgate, he went out one Sunday on the moors with his comrade Grant, to try if they could discover any of the Wanderers. They were disguised like countrymen, in grey coats and bonnets. After eight or ten miles' walking, they descried three men on the top of a hill, whom they judged to be placed there as sentinels. They were armed with long poles. Taking precautions to come suddenly upon this outpost, Creichton snatched one of the men's poles from him, and asking what he meant by carrying such a pole on the Lord's day, immediately knocked him down. Grant secured another-the third fled to give the alarm, but Creichton overtook and surprised him also, though armed with a pistol at his belt. They were then guided onward to the conventicle by the voice of the preacher, Master

John King (afterwards executed), which was so powerful, that Creichton professes he heard him distinctly at a quarter of a mile's distance, the wind favouring his force of lungs.

The meeting was very numerously attended; nevertheless, the two troopers had the temerity to approach, and commanded them, in the King's name, to disperse. Immediately forty of the congregation arose in defence, and advanced upon the troopers, when Creichton, observing a handsome horse, with a lady's pillion on it grazing near him, seized it, and leaping on its back, spurred through the morasses, allowing the animal to choose its own way. Grant, though on foot, kept up with his comrade for about a mile, and the whole conventicle followed in full hue and cry, in order to recover the palfrey, which belonged to a lady of distinction. When Grant was exhausted, Creichton gave him the horse in turn, and being both armed with sword and pistol, they forced their way through such of the conventiclers as attempted to intercept them, and gained the house of a gentleman, whom Creichton calls Laird of Poddishaw. Here they met another gentleman of fortune, the Laird of Polkemmet, who, greatly to his disturbance, recognised, in the horse which the troopers had brought off, his own lady's nag, on which, without his knowledge as he affirmed, she had used the freedom to ride to the conventicle. He was now at the mercy of the Life-guardsmen, being liable to a heavy fine for his wife's deliquency, besides the forfeiture of the palfrey. In this dilemma, Mr. Baillie of Polkemmet invited the Life-guardsmen to dine with him next day, and offered them the horse, with its furniture, as a lawful prize. But Creichton, perceiving that the lady was weeping, very gallantly gave up his claim to the horse, on condition she would promise never to attend a conventicle again. The military gentlemen were no losers by this liberality; for as the lady mentioned the names of some wealthy persons who were present at the unlawful meeting, her husband gave the parties concerned to understand that they must make up a purse of hush-money, for the

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benefit of Creichton and his comrade, who lived plentifully for a twelvemonth afterwards on the sum thus obtained.

This story, though it shows the power intrusted to the soldiers, to beat and plunder the persons assembled for religious worship, is rather of a comic than a serious cast. But far different were the ordinary rencounters which took place between the Covenanters and the military. About forty or fifty years ago, melancholy tales of the strange escapes, hard encounters, and cruel exactions of this period, were the usual subject of conversation at every cottage fireside; and the peasants, while they showed the caverns and dens of the earth in which the Wanderers concealed themselves, recounted how many of them died in resisting with arms in their hands, how many others were executed by judicial forms, and how many were shot to death without even the least pretence of a trial. The country people retained a strong sense of the injustice with which their ancestors had been treated, which showed itself in a singular prejudice. They expressed great dislike of that beautiful bird the Green plover, in Scottish called the Peaseweep. The reason alleged was, that these birds being, by some instinct, led to attend to and watch any human beings whom they see in their native wilds, the soldiers were often guided in pursuit of the Wanderers, when they might otherwise have escaped observation, by the plover being observed to hover over a particular spot. For this reason, the shepherds, within my own remembrance, often destroyed the nests of this bird when they met with them.

A still sadder memorial of those calamitous days was the number of headstones and other simple monuments which, after the Revolution, were erected over the graves of the persons thus destroyed, and which usually bore, along with some lines of rude poetry, an account of the manner in which they had been slain.

These mortal resting-places of the victims of persecution, were held so sacred, that about forty years since an aged man

dedicated his life to travel through Scotland, for the purpose of repairing and clearing the tombs of the sufferers. He always rode upon a white pony, and from that circumstance, and the peculiarity of his appearance and occupation, acquired the nickname of Old Mortality. In later days, the events of our own time have been of such an engrossing character, that this species of traditional history is much forgotten, and moss and weeds are generally suffered to conceal the monuments of the martyrs.

CHAPTER XVIII.

Descent of the Highland Host—Writs of Lawburrows on behalf of the King taken out against the Gentlemen of the West-Trial and Execution of Mitchell, for Assassinating Honeyman, Bishop of the Orkneys-Murder of Archbishop Sharpe-the Nonconformists take up Arms in the West -Defeat of Claverhouse at Drumclog-The Duke of Monmouth sent to Sootland to suppress the Insurrection-Battle of Bothwell Bridge.

WE have said before, that Lauderdale, now the Chief Minister for Scotland, had not originally approved of the violent measures taken with the nonconformists, and had even recommended a more lenient mode of proceeding, by granting a toleration, or Indulgence, as it was called, for the free exercise of the Presbyterian religion. But being too impatient to wait the issue of his own experiment, and fearful of being represented as lukewarm in the King's service, he at length imitated and even exceeded Middleton, in his extreme severities against the nonconformists.

The Duke of Lauderdale, for to that rank he was raised when the government was chiefly intrusted to him, married Lady Dysart, a woman of considerable talent, but of inordinate ambition, boundless expense, and the most unscrupulous

rapacity. Her influence over her husband was extreme, and, unhappily, was of a kind which encouraged him in his greatest errors. In order to supply her extravagance, he had recourse to the public fines for nonconformity, church penalties, and so forth, prosecutions for which, with the other violent proceedings we have noticed, were pushed on to such an extremity as to induce a general opinion, that Lauderdale really meant to drive the people of Scotland to a rebellion, in order that he himself might profit by the confiscations which must follow on its being subdued.

The Scottish nobility and gentry were too wise to be caught in this snare; but although they expressed the utmost loyalty to the King, yet many, with the Duke of Hamilton, the premier Peer of Scotland, at their head, remonstrated against courses which, while they beggared the tenantry, impoverished the gentry and ruined their estates. By way of answer to their expostulations, the western landholders were required to enter into bonds, under the same penalties which were incurred by those who were actual delinquents, that neither they nor their families, nor their vassals, tenants, or other persons residing on their property, should withdraw from church, attend conventicles, or relieve intercommuned persons. The gentry refused to execute these bonds. They admitted that conventicles were become very frequent, and expressed their willingness to assist the officers of the law in suppressing them; but as they could exercise no forcible control over their tenants and servants, they declined to render them selves responsible for their conformity. Finally, they recommended a general indulgence, as the only measure which promised the restoration of tranquillity.

Both parties, at that unhappy period (1678), were in the habit of imputing their enemies' measures to the suggestions of Satan; but that adopted by Lauderdale, upon the western gentlemen's refusing the bond, had really some appearance of being composed under the absolute dictation of an evil spirit. He determined to treat the whole west country as if in a state