denied upon oath that such a promise was ever given to him: Lockhart produced a copy of the act of council in which it was recorded, and craved that the register of the council's acts should be produced, which the court refused; the act, however, was read, and Lockhart earnestly insisted for liberty to speak on it; but this the court would not permit. The jury found Mitchell guilty, and he was executed at the Grassmarket of Edinburgh on the 18th of January, 1678. Perhaps the lords had short memories, which are sometimes exceedingly convenient; for the act containing the promise to Mitchell still remains in the register of the proceedings of the Privy Council.4

49

The government now determined to extinguish conventicles by treating the west, the south-west, and other parts of the country, as if it had been in a state of rebellion. Towards the end of January, 1678, an army of ten thousand men was mustered at Stirling, of whom six thousand were Highland clansmen. This force was spread over the above regions where the nonconformists, or the Whigs, as they were called in the speech of the time, were most numerous, there to live at free quarters; and a committee of the Privy Council accompanied the host, armed with special information and ample powers for punishing notable offenders. They were empowered to impose and exact such fines as they thought fit from all who refused to take the bond; and they were instructed to prosecute vigorously all who had been at field conventicles since the 1st of January 1677; while all persons who had been accessory to the building of preachinghouses, and also all landowners, life-renters, and landlords, who had connived at the erection of such houses, since the 24th March, 1674, were to be punished without mercy, and all the meeting-houses were to be razed to the ground. They were to prosecute all who had withdrawn from public worship in their own parishes, to disarm all persons, and to search for and seize arms and ammunition.

The bond, tendered and backed by the presence of the

49 State Trials, Vol. VI.; Wodrow's Hist., Vol. II., pp. 454-473.

:

army, was in the following terms "We faithfully bind and oblige us, that we, our wives, children, and servants, respectively, shall not be present at any conventicles or disorderly meetings in time coming, but shall live in obedience to the law, under the penalties of the acts of parliament also we bind and oblige us, that all our tenants and cottars, their wives, children, and servants, shall likewise abstain from these conventicles, and other illegal meetings, and live in obedience to the law: and farther, that we nor they shall reset, supply, or commune with forfeited persons, intercommuned ministers, or vagrant preachers; but shall do our utmost endeavour to apprehend their persons and in case our tenants and cottars shall contravene, we shall take and apprehend every person guilty thereof, and present them to the judge ordinary, that they may be punished therefore, according to the acts of parliament; otherwise we shall remove them and their families off our ground; and if we fail therein, we shall be liable to such penalties as the said delinquents have incurred by law." The resistance to this form of oppression was almost universal; even many of the landowners and small proprietors refused to sign the bond; in Lanarkshire only twenty out of three thousand householders subscribed the bond, and, indeed, it is reported that those who did sign it suffered as much as those who refused, as the soldiers and Highlanders sent to execute the law spared no one, and acted without distinction of persons. The Highlanders were sent home in the end of February; and on the 24th of April the remainder of the army was disbanded, save a garrison left in Ayr.50

The government was disappointed that the Highland army had effected so little; and more force behoved to be employed.

50 Wodrow's Hist., Vol. II., pp. 378-454. "When this goodly army returned homewards, you would have thought by their baggage that they had been at the sack of a besieged city; and therefore, when they passed Stirling Bridge, every man drew his sword, to show the world that they had returned conquerors from the enemy's land, but they might as well have shown the pots, pans, girdles, and other household furniture with which they were loaded; and among them all,

A Convention of Estates was summoned to grant money, which met at Edinburgh in the end of June, 1678. It passed an act authorising a sum of eighteen hundred thousand pounds Scots to be raised by a tax spread over five years, to enable the King to maintain more forces to uphold the orthodox clergy, extinguish conventicles, and crush the people. This act was extremely obnoxious to the presbyterians, but all were obliged to pay the tax under severe penalties.51

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By the end of the year a considerable army was posted, chiefly in the western and southern counties. In the beginning of the year 1679, detachments of troops were ordered to move and down the country, to harass all who did not conform to episcopacy, and to collect the tax, which many would not pay till they were compelled. The soldiers were commanded to search out and to pursue all who attended field meetings, to kill all who resisted them, to imprison and deliver to the magistrates, or send in to the council, all whom they apprehended.52

