true loyalty, not five-penny fine, much less eleven-penny,’ ...  ’The design was to low him, that he might never be the head of a Protestant party, and to annex his jurisdiction to the Crown, and to parcel out his lands; and tho’ he was unworthily and unjustly dealt with here, yet ought he to observe God’s secret hand, punishing him for his cruelty to his own and his father’s creditors and vassals, sundry of whom were starving.’  Lauder speaks of ‘that fatal Act of the Test.’  He had no favour for it, and he narrates with glee how ’the children of Heriot’s Hospitall, finding that the dog which keiped the yairds of that Hospitall had a publick charge and office, they ordained him to take the Test, and offered him the paper, but he, loving a bone rather than it, absolutely refused it; then they rubbed it over with butter (which they called an Explication of the Test in imitation of Argile), and he licked of the butter, but did spite out the paper, for which they hold a jurie on him, and in derision of the sentence against Argile, they found the dog guilty of treason, and actually hanged him.’

    [23] Sir George Mackenzie also, who criticises Lauderdale’s proceedings
        very freely, pays a fine tribute to one trait in his character,
        ’Lauderdale who knew not what it was to dissemble.’—­Memoirs, p.
        182.

  [Sidenote:  H.O. 166]

  [Sidenote:  H.0. 196.]

  [Sidenote:  H.O. 189.]

Although Lauder considered that Argyll had been unjustly condemned in the matter of the Test, his opinion about the expedition of 1685 was very different.  He did justice to his capacity.  He writes, ’Argile had always the reputation of sense and reason, and if the Whigs at Bothwell Bridge in 1679 had got such a commander as he, it’s like the rebellion had been more durable and sanguinarie’ But as soon as the news of Argyll’s landing on the west coast came, this is his note, ’Argile, minding the former animosities and discontents in the country, thought to have found us all alike combustible tinder, that he had no more adoe then to hold the match to us, and we would all blow up in a rebellion; but the tymes are altered, and the peeple are scalded so severely with the former insurrections, that they are frighted to adventure on a new on.  The Privy Council, though they despised this invasion, yet by proclamations they called furth the whole heritors of Scotland,’ and so on.  ’Some look on this invasion as a small matter, but beside the expence and trouble it hes put the country to, if we ponder the fatall consequences of such commotions, we’ll change our opinions:  for when the ramparts of government are once broke down, and the deluge follows, men have no assurances that the water will take a flowing towards their meadows to fructify them; no, no, just in the contrare.’  Argyll was discovered and apprehended in his flight by a weaver near Paisley, of whom Lauder says, ’I think the Webster who took him should be rewarded with a litle heritage (in such a place wher Argile’s death will not be resented), and his chartre should bear the cause, and he should get a coat of arms as a gentleman, to incouradge others heirafter.’  It does not appear that this suggestion was acted upon.