Leighton, in despair, resigned his see:  the irreconcilables of the Kirk had crowned him with insults.  The Kirk, he said, “abounded in furious zeal and endless debates about the empty name and shadow of a difference in government, in the meanwhile not having of solemn and orderly public worship as much as a shadow.”

Wodrow, the historian of the sufferings of the Kirk, declares that through the riotous proceedings of the religious malcontents “the country resembled war as much as peace.”  But an Act of Council of 1677 bidding landowners sign a bond for the peaceable behaviour of all on their lands was refused obedience by many western lairds.  They could not enforce order, they said:  hence it seemed to follow that there was much disorder.  Those who refused were, by a stretch of the law of “law-burrows,” bound over to keep the peace of the Government.  Lauderdale, having nothing that we would call a police, little money, and a small insufficient force of regulars, called in “the Highland Host,” the retainers of Atholl, Glenorchy, Mar, Moray, and Airlie, and other northern lords, and quartered them on the disturbed districts for a month.  They were then sent home bearing their spoils (February 1678).  Atholl and Perth (later to be the Catholic minister of James II.) now went over to “the Party,” the opposition, Hamilton’s party; Hamilton and others rode to London to complain against Lauderdale, but he, aided by the silver tongue of Mackenzie, who had changed sides, won over Charles, and Lauderdale’s assailants were helpless.

Great unpopularity and disgrace were achieved by the treatment of the pious Mitchell, who, we have seen, missed Sharp and shot the Bishop of Orkney in 1668.  In 1674 he was taken, and confessed before the Council, after receiving from Rothes, then Chancellor, assurance of his life:  this with Lauderdale’s consent.  But when brought before the judges, he retracted his confession.  He was kept a prisoner on the Bass Rock; in 1676 was tortured; in January 1678 was again tried.  Haltoun (who in a letter of 1674 had mentioned the assurance of life), Rothes, Sharp, and Lauderdale, all swore that, to their memory, no assurance had been given in 1674.  Mitchell’s counsel asked to be allowed to examine the Register of the Council, but, for some invisible technical reasons, the Lords of the Justiciary refused; the request, they said, came too late.  Mackenzie prosecuted; he had been Mitchell’s counsel in 1674, and it is impossible to follow the reasoning by which he justifies the condemnation and hanging of Mitchell in January 1678.  Sharp was supposed to have urged Mitchell’s trial, and to have perjured himself, which is far from certain.  Though Mitchell was guilty, the manner of his taking off was flagrantly unjust and most discreditable to all concerned.