This year, in the end of February, the government added a number of new commissioners to assist those appointed in August, 1677; their special work being the suppression of all schism and opposition to the Established Church, and all seditious meetings. Among other instructions touching the execution of their task, and to interest and encourage them in it, they were authorised "to apply the one-half of the fines of all the landed men and women, and their children, who lived within the bounds of their commission, to their own use, and such as they should employ". This was sure to make the commissioners warm to their work. The King also issued an order authorising none purchased so well as the two Earls of Airly and Strathmore, chiefly the last, who sent home the money, not in purses, but in bags and great quantities. Yet under all this oppression the poor people bore all; only in Kampsey there was one of the plunderers killed by a countryman, who yet escaped punishment."Kirkton's Hist., pp. 390-391. It has often been noticed that none of the Whigs lost their life by the hands of this Highland host, as it was called.

51 Acts Parl. Scot., Vol. VIII., pp. 213-229; Kirkton's Hist., pp. 393-396. 52 Wodrow's Hist., Vol. II., pp. 492-495; Vol. III., pp. 11-17.

the sheriffs in the south and in the west of the kingdom to recognise, and act with, a number of special sheriff-deputes nominated by the King himself, expressly to try and judge persons accused of attending conventicles, of withdrawing from the worship of the parish churches, or of irregular baptisms and marriages.53 That men thus invested with judicial powers should sometimes act with a high hand was almost certain, and when William Carmichael, an ex-bailie of Edinburgh, was raised by the King to the dignity of a special sheriff in the county of Fife, it was natural that he should exert himself to show that he was worthy of his post, by pursuing and fining nonconformists.

It was this man, who had been treating those who attended field meetings in Fife with great severity, that a few bold men resolved to punish and frighten. On the 3rd of May, 1679, under Hackston of Rathillet and John Balfour, they attempted to waylay him among the hills above Cupar, where they expected he was to be hunting. They searched for him from early morning till the middle of the day, but without success; and just when they were about to disperse, they were told that the Primate was in the neighbourhood, and would pass along the road in his carriage. They then bethought themselves that, while the subordinate had escaped, providence had placed their great enemy within their grasp, and him they determined to murder. The Archbishop's coach was driving along Magus Moor, about two miles from his own city, and they instantly pursued it. Sharp cried to the coachman to drive hard; the pursuers, however, fired several shots, overtook the coach, cut the traces, disarmed and dismounted his attendants, and then commanded Judas to come forth, that they might not injure his daughter, who was with him in the coach. But as he refused to move, they fired into the coach; he still clung to his daughter, who was screaming with terror. Then they dragged him out, when he fell on his knees, and in piteous tones implored them to

53 Wodrow's Hist., Vol. III., pp. 17-21, 41.

spare his life, promising them forgiveness-anything, if they would only have mercy: but they reminded him that he had imbrued his hands in the blood of many innocent people for a period of eighteen years, and that now he must die. A volley of shot was discharged at him, and his life was extinguished with their swords. The assassins, after rifling the coach and the Bishop's clothes, remounted their horses and rode off, leaving the Primate's daughter lamenting over his mangled body on the moor. 54

At the time there were a few in Scotland who approved of this foul deed, but the majority of the people regarded it as an atrocious murder. There were not many, however, who greatly lamented the fate of Sharp, and long afterwards some people thought that he deserved his cruel end. But murder and assassination cannot be justified under any circumstances, and must in all cases be emphatically condemned.

The murder of Sharp afforded the government a new excuse for greater severities against the nonconformists and all who attended field meetings. A reward was offered for the apprehension of the murderers, but they had fled to the west, where they were joined by others, then preparing to resist the authorities. The Privy Council immediately emitted proclamations against armed conventicles; but the people of the west were past the stage of being deterred by proclamation: they were ripe for insurrection. A few of the most resolute agreed to give what they called "a public testimony against the government," and arranged to meet on the 29th of May, the anniversary of the Restoration. A party of eighty armed men marched into the borough of Rutherglen, extinguished the bonfires, then blazing in honour of the day, burned the Rescissory Act, and the acts establishing episcopacy, and then read their declaration and affixed it upon the market cross. In this manifesto they gave their testimony-"1. Against the Rescissory Act, for overthrowing the whole Covenanted Reformation. 2. Against

54 Kirkton's Hist., pp. 403-421; Wodrow's Hist., Vol. III., pp. 41-51.