wing for Ireland, and Lockhart and others being also absent, the most active of the Councillors now left in Scotland, in association with Monk, seem to have been Lord Keeper Desborough, Swinton of Swinton, and Colonel Whetham.  Since August 1656, by the Protector’s orders, three had been a sufficient quorum of the Council.  Monk, of course, was the real Vice-Protector.  Scotland had become his home.  He had lived for some years in the same house at Dalkeith, “pleasantly seated in the midst of a park,” occupying all his spare time “with the pleasures of planting and husbandry”; he had buried his second son, an infant, in a chapel near; and to all appearance he might expect to spend the rest of his days where he was, a wealthy English soldier-farmer naturalized among the Scots, acquiring estates among them, and keeping them under quiet command.[4]

[Footnote 1:  Baillie, III, 836-874 and 577-582; Blair’s Life, 333-334; Council Order Books, Feb. 12 and March 5, 1656-7, and Sept. 18, 1657; and a pamphlet published in London in July 1659 with the title “The Hammer of Persecution, or the Mystery of Iniquity in the Persecution of many good people in Scotland under the Government of Oliver, late Lord Protector, and continued by others of the same spirit, disclosed with the Remedies thereof, by Robt.  Pitilloh, Advocate.” The Persecution complained of by Mr. Pitilloh, a Scottish lawyer who had left Presbyterianism, was simply the discouragement under the Protectorate of such Scottish ministers as had turned Independents and Baptists.  The names of some such are given:  e.g.  Mr. John Row, Principal of the College of Old Aberdeen; Mr. Thomas Charters, Kilbride; Mr. John Menzies, Aberdeen; Mr. Seaton, Old Aberdeen; Mr. Youngston, Durris; Mr. John Forbes, Kincardine.  “As soon as Oliver was lift up to the throne,” says the writer, “some of the Presbyterian faction were sent for; and, to ingratiate himself with them, intimating tacitly that it was his law no minister in Scotland should have allowance of a livelihood but a National Presbyterian, he ordered that none should have stipends as ministers ... but such as had certificates from some four of a select party, being thirty in all, ... of the honest Presbyterian party.”]

[Footnote 2:  Council Order Books of dates.]

[Footnote 3:  Council Order Books of date, and Baillie, III. 356 and 365-366.  Another interesting item of Scottish History under Cromwell’s rule may have a place here, though it belongs properly to the First Protectorate.  In the Council Order Books under date Feb. 17, 1656-7, is this minute:—­“On consideration of a report from his Highness’s Attorney General, annexed to the draft of a Patent prepared by his High Counsel learned, in pursuance of the Council’s order of the 13th of January last, according to the purport of an agreement in writing presented to the Council under the hand of the Provost of Edinburgh on behalf of that city and of Dr. Purves on behalf of the Physicians of Scotland, the same being for erecting a College of Physicians in Scotland:  Ordered, That it be offered to his Highness as the advice of the Council that his Highness will be pleased to issue his warrant for Mr. Attorney General to prepare a Patent for his Highness’s signature according to the said Draft.”]