do little harm; they had done none under the English occupation, which abolished the General Assembly.  To have restored the Assembly, or rather two Assemblies—­that of the Protesters and that of the Resolutionists,—­would certainly have been perilous.  Probably the wisest plan would have been to grant a General Assembly, to meet after the session of Parliament; not, as had been the custom, to meet before it and influence or coerce the Estates.  Had that measure proved perilous to peace it need not have been repeated,—­the Kirk might have been left in the state to which the English had reduced it.

This measure would not have so much infuriated the devout as did the introduction of “black prelacy,” and the ejection of some 300 adored ministers, chiefly in the south-west, and “the making of a desert first, and then peopling it with owls and satyrs” (the curates), as Archbishop Leighton described the action of 1663.  There ensued the finings of all who would not attend the ministrations of “owls and satyrs,”—­a grievance which produced two rebellions (1666 and 1679) and a doctrine of anarchism, and was only worn down by eternal and cruel persecutions.

By violence the Restoration achieved its aim:  the Revolution of 1688 entered into the results; it was a bitter moment in the evolution of Scotland—­a moment that need never have existed.  Episcopacy was restored, four bishops were consecrated, and Sharp accepted (as might have long been foreseen) the See of St Andrews.  He was henceforth reckoned a Judas, and assuredly he had ruined his character for honour:  he became a puppet of Government, despised by his masters, loathed by the rest of Scotland.

In May-September 1662, Parliament ratified the change to Episcopacy.  It seems to have been thought that few preachers except the Protesters would be recalcitrant, refuse collation from bishops, and leave their manses.  In point of fact, though they were allowed to consult their consciences till February 1663, nearly 300 ministers preferred their consciences to their livings.  They remained centres of the devotion of their flocks, and the “curates,” hastily gathered, who took their places, were stigmatised as ignorant and profligate, while, as they were resisted, rabbled, and daily insulted, the country was full of disorder.

The Government thus mortally offended the devout classes, though no attempt was made to introduce a liturgy.  In the churches the services were exactly, or almost exactly, what they had been; but excommunications could now only be done by sanction of the bishops.  Witch-burnings, in spite of the opposition of George Mackenzie and the Council, were soon as common as under the Covenant.  Oaths declaring it unlawful to enter into Covenants or take up arms against the king were imposed on all persons in office.